Eye Candy for Everyone! A Mackenzie-Childs Photo Tour

Oh, man, am I in trouble!

You should never take an easily distracted person on a tour of the Mackenzie-Childs Store and Farmhouse the week before their annual Barn Sale.

I’ve never been to the Barn Sale, but I’m plenty tempted.

But should you take a candy addict to a half-price candy sale?

I’m being metaphorical (though, of course, I DO have a problem with real candy as well).But EYE candy….everywhere.

We live a nice Sunday drive away from Aurora, New York; the whimsically wonderful home base of the Mackenzie-Childs’ Factory Store.  We’ve visited a few times, and our latest trip was Mr’s idea.

Really…?!! What was he thinking!  He knows that as soon as I go there, I start forgetting the projects I was already procrastinating about and add new projects to bump the old projects further down the list.

Sorry, but that’s how I am.

Hmm? Pardon?

Did you say what’s a Mackenzie-Childs?

S’okay!  Those words also crossed my lips a few years ago.

I’d just painted a bees and ladybugs checkerboard game table for a school auction and afterward, a woman asked if I could paint a chest for her in the style of Mackenzie-Childs.

Crickets.  Zero idea what she was talking about.

Uh…a Mack what?

Hours later, after emerging from their “Rabbit Hole” of a website (a great phrase for “time burner.”..thank you, Jodie!), I was fully hooked on their iconic paint-dragged black and white “Courtly Check” (which is now also available in cream and white), and signature black and white stripes, all juxtaposed against colorful backdrops of flowers, butterflies, bees, trees, fish….so so so much to absorb.

It motivated me to paint/decorate a couple of MacKenzie-Childs-inspired mailboxes, here and here; make my own frame as a front-door wreath alternative; these cute file folders for our command center; and several bird houses I have in the yard.

I’ve also received a few pieces as gifts…but avoided the Barn Sale…their once-a-year fire sale with discounts of up to 80% on new, overstocked, and discontinued items and factory seconds.  Even for a cheap hag like me, that would be a wallet buster.

But if I ever went, this would be my most hoped for prize:

The Mrs. Powers Garden Gate, THE perfect reason to build that berry patch I’m always not building.  She could make it happen.

I love her.  She reminds me of my mom.

I have this Mrs. Powers Bell outside my side door…and loved it so much I gave one to my gardenista mom for her house.

I’m also fairly addicted to the rest of their birdhouses and garden stuff.  But just touring the store gets me thinking about the fun it would be to decorate INside in their whimsical style.

Here’s a peek at the store:

Sensory overload, amirite?

You might think it a little too over-the-top… I mean, how could you actually decorate with this checkered mania.

And then…you take a short walk down the path to an adorable Victorian farmhouse where you are beaten senseless by charming details everywhere you look.

 

And you haven’t even gone inside yet!!!

 

Thoughts of “I wish..” and “Hey, I could use that idea to make a…” start poking at your cranial inspiration center.

Enough of me telling you…

Here’s the living room/parlor:

 

The ceiling treatment in this library/reading/no-smoking/smoking room features a painted sky through the octagonal molding.  (Be sure to zoom in and check out Dude’s trousers.)

 

The cheery dinette:

Now that would make me serve breakfast in an apron, dress, and pearls.

 

The kitchen (also home to the candy jars in the first photo):

 

The first floor hallway….

 

that takes you to this second floor hallway.

I need to toss all the clothes out of Mr’s armoire so we can have a coffee station and mini bar upstairs like this one.  He won’t mind… I’ll get him some nice cardboard boxes.

 

And after I do that, he will probably suggest I camp out in another bedroom…which I could decorate like this:

 

Or perhaps I could put roosters on the posts of our bed….although he is not a rooster fan, so perhaps not.

 

The third-floor Courtly Check suite…  Super fun to look at, but if you spent any measurable amount of time here, would your eyes make you see checks everywhere for the rest of the day…like one of those optical illusion thingys?  I say yes!

 

 

Ahhhh…much better!

Darling, right?

I really enjoy spending time in that house.

 

Which is not to say that I am not equally inspired by this

or this

or this

or this

 

Completely different flavors of candy.

But I have room in my heart for Sponge Candy AND Swedish Fish AND Payday Bars AND Coffee Crisp.

I can love a lot of different design styles as well.

HOWEVER…  I am NOT a fan of black licorice.  Blech…just don’t feel it.  Similarly, in painfully honest disclosure–one that is blasphemous to true Mack-Chi afficianados–I am also not a fan of the lamp lady that greets you when you enter the farmhouse.

I do get it…she’s artsy and whimsical…but she kind of creeped me out enough that I forgot to snap a pic of the uber colorful and very lovely dining room.  Blame me…it’s a childhood mannequin trauma thing.

However, if you would like to crawl down the rabbit hole on your own time, here is the link to the Mackenzie-Childs’ website/store/blog.

 

People will come from far and wide for the 2018 Mackenzie-Childs Barn Sale.  And I will have fun following it on Twitter and Instagram using the likely hashtags #BarnSale, #BarnSale2018, #MackenzieChilds, and #courtlycheck.

If you won’t be traveling cross-state or cross-country to hit the sale, now is also a good time to visit Mackenzie-Childs.com.  They currently have a large selection of generously discounted items and gifts (some of which are also very generously priced, wink wink). They also have an equally charming blog.  (FYI, I am not an affiliate, this is not sponsored, and don’t have a discount code.   I just find it fun.)

 

Going forward…my list of projects that I will probably never get to I’m hoping to start right away has just gotten hopelessly long.

We’ll just have to see where the distractions take me.  Don’t blame me…it’s all Mr’s fault!