If you were one of those three people who missed our holiday open house after Thanksgiving - it was fabulous!

Not to worry though, we still have a number of great handmade wreaths, and garlands. We also have lots of cool old vintage ornaments and decorations.

We also have a nice supply of boxwood and magnolia wreaths in our 4000 square foot walk-in ooler/hayloft upstairs.

I should also mention that we'll probably close a little early on Christmas Eve, so if you need a last minute gift, call first!!. We'll be closed Christmas Day and we will re-open on Sunday December 26 at 12pm.

Recently, a customer by the name of Steve Johnson sent us an email inquiring about something that he could use for a fire pit. In the note, he mentioned that he had an old Kimball grand piano for sale. We weren't really in the market for a piano, but curiosity got the better of us and we went to take a look. It was a, beautiful, ebony, almost concert-size grand piano! We tried every way we could to talk ourselves out of it - it was too big, too old, too expensive - a completely extravagant purchase... we had to have it.

We scraped together all of the spare money we could find - under the cushions, behind the dresser, in Addy's piggy bank and made the best offer we dared. Although it was much less than Steve wanted, he bit his lip and kindly sold it to us for exactly what we could afford.

Three days after the piano took up residence in our living room (now music room), I came a cross a photo of the day my grandparent's announced their engagement. It was in a pile of photos my brothers and sisters had started sorting through last summer was supposed to have been headed for storage.

The photo was taken on June 21, 1921 in the garden of my great- grandfather's house in Highland Park, IL. Among others, the photo shows my great-grandfather - Curtis Nathaniel Kimball (then president of Kimball Pianos), Fanny Hadley Kimball - who I believe was the widow of W.W. Kimball, the founder of the Kimball Piano Company and my grandfather, W.W. Kimball II, who was just back from college at Dartmouth and in the beginning his career at the piano company.

All of the sudden it struck me that if this piano was manufactured in the period between 1919 and 1921 as it's serial number indicates, my grandfather could well have been the junior floor manager that gave it the final seal of approval as it rolled off of the line. A real piece of my family patrimony had just unexpectedly dropped into my lap.

We've polished it and had it tuned - none of us can keep our hands of of it. Addy has mastered "Chopsticks" and moved on to "Jingle Bells" - we hope to have him starting lessons next month.

Steve seemed to know, better than we did, just how absolutely right it was that we have not just a piano, but this piano.

Thank you Fafa, Great-grandfather C.N. and Steve Johnson.

Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.

The three of us are going to Mexico on New Years day. We're going to Huatulco again, our favorite place in the southern beach area of the state of Oaxaca.

We'll be staying for a week, so we're closing the store from Saturday, January 1st through Saturday, January the 8th. We'll re-open at our usual time of 12pm on Sunday the 9th.