Coastal Design Inspiration from my favorite Flea Market..and the San Francisco Gift Show

Spent all day Saturday at the San Francisco gift show - quite the adventure!  The CalTrain runs from Belmont, where I live on the Bay, to downtown San Francisco, so instead of fighting Saturday traffic in the city (sometimes  much worse than during the week!), I thought I would be brave and learn how to take the train into the city.  It was a lot of fun!  Big Giants game against the Dodgers, so the train was packed with Giants fans all decked out and ready to go to the game, gloves in hand, jerseys on!


Here's a preview of some of the beach house accents that I found - I am only going to show you a few things, so as to not spoil the surprise later when they show up at Caron's Beach House
Sea Glass Stones - Love these!

New company located here in the Bay Area - love their designs, all blue and white clean classic By-The-Sea colors!  Very excited about adding their products -














So after spending all day looking at new coastal products for the website, exhaustion set in. Nice PB & J for dinner, then promptly falling asleep with the light on and the book on top of me, I didn't even hear the phone ring when Tom called me.  He was gone to the Oregon Coast this past weekend for his family's annual beach trip, and I stayed home working and going to the shows.  Nice guy that he is, he set the alarm at 5:30 am, so that I could get going  over to Alameda before the crowds.  Yeah,  that didn't happen.

After hitting the snooze button about 6 times, I finally rolled out the door at 7:30. With a huge cup of coffee, and a peanut butter laden English Muffin in hand, I was off in the GTP.  Hoping that no one would notice my big black circles under the baby blues, I made it to Alameda by 8:10. Crowds had already beat me there.

Have to confess, this is my favorite thing to do - go to the Flea Markets, talk to the vendors, look at all of the great vintage coastal things!  It's great inspiration for new product ideas, new displays on the website, this time I was actually inspired to create a whole new category at "Caron's" just so that I could share my beach finds - it's called "Caron's Beach Treasures" - check it out!   http://www.caronsbeachhouse.com/servlet/the-**Caron's-Beach-Treasures--dsh--Unique-and-Special!-**/Categories



The Alameda Flea Market is a never-ending source of inspiration for me. I hope you enjoy my tour of August's market!

I would have bought several of these, if I could figure out a way that they could be shipped economically!  Great colors-

So upset with myself for not buying this picture when I saw it!  After being at the market for 2 hours, I was starving, so I walked away to grab a bite to eat, then couldn't find the booth again.  Feel so stupid.

 I did buy these - could not resist this Southern California artist's work.  Fabulous! Vintage bottles, with gorgeous shells soldered on with oxidized copper.... very very cool.  Have been looking for these for months, but couldn't find any that really grabbed me. These did.

Just another example, vintage lilac colored perfume bottle with cluster of purple barnacles....

Colorful hand-painted berry buckets.  If I had a store, these would have been a fun purchase!

Big vintage ship's porthole, $300.00.  Pretty cool, but I passed.

Delicate hand-painted tropical dishes.....

 English picnic basket with real china dishes!

Vintage sea-washed bottles, some of these can be quite expensive!

Beautiful French desk..

French lantern- similar to the SeaMaster light at Restoration Hardware.  Gorgeous!  Was stupid though, didn't find the price

Love love love - this  hand painted furniture.  Beautiful beach cottage colors and detailed hand-finishing.....

Here's the whole set....

12" + seashell queen.....

Tin children's beach buckets....very neat, but a little pricey.  Will keep looking!

Seashell and jeweled tiaras... local artist, I may still have to go buy some of these for the site!

I had a great time.  Got to the market at 8:10, didn't leave until almost 1:00 pm, needless to say, I felt like I had run a marathon!  Came home and took a 2 1/2 hour nap....