Twigs & Faeries

Happy New Year!

2009-12-31T09:31:00.001-08:00

"Resolve to make at least one person happy every day, and then in ten years you may have made three thousand, six hundred and fifty persons happy, or brightened a small town by your contribution to the fund of general enjoyment. Your Merry Christmas may depend on what others do for you. But your Happy New Year depends on what you do for others."

January hours at the shop will vary, but appointments are welcome! Please call Mary at (585)704-7686 or Sylvie at (585)624-4690.

Champagne Tasting

2009-11-24T04:50:00.000-08:00

Thursday, December 3, 5:30-7:30 is the Honeoye Falls Lower Mill's Annual Champagne Tasting. Come do some Christmas Shopping with Twigs & Faeries, taste some good bubbly compliments of Colonial Liquors, tour the art gallery and top it all off with a delicious dinner at the Rabbit Room Restaurant while listening to live music. Reservations are recommended for dinner as this is the most popular tasting of the year.

Twigs & Faeries will be open for shopping with lots of new inventory and seasonal items appropriate for gift giving this Christmas---gifts for the hostess, housewarming, wedding, bridal shower, or even something a little special just for yourself. Our whole inventory will be 20% off (excluding jewelry and baked goods).

Hope to see you there!

Spooktacular Happenings at Twigs & Faeries

2009-10-02T05:18:00.000-07:00

October is the month for one of our favorite holidays---Halloween! That is why we have chosen a Halloween themed gift basket to donate for a silent auction at the Historic Lower Mill on October 16. This wine tasting and fundraiser is hosted by the Lower Mill and organized by Strong Fertility Center to benefit preservation of fertility in cancer survivors.

Twigs & Faeries has arranged a very chic and festive collection of Halloween themed items resulting in a Spooktacular Gift Package with a retail value of $200. We are very excited and proud to be part of such a worthy cause.

Gift Packages

2009-06-08T06:44:00.000-07:00

But what is a gift package, you're wondering? We think of them as a very special arrangement of several beautiful items in one gift. Their theme can be determined by the type of items we have gathered together or it could be a variety of items being connected only by color. Or maybe you want to personalize a gift for someone special. Then we encourage you to browse our shop to find those gems and let us magically bring them together in an arrangement that will make you feel as special as the lovely recipient.

We merrily invite you to stop in and experience the magical atmosphere of our shop and take a peek at all of our little treasures. These are just some of our dish sets that can be assembled into very unique gift arrangements for any occasion.

Sneak Peek!

2009-05-12T16:00:00.000-07:00

Here is a sneak peek at some of the handcrafted items we are making for Twigs & Faeries. We know the pictures don't give you much info. You'll just have to visit the shop to see what these little luxuries are. We're opening May 28! Hope to see you there!

Mary & Sylvie

Coming Soon!

2009-03-03T12:37:00.001-08:00

Historic Lower Mill at 61 N. Main Street, Honeoye Falls, New York.

Another Special Gift

2009-02-26T13:12:00.000-08:00

We had a request from a family member to create a gift for her friend who will soon be celebrating a very special birthday.

This was going to be one of our customized gifts. But we didn't have the pleasure of knowing the intended recipient. In fact, the request came from and would be shipped to another state.

In order to make this gift special, we had to get a little information. What we found out was that this person is very natural and earthy. She is into mindfulness and practices yoga. And like us, she loves all beautiful and vibrant colors and likes antique or vintage inspired jewelry.

Off we went on our shopping expedition. Usually, we need to find one unique item for the gift arrangement and then we build around that. The first item we found was a CD of beautiful meditative music, entitled Inner Peace. The colors on the front of the CD were a lovely soft green and lavender. That's all we needed--we had our color scheme. The rest came easily, but very thought out.

We added an aromatic green tea French milled natural soap, Yoga and Meditation Balm, Green Tea nutrition Bar and Green Tea mints. We also purchased one of the cutest notecard sets that is illustrated by an artist friend and happened to match our color scheme. Along the way we found a cute little natural linen handbag that is made by World of Good. They are a company who offers Fair Trade items to help artisans all over the world. You can read about them here.

And the final item was a necklace made with antiqued brass. The focal point of the necklace is a dark speckled green stone wirewrapped with amethyst and clear Swarovski crystals. It has that vintage quality and was perfect for our color scheme!

All of these items sit in a very organic and natural wooden bowl on a purple feather boa. The feather boa is becoming our favorite filler. It is fun, sexy and can be used again as opposed to shredded paper that just gets thrown away. That meets our criteria of making each item of the package a gift in and of itself.

We hope the birthday girl enjoys her gift and will feel the joy and care we felt while putting it together for her.

marysylvie@twigsandfaeries.com

And the Winner is...

2009-02-25T03:54:00.000-08:00

Some of you may remember the gift box Mary and I arranged for a donation to an auction raising money for breast cancer research and awareness. We hoped that whoever won our gift would really enjoy it as much as we enjoyed preparing it. And we often wondered about it.

I've been very busy preparing for a big move to a new home, starting up a new business and dealing with an unexpected health issue with a family member. You know, "when it rains, it pours". I've been a little stressed and very overwhelmed.

Well, imagine my surprise and joy when I opened my email this morning and found this note:

Hello! I was the winner of that basket. Funny thing, there were prizes to bid on spread out on 5 tables. They drew names and after dinner we fanned out to see the winners posted with each prize.

I had donated a good chunk of $, about $150 and was sure I would win something. My adopted daughter Kerry's biological mom died of breast cancer, so we know to watch kerry carefully. She is 18 now, a freshman in college.

Back to the tables. I checked table 1. Nothing
Table 2. Nothing.
Table 3 still nothing.
Table 4. Nothing.
By now I was resigned to being unlucky as usual, but at least the $$ went to a good cause.
Went to table 5, still nothing.
Got to the last basket and announced to my girlfriend, "well that's it, nothi...whoa, I can't believe it, I won this beautiful basket!" Your basket was the very last thing I checked, being at the end of the last table I inspected.

So I was the envy of several friends, it was so gorgeously wrapped.

I took it home, and my daughter and I unwrapped it. Lucky for me, she was going back to college the next week, because she saw the spa gift certificate and claimed it immediately. (don't think so Kerry!)

My favorites were the choc covered pomegranate seeds, wow they were sooooo good. Also the hand painted champagne glasses. And I have already worn the very funky scrabble necklace. Kerry took the earrings, and the boa and finger sleeves remain waiting for the right occasion :)

The cookies were just beautiful, I popped those in the freezer and they are gone now I believe.

I look forward to travelling to HF this summer to use the 3 gift certificates, maybe I will bring my mom.

Oh, and the box is adorable too, that will be put in my guest room for toiletries or something.

So thank you for your generous contribution, I will be sure to stop in when I come this summer

Sincerely, Kathleen Kilmer

Kathleen, thank you so much for writing us! We are thrilled to hear how much you and your daughter are enjoying the contents of your gift box.

Sylvie and Mary

Sneak Preview

2009-02-18T13:25:00.000-08:00

We are currently working on our designer cookie collection. These cookies will be one of our two signature items. We already introduced you to our Valentine Heart cookies in the previous blog post and here is the cookie we made at holiday time. A dove shaped cut-out butter cookie, glazed with white icing that is then decorated with piped on icing. They are so beautiful! And delicious too! This one would also be perfect as a wedding favor. As we perfect them, we will introduce them here on our blog and you will be the first to see them. Stay tuned! And contact us if you would like to know more about them or you would like to order some for yourself: marysylvie@twigsandfaeries.com

Happy Valentine's Day!

2009-02-13T11:23:00.000-08:00

From Mary and Sylvie with lots of love!

Celebrate Your Life!

2009-01-24T07:57:00.000-08:00

We are very excited and proud of our gift box donation to a local auction. This auction was a fundraiser for breast cancer. A cause that is very near and dear to our hearts. We put alot of thought into what we wanted to present and decided our gift should be about pampering yourself and a sprinkling of glam. Naturally, the color scheme came easy---pink, of course!

Off we went to purchase an assortment of handmade jewelry, painted champagne flutes, an antique pink depression glass platter, and a pair of handknit fingerless gloves. That is the glam.

The pampering comes in the form of three gift certificates, a bag of dark chocolate pomegranate and four of our designer butter cookies. The gift certificates are $40 for a salon and spa, $25 for an upscale restaurant and $20 at the wine store. Our designer cookies are baked by Mary of kokopelli a la carte and they melt in your mouth. They were decorated by Sylvie of Albina Rose with pink glaze and wite piped on icing. The cutouts are in the shape of the breast cancer pink ribbon.

All of these items were placed in a beautiful gift box with a pink feather boa whose feathers are bursting out all over in an explosion of pink luxury. The total retail value is $275 and we're hoping they will raise every penny of it, and more, for this worthy cause.

Celebrate your life!

marysylvie@twigsandfaeries.com

A Business is Born

2008-12-23T14:37:00.000-08:00

marysylvie@twigsandfaeries.com.
We were (and still are) in the planning stages of our new business venture when, through Kokopelli a la Carte, we got our first order. And it was a big one! Less than two weeks before Christmas too!

A client of Kokopelli a la Carte's asked for 65 cookie sampler platters as a holiday gift for his clients.

Of course, we had some concerns with such a large order at the last minute and so close to Christmas, but when opportunity knocks you have to let her in. And we did so in a very big way.

We had almost no supplies, fronted the money ourselves and immediately got to work. There was so much to do. We didn't even have a name. But who had the time to even think about that.

Apparently we did. At 3:00 in the morning!

Everything I had read about choosing a business name advised that it should represent what you do. Well, we are a gift shop, offering unique and interesting gifts that could be tailored to the giftee. Too many things to try and encompass in one name.

So I thought that the next best thing was a name that represented who we are. Mary and Sylvie. Still no inspirations, no name and no tag line to go with it.

Then at 3:00 in the morning one day I woke up and realized that our "identity" and tag line was right in front of us. Under our very noses. We actually had been talking and joking about it for a month already. So I waited until an acceptable time later in the morning to call Mary and tell her about my middle of the night "aha!" moment.

When I asked her if she knew what I was talking about, at first she had no clue. Then the developing smile on her face and knowing look in her eyes showed me she got it. The thing we had talked so much about was our distinctly different styles and trying to bring them together.

Mary is very primitive and rustic with a Southwest touch. I am more renaissance, foresty with a little magic thrown in. Hence the name that Mary created, "Twigs and Faeries".

So in the middle of our mad dash to fill this order, our little business was christened and the brand promise came very easily after that----celebrate life!

We managed to fill the order (that's about 2400 cookies and 65 mini sweetbread loaves) all individually wrapped and served up on a beautiful stoneware plate with a winter design. And we made our deadline too!

But I think next year we'll have a cutoff date for taking on large multiple orders during the holidays so we can spend the time just before Christmas with our families. Without their support and help, we couldn't have filled this order.

So while Mary and Sylvie do the high five, we salute our families with a HUGE thank you and lots of hugs!

Welcome!

2008-12-11T07:12:00.000-08:00

Albina Rose and Kokopelli a la Carte would like to introduce you to our new business venture, Twigs & Faeries.

Twigs & Faeries will offer a variety of unique and select treasures. If you want to gift someone with a memorable treasure that will make them and you feel special, we can make that happen. For more information send us an email at marysylvie@twigsandfaeries.com. Thank you for visiting!