Weathered Elegance(The Store), Serendipity(Luck), Tea and Thee(Us)!

Our new flower cart getting acclimated to her new surroundings.

I meet the nicest people all of the time and, this occasion was no exception.  It all started with a vintage flower cart perched prettily in the corner of a charming Leesburg shop window.  Yep, that's right.  A simple flower cart brought a group of artistic ladies and me together for a lovely afternoon infused with lavender, tea and thee--I mean us! Call it serendipity, karma or just good old-fashioned luck, it was a match made somewhere in the cosmos.

The Weathered Elegance store front.  Image taken from the Weathered Elegance Facebook page.

This is the kind of painting I'm talking about and this one is of Lincoln, VA.

It all started one Sunday afternoon, a couple of weeks ago, when Peter (a.k.a. P.Lorenz) said he needed to go into Leesburg,VA to take some pictures of historic buildings.  He's in the midst of one of his creative painting binges (painting a scene of a town) and this time, it happens to be the town of Leesburg, VA.  and I said I'd go along for the ride. Not wanting to take a lot of time, we split up; while he went his way to photograph a few buildings in order to get them accurately captured on the canvas, I zipped through a couple of shops, then headed to the corner where we had decided would be our rendezvous point.  I turned around only to find Peter standing half-way up the block waving me back to a store that I had just come from. I sighed and headed back and there it was, posing patiently in the window of Weathered Elegance, just waiting for us to come in and bring her home, to Blooming Hill.  Good thing he wasn't in as big of a hurry as he told me he was, or he might have missed it, too.

Donna, Owner of Weathered Elegance, pictured here, on the right.

Weathered Elegance, (I love their slogan--"The art of salvaging gracefully") located on Loudoun Street, is a shop chock full of antiques, creative arts and crafts and shabby chic decor.  Not only that, shop owner Donna, also an event planner, was welcoming and gracious and just couldn't be nicer. We talked a bit and she found out that we serve teas here at Blooming Hill and soon after, we were planning one for Donna and her Weathered Elegance friends, who together supply and apply their creative arts and tasteful decor ideas to the shop, helping Donna make this place a successful and trendy new location in Leesburg that you need to check out, if you haven't already.

Kim, my friend and also the owner of Loudoun Valley Herbs and tea lady extraordinaire, whipped up one of her culinary collages of lavender-infused teatime sweets and savories and, VOILA! The ladies of Weathered Elegance, Loudoun Valley Herbs and Blooming Hill came together, here at the farmlet, for a summer afternoon tea on the porch, all thanks to a simple flower cart.  I told you it was serendipity, an unexpected and charming surprise that was meant to be.