A dream come true
Soflea is finally open and ready to serve you!
Where did Soflea begin? Let’s take a stroll down memory lane…
As a child, I didn’t have a room of my own until I was 8 years old. We lived in a 4-bedroom house with 7/8 people and a cat-my parents, my grandparents, my older sisters, my oldest sister’s husband for a bit, and little old me. I am the youngest of 3, born 12 years after my closest sibling. When Katherine and her husband moved out, I finally had a room of my own.
The level of excitement of having my own space was off the charts. My mom got me a bedroom set from Dunk and Bright, all new bedding, I had an old black and white tv, and I hung posters all over the walls. My teddy bears all lived together in an old bassinet and my Barbie Dolls, dressed in Oscar de la Renta dresses, reenacted a formal ball on the top of my tall dresser. I crammed as much of “me” into the space as I could, not leaving a single inch of space for anything else.
My middle sister graduated college and moved to Florida, and then I upgraded to an even bigger room. As a teen, I covered the walls in rock and roll and teen idol posters, put in a second bed for sleepovers, created a closet organization system, and had every set of Laura Ashley sheets one could have. Despite so many people still living in the house I would host sleepover parties where we would make mix tapes (recording off the radio and then cassettes) and talk all night long. Ah, the good old days.
When I went off to college, it was much of the same. I always had the best dressed dorm room, upgrading to Ralph Lauren bedding, pictures all over the walls…making every space feel like a sanctuary. When my bestie Liz and I got an off-campus apartment senior year, I finally had a taste of what is was like to decorate more than a bedroom. Liz brought a beautiful old rug from Connecticut for our dining room, we inherited some furniture from the previous tenants, and we threw dinner parties and keggers often. I hung rock posters in the bathroom upstairs to cover up the weird wallpaper. So what if sewage poured into our downstairs closet every once in a while? So what if stray cats sat on our back porch and howled all night long? The space was ours, a magical apartment at 395 South Main street (a pink row house in Geneva, NY steps away from our favorite bars).
I moved back home for about 8 months after college, back to my old bedroom, craving the next step. I worked as a chemist at University Hospital, coached the JV lacrosse team at my high school, and arbitrarily decided that I would move to Boston. I applied for every chemist job available in the Boston Globe, and actually got one. This is where some serious Soflea transformation began.
To prepare to move to the big city, I started looking at decorating magazines to get ideas for decorating an apartment of my own. There was one article in particular that really inspired me-a girl moved to the city and had a tight budget and upcycled furniture from garage sales and flea markets to make the space uniquely her own. Her space was so cute, and I was all in.
I started visiting the local Syracuse Flea Market at the Regional Market, and I found all the junk shops in town too. Back in 1998 the flea market was epically awesome. There were so many vendors and so many awesome vintage pieces to choose from. I bought an old black and white enamel top table and chairs (I still use the table to this day), found a beautiful iron bed in Bouckville, NY, and many more items that I loaded in a U-Haul for my father to drive up to Boston.
The next chapter is where I really began to find my style, influenced by the people I met in MA (specifically the Carters), the caliber of items at the flea markets in the suburbs of Boston, and the famous Brimfield Antiques show. More on all of that in the next blog, as it requires deep dissection!
Want to see what I am interested in now? Soflea is a curated collection of things I like, vintage items to add whimsy to your home, and some new items I have imported or sourced in the good ol’ USA. Come down and shop! The store is open Tuesday-Sunday 11:00-7:00!
XXOO Until the next blog….-Soflea
