Hi everyone! First off, I hope everyone is having a good summer. The weather here in South Jersey is very humid and hot. July has been hot- more like August weather. August is usually brutal here with the humidity being almost unbearable at times. I guess it has a lot to do with us being close to the ocean. The sea shore towns here in South Jersey, (ex. Atlantic City & Wildwood) are always so busy with people and with the economy being so bad many people are staying close to home this year. So many locals are spending their vacations close to home at the Jersey shore.
We are still expanding our new site –Jessica’s Unique Gallery www.jessicasuniquegallery.com We are adding more categories and merchandise all the time so keep checking back. We have added some new Mardi Gras Lady Wall Décor and it is under the Lady Wall Décor category and the Mardi Gras category. I love the look and festive colors of Mardi Gras and I hope these new pieces reflect that. As luck would have it, a new food market has opened here in downtown Vineland and one of the Vendors is from New Orleans. She is a wonderful cook and we are now lucky enough to have authentic Cajun food right here in downtown Vineland.
We are also expanding our hand painted pottery section and have added some new hand painted Sangria pitchers. These make great gifts- colorful and functional. All of our pottery is lead free too. We will be expanding the pottery section and will soon add some very pretty hand painted hanging planters and pots for the garden.
On our main site- www.jessicasuniquegiftshop.com we have added our holiday animated plush section. We put it up early this year and will be adding many new animated holiday plush. We will have many bears that recite the entire “Twas the Night Before Christmas and a cute Frog that sings Joy to the World. These will be on the web site within the next month. Our Grassroots section has also expanded and we have added many new glass beaded sculptures. Check out our glass beaded birds & our musical instruments section. We also have some cute new plush backpacks for back to school for the younger crowd under our plush bag category.
As far as new items coming we are very excited about taking on a new retro art line in laptop bags, Ipad bags and train cases. These are all funky retro art and will be put on our Gallery site. Check out the pics attached to this blog. What great different gifts and functional too. They will not be on the site till the first week of August, but you can get a sneak peek some of the style here on the blog.
Hi everyone-our new sister site is finally up- Jessica’s Unique Gallery. Check out our new site which contains artistic gifts- most are handmade, hand painted, or hand embellished. It is in the early stages right now, but we are adding more categories & items soon. We have our popular Lady Wall Décor category moved from our main site to the gallery site. These pieces are very unique & make great gifts. All these pieces are made in the United States and not one is the same. They are easy to hang since they all have a ribbon attached on the back of the face. The pictures do not do these pieces justice. We also have a new category of Ceramic Art tiles. Fantasy artists such as Josephine Wall & Nene Thomas have reproduced some of their best paintings on these tiles. They can be hung on the wall by means of a ribbon that attaches to the back. We have many more Art Tiles coming soon. We have some of the Josephine Wall tiles up on the Gallery site right now.
In regards to ordering, Both sites are all under one shopping cart. You can order items from Jessica’s Unique Gift Shop & Jessica’s Unique Gallery at the same time. So if you want to buy an animated plush from the Gift Shop & also want to buy one of the Art Tiles at the Gallery site, for example, you can purchase at the same time.
I hope you enjoy the new site. Look for more categories & new items coming very soon.
We are still working on our sister sight- www.jessicasuniquegallery.com We thought we would have the sight up by now but we have had some delays with products & web design. The new site will be up shortly. We will have on this “sister” site most of our art related items such as pottery, art panels, trinket boxes, matted prints, photographs, and hand made lady wall masks & decor. Keep checking back and we will be posting on our main site when the “sister site will be finished.
We are now carrying some new animated plush from “Gund.” A little background on the company “Gund”-For more than a century, GUND has been creating unique teddy bears and other soft toys recognized the world over for their quality and innovation. The leading soft toy manufacturer in the U.S., and also the oldest, GUND was founded by German immigrant Adolph Gund in Norwalk, Connecticut in 1898. GUND was one of the first companies to design and produce teddy bears in the early 1900’s.Today, the company manufactures an extensive collection of unique characters and licensed plush under the GUND, GUNDbaby and GUNDKids brands. GUND is known worldwide for its top quality, soft and huggable plush designs and gift products .
Gund has some unique animated plush and we have a few in stock right now. Arnold the snoring pig is a fun animated plush which snores & then “talks in his sleep.” We also have a “Bingo” dog that sings & moves his arms to the song Bingo. Also in is a bobble head duck & then a plush for ‘Baby” which plays Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and has it’s feet light up. A perfect gift for “baby.” The videos for these toys are now up on our you tube site and will be up on the web page shortly.
New Items now in stock and will be up on the web site soon! We recveived today some of our new animated plush - Rocco Lobster, Later Gator & Palm Tree Peety. They will be up on the web site within a couple days. We also received our new Lady wall masks & they will be up on the web within a week. Our new line of Children’s Plush carry bags also came in as well as some new artwork items for our sister site - Jessicas Unique Gallery. So a lot going on around here as far as new items so keep checking back for the new additions to the web site.
Wow- we actually have had a few days here without snow. What bad weather we have had here in South Jersey. This winter has been horrible and I am so glad that we missed the last storm & only received rain. Only about 1 hour north of us received 17” inches of snow so we were really lucky & missed the snow on the last big storm. Thanks to everyone who had to wait a few extra days for their orders due to our horrible weather. UPS stopped shipping for a day or two due to the snow and ice and it had caused some delays in customer’s orders. We will keep our fingers crossed that the rest of February won’t be as bad as January. Notoriously, we have had our worst storms in February so I am hoping this year is different.
Some new things happening around here at the shop. We are bringing in some new & exciting lines of gift items. We are going to carry a great line of slippers- for kids & for adults. Most of the kids slippers will be in the form of animals & the women’s slippers will be in the form of dogs. We also are carrying a cute line of Children’s plush tote bags in the shape of different animals such as a horse, cow, ladybug & more. Will be up on the web site soon.
As far as animated plush- many new ones coming out soon. We will have soon a lobster that sings “Sea Cruise”, a raccoon that sings “jail house rock” and a frog that sings “When you wish upon a star. Many more new ones coming soon.
We just started to receive some new items from Grassroots too and will have them up on the web site soon- new dogs, a lighted light house, and some beautiful huge butterflies.
As far as our new site- Jessica’s Unique Gallery- we are still working on it & it won’t be up for a few more weeks. A lot of beautiful artistic items coming for that sister site of the gift shop. Just keep checking back for when it will be launched.
Just some random pics of some of our displays
I am going to post some pics of our actual shop here in Vineland, NJ. I get asked many times to post pics of our actual displays, so I will be posting them shortly. First I thought I would tell everyone a little background on our town-Vineland, New Jersey. It is in the southern part of the state. When people think of New Jersey it is generally the northern or central part- never the southern part of the state. I always get asked the question- “what exit are you located on” in reference to the NJ turnpike – but we are nowhere near the turnpike- That is for the central or northerners in this state. We are the lonely “Southerners” of New Jersey- the forgotten part of the state. It is mainly farmlands here in Vineland but we have many interesting towns here. For one, Vineland is only about 45 minutes west of Atlantic City. So we are close to a major gambling town. We are also only an hour away from Cape May. For the non-locals, Cape May is a major old Victorian town. The Victorian homes are all from the 19th century & most are fully restored to their original grandeur. We are also only 1 hour south east of Philadelphia, PA. In fact most of the coastal towns such as Cape May & Atlantic City were started as summer residences for the wealthy from Philadelphia.
Vineland was incorporated in 1880. The first houses were built in Vineland in 1862 & shortly thereafter train service was established between Philadelphia & New York City to Vineland. The soil here is very good and well suited for vine types of plants such as grapes (hence the name “Vineland”). One of the original founders of Vineland, Charles Landis, started advertising to Italian grape growers about the soil here in Vineland and he offered 20 acres of land to any growers who would come here and grow grapes. Many Italian families came to Vineland and their roots ( no pun attended) are still deep here.
Charles Landis wanted to keep control over the city & he insisted that Vineland would be a “dry” town. A law was passed to prohibit the sale of alcohol here. The only problem was that many churches needed wine for their religious ceremonies. A man by the name of Thomas Bramwell Welch came up with a solution by taking some of the local grapes and preserving them without fermenting them- thus making the grape juice alcohol free. The demand was high for Welch’s “alcohol free grape juice” and soon he formed the Welch’s Fruit Juice Company- forerunner of today’s well known Welch Company. His first factory was set up right here in Vineland.
In the late 1940’s, the poultry business started to take over all other business’ in Vineland. Vineland became a leader in the poultry industry & approximately 90 % of the population at this time was involved in the poultry business one way or another. Vineland became known as the “Egg Basket of America.” As technology improved and progressed, egg prices soon dropped and it brought about the decline of the poultry business in Vineland. In fact if you drive around town, you still will see many chicken coops in people’s back yards.
Vineland continued to grow, attracting industries such as glass manufacturers & clothing companies. Many retail stores grew out of the increase business & population of this small town. Today there are approximately 60,000 residents in Vineland. We are actually the largest town in New Jersey in area- (69 square miles). Going from one side of town to the next can take as long as ½ hour.
So that’s just a little background on our town where our shop is located. Hope you enjoyed the little tidbit about our hometown.
Hi Everyone,
Some new things happening around here. We are developing a sister website to our main web site called “Jessica’s Unique Gallery.” Both sites will be linked together but the new site will deal with more of our art oriented items. We carry many art related items here at the shop – many handmade & many decorative pieces. We are going to put all these items on the sister sight. Some of the categories will be our decorative lady wall masks, handmade masks, photography, handmade ornaments, hand painted pottery, custom journals and art panels, and gicless. It will be a bit before the site is up but we are working on it right now. You will be able to purchase from both sites under one shopping cart. We are expanding the art side of our gift shop so this will be a great way to showcase it. You will see a posting on our main site when the sister site is up.
Hi Everyone,
Haven’t been too good about keeping up with the blog here but I will try to update it more in the near future. We have a lot of new things going on at the shop. We have up on the web site our Valentine’s Day animated plush category and also we have a page on some special Valentine’s Day unique gifts. We have remodeled the shop somewhat & I will be posting new pics of the shop on the blog soon. Our weather here has been a nightmare. Horrible winter around here so far. A lot of snow storms & very cold weather. It makes me want to move south just because I am already tired of the snow & cold this year. At least the snow totals are not as awful as they were last year. Last year we had three major storms that we received over 30” inches of snow with each storm.
As far as new items coming into the shop we will be carrying a new animated plush line called “Zoocational.” They are for the younger crowd but they are fantastic educational plush. These new plush are in the styles of a panda bear, monkey, giraffe, lion, manatee, elephant, and a tiger. When you press the button on their “paw” they tell you all about themselves. Every time you press the button you get the animal to tell you a different fact about themselves. These will sell for around 23.00 and they will make great gifts for children. They should be at the shop by mid-February. A pic of the panda bear from this line is attached.
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