Keepin’ it Swanky May 15, 2013

Sorry for the blog title. I really couldn’t think of anything. So that is what happened. Yeah..

Anywho, things have been rather busy but good. My supervisor is gone on vacation so things at work has been busier for me, not that I am complaining. I like to keep occupied; it makes the hours fly by!

I’ve been trying to squeeze in little thrift store stops here and there because I now not only do I have my shop on Etsy to stock, I have an antique store booth!! Well, my mom and I do. We are splitting the space and cost. We haven’t had a lot of time to spend on it yet, so it’s a bit sparse. But we’ll have every nook and cranny filled before you can say “hereditary hoarding hootenanny!” Ok, I must apologize once again. I got carried away.

My dad is building us a cubby-style shelf, somewhat like this IKEA one:

Not too much else going on at the moment. I’ve been enjoying our basil and cilantro plants. One of my favorite things to eat when I have fresh basil is bruchetta. I made a batch last night and toasted baguette slices in the oven…mmmm! Glorious!

Other current fixations:

This soda:

Can’t get enough of it. My Grandma has always had this in her fridge and I always liked it enough, but suddenly one day I decided it was the best thing ever. I like to splash in some diet cranberry juice (and maybe a little gin when it’s been that kind of a day…)

This book:

The woman that wrote the screenplay and performed the lead role in My Big Fat Greek Wedding wrote a book about her journey through infertility and the adoption of her daughter. It’s mostly about adoption, though.

Actually wearing my vintage jewelry instead of hoarding it away in dusty boxes:

 

Well, it is almost 11:00, time for this old lady to get off to bed!

Irons in the Fire April 21, 2013

I am so excited for the months to come…so many ideas and plans and hopefully many good things ahead. One of these things is a thrifting roadtrip with Nicole which we have officially begun to plan!

She invited me over for a planning session and I brought sushi:

Yum!

She provided the edamame and the sesame stick/nuts/pretzel snack mix and we proceeded brainstorm.

I am giddy with the notion of a trip mostly devoted to treasure-hunting! We also hope to catch a drive-in theatre movie and try lots of yummy food at different roadside diners and restaurants along the way.

I will leave you with some blurry fake-dancing photos we took as Nicole showed me the spoils from her shopping spree yesterday in participation with National Record Store Day.

Shake that thang.

I’m so fast I’m like greased lightening!

Kind of looks like she’s doing a pageant wave…

Wow…the face I am making. I don’t even know.

New Finds and Current Obsessions April 20, 2013

Brand new additions to the shop, just listed today:

adorable red hat box suitcase

antique bedtime story collection, 1941

milk glass footed bowl

retro embroidered throw pillow

This week I was bad….very bad indeed. In complete defiance of my inner determination to become a minimalist, my body betrayed me and I found myself pillaging the thrifts like a savage shopping Viking.

The good news is, most of it will end up in the shop. Of what I found, I am keeping a blue and gold enamel flower pin, a couple of books, a kitschy 1960′s pedestal mug, and a lidded glass carafe that is a square shape with a plastic aqua lid that I will use to store  iced herbal tea in this summer.

I am obsessed with tea right now. I have sort of lost my taste for coffee lately, partly because I am watching my weight and coffee just doesn’t taste the same without my cream and sugar. So I guess I didn’t really love the coffee so much as the cream and sugar…

Other current obsessions:

*edamame steamer snack packs (Nicole, I blame you)

*Annie Freeman’s Fabulous Traveling Funeral by Kris Radish. I don’t know that I am in love with her writing style but I am in love with the entire concept. I am 100 pages in and hooked.

*Fructis Style Wonder Waves. I am so into NOT drying and straightening my hair lately. I spray it on my damp hair, scrunch with my fingers, and voila! Done.

*Watching Gossip Girl with the Netflix app on my Nook while I work out on the elliptical. Such a dumb vapid show but it’s sort of the perfect thing to exercise to because you don’t have to concentrate on it too terribly hard.

*plotting and planning away with a game plan to quit my job and do re-sale full time within the next two years

 

 

 

 

This post has been fortified with extra Vitamin C & D April 7, 2013

So this morning I washed and tested the vintage Juice King I bought a few weeks ago. It has been sitting there ever since on my kitchen table, yet another forgotten object in the “list” pile for Etsy. That pile sometimes remains there, completely undiminished, for weeks at a time as I go through lazy periods of ignoring the shop.

I tested it with the only thing I had on hand: clementines. Needless to say, there wasn’t much juice from those itty bitty nuggets of goodness, but what was there was delicious.

Like approximately 75% of what I buy when I thrift shop, I sort of fell in love with this contraption. After using a borrowed juicer for about a week (this was months ago, after impressionable me had just watched Fat, Sick & Nearly dead on Netflix and was convinced this was to be my new diet forever and ever) this was so simple to use. It was noiseless, easy to take apart and clean, and doesn’t take up much space.

Then again…will I really use it? Hmmm, such a decision to ponder…

Anyways, moving on. Here are some more of my swizzle sticks from my haul yesterday:

stirrer spoons from the Stardust in Las Vegas

Neon is swell. I especially love the Air West ones.

I love the little whales! These are from Maui.

Circus Circus! I adore the little pink conductor!

A rainbow of stirrers

There’s more but I know this post is already rather picture heavy! Well, the Mister just came home from the store with lemons and requested a lemon shake-up with lunch. Guess I’ll be holding onto that juicer for now…

Holy Swizzle April 6, 2013

This morning brought a treasure hunting adventure with my lovely cousin. She met me at my house and we booked it to the Estate Sale location (after a quick ATM stop for me). We were numbers #44 and #45 and waited about a half hour to get in.

It wasn’t a crazy good sale, like I had hoped from the pictures I’d seen online. But it was the second day, so that might be part of it. I nabbed a vintage alarm clock for $1 and three highball glasses full of swizzle sticks, each only a dollar!

I was estatic! There were tons of different stirrers from different places all over. Some of my favorites:

I love Tiki!

I took more pictures that I’ll have to post later

Nicole picked up some records and an industrial metal filing cabinet. After looking over everything multiple times, we were ready to go. We decided as we got back into the car that it was early & we should hit a thrift store…or two.

First stop: the Salvation Army closest to my house. It was slim pickens’ but I found an adorable baby quilt with embroidered nursery story pictures in the squares. It’s already in my baby hope chest aka the Rubbermaid bin I keep in the basement for all the cute baby/kid stuff I can’t bear to pass up.

As we were leaving, we found….adult…footie….pajamas. We died laughing because we had been singing the Mackelmore “Thrift Shop” song all morning. Somehow Nicole convinced me to buy them and we convulsed with laughter as the elderly cashier looked on with a smile and mild confusion. “Keep laughing, girls” she said. We promised that we would.

Second Stop: The Salvation Army further away from my house that always yields more thrifty bounty. Nicole found a gold pendant with a giant purple gem that spins in its setting. I found:

milk glass compote, maybe going in the shop…maybe

vintage string art, listed in my shop

enamel butterfly pin, already in the shop

 

Also found but not pictured: a vintage flower patterned pillowcase, a Children’s book about that Circus that has terrifying photographs I shall share later, a vintage apron, and a 1972 pattern for jeans that I’ve listed in the shop.

All in all it was a fun and successful morning! I got home and threw the jammies in the wash and made myself a late breakfast/early lunch.  Sadly, the pajamas did not fit or I would have included a disturbing photo for your enjoyment.

Morning Sunshine! March 24, 2013

I am so wide awake this morning; it’s odd. I usually sleep in on weekends but I woke up bright-eyed and ready to go. How cute are these woodland deer planter vases? My mom bought me the one on the right a few months ago, and last week I found the one on the left at Salvation Army for a song.

I’ve been finding way too many little trinkets and doo-dads for myself lately and nothing for the shop. That’s not a good thing, as my small house is cramped as it is. My inner minimalist has long since been silenced (bound, gagged, and locked away forever) but I still don’t want my house to resemble a booth at an antique store. I seriously need to invest in some more shelving or pare down my collections. (yeah, like that’s going to happen…)

The other night I popped into Goodwill on my way to somewhere else. It was not a good trip. The pricing is way too high, there were several aisle hogs in the housewares section, and the staff was agitated and acting rude because it was near closing time. They were openly staring at customers, counting how many people were in the store, pacing around and talking about how close it was to getting out of there. When I left, there was still a half hour until the time they close, so I’m not sure what the fuss was about…

Anyways, I left with two cute dresses for summer and this little incense burner:

Isn’t it so cute? It was 99 cents.  I’ve really been into burning incense again, a nod to my teenage years in the late 90′s. The smoky spicy scent instantly transport me back to my cozy bedroom in my parents’ house. (I say cozy but that room was thrice the size of the bedroom I now share with my husband-I used to hang out in my closet because it was the size of a very small room! *sigh*….I was spoiled and didn’t know it…)

Well, now that I’ve met my required coffee intake for the morning, I have to get ready and go catch a late breakfast with the hub’s folks.

I pity the fool who messes with me before I’ve had my coffee!

The Boob Tube and Chicken Biscuit Stew March 5, 2013

One of my favorite things to find are old letters and pictures from eras gone by. My dream is to find a box full of old letters or even better-old diaries. I just find it fascinating to peek into someone’s private thoughts and musings…is that wrong?

One day I was shopping the book section at the Salvation Army and a yellowed letter fluttered out of an old cookbook. I quickly picked it up and tucked it into my coat pocket. The entire time I continued to shop, I thought about the letter in my pocket, waiting to be opened and read after all of these years. What sort of secrets would it reveal? What sort of sordid love letter might I find?

I left the store with a feeling of anticipation. I had barely closed my car door before I snatched the letter out of my pocket. I immediately noticed the date on the envelope was 1982 and felt disappointed. I had hoped for an old love letter, but figured a 1980’s love letter would suffice. I opened the letter and read:

“Hello,

Here is the recipe I promised you. I’m sending you the one I had, so you can see what it looks like. As I told you on the phone I just buy a can of mixed peas & carrots. The T.V. man just left. He had to come and take the part out, and send to Chicago to be repaired, so I’ll be without the Boob Tube for over a week. But I don’t watch it that much anyway. I8m not one of those soap opera fiends. Give me a good book and I’m happy. My neighbor & I follow Dallas & Falcon crest on Friday nights. She told me I could come over to her house tonight & watch them. But I guess you know that I’am not going to bother. Also I’am not going to rent one to the tune of $15 a day, If mine is gone for ten days that would be $15,00 dollars added to my bill & it is going to be high enough as it is. Hope you are feeling better. Be sure and let me know how you like Chicken Biscuit Stew. One thing about it it is simple to make, and does’t take much time either.

Call me later.

Kate”

So it was not riveting stuff, to say the least, but I was still glad to have found it. Something about the letter just endeared me to Kate. I pictured her sitting on a stool in her kitchen, bored and irritated that the TV is broken, yet determined to keep busy.

“I know”, she thinks with a satisfied smile as she lights up another cigarette (Kate’s a smoker in my mind, I’m not sure why) “I’ll send Rose that recipe I told her about that I’m sure she’s forgotten by now. That should take up a good ten minutes!”

Things I like about this letter:

1. Kate’s typos. She was obviously on a typewriter and didn’t feel like making the corrections. She apparently had the non-pretentious kind of friendship with Rose that did not warrant a perfectly written letter.

2. The mention of  “the T.V man” and sending a part to Chicago. Remember when Americans actually used to repair stuff instead of buying a bigger and better replacement?

3. The mention of Dallas and Falcon Crest. Nice!

4. The way she referred to television as the “Boob Tube.” My mom used to call it that when I was a kid, which always embarrassed me greatly. I was a big weenie; everything embarrassed me when I was younger.(my mom delighted in that and used it to her advantage).

5. The fact that Kate took the time to write her friend a letter, even though she didn’t have anything too important to say. It was just a simple act of friendship, of reaching out, of saying “I am thinking of you. Now go make some Chicken Biscuit Stew and watch you some Boob Tube!