memorial day.

Memorial day this year consisted of cookouts and sparklers and cream soda and patchwork quilts and everything else good Summer holidays are supposed to include. 'Patriotic' holidays always make me really nostalgic, every fourth of july week of my childhood was spent in Ocean City, Md, a beach town made up of amusement parks, rows of hotels, a striped umbrella-covered beach, and a boardwalk filled with taffy shoppes, ferris wheels and carousels. Think of Atlantic city circa 1920s or the fictional town of Amity and that's Ocean City.

My entire family- aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents- would pack up their cars and make the three hour drive, where we all rented our own beach houses in the same little neighborhood. The week was spent riding carnival rides and playing arcade games on the boardwalk, eating cotton candy, watching fireworks over the bay, laying on blankets in the grass, swimming in the ocean, and eating strawberries until our little fingers were stained red. All the perfect things that make up childhood Summers.  I'll have to dig up some photos of those Summers, because that place really was magical! I heard it's kind of taken a bad turn over recent years, which makes me sad because I want that place to always be how I remember it. (or like this:)

french labels.

There's something so beautiful about french labels from the past, with their beautiful lettering and romantic images. I've always been taken with them. When it comes to antique packaging, the more faded, tea stained, and soiled the paper is, the more beautiful it becomes. I've been collecting old french (and english) ephemera; prints, book plates, labels, for a long while, and now that I'm reorganising my room and trying to fill up a bare wall, I've been searching online for more pretty ones to frame and stick in the blank spots. Here are some really lovely ones I've come across on recent searches, these are not for sale, but still nice to look at nonetheless.

this one isn't french, but, strawberries! i had to include it!

5.27

Due to some new changes in my work schedule, mostly because of the end of busy season but because of some other things as well, I've been working a whole lot less and thrifting a lot more to make up the difference, and also because I hope to eventually do etsy full time. I've really been trying to throw myself back into it the way I used to, when I went to multiple thrift/antique stores everyday during the week and estate sales on the weekends. I went through the paper this week and made a big list of all the good estate sales and auctions and I'm hoping to wake up pretty early tomorrow to get to as many of them as I can. Hopefully they'll be good ones and I'll have some good finds to share when the day is over.

I've been trying to get back into this sort of routine little by little, going to antique shops on my short work days or days off. On one recent antique store visit, when I went looking for a glass reamer to make lemonade with, I discovered an amazing 1920s/30s embroidered floral wool cape the likes of which anthropologie would probably like to get their hands on. I actually discovered it almost a year ago, but it was reaaaally expensive then so I just kind of admired it every time and then sadly put it back, slightly hidden, hoping no one else would snap it up. But this time it was on super sale so I had to grab it. I started thinking when I got home though, and realized how silly it is to own a wool cape in fl, where we're lucky if it gets down to 40° in the Winter, so it'll probably eventually be heading for the shop.

I've been in the process of cleaning and reorganising my room lately, and I now have one sad blank wall, so I've been keeping my eye out for pretty antique picture frames for my many antique prints that I've been waiting to hang foreeever. Now that I finally have a place to hang them I just need more frames. And I can finally hang my olde crumbling mirror that's sitting on an olde apple crate and leaning against my window, so now it won't fall over anytime I have my window open on a windy day.

I only have a short time to get everything situated, because I have an exciting visitor coming reeeeal soon.But more on that later. xx

dream within a dream.

This past weekend and the end of last week were uncharacteristically nice weather-wise, instead of the mid-ninety degree weather we'd been having, it returned to a late Winter/early Spring-like (for Fl) mid-seventy degrees. I had a big list of things to do on Saturday but when I felt how nice it was outside I decided that those things would just have to wait and threw on this cotton 1930s dress I'd been really excited about wearing, grabbed a picnic basket and hat and out I went. It was such a lovely, lazy day filled with peach iced tea in pretty glass cups, warm grass, and just enough sunshine. I snapped a few photos for my shops, and some of them unintentionally turned out sort of Picnic at Hanging Rock?

The dress. The dress is a light pink cotton 1930s dress with navy blue swiss dots, little ruffle sleeves and three little navy colored bows at the neckline. Oh! and the buttons- big, carved plastic, perfect 1930s navy blue buttons down the back. I'm facing a bit of a dilemma, however. This dress as it is is quite the dream dress, kind of a pretty lawn dress inspired sort of thing, but I'm not sure how practical (for me) it is right now and I'm really considering removing the ruffle at the hem. I'd really hate to alter or hem a vintage dress, and it's super pretty how it is, but I feel like if I removed the ruffle I would not only like it way better, but I would live in this dress, like wear it to pieces until it was a pretty little scrap to be hung on my wall I would wear it so often. There are a few scattered stains on the bottom so it's not like it would be pure frivolity, right?

vintage straw hat available here

antique picnic basket available here

UPDATE: I went ahead and pulled, yes pulled, the ruffle off, and I don't feel one bit bad about it. I inspected the seam more closely and there had been numerous poor mends in the past, and it seems that the ruffle may even have been a later addition using the same fabric. So I found a spot (there were several) were the seam was already separated and gave it a gentle tug and the seams pulled right apart, no seam ripper required.

a few keepers.

Yesterday when I got to work there were workers on the roof, and the whole office smelled like tar fumes, so I was able to leave after only about an hour. Since I got to leave so early, I stopped by one of my favorite antique stores to poke around and dig through olde stuff. I ended up finding so many things I wanted, but since I had just gone on a whim and hadn't planned on doing anything that required money that day, I didn't really have much money with me. I was able to bring some of my finds home, but the rest I had to leave behind to be picked up on Wednesday.

I found some really pretty antique clay marbles, I'm always drawn to them because I love the colors and how primitive they look. The little pink one even has a star on it! I think these will end up being for thefoxparade, but if I hang on to them too much longer they might turn in to the beginnings of another collection! I'm having them appraised before I list them because some of these little guys can be worth a lot, and I'm not an expert when it comes to marbles.

I came across this pretty flower lamp in one of the tiny back rooms that I almost skipped because I usually don't find anything in there, but something told me to go peek and I'm so glad I did because I've been looking for something like this for ages. When my brother saw it later in the day, he laughed at it and said it looked like something that would have been in my great grandmother's house, but that only made me like it more, and was probably what drew me to it in the first place. It looks so lovely lit up at night, and gives off the most perfect glow. I've been sleeping with TCM on every night ever since I had a run-in with a spider on my bed (worst nightmare), since it's always on anyway and the olde black and white films don't give off light as harsh as other "color" channels, and I think this will be a nice replacement so I can actually turn my tv off when I go to sleep.

This little guy, I fell in love with him one of the first times I went to this shop. He's so adorable and just about broke my heart. I have such a weird, emotional soft spot for olde stuffed animals, I feel like I have to "save" them in a way, and this one was no exception. But his price tag was a bit higher than what I usually let myself spend on these silly things, so I'd had to leave him behind in the past. This time when I went, the lady who owned the items in that room was in there straightening up, and she told me that if I saw anything I liked she would "make it" be on sale for me, haha. I probably should have hesitated for at least a second but I saw that little zebra was still sitting there so I immediately snapped him up and said "what about this guy?" and she laughed and said she would give me a good deal, which she did, so I added him to my growing pile at the front of the store. Look how sweet he is! So raggedy and tattered that my mom looked at me a bit like I was crazy when I showed her later, but that's what I love most about him.

When I spotted these I knew I had to buy them, as I'm sort of obsessed with anything antique-y circus animal themed, and my birthday is also coming up next month (not that I would actually light them or anything). Adorable.

i think these two are my favorites!

I had to leave behind a few lovely things for now, including an olde 1930s quilt and an amazing suitcase, and some weird antique photos I had picked out, of things like creepy olde Victorian ghost women, and olde men with horses, and some flapper girls. Also a vintage kitty print kitchen towel and a rose wall hook. My poor shops have been so bare lately, because I've been finding so many amazing things that I'm finding it hard to part with any of them! I'm going to try to start being less selfish with my finds, at least until I move into a bigger place that can accomodate my growing hoard of vintage dresses and antique knick knacks!

our old stuff.

There's a little neon green building near my work that I drive past daily, with big blue lettering that reads 'Our Old Stuff'. I had driven past it before, on the way to other vintage shops in the area, but it looked so small and not very promising and I thought they sold only retro type furniture so I never went in. One day at work I got to leave early so I decided I might as well stop in and see what they had. Turns out, the look of the building is very deceiving, not only is it not a "little" building, but it's actually huge! Room after room of amazing things (not just furniture by the least!) and even a second large building that it's connected to.

I visit now almost weekly, and I always find the most amazing things. I love that weird little wall (except the poor deer!) and I've been obsessing over those tole floral sconces and the floral jadite salt and pepper shakers since I first set foot in the shop. Unfortunately, they are both waaaaay out of my price range right now, but the things I've been bringing home are just as good. I went in today and found so many things, I actually had to put some on hold for next week. But more on that tomorrow...right now I'm way too tired to function! night xx