beach day.

I live less than five minutes from the beach, but I can honestly say I don't like going. It's too way hot here, and there's nothing appealing to me about laying on a towel in direct sunlight, sticky and hot and feeling like I'm about to die. I don't mind the beach so much if the weather is cool, and I'll occasionally go to the beach fully clothed just to walk in the sand for a bit, but it's been years and years and years since I actually put on a bathing suit to go to the beach. in the summer. But when my cousin visited, it was one of the things she wanted to do, so we did. The only reasonable time for two pale ghost girls to go the beach in the middle of June is eight o' clock at night, obviously. so that's what we did. 

40s style sunglasses - anthropologie

1950s bathing suit - ebay

estate sale finds.

As I mentioned before, I've been trying to get back into my old routine of estate sale-ing now that I have more free time, going through the paper mid-week, writing down all the promising ones, mapquesting the addresses, and making a schedule/route based on the distances and duration of each sale to be more efficient (tedious but necessary). This past Thursday I did just that, getting a late start on my schedule making as I was supposed to work Friday but found out at midnight the night before that I would be off. So I stayed up late Thursday night planning my route and got a bit of a late start on Friday because of it. Maybe it's just me, but it seems like every time, there's always one really strange or awkward estate sale experience and one really good one.

The first one I went to was the strange one, when I got there, there were no other cars and I didn't see any signs but being that I'm afraid to miss out on something good, I went up and knocked on the door (which was the most awkward thing ever) and a little olde lady came to the door and said she had put the wrong date in the newspaper but I could come in and look around anyway. Part of me wanted to run back to my car and escape the awkwardness of walking around in someone's house alone, picking through their things, but the other part was excited to have the whole house to myself, not having to knock elbows with crazy estate sale goers to get what I want. Unfortunately it wasn't very good, and the lady made me walk around and look at every single thing, picking up things and telling me they were "SO old/rare/collectible" (most weren't) but I felt bad because I think she was just pretty lonely and excited to have someone to show all her things to. I asked her about clothes, and she pulled out a pile of some men's shirt that were more modern than she claimed, but in the pile I found a 1950s black sequined sweater that she said had been her mother's, and she sold it to me for $1.50. I imagine I will sort of be living in it when Winter rolls around; it's so pretty and sparkly and festive. So all in all, not a total bust, but it took me longer than it should have to leave, because as I kept inching my way towards the door she kept trying to start another conversation with me. But I finally made it out to my car and head off to the next one.

The next few weren't very good and I left empty handed, but the last one, which promised "stuffed animals, kittens and figurines, handmade quilts and a lifetime of treasures" certainly delivered. The stuffed animals were mostly modern, nothing cute and tattered and olde like the little zebra I found, but there were a bunch of cute cat figurines and so many olde handmade quilts. I wanted to take them all home but they were so ridiculously expensive that I couldn't bring home even one. I did find a lovely 1950s faux fur stole, and a few pairs of cute sandals, and the black ones were just the thing to replace my black ones that just broke. The other two were supposed to be for the shop, but the white ones started to crumble a bit (I threw them away) and I kind of like the tan ones so I might keep those for now. I walked back through to see if I had missed anything and I came across the best thing ever. A teapot. shaped like a cat. A cat teapot. The most perfect thing for me ever. So I snapped it up and as I was paying I spotted a pretty depression glass juicer so I grabbed that too. Overall, I came home with some pretty good finds, but I really need to stop buying things for myself and putting more things in my shop!

st. augustine.

My cousin declared Saturday the 11th to be my fake birthday, since she wouldn't be here for the real one, so we put on our cutest polka dot dresses and headed to my favorite place in Florida (probably the only place in fl I actually like), St Augustine. We were going to make a stop at the st john's flea market first, but we got a bit of a late start so we picked up some sprinkle donuts and coffee and went straight to historic downtown. We visited the Lightner Museum (which will take up a whole post on it's own) and spent the day walking around and peeking into cute antique shops and eating macarons, and I kept finding pretty little gifts throughout the day; one sitting on the seat of my car when I got in, another mysteriously popping up on the table when I came to sit down, etc.

It was such a lovely day (aside from the weather which was disgustingly hot and almost unbearable) and I felt pretty special all day, like it was my real birthday. We ate lunch at a little wine bar that looked cute and promising but ended up being sort of terrible and awkward, but despite the odd, pushy owners and weird food we had a fun time at our little table and there were little white lights hanging across the ceiling, which pretty much makes any situation better. And at the end, when I came back from the restroom, there was a pile of gifts and a giant cookie and sparkler candles waiting for me and it was pretty amazing.

1940s style glasses - anthropologie

1930s swiss dot dress (from this post) - ebay
navy vintage bag - thrifted

cousin visit.



My cousin left today to go back home to New York, it was a long fun exhausting week filled with much eating and shopping and lots of silly girly fun. She arrived on Thursday and after I picked her up from the airport we went to a nearby mall in Orlando to eat. We ended up going to the Cheescake Factory because it was there and we were starving, and we got huge burritos/tacos that we could barely finish even half of, and then of course, I ordered a big slice of white chocolate raspberry cheesecake to go. We got coffee and walked around for a little bit, browsing in Anthropologie, where I picked up a few of my favorite soaps and a pair of 1940s style sunglasses, and Urban Outfitters, which was even more underwhelming than usual but I bought a pretty 60s inspired lace dress on sale that I unfortunately won't be able to wear until probably October because it has long sleeves.

We went to bed pretty early because she was tired from the flight and I from working the day before and from last minute errands earlier that day, and the next day we woke up early to go to an estate sale that wasn't very good, and some antique stores that weren't very good either. We were going to have lunch on Canal Street but after driving up and down and not really finding anything too appealing at the moment we decided to have lunch at Mulligan's, a cute pub nearby which is a staple of mine so I knew we'd find lots of things we liked on the menu. After lunch we got frozen yogurt and then settled in pretty early yet again so we could get up early the next day to go to St Augustine, which I will talk about in a future post!

dress - urban outfitters like three years ago

sandals - target

vintage heart locket - thrifted

40s style glasses - anthropologie

june eighth.



I've been terrible at keeping this updated (I probably have been/will continue to begin many of my posts this way), but I have good reason. As I mentioned previously, I've been cleaning and organising like crazy, trying to rearrange everything how I want it and getting rid of clothes and things I no longer want or wear to make things a little less cluttered and a little more pretty. I've been in the process of doing this little by little over the past few months but when I found out my lovely cousin/best friend was coming to visit very soon I started scrambling to get things done even quicker. She will be arriving tomorrow afternoon, and we have some really cute/fun little dates planned (mixed in with just the right dose of laziness and doing nothing). Exciting!

There were a few things I needed at the market so when I walked in today and saw these pretty flowers I grabbed a few bunches to arrange and spread out around the house. I spent at least an hour snipping away at stems and leaves and arranging little bouquets (and apologising to the flowers as I cut them, I'm strange) and placing them in my favorite glass bottles and jars, and then spent almost as much time snapping photos of them because I think they turned out really lovely.

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!