Happy Holidays!

Hello & Happy Holidays to everyone!
Things are winding down here, that busy holiday excitement, presents are bought and being delivered today, cookies have been made, and Christmas dinner supplies have been bought. Now there's nothing to do but wait and maybe relax a little. Or panic and think of some last minute thing that needs to be done.




We had a bunch of turkeys out in the yard the another day, 13 of them. Our regular 5 gals and then 8 boys. They're funny to watch, kicking through the leaves. We throw a bunch of corn out there, so now they know there's good eating in our yard. Here is a photo of 4 of the gals out in the yard this morning. It's not very clear because I had to take the photo through glass and screen.







The Christmas tree that we ordered arrived in plenty of time, Yeah! We were worried it would be late. We saw one on display in an antique store last year, and finally tracked down the same one in the right size this year. The photo is kind of busy and cluttered, so I don't know if you can make it out. The tree is about 6ft tall, not super full, thin banches, and it has a black bear climbing up the back of it. Great for out here in the woods. We have some of my Mom's vintage beaded garland and ornaments on it. We use to set up a Victorian style feather tree that she had made, but it was looking a little bleak, so we found this tree just in time. It looks really nice lit up.
The cases in the background originally came from an old drug store. My parents bought them from a guy who had the cases stored up in a loft in an old barn. Those top cases were probably the hardest thing to move when we moved earlier this year. They just fit against that wall. They display my Mom's doll's, some old, some she made.


Here is a peek at some of the items that I bought last week. A few 1920-30s dresses and two great embroidered robes (I'm fighting not to keep those!) Most of the load was Victorian to 1930s. More coats! Just when I think that I have all my backstock of coats listed, I get some more. There are several nice mink stoles and coats, plus there are a few really cool 1940s hats. Those items will start to show up on the website in mid-January.

The 8th Anniversary sale will start on December 26th! Wow, 8 years of selling vintage online, I can't believe it's been that long. Originally I had a site selling crafts and clothing that I made. Somewhere online I saw another site selling vintage clothing, so I decided to give it a try and started with a single page of items added to my craft page. The stock was items that I had been buying for myself since I was about 17 years old. Some things I had worn, and many of the items were very cool items that I had seen and just had to buy. It was hard to start a website back then, it's still hard now, trying to get people into a brand new website, but back then was even harder because people didn't know to look online for vintage clothing. There were only about 10 other vintage sites then. I think I was online for almost 2 months before I sold anything. I just kept focused on the site, adding stock and tried to get myself linked and networked to get customers. Several of the websites that were online back then wouldn't exchange links with me, because I was obviously a novice at website building and I was really cheap and didn't have much stock to begin with. Well, doubters, here I am still! My website building skills are a little better now (I still need to remember to do spellchecks though) I have great stock and the prices are higher, but I pay alot more now for my stock than I did 8+ years ago.

The first item that I sold from my website was a pair of late 1950s faux leopard fur pants! In March, I discovered ebay and started selling there. The first ebay item that I sold was a 1950s blue velvet clutch coat.

The vintage market has changed alot since I started, for better and worse. People know to look online to buy great vintage items, but there is a lot more competition selling online. I can't just set back and relax, I have to keep working to keep the website updated and networked and finding great stock. I love my job, and I feel very lucky to have ended up with the best job possible for me! I can't imagine doing anything else now. I've met alot of great people who love vintage clothing as much as I do, and it's a nice community to belong to. (I'm starting to sound like I just won an Oscar or something)

Be sure to check out the Anniversary sale that starts on December 26th.

Happy holidays & Bye for now, Carol

Project Runway, Snow in the woods and a bunch of stock

First snow in the woods 12/5 -

The driveway - how'd you like to shovel that? Luckily the snow was soft enough that it cleared away after driving the truck up and down the driveway several times

The last photo is this cool/weird bent tree that's behind our garage. It looks like the addition to our garage isn't going to be built until Spring now. So we'll be cramped and packed into the house until then. I was planning on using the room over the garage addition to store my stock, but I'll have to just keep piling it up in the bedroom for now.

I bought several small loads of vintage over the past few weeks, plenty to keep me busy over the Winter. Included in one load was 200 pieces of lingerie, so look for some great expansion in the lingerie department over the next few months! I've got a bunch of hats and purses too, and gloves, oh man I've got the gloves! I've got some nice linens too, which I don't buy very often. I have to clean and iron those though, so it may take me some time to get into the mood to work on those. Nylon is so much more easier to work with than cotton so I'm starting on the lingerie first. Now I need some dresses, there were only a handful of good dresses out of all of the loads, darn.

The new season of 'Project Runway' has started, and I'm watching it again. I don't really follow current fashions and I'm not a fan of any modern fashion designers really, so I don't know why I like the show so much. I guess I just like watching people be creative. The show is on Bravo, if you haven't heard of it. Unknown fashion designers compete to have their collection shown at Fashion Week. Each week they have a fashion design challenge. In the premiere they were given 6 yards of muslin and $20 for notions/accessories to create a dress. The next challenge was given to them after a dinner party. They were told that they had to use the clothing that they were wearing right at that moment to create a new garment. The show is interesting, and you get the typical cattyness, wackiness, big egos and backstabbing as you do with all reality shows. There was another fashion design show on one of the major networks. I only caught one episode of it, and it was not as good as Project Runway.

Bye for now, Carol