freshvintage

Sparkles for a Steal

So much fabulousness, I don't even know where to start...

Here's a pair of Lemaire Fabt Paris opera binoculars with leather casing. If these didn't say "Paris" on them, I probably wouldn't have bought them.

Three Horse Show Ribbons from 1949 in cream, pink and olive green. As soon as I saw them, I thought of this post on Andrea's Everyday Beauty blog. I scooped these up on the last day of a three-day estate sale in Delaware, when everything was 20% off. How could these have slipped through the cracks? They would look so cute hanging in a little girl's room.

A silver baby cup:

It is engraved with the name Jackie.

Jewels, jewels and more jewels. These were all from one yard sale in Oxford, PA. The woman had two long tables filled with jewelry. I picked up one brooch and asked how much it cost. When she said "a quarter", I grabbed the first container I could find and maniacally started filling it up with anything sparkly. There were a few other people digging through the jewelry, too, but I enlisted Finn and Maeve to stand on either side of me and form a barrier to prevent anyone else from swiping the goods.

When I presented the homeowner with this green Made-in-Poland colander filled with rhinestone jewelry, she got out her pencil & paper and began to add everything up.

Most of the necklaces and brooches are missing a jewel or clasp here and there. There are only a couple of pieces that are in perfect condition, like the sterling silver double-strand beaded necklace on the left, and the Weiss rhinestone and milkglass necklace in the middle.  

Do you see that long necklace towards the right side? Someone hastily sewed three strands of rhinestones onto a navy blue grosgrain ribbon.

The woman carefully picked up each piece and wrote down the price for each one. She noticed that many weren't in great shape, so she priced them at ten cents. The "nice ones" were a quarter. All told, I paid five dollars for the vintage enamel colander, the silver baby cup and twenty-two pieces of jewelry.

She even threw in a free "diamond" ring for Maeve:

It joins her growing collection of costume jewelry. These are clip-on earrings that we found a few weeks ago:

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I have an update on the BlogHer Community Keynote: my blog posts were not selected. Boo-hoo. The thought of speaking in front of 1000 people freaked me out anyway. It would have been so embarrassing to poop my pants in the presence of all of those nice blogging ladies. So, instead, I will enjoy listening to all of the other speakers, without any worries on my mind (or in my pants).

I've mentioned it before, but if any of you will be at BlogHer, please drop me a line. I would love to meet up at one of the many parties.

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Here are a few blogs that I have been enjoying lately:

This Young House - Get a glass of sweet tea vodka & lemonade and read through all of their archives. They documented the extensive (and inexpensive) renovation that they did on their little house. And make sure you check out their on-a-shoestring backyard wedding. Wow.

Moggit - Two funny ladies snark on ridiculous design ideas. I love how they call bullshit on major interior design mags and websites. A few examples.

Patina Green - A mother/daughter team of talented interior designers and antique dealers. Kaci & Luann have quite a knack for displaying their vintage finds in the two shops where they sell their goods. And, lucky for us, they share lots of photos of their displays.

On the Dot Creations - Julie has lots of great Etsy advice. Her free e-book is a must-have for Etsy sellers, or anyone thinking about selling on Etsy. Like me.

The Kitchn - I keep revisiting the same page over and over again, as if it is going to change. I need to make these or else I will surely die.

freshfind: vintage jack & jill lamp

Vintage Irmi Jack & Jill lamp with light-up well

Find more Irmi goodness on Flickr

Crazy Keywords, eBay Interview & Vote for Me

I finally wrote a new post on my freshblogtips.com blog about the advice I gave my mom when she decided to start a blog. I thought I'd celebrate by sharing some of my favorite keywords that have brought readers to freshvintage in the past few months (unexpectedly, I am sure). I've done this before, and they keep getting better.

I'm still not sure how some of these phrases brought people to my blog. Especially the first one:

• am i offending blacks with my clothing
• big tits wool clothes
• vintage clothing for traditional catholics
• you're dumb
• where do the crack whores hang out in charlotte nc
• wearing a maxi pad
• crack torch martha stewart
• what does a good stool sample look like
• beet stool samples
• woke up in pee mortified
• why feces smells like copper
• kathy lee sweet melting  
• indian son who likes his mother's tits & ass & also to see while she does pee-pee [wtf?]

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I was interviewed for an article on Entrepreneur.com about The Evolution of eBay. You'll find Gary from The Auction Rebel quoted in the article as well. So exciting!

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My sister nominated me for the BlogLuxe Funniest Blog Award. If you have some time to kill, go over and vote for me. Once a day. Every day until July 6th. You don't have to register or anything crazy like that. Oh - and you'll have to scroll through all of the unfunny blogs to find mine. ; )

The rumors are true.

My mother started a blog: BoggleMama.com.

It sounded like a good idea when I first suggested it to her. I even helped her come up with a name for it.

But I fear that I have unleashed a blogging beast. She has the potential to share an ungodly number of stories that could be very embarrassing to my siblings and me. In fact, I would say I am on the top of their collective shit lists right now.

If you love cringe-worthy childhood photos, tales of medical mishaps, brushes with famous people, and life stories of a former prostitute who braved it all to eventually become a loving mother of five children, then you will love my mom's blog. Okay - totally lying about that last thing. My mother was never a hooker. The only service she ever performed in exchange for money was Color Analysis.  I'm a "Spring".

No matter how embarrassing the stories may be to my family, they are sure to put a smile on your face. My mom is a crack-up and an engaging story-teller. And she is obsessed with reading all of the comments that people leave on my blog. So you can imagine how much she will love hearing from all of you on her very own blog. Please visit BoggleMama.com and give her a warm welcome!

Mid-Century School Chairs, Brownies & Ninja Maeve

Here are some finds from the last few weeks of junking. I spent $30 for everything in this post...

I bought these four Brunswick children's chairs for four bucks at a fancy private school's yard sale. It is difficult to see the colors, but there are two light green, one pale yellow and one beige. They are a little beat up - the legs have some rust on them. But the plastic seats cleaned up very well with the Magic Eraser. Love that thing.

They have that mid-century modern Eames-era thing going on. You know that I am not necessarily into that style, but that it is selling a lot these days.

And for the romantics, I found four hatboxes at a yard sale for six bucks. The striped one doesn't exactly have that same frilly look as the others, but it is from Strawbridge & Clothier in Philadelphia, so I had to buy it.

Howitzer is the 1943 January Yearbook of West Point. In order to get more officials in the field during WWII, the Class of 1943 graduated six months early, in January.

Set of French Language instructional booklets:

Here's a little metal box with drawers (and the remains of a floral decal on top). This is now Maeve's jewelry box because there weren't any toys at that particular yard sale and she was acting crazy and I didn't want to have to scream at her in front of everyone. And it was only fifty cents. A small price to pay for a few extra minutes of digging through good junk.

Her 57 big plastic Tinker Bell beaded necklaces don't exactly fit in here, so instead, she keeps tiny balls of brown playdough that she called her "brownies". Don't worry - I sniffed them to make sure she wasn't playing with her poop.

This small day book contains a log of workers and their payments from 1918. Next to the workers' names, it has their profession. On this page, you can see that Philip Fisher was a "Coppersmith".

I have to enlist some help from my friends for this one: Simone, a German living in America and Carla, an American living in Germany. (And any of my kind German-speaking readers who want to help.) What do these say? They are scraps of linen fabric embroidered with German words. It looks like they may have once been the edges of a tablecloth. Click the photo to make it larger.

And my favorite find of all: a wool Rothschild coat & hat set. In Maeve's size and in perfect condition . I paid $8 for the set.

That innocent look never lasts long. Two seconds later..

She looks like a blood-sucking, ballet-dancing ninja on her way to church.