freshvintage

Highland Orchards Fall Festivals & Vintage-Inspired Goodies

I thought I'd give you a fall-filled peek at the orchard where our shop is located, along with a few new items that we have started carrying.

Highland Orchards was just featured by Philadelphia Magazine as one the area's top apple orchards (and there are a surprising number of orchards around here). During the week, you can drive your car into the fields to pick your own apples and pumpkins. But on the weekends, they provide a shuttle to the fields.

Who on earth wouldn't want to take this shuttle to pick apples and pumpkins?! It is the cutest thing ever!

Even the hand-painted sign where you wait for the shuttle is adorable:

One of the friendly goats at Highland Orchards. (But I still would never stick my hand in there, no matter how friendly. You never know when a goat is cranky from eating a bad piece of corn.)

On every October weekend, Highland has Fall Apple Harvest Festivals. There's face-painting, hayrides, scarecrow-building, a hay maze and lots of other fun activities for the kids (including a playground that's open all year long). 

You'll find Tiny's BBQ set up in the field, too. Hands down, the best pulled pork sandwich I've ever had. 

Meanwhile, in our shop, we've been mighty busy teaching kids how typewriters work...

...while their parents show them how long it took to dial a number on a rotary phone.

Yes, we are educating children about the inconveniences of vintage machinery. And how thankful they should be that they don't know about white-out.

We've been branching out beyond selling purely vintage items, and have a few vintage-inspired products for customers who may not necessarily love old stuff.

 The kiddies love the $4 coin purses:

And the adults love the Lavatory Mists, guaranteed to eliminate soiled air. Abe Lincoln's Log is our best-seller so far. 

This pencil case with vintage cameras is one of my favorites:

Along with this shopping bag with vintage bikes. I want that one with the basket!

We also have several new wooden signs, all created and screen-printed in the USA. Most of them can be personalized, too. I hung them in my kitchen to take pictures of them. And now I want to keep them all.

These signs are all three feet long, and printed on wood slats. 

I chose "Brandywine" on this sign since we are a few miles away from the Brandywine River.

This one can be customized in the open area at the top:

This sign comes as is. I love its simplicity.

Pennsylvania can be replaced by anything you want. Our Facebook fans gave a lot of ideas for their favorite vacation spots. "The nude" was my favorite replacement for "Pennsylvania".

Shoot me an email if you are interested in any of the signs (colleen@freshvintagestyle.com). 

So, do you have a favorite orchard in your area where you can pick apples & pumpkins? 

Good News & Bad News about Facebook Interest Lists

This is a public service annoucements for Facebook users. If you don't use Facebook to follow the latest news on your favorite businesses, blogs and people, then you can skip this post. I promise that my next post will have tons of vintage awesomeness in it.

UPDATE [November 16, 2012]: The squeaky wheel gets the grease! Enough people complained to Facebook, that they added a new option for Pages called Get Notifications. Hover over the Liked button on your favorite pages (and people) and check off Get Notifications. Now, whenever that page posts an update, you'll get the little red notification number on the globe across the top of your page. Also make sure that "Show in News Feed" is checked.

So, hopefully, you won't even need Interest Lists (although they might be handy for organizing & categorizing lots of pages). But I'll leave my post intact below, in case Facebook decides to change their mind again...

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By now, you've probably seen a zillion posts about how Facebook has royally screwed the owners of business pages (including freshvintage), and our posts aren't appearing in your News Feeds. Your friends are telling you something along these lines:

To keep seeing us in your news feed, you have to hover the mouse on the "Like" button near our name. In the drop-down menu select "Add to Interest  Lists". Then, create an interest list. When you select that interest list you will see ALL of our posts and you won't miss anything!

You may have already done that for a few Pages here and there. But did you know that you can save time and add a BUNCH of your PAGES at one time?! 

I will show you how to do it. I'll also break some bad news about Interest Lists, straight from Facebook's own Help pages. Interest Lists may not be the miracle cure that everyone is claiming them to be. More on that later.

The Good News First...

Here's how to add a bunch of pages to your Interest List at one time:

First, go to your personal profile (go to www.facebook.com and click your name in the left corner).

Then, go to the bottom of the left column, and you'll see the Interest List you created. (If there isn't one there yet, then follow the directions above to add a new Interest List. Start with freshvintage!) 

I created a list called freshvintage faves. I made my list public, so anyone can read the feeds from the Pages on my Interest List. 

 

Click on your list, and you'll see the News Feed for everything in that list.

See the Manage List link in the upper right corner? Click it, and choose Edit List:

You can now see all the Pages that are already in your list. 

Here's the good part. Select "Pages" from the drop-down list in the upper left corner:

Here are ALL of the pages that you Like. Click on the ones that you want to add to your Interest List. My freshvintage faves list is mostly related to vintage, antiques, small businesses, crafts and other stuff I like. It doesn't include every single page that I "like".

Of course, you can also add friends to your list, and create separate Interest List for other topics.

Unfortunately, there is no "Select All" button. Which stinks, especially if you are like me, and "like" hundred of pages. But this method is easier than visiting individual Pages and adding them to your list one at a time. 

The Bad News:

I think it is also worth noting that simply adding Pages to your Interest List will NOT necessarily include all of their posts in your News Feed. Here is a quote from Facebook's own Help page about Interest Lists:

When you create or subscribe to a list, you'll see the best posts from that list in your main news feed. Your lists will also appear in the Interests section of your bookmarks. Simply click the list's name to see all the recent posts and activity from the Pages and people featured in the list, without overwhelming your main news feed.

What does "best posts from the list" mean? It certainly doesn't mean "all posts"! So, creating Interest Lists does not guarantee that you will see all posts in your News Feed! But if you click on the Interest List from your profile page, you will see all of the posts from your Interest List.

UPDATE: Once you create an Interest List, you will start to see an update in your main News Feed that lets you know how many new posts there are in your list. The actual posts from the list aren't there - you have to click on your list to read them all. Also, I don't know how often Facebook adds this type of update to your News Feed, so you are better off just clicking on the Interest List whenever you want to read all of the new posts.

Bottom Line:

Interest Lists are a step closer to improving the quality of your News Feed by including more updates from your favorite Pages. But, they will not include everything from those Pages. You still have to click on the actual Interest List to see all of the updates from your favorite pages.

So, when you are sitting around on a Friday night, drinking Chardonnay, make sure to click on your Interest List so you can catch-up on ALL of your favorite pages!

Of course, don't forget to add freshvintage to your list. And, if you are on your third glass of wine, visit my freshvintage faves Interest List - you may discover a few new favorites of your own!

Antique Factory Cart Makeover

I've been begging customers to send photos of freshvintage purchases in their homes. I get a little sad when we sell something and it - poof! - disappears, never to be seen again. Well, one of our customers finally listened to my plea!

Chris bought this old Nutting Company factory cart last month from an Amish gentleman who used it in his barn. We chose not to restore the cart - we prefer to let customers decide what to do. (HAHAHA. That's funny. You know by now that we are just lazy).

We lugged the cart to Clover Market in September, where a customer named Marc bought it. He wanted to use it as a coffee table, but planned to make a few improvements.

 Here's the cart in its new home!

Pretty cool, huh? I've seen them used as coffee tables, but it never seemed practical to me - unless your sofa was six inches off the ground. Marc added legs to give it height, but still kept that rustic, industrial feel of the original cart.

I asked Marc to give us a run-down on his improvements:

"I removed the metal brackets that held the handle and flipped them all over – this way the pipe would not slide through. I purchased new black pipe, 14 inches long, and threaded on one side. I added the couplers on the bottom to give it a little beef to the bottom also to use as a leveler. 

I then lightly sanded the entire piece with a 120 grit sandpaper, cleaned it well, and shellacked the entire piece – including the metal to give it that shine. No welding on this piece as I was able to do with just old bolts I had laying around!"

Here's another shot: (I love that rug, too.)

Thanks for sharing, Marc!