Vintage has never lost it's style in Americana

You know how they say, "everything comes back into style..." well, that is very true. Check out the fashion magazines each year and your mom and/or grandmother will say that they wore that when they were younger. The world of Vintage has been very much alive for many years now. Some people are new to the trend, others have been doing it their entire lives, and some are just going with what they think is popular at the moment.

There are many amazing blogs and articles out there that help you figure out vintage and how to buy it, but the truth is, most of the people who buy vintage and sell it online... they do not truly want you knowing their secrets because they want you to buy items from their shops online {and some have real actual shops too}. And it makes sense to hide their secrets to a point; you don't expect people who run shops to tell you the wholesale shop they purchase their items from to give you such amazing prices. If they did that, it might put them out of business. Luckily for us regular people who do not run our own vintage stores, we do not need an "in" or any "secret codes" to shop for Vintage. It really is as simple as going out there and doing it! If you are shopping for yourself, and not to sell online, then there is no trick. If you see it and you like it, buy it! It is pretty much the same thing you would do when you went shopping in a regular store. You wouldn't need any major tips or tricks to shop at Target. The same is true for Vintage shopping. If your town has a Goodwill, a Salvation Army, a Flea Market, or any store that sells "gently used items" then you are on your way to shopping for Vintage items!

There are no set rules unless you are a hard core Vintage shopper. Anything over 10 years old can be considered "one of a kind" because chances are there are not too many of its kind around. the older the item, the less chance you have to walk down the street and bump into someone wearing the same thing you are, which is a huge draw for people to shop Vintage. Same thing with furniture... the older the item, the more rare it is that you will have the same thing in your house as your neighbor.

Do not forget about the Eco Friendliness of buying Vintage. If you buy something pre-owned and pre-loved, you will not need to buy something brand new. Reducing the need to produce more waste in the world by making new items.

I've put together a list of a few websites that give some tips on Vintage shopping that might help those who enjoy shopping and want to branch out into the Vintage shopping world, but are not sure how to do it.

1. A Beautiful Mess is a wonderful blog to follow even if you are not a fan of buying Vintage items. The blog owner runs her own shop selling Vintage items online and in another store in the real world. A while back they described how to shop for Vintage clothing.

2. Frecklewonder is another great blogger. She has listed out some tips on how to thrift while you have little ones with you.

3. Bleubird {aka Miss James} did a guest blog spot on Candimandi's blog giving some wonderful vintage tips.

4. A big concern of mine is cleaning Vintage clothing. someone who wore it before could have just been a nasty person, not to mention the item was probably sitting in a box or attic for awhile, then it was hung amongst other clothes in a thrift shop before you purchased it. Here is a nice article explaining cleaning Vintage clothes.

5. Maybe you aren't hip to buying used clothes, but you would love to get your hands on some Vintage pyrex dishes that you loved when you were a kid? You need to know how to clean it properly! Most recommend that you DO NOT put vintage pyrex into the dishwasher for fear of removing the pretty details on the outside of the dish. Here is an article explaining how to clean up your pyrex before you use it.

6. Maybe the thought of using old dishes is beyond your thought process, as is wearing old clothes. fear not, there are still many things you can buy at a Thrift store that you won't use in a personal way. Like vases, old jars to hold beautiful items to display, art sculptures/statues, and etc. But you'll still want to clean up your newly purchased item. Here is an article explaining how to clean vintage glassware's.

7. And lastly there is purchasing furniture. Thrift stores, as my kid puts it, "smell like old attics that are dusty and stinky..." so you will want to clean up your items. Unless you enjoy that vintage smell... then you are welcome to skip cleaning it for the smell part, but you might want to consider it just for sanitary reasons. Here are a couple of articles that explain how to clean thrifted furniture items: article 1, article 2, article 3 {articles 3 & 4 help explain the bed bug effect that took over NY, and still takes over areas every year!}, article 4.

Basically when you thrift, you need to take into account many things. But if you are willing to put in the time and effort... you will find many amazing deals out there!

If you think you are just too freaked out by buying used items, not to worry... there are many, many, many places out there who specialize in selling throwback items that are made brand new, but I'll tell you all about those another time!

having an eco friendly kid, and let them have their toys too?

Pokemon Toys on the kids dresser

The other day i was wandering the house trying to pick up the things that the kid left out, mostly hair accessories and jewelry. And the past few weeks i have been trying to make my closet a CLOSET and not a storage for boxes left over from the move. You are probably wondering what these two things have in common... my kid. All of the boxes are full of her things. Things she has collected and saved during her 11 years on this planet {there were 10 boxes when i started, i am down to 7 and still going through them all}

My kid is a collector of everything. And rightfully so, i should have put a stop to it years ago, but i did not. She started collecting Pokemon when she was 2. First it was cards, then the little plastic figures, then the stuffed animals, and then there are a few posters and coins and strange nic-nacks that go with her collection. She collects keychains as a trinket from all of our vacations. She collects pins that say funny things. She collects rocks {no joke. any rock in her life that she found to be "pretty" she kept it}. She collects coins from around the world. She also collects rare American coins. She collects/saves every card anyone gives her... heck it doesn't even have to be a card, write a note on a piece of paper and she will keep it. She has a hoarder side for sure! And it isn't so much that she keeps things. I'm ok with keeping things that you treasure and that will stand the test of time. She takes it a step further... once she starts, she doesn't want to stop. It is now part of a "collection" which is truly a collection of junk... for the most part.

A few years ago a friend of mine Karyn wrote a blog entry that i couldn't get out of my head these past few days. She wrote about how not having kids made her more eco conscious. And i remember reading that back in Feb 2009 and thinking, "my kid can't consume that much, she's just a tiny kid." But now that i am sitting her trying to figure out the Trash pile, the Goodwill pile, and the "oh my God are you kidding me, why the hell are you seriously keeping this crap" pile... i think Kayrn was spot on in her thinking!

Now, i would not trade my kid for anything in the world. I love her to pieces. But kids are a major contributor of the current eco system we find ourselves in. Take ANY kid under the age of 10 to a store and the first thing they say, "can we go to the toy isle?" And sure enough, that kid will complain their way into a new junk, er, i mean toy. It's bombarded into their brain on a daily basis.... BUY BUY BUY. The breakfast cereal has a junk toy inside of it, so they want the cereal that has a toy in it. The cartoons they watch before school have commercials telling them about how cool the newest toys are. Then all day at school they have Billy and Janie telling them all about their toys and how cool they are, and if you kid doesn't have what the other kids have... they now want what the other kids have!

I'm not sure what, if anything, we as parents can do to break the wants and desires of the children. I do know that by the time Claire was 7 i had her convinced of being more ECO friendly when it came to toys. It also helped that all of her Barbie toys were tainted with LEAD {thank you China!} and she had to throw them all away. She isn't exactly the best eco kid on the planet, but she hasn't asked for the toy isle since age 7.

Yesterday i turned my kid onto thrift stores. At first i took her to Goodwill a few weeks ago and her reaction was "ICK! can we leave? it SMELLS really bad in here!!!" but yesterday i took her to a thrift store and she was like a kid in a candy store looking at all of the old, previously used, still perfectly good, already manufactured, made to last things. She only bought 1 thing with her own money, a painting. But it is a start in the right direction.

My goal is to put her on a path to keep things OUT of the landfills by donating her gently used toys + not buying so many toys to begin with. We've always been big on recycling and reusing anything that we can. We donate and only trash things that are truly trash. But i think when it comes to a life with kids... it really is hard to live a truly eco conscious life style.

Drive thru mentality

It seems that everyone is too busy in life. No one wants to slow down and enjoy the things that are meant to be enjoyed. I know only a handful of people {myself included} who would rather drive to a vacation destination than fly. Everyone wants to just get there and skip over the places that are along the way, and then get right home by skipping over the places once again. No one cares to get out into the world and see the world much anymore.

The people of Europe have it right. For the most part, each person can speak their native language along with English and several other languages of the area around their country. The reason for this learning is simple; they travel, they explore, and they are aware of their entire continent that they live upon. Only 7% of American's have a passport. Which for the most part we do not require one for any reason at all other than to travel to Canada and Mexico while driving and seeing things, so this is just a random point to make. European's however can get to almost any other country from where they live in just a few hours. And i could not find any hard numbers, but most online sources said ALL Europeans had passports.

You do not need to live in a place like Europe to immerse yourself in a culture rich environment. Inside of each town, each state, and each section of our country you can find culture. There is so much to see in America. I'm proud to say that i have driven from one coast of this country to the other coast of this country. I've driven North to South and places in between. And honestly, i've barely scratched the surface of what there is to see in America. But i can tell you this, i've seen some truly amazing things driving around this country of ours. Middle of nowhere Utah/Nevada border area... the great salt flats! amazing! Middle of nowhere Wyoming... Tree Rock! Middle of nowhere New Mexico... Billy "the kid" history! Places you can not just take a plane and you are there. You have to get out and take an adventure. I could list off so many amazing things that i've seen over the years because i took the time to get to where i was going and noticed all of the things along the way.

This isn't just about knowing your country and seeing it, but on a whole people prefer to just have a drive thru style of life. Maybe it is because it is COLD out in the mid-west but the drive thru's are always packed and the parking lots and inside the places are empty. I prefer to go inside, sit down, and enjoy speaking to people face-to-face. {I admit to getting drive thru meals when we are painting or doing a task that requires fast food.} There is just something about the concept of everything going drive thru, it bugs me a bit. Drive thru pharmacies are popping up at even the larger chain stores that do not even specialize in pharmacies. I saw in the news a few months back that they have a drive thru "Adult" store opening up in Texas. I've seen articles on drive thru cigarette and alcohol stores. It's just strange that people can drive thru to get almost anything these days.

I get that people are busy. I get that everyone thinks that their time is more precious than parking, getting out of their car and actually walking around a store to get what they need... but is it any wonder that the Obesity rate in America climbs higher and higher every year? People are getting lazier by the minute. Soon it will be like in the movie Wall-e. People will have zero need to even get up for any reason and they will turn into the people in that movie. FAT and LAZY people just wondering through life with no attention span for reality. it is a sad thought to think of the future of the human race when everything is going to a lazier way of doing things.

This sort of turned into a mini-rant there at the end. Sorry. Basically i wonder when the drive thru lifestyle will end in America? When will people realize that they NEED to get out and DO things. Explore, Enjoy, and Appreciate the life that is all around us all. There is plenty of time to walk your happy bottoms into Taco Bell and get your food for lunch. Not only are you getting a bit of exercise that will help save your life one day... you are also shutting off your car, which in turn helps reduce CO2 and less pollution also helps save your life and the life of others!

climate gate.

the reason we try.

Over the last few days i've been reading and listening to the News talk about "climate gate" (if you've been living inside of a box, try going to google and doing a search on "climate gate"). It stands to reason that any lie is bad and should be looked down upon. But i also feel that it is necessary to sometimes lie to certain people in life... "Why no dear, that doesn't make you look fat." ;-) Although i pride myself on being up front and honest as much as i can in life - i would expect nothing less than the truth from all others to me... so i do all that i can to always tell the truth, even if it hurts someone. But there are certain times when you just can't help but lie to avoid major hurt or unforeseen circumstances.

So when i hear/see that people in the climatology departments have been faking documents to cover up that the world isn't exactly warming up like they had previously predicted - one thing 1st comes to mind - so what?

But when you dig deeper down into the cost of it all - then and only then do i feel frustration towards the issue.

Set aside the cost issue... set aside the billions wasted each year on fake studies and false records... set it all aside, and what you get are people working towards a better future for the planet to make life better for every person on it.

But it does remind me of a quote my Earth Science teacher said almost daily so its burnt into my mind, "the planet will be here long after humans die off and another race of beings takes it over..." just as it did with the dinosaurs; what we are doing today is protecting and preserving HUMAN kind, not the planet. There is very little that we, as humans, can do to destroy the planet for good. We might change its nature, we might make it appear differently than what it had in the past... but we can't destroy the planet (short of blowing it up, of course). But we can harm and destroy HUMAN kind by what we do.

Another thing is a great photographers quote "keep/leave it just as you found it..." meaning that when you go to take a photo of nature or life, don't adjust what you see... don't move the leaves around to make it more pretty for what you think might make it prettier in a photo... just take your photo, and move on so that others can come and see the world just as it should be - natural - un messed with by human kind.

So back to my first original thought of "so what?" If it takes a "lie" to wake up most people on this planet that what they are doing is killing each other, then i say fib a little bit... just stop spending/wasting money doing it and we're all good. Most people i know do not recycle or even try to "save the planet". But i've been at this saving the world business since i was a teenager (but i am far from perfect at it). I was part of Greenpeace. i've been a vegetarian since age 11 and will forever be one. I refuse to think to this day that it is about saving the planet, the planet will be just fine - what i am trying to save is the future of HUMAN kind. Saving the future for my daughter and her (our) future children.

So to sum up, lying is BAD... but maybe change your tactics to save the people instead of saving the planet and you will get more help. Most people are against killing of humans (sure they'll eat a cow or two) so if they realize they're killing each other off slowly by trashing the planet - maybe they will wake up and try harder :)

something found

i simply adore when places get creative! Not only is this a great way to recycle paper, but it is so cute!