I took a lot of photos yesterday of new items that I’m working on adding to my shop, lots of good dresses ahead! If you want to see bigger photos, please see my flickr. and of couse my shop!
The rainy season is starting here in Portland, so now it’s a big game of “where’s the light? is it raining?” when taking photos. I wish I could set up some kind of year-round indoor lighting situation sot that I wouldn’t have to worry about it, but I am nervous about dropping the money on lights in case it doesn’t work well enough. dalas and I were talking about it last night and it sounds like the true, best solution is to have a better quality camera. Unfortunately I won’t be dropping $1000 on a DSLR anytime soon, so we’ll just have to see how it goes.
So far I have made two meals with my forest mushrooms. I made a potato-leek-quinoa stew with chanterelles, and Ariel & Aron came over last night and we made a really good chanterelle-sauce pasta, with pesto biscuits and salad. Yum! dalas had also prepared some boiled peanuts earlier in the day (an amazing Southern snack) so I got to have some of those as well. Food party! I still have more mushrooms, so I see more delicious meals in my future.
I really love spending time in the forest, so mushroom hunting is a perfect activity for me. Last spring, Ariel and I went looking for morels and found some very delicious ones. It was my first time tasting them, and I was totally floored by how good they were. They were creamy and amazing! I am really looking forward to next spring, but in the meantime, there are chanterelles to find! We went searching for chanterelles this morning, it was so fun. It’s very relaxing to be in the forest with no one else around, searching off the trails for delicious mushrooms while also finding really interesting ones. I have never seen so many different kinds of mushrooms in one day before, it was awesome.
We ended up going to two different locations. The first one had the biggest variety of mushrooms, but we didn’t find any chanterelles- only signs that someone had been there before us and harvested the few that were there. We did, however, find a jumbo porcini mushroom! It weighed half a pound, pretty impressive.
Mushroom hunting sounds like something potentially dangerous to do, because of all the poisonous varieties out there, but when you are looking for something specific it isn’t that hard or scary. Morels, for example, are really really distinct. I think you would have to be crazy to mistake anything else for a morel. Chanterelles are a bit harder, because there is a mushroom that is pretty similar, but the coloring and formation of the gills will tell you if it’s right or not. Boletes (porcinis are in this group) are a bit trickier, and we took ours to a mushroom lady at the farmer’s market so that we could be sure.
The second location we hit up was incredible, we didn’t have to look very hard and found tons of chanterelles! It was really exciting. We also found some lobster mushrooms, and we’re planning on making a chanterelle-sauce pasta from this nice Italian cookbook tomorrow night. I can’t wait. I am very into food, so it’s really gratifying to find these little fungus guys, cook them up and eat them!
A coral mushroom.
Our final haul.
Chanterelles
Our forest basket
These guys were very tiny, growing inside an old log. When you hunt for mushrooms, you have to put your “mushroom glasses” on, so that you tune your vision into the mushroom world.
Ariel in the meadow we found. It was so classic, it had daisies and everything. All it needed was a deer prancing around!
If you want to see more photos, check out my mushroom hunting set on flickr. I can’t wait to go again!
I was just browsing through the newly listed dresses on etsy and thinking, “Oh, they’re all very nice, but I’m not really seeing anything perfectly ME.” Selling all these clothes has made me really, really picky about what I spend money on for myself (although the super cheap Goodwill bins clothing are easy to justify), and it seems like it’s a common feeling amongst vintage (or any clothing?) sellers. I was chatting with the girl at the thrift store that I hit up today about the same thing- she says that she likes to “test” things out from the store before deciding to buy them, and was testing out a cute pair of seafoam pants today. Such a good idea! I have to admit I do that with my vintage clothing too, when I find something that I like I try it out, see if it works for me, and if it isn’t quite right then I put it up for sale. Sometimes I will keep something for a while but realize that I’m just not wearing it enough, and into the shop it goes! It’s fun to have a rotating wardrobe, and I feel like my staple pieces really have to earn their place. I feel guilty holding on to things that I don’t wear very much!
So, tonight while I was browsing dresses I came across this one and was totally floored.
I really enjoy Pennsylvania Dutch imagery, and the colors are just so bright and perfect! It’s a nice, flattering shape (it isn’t pinned in the photo, it is shaped like that), and when I realized that it was in my size (the measurements are almost perfect) I got even more excited, and then when I saw the photo of the tag I knew that I had to do it.
I mean, Charlie’s Mustache?? How could I resist? I bought the dress. I’m pretty stoked about it, and if the knit really is as non-itchy as the seller claimed, I think I will be wearing it a lot this winter. Now, if only I could find a perfect pair of brown, size 8.5 t-strap maryjane flats…
Thank you all so much for the great response to my fall lookbook! What an awesome beginning to my week. Emily, Missa, Milla, Vivienne and Vegan and Vintage have all posted super sweet things about it in their blogs. You guys are so nice! I really appreciate it. It’s funny that so many people are seeing these photos, I almost feel a little embarrassed because I’m in them, haha. The positive feedback I’ve gotten is really encouraging, you’ll definitely be seeing more of these kinds of photos from me in the future.
In fact, I just got home from a very successful thrifting trip and have a LOT of new things to add to the shop in the next couple days! Here’s a preview of my bounty, displayed sloppily on my couch:
It is mostly dresses (tons of 1960’s stuff, conveniently in my size!!), a couple blouses, a skirt, a couple pairs of shoes. Lots of great stuff, all in perfect shape. When I shop at the Goodwill bin store it can be frustrating because I’ll find some amazing pieces, only to discover that they have a bad stain or something in an obvious place. Total bummer! Finding things that have no damage is like a holy gift from the thrifting gods. I suspect that several of these new dresses came from the same person’s closet, cause they are mostly all the same size! Pretty sweet.
I want to do another photoshoot right away, but it will have to wait till tomorrow. I have to pick up our delicious CSA veggies in a few minutes, dalas is coming home today (he spent a few days on the east coast for a coastal get-away with his vimeo friends), and tomorrow morning I am going mushroom hunting in the forest with Ariel! I’m so excited, mushroom hunting is one of those earthy things that makes me feel really awesome. I find it, I eat it! I believe we’ll be looking for chanterelles.
Also, today is my friend Rebecca’s birthday! She is 22, hooray! I have a really awesome gift for her, but it probably won’t be opened till the end of the week when we have a little party. I’ll share it afterwards, cause I think a lot of you will like it too. Here are some really lovely lockets that Rebecca made, you can purchase them over at The Shiny Squirrel, along with paintings too!
Okay, off to get my veggies! Look at all these wonderful things I’ll soon be eating:
Rather than sitting around and moping, I decided to do a little fall photoshoot for my vintage shop! I made a little lookbook of my favorite fall items, and you can click on the image below to check it out:
I had a lot of fun dressing up, taking the photos, playing around with them in photoshop (all by myself!)… I hope you like it! Many of these items will be appearing in my shop very soon. And now, more images:
Big versions of all of the photos can be seen on my flickr. Please let me know what you think of these!
I’ve been feeling kind of bummed out lately, so I’ve been lazy when it comes to updating this blog. I always feel like no one is reading, and I feel weird about my shop these days too. I always feel like I’m losing the competition against other sellers. I’ve had at least five packages go missing this month, and it’s really frustrating. All of the missing packages were sent priority mail, with delivery confirmations, and they made it to a Portland post office to be scanned in and then disappeared. I just don’t understand what happened to them. It’s hard for me, financially, to refund these orders (although I absolutely do), and it has me rethinking my pricing. I think I need to start moving my shop up to the same level as some other etsy sellers, because I work just as hard and my items are just as good, so I think I deserve to be making a bit more from this venture. It’s scary to think about raising prices because I don’t want to lose customers, but I also want to be able to keep doing this and the way things are going now, it might not be possible unless I make some changes. I hope everyone understands!
In the meantime, here are some things that have been recently added to the shop:
It is really starting to feel like fall in Portland. It even smells like fall! I am looking forward to it, but not as much for the winter that will come later. I am really happy to be in a place that doesn’t much (if any) snow, but sometimes the rain is hard to deal with because I get super grumpy if my feet are wet, ha ha. I have really bad luck with rain boots, they always get holes in them. I think I have a rain boot curse. I’m going to write a post on boots later, but for now I just wanted to share a couple cute appreciation photos from my etsy shop!
First, here’s Kirsten (aka luno) from Australia! She purchased several brooches and pins from me, and here they are all displayed on her cute jacket. This picture is extra fun for me, because I remember where I found all of the pins. They are from lots of different cities, too! Memory pins.
Next, this awesome photo from Melly, who recently purchased this awesome Nefertiti tote from my shop. Perfect pose! Man, I love appreciation photos so much, I wish they were mandatory or something! So cute.
dalas and I went to Forever 21 this weekend because he wanted to buy some big oversized clear plastic sunglasses that his friend picked up a few months back. Now, I never try to hide my distate for F21, I think it’s a shitty place full of cheap, badly made clothes (even if they have cute stuff sometimes!) and all the overseas factory production makes me want to barf. That being said, I did buy a pair of $5 sunglasses, popped out the lenses, and intend to make them my new prescription goggles. dalas found the last pair of his funny glasses, although I’m not sure if he’s going to get lenses for them too. Mine:
I think I like them! You can also see in these photos my fall look of choice- wooly knit vests! They make me warm without having to be covered in long sleeves, and they remind me of old Scandanavian family vacation photos… I’ll try to find some good examples on flickr later. I hope you are all having a nice weekend!
I am having a sale in my shop! Every listing that is more than a month old has been marked down to $10 or less. Pretty sweet deal! I am really hoping to get some things moving so that I will have more space for new inventory. It’s probably the cheapest that the items will ever get, so now is a good time to pick them up!
I recently came across an old Life Magazine from August 1945 while thrifting and I took some photos of my favorite ads:
Actually, I liked the weird Shell Oil ad so much that I stuck it in a vintage frame that I found last week and hung it on the wall:
This is a screenshot from my website’s main page. I never write in my old food blog or butterandjam anymore, so I removed the links/photos. I think I might want to add something for my videos, but I need to find a good photo first.
I’m still making progress on my BILLUMINATI drawings. Here’s William H. Macy. I haven’t decided yet who to do next…
I finally finished this video from my trip last month. I think it is an accurate representation of my experiences, perceptions and feelings from the cabin. You should follow the link to the actual page on vimeo, or watch full screen. It looks better like that!
Hello friends! There is too much space between my posts, but I’ve been quite busy lately so it is hard to keep up. First of all, I just wanted to say that I am having another 15% off sale today and tomorrow (11-12)! All orders over $15 will receive a 15% off discount. Yay! Would you like to see all of the things that are new in the shop?
A few items have been sold already, but there is still a lot left!
Last night dalas and I met up with a couple friends to see the swifts fly into the chimney at the Chapman school! It was really amazing. Thousands of the birds collect in the sky and they spiral down into the chimney as the sun sets. Hundreds of people, at least, were there sitting on the grass watching the birds. It was so fun! There is even a hawk who comes to attack the birds, I think he ate one last night. It was very dramatic, and there was even a nice sunset.
I’m trying to work a lot on my BILLUMINATI project so that I can actually get it finished. I have since completed Billy Bob Thornton:
and am working on William H Macy, but I think I am going to re-draw him because it just doesn’t look right. It sucks, because I spent a few hours on it, but I suppose it is worth trying again.
Hello! This is me, last weekend. I love that polkadot dress, you can see it in some of the etsy photos as well. It’s very comfy and the rayon fabric just feels great. I want more rayon in my life! Hope all is well with all of you out there!
