Apron Thrift Girl

frugality ~ checks & balances

When I said that I wished to have more readers and comments, I had forgotten that it might mean something more than just numbers. It meant that more people would find my blog and sometimes those readers would be new. They wouldn't really know me except for the their first impression. When the woman who referred to me as a swindler for buying the Arts & Crafts table for $10.00, she said this because she didn't know that sometimes I'll pay more for something then what a seller charges me. A woman last year charged me $10 for a huge box of vintage items and I gave her $20 because I saw the value in what she was selling me. If the table didn't need so much work maybe I would have offered more.

There also was the comment about buying "cheap crap from China" regarding the Liberty of London post. For those that know me well, you are familiar with the fact that I try to live in moderation. 90% of what I bring home is thrifted while 10% is retail. I try to live eco-consciously but pretty things like the Liberty of London line or the lure of Anthropologie and their sale section fills that 10% gap where I step outside of my thrifted, environmentally friendly ways. Because I know my readers don't just stick to buying thrifted things, I also share buying retail items on sale or items that are very affordable. Or just plain expensive, lovely things because we all splurge once in awhile.

If we talk about food, despite my kitchen being filled with organic food, you will find a jar of Best Foods Mayonnaise in my fridge. I've tried the healthy stuff but nothing comes close to Best Foods. I'd even admit it's my least healthy thing that I have in my kitchen and so delicious with avocado or artichokes.

An hour after our house sale fell through I received an email from a reader. She said that she enjoyed my frugal tips but she found it hard to understand how I could rave about eating out in restaurants. She went on to say that all the money that I spend on meals out could be spent on tangible items. She asked me "how does this make you thrifty?" She finished by saying that to her I am a bit of a contradiction.

I had to admit that this hurt to read. I don't have the thickest skin but after all three comments, I realize that I need to not let these bother me so much. Otherwise why have the goal of growing this blog. I can't expect people to agree with everything that I say, that would be boring. A challenging comment can actually be interesting and can get us all thinking. I adore the comments from Christine of Holland every time she tells me that one of my 1970's finds is really ugly.

Since Friday, I have actually found myself writing this post in my head over and over again. What I wanted to share with you all is why I do what I do. Like many people in my generation I grew up without a lot of money. The land we lived on was my grandparents, the house was built (a log cabin) with money loaned by them as well. My dad barely earned $10,000 a year as a school teacher. We thrifted because we had to. What we didn't thrift we bought at K-Mart. We ate out a few times a year. My birthday dinner was at A&W and in those days, a meal out was a huge celebration. We traveled in the summers but only by car and we camped in a vintage tent trailer. It wasn't until my brothers left home that my dad earned a bit more money as an E.M.T. My parents scrimped and saved in order to send me to Norway for a year as an exchange student. They felt that the experience of that year is worth more than anything.

When I did earn money as a young girl, I spent it on these.

When I graduated from High School I went to community college and really learned the art of frugality. A few years later when I moved to Aberdeen Washington, I took a job in a cemetery because it paid well ($7.00) an hour and because I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life thanks to high school. My parents paid a small down payment (inheritance from my grandfather) on a little house (the entire house was only $39K) for me and it was up to me to pay for the monthly payments and take over the mortgage. I was so into frugality at that point in my life that I saved everything I could. I had decided that I wanted the cheapest electricity bill ever and froze during the long winters. I did successfully get my bill down to $18.00 a month. I saw that saving money was more important than my comfort and quality of life. It was almost as if I was so frugal that I lost sight of the important things in life. I spent three very depressed years there. If I had to choose a dark part of my life, it would be my time in Aberdeen, WA. The only bright spot was the fact that I chose to spend $200 to fly to Chicago to visit my brother. It was there that I met Dave and my life changed forever. 14 years ago today I was in Chicago spending the day celebrating my brother's birthday.

When Dave and I married, he was in some debt and we had to live frugally. I knew how to do this though and showed him all my tricks. We sold his house and moved to Wales and the debt disappeared. What he taught me was how to dress well, how to have lovely things in my life and how to enjoy new foods. He really opened up a whole new world to me. He taught me that it was okay to spend money on myself, something I didn't even know how to do. He works for a large corporation and has a good salary. For the first time ever, I was able to really understand abundance. There were fancy company cars and exciting parties in London. We got to attend a Sony Awards dinner in London where I got to see a handful of celebrities. I got a taste for a slice of life that I never imagined. Yet inside I was still a timid girl who was very unsure of herself.

Cerys was born three years later in 2000 and again my life changed. I learned that despite what every conventional book told me, I was going to breastfeed, co-sleep, eat an organic diet, dress her in natural fibers and surround her with natural wooden toys. I discovered Waldorf education and I knew that the most important thing in my entire life was giving this gift to her. Her brother arrived in 2002, and it became a gift for both of them.

Every move after his birth was directed by which Waldorf school we wanted our children to attend. Waldorf isn't cheap unless you are lucky enough to attend a charter school. If our money situation fell down around us, our priority after food would be Waldorf Education. We'd live in a shack if we had to.

It was during this realization of what Waldorf Education meant to me that I realized more about myself and about money. Unlike my life in the mid 90's where I lived in scarcity, I realized that I had choices on where to spend my money. Frugality isn't about living without, it's about having freedom to choose where to spend money.

The three areas in life where we choose to spend our money is our mortgage, Waldorf education and our organic gluten free diet. If our money situation changed we would rent out our house and move into an apartment and alter our organic diet in order to have the money for the school. Everyone who lives frugally gets to make the choice of what their priority is. While my husband's salary is good, after our mortgage (high because we have to always live near a large city), food bill and tuition payment, there isn't much left. We have to pay our bills and what is left over is the reason I live frugally.

Here are things we don't regular do or spend money on:

• fly to Hawaii, Mexico or other popular travel destinations
• buy new CD's and music (I get free itunes card with my business credit card)
• concerts / musicals (although I've been wanting to see Wicked for years)
• hotels (usually free with our family credit card points)
• rental cars
• house cleaners
• gardeners
• ski trips
• movies (the last movie I saw was Nine last December)
• Appliances (most are 2nd hand)
• New Furniture
• We rarely date and don't have a regular Babysitter

Instead we travel by car, stay in hotels for free and we stick close to home. Our music is either free or comes from a yard sale. We did go to Brian Setzer last December but I must tell you the money we paid for it nearly made me sick inside but it was a gift for Dave. He rarely spends money on himself. We take our car with us when we travel so that we don't have to pay for rentals, we clean our own house well sometimes and usually mow our own yard (this rental has a gardener-woot). We rarely go to the movies and instead spend $14 a month for netflix and we make our own popcorn.

We don't buy many new appliances and instead we wait until we find what we need at a garage sale. Right now we need a Slow Cooker. New furniture is easy to not buy since I personally feel that most things aren't made well these days. I'd prefer to buy a solid 50 year old desk for $10.00.

The woman who wrote to me wondered why I spend money on meals out rather than on things that I can keep. It's a great question. I could spend $500 on a new table made with pressed board that will chip easily if something bumps into it. Again I'd prefer to buy a solid wood vintage desk for $10.00. It's about making choices and each of us will have completely different ones. For those that send their children to public school will have $20,000 more money than me to make choices with. Some people are saving for college. We are not. We are investing everything we have right now into the childrens' education. As I watch my daughter flourish here in her new school, I know it's worth every penny. She's a different child than she was a year ago.

I love to eat out, crave it actually. We recently found a Thai restaurant which takes our Restaurant.com vouchers that we traded for airmiles. You spend $50 and you get $25 off your meal. I would eat there weekly if I could, maybe daily. The flavors of their food delight me to no end. It's a taste that just can't be matched at home so I often think about it days after our meal is finished. Because we have to spend $50 it means that we get to order drinks (we normally drink water) and appetizers. I adore this experience of being out with the family and not having to cook at home. To me this is something worth paying for, especially when it is discounted. I'd personally rather have the memory of the meal out than something tangible. Or maybe I should add that I'd prefer to have both.

The key to frugality is not spending more than you bring in. It's really simple math. We could spend half of Dave's salary on clothes if we wanted to and the other half on mortgage and food as long as we paid our bills and had money left in our account at the end of the month. Obviously the more you save the better as long as it's a good balance. When I lived in Aberdeen I saved too much and the balance was thrown off. I was depressed and cold during my three years there. Who cares about my savings account when I was miserable. I couldn't see this then. I just saw dollar signs in my bank.

Right now our money could become off balanced if we don't sell the house in the next few months. Our renters might leave in June and we would be stuck with a full mortgage and our rental here in CA. I have decided that rather than spend money to move out of our rental into a smaller rental, I will earn extra money for the difference. I'm going to double my efforts to bring in money. We'll also have a yard sale, cut back on eating out and spending. It will cost us a lot of money to move so I just had to think outside of the box on how to gain that extra money every month so that we stay in balance.

What is your priority for money? What is your favorite way to spend money? Where is your favorite way to save? I can imagine that many of us will have different answers. I write this blog because I want to share some of my frugal choices and how anyone can have quality items in their life for less. I have an $800 convection oven that I bought for $20.00. I have $200 boots that I bought for $25. I am surrounded by beautiful, quality items that I paid pennies for. I love my life and the balance that I have created.

I can't feel guilty for having abundance in my life because it's the life I have always visualized that I would have. One of the things I want to do is share with people how to save money and how to live the life that they have always wanted. We can all have our fairytale life because it all comes down to the choices we make.

a walk through the woods

We wanted to escape at the weekend to get away from our "house" thoughts. I thought a trip to Armstrong Redwoods would be rather healing. When I was a young girl, one of my favorite trips would be to the redwoods in the Eureka area. I especially loved Patrick's Point and all the agates we would find there. Somehow we hadn't been to the redwoods since we moved to California in August. I can't believe we live 30 minutes from a Redwood Forest.

Here is the base of the Parson tree, the tallest tree in the forest. It's hard to even describe to Cerys how old 1300 years is.

a rare family photo of the four of us. I love to see that even though we are under so much stress, when the camera caught us here, we look like such a family. Everyone here in this photo is my entire life.

My camera caught this magnificent tree in an odd light and I accentuated it in Picnik.

The silence of this forest stripped us of all the stress that we had carried into the weekend. It was almost as if when we left to go home that we knew what we had to do and how to cope. Mother nature can be so grounding.

I have a long post for tomorrow. Someone emailed me and mentioned that I am somewhat of a contradiction since I like to eat out in restaurants. I thought I would take the opportunity to explain my personal take on thrifting and the checks and balances of it all.

xoxo

Selena

Thrift Share Monday

I find that as I thrift more and more my mood can reflect how I thrift. Sometimes I am down and thrifting helps me escape, sometimes I am energetic and happy and I tend to thrift and stumble upon my most valuable finds and sometimes I am so distracted either with other projects or sadness that I just don't have the heart to go out and thrift.

Friday evening we learned that our buyers have pulled out of the house deal due to lack of financing. They had attempted to find other financing but in the end they couldn't do it. We are back at square one. It's so hard to imagine selling a house from 800 miles away. We may have to move out of our current rental into a less expensive one very quickly. We are in a somewhat vulnerable place with a mortgage and a rental. When we originally moved to California we rented our current place because our house was set to close. Everything is all up in the air right now.

I did go out and thrift in the end but only to one sale right down the street. It was more of a "get me out of the house" type of thrift outing that helped me forget our problems at least for a half an hour. Here are my finds for Thrift Share Monday. Please feel free to add a link to your own Thrift Share Monday at the bottom of this post.

Vintage Crayola Crayons with their original .15 cents stamp on the back.

A stoneware pottery vase.

Mystery marking. It looks like an M. I searched and searched on Google but couldn't find anything close to it. Is it familiar to anyone?

I found a box of vintage paper. Look at the scripts someone had written of their address. The children love when I bring home thrifted drawing paper. Keiran is working on something as I type this.

A rather interesting Mid Century Modern dish.

This is a beautiful recorder with the original case and cleaner. It's a Mollenhauer and it appears that it's a quite an expensive brand. The wood is so lovely and smooth; the sound absolutely beautiful. Cerys started playing it as soon as I brought it home. 

I found the sweetest little easel perfect for my Inside a Black Apple card. 

A vintage wool blanket.

Thanks to everyone who entered our Sarah's Silks Giveaway. Here is the winning number:

Random Integer Generator

Here are your random numbers:

29

Timestamp: 2010-03-29 15:08:09 UTC

Congratulations to Julia of Nugglemama's Handful. Julia I'll be emailing you ASAP to get your address so that I can mail your Easter Basket full of Sarah's Silks today.

To those taking part in Thrift Share Monday, please leave your link so that we can visit your blog. I'll be making a button soon in case you wish to place one on your blog.

Pen & Paper ~ National Card & Letter Writing Month

I'm not generally a huge fan of "national" days. I don't celebrate "Talk like a Pirate" day or "Bubblegum" day. I do acknowledge "Garage Sale" day because who wouldn't? Yet when I came across a mention of National Card and Letter Writing Month (April) in Country Living Magazine it touched on something in my heart. When I was a young child I remember sitting on the couch and looking out of our living room window waiting for first sign of the mailman (it was the 70's so I could say that back then). He drove a rather beat up, soft beige jeep and delivered mail to our Rt 2 Box 17E address way out in the country.  When we lived in Wales our address was ~1 the Crescent~ as the house was literally on a small crescent in a little village called Mathern.

My mother and I sometimes argued at who would get the mail. Usually she won and I would have to wait patiently while she looked through the envelopes on her walk back to the house. I can still feel the heat of the summer sun on those July mornings and I can see her so clearly sifting through the mail on her walk. She did let me sign up for junk mail any time I had the chance. I wasn't really picky although by far my favorite thing to receive was a hand written letter. I don't remember how I found pen pals back then. I had many though and wrote letters constantly. Maybe I found them in magazines? Do you remember? My favorite pen pal ever was a girl from Belgium. Her name was Caroline and she became one of my best friends as a teenager.

We dreamed big through our correspondence to each other. I remember the trip to Africa that we were going to take. She drew hand written maps of the places that we would visit. When I married Dave and moved to England we actually met for the first time. We had written each other for years before we met and I felt like I knew everything about her. Ironically as we both married and now have children we never write any more. We are both on facebook but even our comments and notes to each other are rare. A part of me really misses her and our letters to each other. I kept every letter that I received from her.

When have you last written a letter to a dear friend? I know as a thrifter, when I come across a box of vintage hand written letters something in me beams with excitement. What will our children find? Old broken computers full of our emails that can't be opened? Will there be any remnants of the written word from our generation?

National Card and Letter Writing Month officially begins on April 1st. To celebrate, I wanted to offer an old fashion pen pal swap for my readers. If you would like to join us leave me a comment that you wish to receive a penpal and I will email you for your details. There are some rules though. Let's make it fun and unique. I'd like you to find a page in an old catalog or some vintage paper to use for your letter. I used one from an Anthropolgie catalog, borrowing the idea from my friend Lissa.

I thought I would write a letter to my parents. I can't think of anyone more in the world who would love to hear from me. Since moving to California I have started to miss them more and more.

The paper does require a good pen. Next time I would use a medium tip sharpie. It was lovely to write on something so beautiful mixed in with the satisfaction of reusing an old catalog. The children were inspired and also begged to write a letter.

I looked through our recycle bin and found an envelope to reuse.

I also used a catalog page to cover the envelope and secured it using double sided scrapbook tape.

I want to make letter writing a habit again and not something I do once or twice a year. I'm hoping that by organizing this letter swap and acknowledging this somewhat lost art, it will once again light the spark of letter writing inside me.

The swap is open until the 31st of March. I will then send everyone an address where they can write their letter to. Please mail your letters by April 30th. Like any other swap, please uphold your promise to join in. There is nothing worse than not receiving something. If you are struggling with meeting the deadline, please email your partner and let them know. I know that I too have procrastinated on a swap and my partner appreciated hearing from me that I was late and kindly forgave me.

• Write at least a full one page letter.
• Try to use vintage paper or recycle something creative like a catalog
• Reuse a junk mail envelope
• Mail your letter by April 30th
• If you have a blog, post about the letter you wrote & the letter you received
• And of course, Have Fun

Thanks so much. And don't forget to enter the Sarah's Silks Giveaway.

Sarah's Silks Easter Basket Giveaway

Ever since my daughter was a toddler, we have had a house full of Sarah's Silks. We've had capes, play silks and silk toys overflowing in our toy baskets. We have countless photos of a young Cerys wearing her silks and pretending that she was a queen or princess or a rainbow striped zebra. When holidays would come around we would give Sarah's Silks as gifts to family and friends. In other words, Sarah's Silks has to be our favorite toy of all time.

When I moved to Sonoma County in August, I had no idea that Sarah of Sarah's Silks actually lived in the North Bay Area. When I ran into her at a Waldorf Craft Fair in December I could hardly believe my eyes. Sarah is like royalty to us. I nearly bowed when I met her.

Sarah has generously donated a beautiful Easter basket full of gifts. Here's what the giveaway winner will receive.

• Green Play Silk to line the basket (instead of plastic or paper)
• Yellow Play Silk
• Blue Play Silk
• Reversible Silk Cape
• Mini Silk Streamer
• Silk Parachute

If you would like to join the giveaway please leave a comment. If you would like to have a 2nd entry simply become a Sarah's Silks Facebook Fan. If you would like a 3rd entry, follow her on Twitter. Please post a separate comment for each entry since I use the Random Number Generator to choose a winner. The drawing will end on Sunday evening, the 28th, at 9pm. I will mail the giveaway Priority Mail so that it should arrive by Easter.

Since I know that many of my readers are all about saving money you can also buy Silk Seconds. Half of Keiran's Christmas stocking last year was filled with seconds and let me tell you, I couldn't see a flaw in any of the items. You can find some seconds here or if you live in Sonoma County and want to shop locally you can stop by the Summerfield Waldorf School store. Not only are the seconds half price, but 20% of each sale goes back to the school.

Thanks again to Sarah for her fabulous and kind gift.

*&#@!! real estate

I'm taking the day off of writing a proper post and instead will spend the day feeling sorry for myself. Our house that was supposed to close last Wednesday didn't close. Yesterday we learned that the financing fell through. Ouch. For them and for us.

They may try again with a different bank, maybe a co-signer.....we are discussing that and trying to keep calm. And we are worrying. It's like a weight around our necks pulling us down. We were so looking forward to being free of this property. I know that so many of you are also in similar situations. I'm just trying to find the energy to be present for the children and to keep my stress at a minimum.

Speaking of stress. How to do you busy ones, that wear many hats, unwind?

This young boy talks endlessly. There are moments when I just want to click on the pause button to take a breath of silence. How do you pause in the middle of your day?

Repairing Thrifted Jewelry

Have you ever bought a piece of thrifted jewelry only to later discover that it was missing something? Occasionally I see this when I am out at a sale but mostly it's something I realize when I get home and it's too late not to buy it. I brought home a ring on Friday and realized that it too had lost a stone so I added it to my need-to-be-fixed collection and sighed. Thankfully on Saturday I had an idea.

I gathered three rings that all needed something.

This crazy piece is one necklace but notice the blue and white pendant is missing a stone. This is a Lucky Brand necklace that I found five months ago for $1.00 and it's been waiting to be repaired ever since.

I placed the four items in a small wooden box and searched through my thrifted bead collection to see if I could find any matching stones or beads.

It took me about 8 minutes to find the perfect stones for these pieces. All three stones are beads that have tiny holes in them. It shouldn't matter with these jewelry pieces if the holes are on the side as they should stay relatively hidden.

This ring says it's Sterling Silver but I just felt that it was missing something. I decided to add some glitter although at this point I couldn't decide on Martha's glitter or some German Glass Glitter. I just knew that I wanted to bling it up some.

I used super glue to adhere the stones and glitter to the jewelry. With my clumsy fingers I had to be extremely careful with this stuff. Knowing me, a small project like this could end up with my fingers glued together and how would I type my next blog post?

I went with the German Glass Glitter figuring the glass would be stronger than the very fine Martha Glitter. This was the hardest piece to work on. It was difficult to add the glue to the inner circles where I really wanted the glitter. I used a couple toothpicks to manipulate the glue and glitter. It sort of worked.

Rather than try to match the turquoise I went with a stone that would be different but would go well with the other stones.

Snake ring with a new blue stone.

The new stone is the lavender one at the top of the ring. This is my favorite piece that I repaired. I can't wait to find an excuse to wear it.

Rather than tossing away a piece of broken jewelry, maybe you could see if it can be repaired. If it can't be repaired can you use any of the parts for other projects? I try to salvage the clasps, pendants, stones, beads and even sometimes the chains. I buy a lot of broken jewelry on purpose too just to salvage the beads or pendant. If it is sterling or gold I save it and sell it for scrap.

What do you do with broken jewelry?

Thrift Share Monday

I want to congratulate Cass Ward of Snailblazer for winning the Blog Renovation Giveaway. 

Random Integer Generator
Here are your random numbers: 21
Timestamp: 2010-03-22 01:38:45 UTC

Cass, I will be emailing you some questions about your blog and we'll get started right away. I really look forward to working on your blog. Thanks to everyone who took part in the giveaway.

I thought I'd try something new here. I know lots of bloggers have catchy phrases for certain days. I think there is Thrift Thursday, Menu Mondays, Follow Fridays and so on. I have tried some in the past but never seem to keep up with them or I move my focus elsewhere. I thought I would try once again but this time will add the Mcklinky feature. Now as I type this on Sunday evening, I must admit, I'm not sure if it's even going to work. I've never added a Mcklinky feature before. If it's not there this week then there has been an error and I'll try again next week. I thought I would try to regularly write Thrift Share Monday posts where I discuss what I found over the weekend.

My busiest day for thrifting tends to be Saturday followed by Friday and lastly Sunday. When I asked you all what you most liked about Apron Thrift Girl back in January, so many of you mentioned that you liked to see what I found when I thrifted. I must say it is an honor that you allow me to share my finds with you. The entire reason I actually started this blog was because I was bored with Dave's reactions to items that I would bring home. He would try to be creative in how to compliment my 12th bowl that I would drag home but in the end I could feel his attention draining. I somehow stumbled upon blogging in 2006 and found so many incredible, like minded people. I still show Dave some items but I much prefer to share them with you, my thrifting readers.

Here's some of my finds from the weekend.

It's a really lovely Matryoshka doll that has a chime bell in it. The paint is slightly peeled on the bottom so they had priced her at .50 cents. She makes the loveliest sound deep in her belly. And she's kind of like a Russian version of a Weeble Wobbles.

Some vintage teak snack bowls. $1.00 for the set.

This is a vintage print of Mt. Shasta. It was $4.00 at an estate sale. I grew up in a small town in the north valley of California. We could walk out onto the porch and see Mt. Shasta from our home.  I got such a sweet warm feeling in my tummy as I looked at this print my mind full of nostalgia.

Here's another one of the Bay Bridge. Another fond memory for me. I will be searching for two vintage frames so that I can display these prints properly.

I bought a few vintage House Beautiful Magazines from the 1960's. I had to smile when I found this ad because this was our first microwave that we had in our home. We called it the Radarange throughout my entire childhood. Did anyone else have one of these?

I don't even know if that is a dress or some kind of nightie. The husband looks happy though in his chair with his pipe looking up at his gal.

Some fun vintage glasses. I couldn't resist the price.

Do you have some thrifted items that you shared on your blog today? If you do and if the MckLinky works, please add your blog to our list. I'd love to visit your blogs and see what you thrifted this last weekend. Have a fabulous week.

Blog Renovation Giveaway

I'm considering offering a new service on my main website that features blog renovation.

I would spend an hour or more looking at your blog and writing up a detailed sheet of suggestions that you might want to take to make some changes on your blog. This is something that could be useful if you would like to take your blog to the next level, build up your readership or even consider looking for advertising. I'm going to start off by giving one Blog Renovation away to one of my readers as a giveaway.

I want to play around with this idea by looking at one of your blogs and seeing how this service would work and how I would approach a blog makeover. Do you have a blog that might need a pick-me-up? 

If you are interested in throwing your name into the hat for this giveaway, please leave a comment with one change that you'd love to do with your blog. I'll pick a name this Sunday at 4pm.

Winner will receive:

• a banner (similar in style to mine with photography and text)
• 1 hour of my time spent studying your blog
• Blog Renovation form with suggestions for your blog

All suggestions and comments will be done with respect and politely. I know how personal our blogs as they do represent a part of us. I'm hoping that this giveaway might be perfect for one special reader.

Good Luck!

Liberty of London

Shopping for me has changed over the last few years. Originally I had to deal with my own guilt of spending money, next I had to to deal with a husband and my guilt for spending money and finally I had to deal with my blog and the guilt of spending money. This means that every time I retail shop I have three different waves of guilt coming at me. I don't mind the guilt because it is what makes me a good bargain shopper. Imagine if I did retail shop and felt nothing. I would be in serious trouble because let's face it, I adore shopping. I love pretty things, glittery things, paper, pens, pencils, gadgets, nifty appliances, 100% Egyptian Cotton bedding, Mac computers, flowery items, handcrafted items and on and on my list continues.

Yesterday I was walking around Target as if in a drunken stupor looking for the next Liberty of London display and let me tell you I felt no guilt. until later In fact this new line was like a drug to me. I took Cerys out to search for a pair of sandals. Summer weather has hit this week with temperatures in the mid 70's. Secretly I saw this teapot yesterday in the current issue of Country Living Magazine, offered only at Target. Okay so I kind of made an excuse to go.

I can tell between the tweets on Twitter and the facebook posts that many of you are also discovering this line. It's everything vintage inspired that we dream of finding second hand. Yet in Target it's not only inexpensive but somewhat available. There is no digging, hunting or searching. It's there just waiting for us.

Here are some of the items that I purchased.

Large tumblers $2.99 each. Cereal bowls $2.49 each.

Down stuffed pillow $19.99.

2 Fabric covered boxes for my office $9.99 each.

I think this is my favorite item of all. Wallet $14.99.

These next items are the ones that I loved in the store but am not sure if I'll keep them. I may return them today.

Rainboots $29.99. I sold my boots on Bainbridge not realizing that they would be useful here. I do need a pair but am unsure of the price. What do you think? Worth it or not?

Lampshade $19.99. I thought this would look lovely in the living room until I realized that I don't have a single modern lamp in the house. This shade won't currently fit on any of our lamps. Keep or return?

 

This left me with the most guilt. $49.99 for a full/queen cotton quilt. Then I realized that I seriously can't remember the last bedding that I had purchased new. The last new item may have been a duvet cover that we received as a wedding gift in 1997. All of my bedding is second hand including pillow cases, sheets, blankets and even the duvets. Keep or return?

I also picked up some lovely unmentionables which I'm definitely keeping. Cerys also found herself a new bathing suit and matching flipflops. Half of the line in the store was completely sold out. Sadly I didn't see a single teapot in sight. I looked on the website and can't even find the same teapot that I was searching for. Many of the items on the website are Out of Stock. If you have any interest in this line, I'd run to Target today. I asked the cashier and she said this line only came out on Sunday with people waiting at the door to get in and have a look. Where you there on opening day?

If you like their Target line, take a look at what they sell in London. Isn't it heavenly?