We all love different fashion decades, and even though I am a 20′s girl at heart, 80′s fashion appeals to me and has somehow found it’s way into my closet!
I AM WEARING:
Pants – Vintage Alfred Dunner // Shoes – Unknown brand (bought in Russia) // Purse – Coach (vintage)
White lace top – my Grandma’s (vintage from Russia) // Striped Jacket – Necessary Objects //
Watch – Marc by Marc Jacobs
And remember no matter what you do…
Happy Thursday! Do you know what’s the best thing about Thursday? That it’s almost Friday!
Today my husband’s grandparents are celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary! How awesome is that? 60 years with the same person! Sam also has his Grandpa’s wedding band, which is more meaningful to us than any words can describe!
So Happy 60th Wedding Anniversary Bob and Betty, and may the 5 o’clock gins continue for many many more years!
We love you,
Sam and Zhenya!
PS. The photo was taken on their wedding day (May 15, 1953), and is a curtesy of my mother in law!
Hey everyone, I hope you all had an amazing week and a Happy Easter I know a lot of my friends and readers in Europe will be celebrating later this spring, so get ready for the Easter Bunny to hop overseas!
Today’s blog post is about furniture, and since some of you know my minor (*COUGH* yeah, right) obsession with Freecycle.org, the post is going to be about “not so new”, but beautiful, vintage and FREE furniture!
I finally got tired of not having a coffee table in our living room, and wrote a Wanted post on Freecycle, and here is what I got:
The lady who gave it to me was so nice, she even delivered it to my apartment building! I am serious! I was shocked too! Trust me! Most of the time it’s your responsibility to go and pick something up off of freecycle, but this time I guess I got lucky! It’s a wooden table, definitely vintage! I looked under it, and it said Massachusets! I am such a sucker for vintage furniture! It’s so beautiful and elegant, that Ikea and Target simply become a blasphemy!
I’ve acquired another piece of furniture this week – a night stand/end table, thanks to my mother-in-law! Since our bed is so high, very few nightstands work with it! I have been looking for a tall nightstand for months, because that corner between the bed and wall started to feel more and more empty with every day that went by. So Sandra, dropped off this beauty last Tuesday, and it fit right in!
I love it, don’t you? I immediately took Sam’s old green lamp out of storage, and placed it on the table:
Now it reminds me of a short story by a Russian writer Alexander Green, called the Green Lamp, which I am planning on translating and posting on here this week! I love Russian literature, makes me feel nostalgic, but at the same time appreciate my background and culture!
An oldie, but a definitely goodie is my console table, which has been recently featured in my “Early Stages of Hoarding” post, and is another great freecycle find, that I got from a woman, who said her husband was a hoarder (Oh-oh!)
Some other items that I have freecycled include (but are not limited to )
- books
- clothes
- vintage
- kitchen appliances
- arts and crafts supplies,
and the list goes on!
It really is a great source, but don’t forget that it’s not all about getting, it’s all about GIVING!
- Our living room carpet looks like this 6 days out of the week…
- Console table…
- Crafts central
- Random piles of stuff all over the bedroom floor
- Closet space
And I know exactly what it is – I am lazy, I don’t like to clean, I don’t like to pick up, for some reason I want to save every scrap of paper, every ribbon, every magazine.
I keep telling myself that once we move into a house, it’ll get better, but who am I kidding – it won’t.
But nothing motivates me, I guess I am just a slob. And it’s the availability and accessibility of products here. I can go to a store, spend some money, get more stuff, but it won’t solve the clutter solution!
I have recently started an Etsy store, and one of the main reasons was to downsize my vintage collection. And yes, I have made some sales, but what’s 1-2 purses compared to a walk-in closet full of supplies, patterns, coats?
Yes, let’s talk about coats. I have an obsession with coats, I think I have about 10 of them! That’s the problem thrifters have – you walk into Savers or Goodwill and see an awesome coat say for $30, and of course you want to pick it up, because in your head you are already putting together outfits, and creating InstaCollages! And at this point you don’t realize that you have another dozen coats waiting to be worn, photographed, pinned, instagrammed, facebooked, etc.
Maybe I just need to vent, but I also function better, when more people know about my issue. I don’t need anyone to hold me accountable, I need to publicly tell everyone that modern day social networks are giving me an ADD, and that my real life is starting to go god knows where!
It’s a 1 bedroom apartment for crying out loud, how difficult could it be to clean?
So here you have it, I fessed up, and am now going to go and vigorously clean the apartment, making several trips to the dumpster!
I was tagged to do this Christmas tag by Luchessa! Thank you, dear, for tagging me! Here we go:
1. Which  Holiday do you celebrate? Christmas, and then Russian Christmas (January 7th!), just because one Christmas is never enough! There was also a time in my life when I celebrated both Hanukkah and Christmas!
2. What are you doing for the holidays this year? Going to Wisconsin! Enough said!
3. What’s your favorite holiday drink? Anything caffeinated with peppermint in it, preferably from Starbucks
4. Candy Cane or Gingerbread men? I was going to say neither, but definitely Gingerbread men as I think more about the question. They are easier to chew
5. What’s your favorite Holiday/Christmas song? At work – All I want for Christmas is my 2 front teeth!
But the one that really get’s me in the spirit of Christmas is – Oh Come all Ye Faithful
6. What’s the weirdest gift you’ve ever received? Someone once gave Sam and me a Christmas ornament that said “Our First Christmas 2010″, we got married in 2011, and the people who gave it to us came to our wedding! So I think it was a re-gift.
7. Have you ever made a snowman? Yes, many times! I think growing up in Russia it’s a winter MUST! I also made a miniature one last year for a girl I used to babysit!
8. What is your favorite winter fragrance? Definitely Miss Dior
9. What is at the top of your list this Christmas? Sewing books I posted about a couple days ago!
10. What is most important to you about holidays? Spending DRAMA-FREE time with my family!
I am going to tag all of you my lovely readers to answer all of the questions, and I’d really like to tag the following bloggers:
Steeple People will probably be my favorite, number one, go to store when it comes to a thrifting quickie! It’s only 10 minutes away from my house (WALKING!), the prices are incredibly reasonable, and there is always a great chance of scoring something vintage! They also carry fabrics, which is what I was looking for!
I ended up walking away with a bag full of stuff, which included Corso Como boots, a vintage dress, and 3 pieces of fabric, one of which has already been transformed into something amazing!
Here are the fabrics:
50 cents of wool
$3 of black and navy blue fabrics ($1.50 each, though the navy blue one has more yards!)
A $6 pair of Corso Como black leather boots! I wasn’t going to get them, but after looking the brand up on my phone (another reason to have a smart phone when thrifting!) and seeing how much those would’ve cost me at Nordstrom, I couldn’t put them down!
And finally a $2 100% silk Anne Crimmins for Umi Collections dress (it will be featured in one of my upcoming refashion posts), and I am already putting together outfits featuring this dress in my head
That’s all I got! What did you like/dislike from my haul? Did you go thrifting this weekend? If so, what did you get! Please leave links below
Yay! DIY Friday is back. Or refashion Friday. Or Friday posts in general! I’ve been actually pretty good at posting on a regular basis this week! I’ll try to keep ‘em posts coming. Especially now that my blog has a Facebook page! I tend to feel like this more and more often:
But on with the refashion! I got this vintage romper off of Freecycle.org over the summer, and have been wanting to make it into something more wearable ever since!
I mean how hideous is this piece? But I loved the fabric, the pattern, you know how I am!
So I cut of the shoulder pads, cut off the legs, and then made a high-low hem line. I kind of had to, because of the fact that there used to be pants and a crotch seam:
Next step was hemming it, then cutting the sleeves to make them shorter, and hemming them as well!
I also had to go over some of the seams, because they were going apart:
Stay tuned for the Outfit post featuring this piece! But here is what it looks like on the hanger:
I am washing it right now, according to the label instructions:
Don’t you also love how the makers of this dress were undecided about the size?! Is it a Medium or a Large? Well, it fits me! That’s all I care about!
Here is the best thing about freecycling clothes – you never know what you are going to get!
I recently ended up with a lot of polka dots items! Here are 3 of them:
I took out little post it notes and wrote how I wanted to refashion those items. One of them being a shirt (that I turn into a blazer in todays post – it was so easy, you are going to fall off your chairs )and then the other tfolk polka dots surprises are pants, both of which will get refashioned sometime soon, hopefully this weekend!
The first thing I wanted to do was get rid of the shoulder pads, because they werent rocking my boat!
Then I rolled up the sleeves! Since this is a 100% polyester Chaus top, I can’t imagine anyone wearing this as a shirt! Maybe in the winter, but you would still sweat buckets! The tricky thing with polyester though is that when rolled up it doesn’t necessarily hold the intended shape, so I suggest you make a couple stitches and hold that rolled up fold in place, or you can jut safety pin it, if you are like me I told you it was going to be easy! And perfect with skinnies:
Sorry for being MIA – I had training at work – free food and beauty products ah – life is good
Have an awesome weekend everyone!
Xo,
Zhenya
Happy Thursday! Do you know what’s the best thing about Thursday? That it’s almost Friday!
I know a lot of my friends and readers in Europe will be celebrating later this spring, so get ready for the Easter Bunny to hop overseas!
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