Some September Loot.

I have been busy preparing for a full winter of vintage selling. These are some of my finds from September. To keep and to sell. There's always a fine line...I'm not always so good at deciding...

Let's get my keep pile out of the way first. Right at the tail end of September I found these shoes. Like so many Value Village frequenters, I get overly excited around Halloween. Months before, they start holding back their coolest, most retro outfits to put out as Halloween costumes. I try to snatch up as many cute ones as I can! 

These intensely sparkly shoes were in the Halloween section this year and I'm pretty certain they're keepers. They fit my tiny fit, but they're a little snug. I'd say they're a narrow 5 and a half.  I might try stretching them out with bags of water. Has anyone actually tried this before? I haven't. I don't want to wreck these beauties! In person it looks like it has glitter or sequins all over, but it's actually just metallic thread. I love them and really hope our relationship works out!

I try not to get too attached to things, but I don't think I can let these go. The pattern is called Flair. Such a sweet name for the best plate set ever! There are eight dinner plates, eight bread plates and one small bowl. Normally I would like a larger set, but seeing as how I don't think I'll be finding anything quite like these again, they'll be mine for now. 

About six weeks ago, my house got broken into and I was pretty upset about it. Luckily the thief didn't get very much. The only thing they took was my purse, and I didn't have too many things in there at the time. I always carry small vintage purses that don't hold a lot, but the one that was stolen was my moms when she was my age. If anything, there was a little sentimental value and the inconvenience of having to cancel all my credit cards and renew my information. Luckily my purse was recovered in the end, along with some personal things the thief obviously didn't think much of. (Everything was found in a garbage can down the street. Gross.) 

Anyway the point of this story is that I was feeling down about having someone violate my home and break into my personal space. So I treated myself to an Etsy purchase that I had been eyeing for a while. A set of these amazing Hazel Atlas glasses from the Etsy shop Midge and Manny's. The seller is very sweet and I received them in perfect condition, wrapped with great care. Sometimes you just need to splurge on something, and this was it for me. (Please ignore my horrible front door partition wall that clearly needs to be painted soon!)

 This set was a nice find last month. I'm a big fan of gravel or textured wall art. I have two melted plastic still life sets already - one in orange and another in blue. These kitschy guys can go off to a new home where they can be fully appreciated for how cool they really are. I'm pretty excited about the incredible bold colour and visual movement of the images. 

Hellooo cute wall clock!! I'm a huge sucker for retro fonts, and the numbers on this Timex clock are pretty retro indeed! I'm willing to part with this beauty and for the right price. It does have a significantly large crack on the front. So sad. Expect a discount! 

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To my Winnipeg people, we're hosting a three household garage sale at my home this weekend. Please email me at charming_shop@hotmail.com if you'd like details. (I'm sorry, I don't want to display my address here!) Direct any and all questions to me and I'll get back to you right away! 

We've been planning this garage sale for a whole year, storing these things in boxes and bins. I have no idea what's what. We wanted to do it earlier in the summer, but we ran out of time. Now we just want to get it done before it gets too cold out. Now there's construction on our street too, so unfortunately space is going to be very limited. A back lane party it is! We would wait until next year, except the amount of stuff is too out of control to store over winter. 

I was also originally planning on doing a pop-up of my vintage shop, CharmingShopVintage, at the sale, but because of the amount of stuff, I decided not to for this time. There's always next year. So come on out. We've been organizing and pricing for two days and I just want to get rid of everything! 

Make offers and take some things off my hands!

We hope to see you there!

Marissa xo

Personal and Shop Finds for August

I can't believe we're more than halfway through August already. When did that even happen?! To break the blues of summer ending faster than we all want, I thought I would recap my top discoveries for this month. so let's do two of mine, and two for the shop!

I came upon this lovely small set of dishes at Value Village a week ago and I'm thrilled about it. I don't really stick to a type or maker when it comes to kitchen items. The only rule is it needs to be turquoise. I'm always on the hunt, but I know everyone else is too. Turquoise has become a very popular colour and tracking it down has become a matter of luck. I'm still in complete shock that this pattern belongs to me!

This letter organizer was a very sweet find at an Estate sale this Saturday. It was the very first thing I spotted and I nabbed it right away. It had a large sticker overtop of the entire "memos"section and a modern pencil holder stuck to the side with adhesive. I got both things off without any trouble. There is some light damage, and obviously needs a good scrub, (I only hung it up for this photo.) but this is exactly the thing we need to get organized and it's aqua! I have always wanted one of these, and had previously considered buying one off Etsy. Now I've got one and the temptation is gone. I can only imagine what they had sold the day before on Friday, because I sure felt like I had taken all the best things, or I should say what I thought were the best. What treasures did I miss? 

This cat salt and pepper shaker is creepy and cute all at once. Found at another Estate Sale, it was part of a shaker collection of the woman's mother that was high in the hundreds. I always love dipping into old salt and pepper shaker collections. You can always tell a lot about the person depending on how crazy their collection is. This one was wonderfully kitschy, and I walked away with three separate pairs for the shop. You'll see the other two sweeties very soon! All three need a good cleaning to be rid of their dust before they're ready for listing. 

Whether we like it or not, Christmas is approaching. For businesses big and small it's always important to get a leg up and be prepared for early holiday shoppers. Whether it be decorations or gifts. I'm pretty bad at getting my gifts organized early, but my decoration planning and buying happens at the first sign of Fall. I get way too excited to put out my family's things now that they've been passed down to me. I suppose it's a childhood nostalgia thing for me. Anyway, the point of this is that I discovered a giant box retro candles that will surely get us all in the mood for winter festivities. I've already glanced through them all to give them a once-over, but I'm pretty excited to take them all out to see what I've got! There a few newer ones at the top, but underneath them are the really cool guys. I know I saw a pretty adorable deer and a perfectly chubby snowman! Around Christmas I also like throwing a cute vintage ornament into my packaged orders for my customers. Maybe this year I'll have a few spare candles! We'll see!

Obviously there's still a little time left for summer garage sales and back-to-school thrifting. Can I find anything cool in the last 14 days of August? I hope so! 

Marissa xo

I Love... Barkcloth Fabric!

Vintage barkcloth has always been fascinating to me. It's one of those tough, sturdy, heavy weight fabrics you can do a lot with. You can use it to make curtains, pillows, bags or even reupholster furniture pieces. The best part about this material though, is the fabulous array of vintage atomic-style designs you may come across.

Winnipeg is finally in summer mode after a crazy long winter, which means the garage sales are in full swing. You can bet I've been out already looking for some great deals and awesome vintage pieces to complete my home, and stock up the shop. 

Don't worry, this all relates back to barkcloth!! I'm telling you this because this last weekend I came across the garage sale of this older gentlemen who was raising money for a nearby hospital. I looked around for a bit and saw a table with a heap of vintage barkcloth fabric on it. He came over and told me they were long curtains his wife had made before they had even met. I thought they were so awesome, so I asked him what he wanted for the set, and he said he'd give them to me for one dollar! He also wanted to throw in some vintage aprons for free, but I assured him I would at least give a donation for the hospital he was raising money for. 

On I went, with my freshly dry-cleaned, fully-lined barkcloth curtains with their superb atomic print and in pristine condition no less! (...and also a couple aprons!) I was kind of in shock at what I had just found. It's hard to unearth cool things like that in Winnipeg. Let's be honest here. 

So in honour of my new find, I wanted to show off some other cool barkcloth fabric that I would be more than happy to own. Some patterns are very iconic; others not so much. Each one is fantastic in it's own way, and I'd be pleased to meet some of it in person some day!

one//two//three//four//five//six//seven//eight

These barkcloth fabrics always have a lot of texture, colour and life. Especially the ones with added metallic bits throughout! I'm always partial to the really typical retro '50s ones with boomerang and antennae looking shapes. Surprise, surprise. 

What's your favourite?

Marissa xo