When Bad Do's Attack

Our dear, dear Mother passed away earlier this month. As we came to grips with our sadness, our wonderful sense of humor--that came mostly from Mom--began to emerge again. Over the course of several days, we went through family photos that we had not seen in quite some time. I was reminded of my "kitchen beautician" hairdos that my well meaning Mom subjected me to. While they didn't bother me much when they occurred and they really don't bother me now...they are pretty funny. At a time like this, funny counts for a lot, especially because it reminds me so much of what was special about my Mom.

With this intro, I offer you Exhibit 1:

I think I was in kindergarten or the first grade. Cute kid, but what's with the flip on the one side? Ok, so you might find this acceptable, but it goes on. Exhibit 2:

Bangs look funky, a few long hairs hanging down on the left side. The same, yet different than the school year before, but again, it goes on. Exhibit 3:

I might have my pictures and the school years mixed up but one thing remains the same....bad hairdos! The line around my head signified where the rollers went in and out. I think I like the version where I'm in the red sweater the best. But this last one brings back memories of the hard pink curlers that snapped into place. Sometimes I had to go to bed with them in my hair and there was no way to sleep comfortably but I refused to sit quietly under the bonnet hair drier for my Mom. It was boring, it was too hot, it was too cool, I wanted to go play.... It was the 60's after all and I had things to do. Poor Mom never got me to be a girly girl until I made my own Junior Prom dress out of pink gingham, but that's another story for another day. That one will need to involve beer or vodka.

I have more bad hairdo shots but I'm not sure you can handle them all at once. I'll spare you for now. Thanks for the priceless memories Mom! Ciao, babies.

Good Sign, Bad Sign

One of our Gypsy Sisters is Cheryl and she tapped me about selling out at the Santa Rosa Flea Market last Sunday and although I had way too much on my plate, I said yes because we always have fun and it was a last ditch effort to sell before Christmas. So I packed the car at 11 pm the night before, she showed up at 6 am and we rolled on. It seemed warmer at 6 am than it had been the night before. A good sign.

Got to the Flea, found our space and we finally figured out that the pickup truck parked in the middle of our spot was from the night before...not someone who had driven in that morning. A bad sign.  Found the gal running the Flea, got moved a couple of spots, made the move easily with the help of a couple of fellow sellers. A good sign.

The reason we had help was so those guys could pick as we brought stuff out of the car...after a few snarky-we-haven't-had-enough-coffee-let-us-unpack-our-shit answers, they took the hint and moved on. A good sign.  The sun was coming up and then we noticed that directly across from us was a dead seagull. Really? Someone said a cat had been responsible because they only eat the heads. Wh..Wh..What? A bad sign.  Cheryl told me to take a picture but it didn't appeal to me then and still doesn't now...except this blog posting has only one picture!

Day gets going and we notice that we are FREEZING. Native Californians...temp is under 50 and it might as well be minus 12 degrees. Another bad sign.  Not many sellers there...another bad sign.  Not many people out....bad, bad, bad.  Overall, it was a bust for us sellers so we went out shopping. Cheryl scored some nice stuff and I had to resist this bitchin' pair of lamps from the 50's cuz, well, I don't need them, but I loved them. They will haunt me.  My fun score of the day was this:

This Kodak Brownie  Hawkeye camera is exactly the one that we had as a family camera in the 50's - 60's until my Dad got his 35 mm Minolta. I loved using that thing. Not sure what ever happened to it but now I have one of my very own. I'm not sure I can sell it!  Probably not a good sign.

Family Vintage

A friend asked me to post a picture of my Mom. She said she felt as if she knew her because of the blog postings where I have mentioned her. I have a few vintage family photos that have somehow ended up on my computer so why not? This little ditty is my Mom holding me after I got into her lipstick. This picture is probably circa 1959.

This next picture of my Mom is a bad copy, but you can catch her '70s essence with her frosted hair. I think this picture was in 1974 at my sister's wedding (hope I got that year right!!) Mom was a working gal and I think her 'do worked for her. My sister and I had gone with long, straight hair by then. 

And this last one is me in my Disneyland Donald Duck hat but the real star is the bitchin' lamp behind me!  Mom still has the lamp but gave it a paint job and changed out the shade to match her changing decor in the late 60's--early 70s. I think I was in about second grade, so about 1964 in this photo, judging by my  haircut.
                                               
Someday I will scan and post all my elementary school pictures and you can have a laugh at my expense when you see some of those haircuts!

Ace Chop Suey?

I'm pumping out posts more often than normal because my Mom took a bad spill and busted 4 ribs, so I drove up to help out and have ended up being here much longer than anticipated (but Ma is improving :) ) so I have been able to sit at the computer and think/type and got out a few times. This morning I checked Craigs' List and laughed at this line from an ad for an "estate sale" (which it was not)..."If you show up before 8 am, it will go bad."  Great line. Chris has been radio silent because she is on a mission to drive a long ass way to a funeral then drive another long ass way to Grover Beach to pick up some treasures we bought via our dear picking Junior Gypsy, Charlene (picking with her and her cell phone/camera/text long distance---piece of cake!!!)

Not many things appealed to me today and I drove umpteen miles out of the way to go to a thrift store that was having a sale because they were moving. Got there and the building had been condemned and they didn't even have electricity. Glad I had my flashlight app on my cell phone! Found this little treasure:

Sorry about my hand in the photo...I hate that but I was being totally lazy. But Ace Chop Suey? What, was Speedie's Chinese already taken?  I'm sure this is from the 40s-50s due to the way the phone number is written and of course I had to Google map the place, fully expecting it to be gone, and it was. So I buy it because our old cat is named Ace (but we call him any one of 43 other names) and I just had to have it. Probably paid 50 cents more than I should have but after all it was for animal rescue.  I can be generous like that.

Now for "interesting" (???) part. Besides being in a condemned building, the guy said they have a warehouse across the street. I have visions of animal hoarder/warehouse hoarder in my head. I could have gone over there, but decided that since they are open 7 days a week, I could make a pit stop there tomorrow on my way home. Another day, another round of picking luck is available. And since my picking mojo wasn't all there today, I think tomorrow it could be. You will be the first to know!

Why Am I So Obsessed?

Obsession is a funny thing. Not funny ha ha, but oddly funny. When I am in Redding helping out my Mom, my big thing is to do the thrift store run as quickly as I can. Not that anybody cares that I'm doing that, but most of the thrift stores in this particular town are in the shadiest of shady areas.  If you have followed us at all, you know that I'm obsessed with the Capri Motel which is "Tweaker Capital" here. And a couple doors down is a big thrift store. I would love to be able to watch all of the sad coming and goings of that place for 24 hours (the Capri, not the thrift store!)  I was a Sociology major in college and I guess that is where this people watching fascination stems from. Do you know I ACTUALLY had the thought, "I wonder what it would be like to check into one of the rooms there for a night?" How flippin' GROSS is that? Bad obsession, down boy.

So I'm tripping around today at my local haunts and found some great stuff.  My fav was books from the 50s' that are in cool colors and the subject matters are directed at kids about historical events. Thinking I would buy 1 or 2, I suddenly got obsessive, thinking I would regret not getting many and I ended up walking out with 11 of them. This store is the same place that months ago I scored dozens of vintage bingo cards and regretted not taking them ALL:( .  Better still was the fact that I apparently cannot read and I thought they were one price but the reality was they were half of that. Oh so happy!  The titillating titles are things like: Queen Elizabeth and the Spanish Armada, The Building of the First Transcontinental Railroad and my personal fav Genghis Kahn and the Mongol Horde probably because of the word Horde which is only just a "sounds like" nod to the show Hoarders....the ultimate obsession, no?

Another find was a thrill because I outsmarted the thrift store "Vintage Goods" pricing matron and got 2 bitchin' plates from the 60's (maybe 50's...need to research) for 50 cents each. SCORE! Ha! I love it when I can find vintage stuff that you know they missed!! It was the same sort of deal on a red ricer. She must have been out sick the day they were pricing that haul. Once I figured that out....it took me almost an hour to get through that store because I knew they had a crack in their pricing system. Me?Obsessed? Hey, at least it's better (and surely safer) than obsessing over the stupid Capri Motel!

Sunday Monkey Food

Chris and I laugh about how addictive the treasure hunt is and we call it "feeding the monkey". So today I had the monkey on my back and headed to the local Flea Market for an hour before hitting Trader Joe's. Weird because yesterday I took my "just learning how to thrift" 19 year old with me out and about and we ended up in a thrift store but I just wasn't in the mood to shop---not even close. But today was different. It was freezing out (yes, under 55 degrees in California is freezing). A couple purchases were normal. Groovy vase, no? It was a deal and it's signed but I have yet to investigate, which is also part of the fun.  So the next pictures are of the lonesome or broken jewels that will end up being made into our vintage jewelry magnets...which is what started this whole dang thing. Found a gal who had a great jewelry treasure hunt area and I dove in.

But my final purchase of the day is probably my most fav and I just couldn't resist it. I'm not sure why...it's really not my style but I knew I would regret it if I walked away. It's kooky and clubby enough that I know I can find someone in the universe who will LOVE it too. I almost bet it will become our most treasured Etsy item once I get it up there.  I loved it enough to buy it but I don't love it enough to keep it because I live with my hubby and 2 boys (19 and 22) and I just won't be able to stomach all the lesbo jokes that will come at me day and night if I keep this darn thing.

Pretty great in a weird way isn't it? You know you love it. It's small...about 15" tall. Not sure if it works yet--figure I'll save blowing out all the electricity in the house until AFTER Sunday football. I'm considerate like that. Feed the monkey.

Oars in the Water

Getting all of our blogging oars in the water is harder than we thought. Writing funny things on Facebook is sort of good practice but we really want to go Big Time. Ha! So we try this and that and will make our share of blogging mistakes, but at least we can all laugh together about it, no?

I (Deb) will most likely do most of the writing. I should get all over Chris about that since we both wrote for our high school newspaper, so I know she can write. But I have a tendency to find a topic and then go all "dog with a bone" on it for at least a couple of paragraphs. Other times I ramble about some vintage hunt that made me get my granny panties in a bunch.

Vintage Gypsies will take you along with us on our vintage hunts, bitchin' finds and sometimes just stories that are funnier-than-shit...at least to us. We sell on Etsy at our store VintageGypsies (same as our Twitter handle) and have a Facebook page Vintage Gypsies. Feel free to like, tweet, comment or just read along.  I don't really get Twitter, but I do it on occasion and I'm trying.

My haunts are different that where Chris does her picking. Sort of makes it fun as we cover about 7 different counties between us. I cover Sonoma, Lake and Shasta Counties; Chris does the 4 around the greater Sacramento area. We have our reasons---you'll find them out soon enough.

Our picking goals are simple. Buy it either because you love it and must have it regardless of the cost OR, and our most popular, buy it because you can sell it at a profit.  We do have one problem with this and that is we need to sell more, but the picking is the FUN part. You never know what you will find. The selling is a lot of hard work, but we both have to work...might as well be fun. Our profits go back into the company (to buy more) and to get us out the door and traveling a little bit to buy or sell. Every trip is worth 1000 laughs, give or take a few.

My first offering this evening is only moments after finishing Thanksgiving dinner. I need to be thankful and should be thankful.  I have a wonderful family, great husband, 2 darling boys (22 and 19--ok, so maybe darling is a bit outdated for their age); and the list goes on.  So thank you.  I'm not sure who I am thanking, but there you go.