Happy New Year!

It’s finally here. That time of year when we obliged to ask about resolutions and either respond with gusto or mutter something or other to get past the question. I’m not big on resolutions per se however Jeremy and I do have plans for 2012. Last year started out with a mission to travel more and for the first three quarters of the year we were successful in visiting Seattle, hiking into Ventura and LA county as well as a road trip through New England with my brother in law and sisters in law. We didn’t quite make it to 11 new places in 2011 but sure came close. We also resolved to be more green and make less of an impact by limiting waste. We did a great job! Unless necessary we eliminated buying and drinking bottled water. We use BPA free water bottles in the car and for our runs at the track, and at home drink from glass pint glasses. We really buckled down with taking our own shopping bags to the grocery store, except when shopping at Target. For some reason the size of their bags fit out trashcans perfectly so we use those as liners. We’ve tried hard to incorporate the green mentality with our shop as well by reusing boxes, finding people on Craigslist that are giving away packing paper and really only purchase packing tape to send everything off safely.  
Becoming an Etsy seller we’ve also started shopping local and trying to avoid mass produced department stores. Don’t get me wrong, I pretty much live in Gap T-shirts and jeans, but this Christmas we made many of the gifts we gave or gave gift cards for local businesses. We have a winter garden that has given us much of our green lettuce and spinach. The unseasonably warm weather here in Southern California has given us little peas and broccoli this winter, but we are anticipating our summer garden and can’t wait to try growing some new veggies.

Enough about last year – Beyond the standard “Eat healthy, exercise more” resolution, this year we plan on buckling down and finding new creative ideas for our shop. We love vintage and because we both have crafty skills want to take some of the vintage inspiration and create. After visiting our local library we’ve been researching mid century art and design to get our ideas together. Hopefully we will have some new items to share in a month or so.

Personally, I’m looking forward to sewing more. I might even try at my first dress. I’ve always loved taking photos of people, dogs, or anything artsy so I’m going to take a class on using all of the functions on my camera. Jeremy is also teaching me to use power tools and we are working on some projects together. If nothing else, I might help get some of his projects done to clear out some space in the garage.

Thank you for following us this last year. We look forward to sharing much more vintage, weekend finds and more. Here's to a great year.

CHEERS!