52 Tuesdays: Favorite Thrifts #14 - Travel Edition

What: Wedge Loafers
Where: Savers in Eau Claire, WI
Level of Love: 5 out of 10

First, I am currently travelling far from home for work, so this week's favorite thrift feature was selected from among my travel belongings. I think it makes a thing extra favorite when you take it travelling with you, right?

I purchased these wonderful wedge loafers pretty recently when we stopped at an old favorite thrift store in Eau Claire while driving from my hometown area in Northern Wisconsin to catch a flight from Minneapolis to Seattle. This is one of my all time favorite thrift stores from our college years. It just always seems to be stocked with some pretty awesome finds. I'm thinking back to numerous items of vintage clothing and my first ever thrifted piece of vintage Fiestaware (the gold creamer you can just catch a glimpse of in this previous post).

I really love these shoes. They're super comfortable, are in really good shape, and I think they go with everything. Plus, even though the wedge is pretty teeny and made out of rubber, I still kinda feel like I'm "wearing heels" when I put them on. If it were completely up to me, I'd give them a ten out of ten. However, this thing called marriage is a two way street, and this husband of mine isn't as big of a fan. Thus, they get only half of a ten. At the store, I recall him telling me I shouldn't buy them because they were too "granny". Whatever. I like granny and I think they're fabulous.

52 Tuesdays: Favorite Thrifts #13 (and a recipe)

What: Five of Hearts Waffle Maker

Where: Stacey's Funk Finds, SoDo Seattle

Level of Love: 10 out of 10

We picked this waffle maker up awhile ago at this treasure of a secondhand shop in SoDo. We actually haven't been back to Stacey's since then, which is unfortunate and must be remedied soon methinks. 

I took these photos when we pulled it out for a waffle brunch last Saturday. The Churchills really love waffles. If you happen to drop by our house on any given Saturday or Sunday morning, there's a good chance you'll find a stack of waffles waiting. This waffle maker makes the best crispy little waffles. And they happen to be adorable, too.  This is my go to waffle recipe, with a few substitutions. Here's how I make them: 

1 3/4 whole wheat flour (although I've used a combination of white/wheat or all white flour, too)
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter melted
1 cup milk
1/2 cup plain greek yogurt (we like FAGE - pronounced fa-yeh - brand)
2 large eggs

1 tablespoon ground flaxseed + 3 tablespoons water (it's an egg substitute)

Whisk the dry ingredients in one bowl. Whisk wet ingredients in another bowl. Pour wet into dry and whisk it all together. Make waffles. 

Long Time No Blog: Two Things

Well hello there dear and faithful readers (insert illusions of grandeur here). I have missed you. I have been absent on this space (not intentionally but rather inevitably) for two reasons.

One: Winslow

Several months ago, my dear friend and neighbor Sarah and I started kicking around the idea of starting an Etsy shop together. Actually, I think it happened in my living room like this. Sarah, "Wouldn't it be fun to start an Etsy shop?"Me, "Yeah. We should do it." Sarah, "Wait, are you kidding?" Me, "No, I"m not kidding. Are you kidding?" Sarah, "Nope, totally serious." Thus we became business partners. Obviously there were a few things that happened between now and then, including us changing the focus of our shop from vintage to handmade because we realized how much we both love making things. Now, the Winslow shop is stocked full of handmade bowties, neck ties, and pocket squares designed and made by us. There are a few things that we think make our stuffs extra special. First, we use all reclaimed and / or vintage fabrics. That means that bowtie you see below above to be a shirt. Hand knit ties are also on their way for fall, which we're making from unravelled sweaters (all thrifted of course). Second, we do things by hand whenever possible because we both just think there's something special about handmade goods. That means our pocket squares all feature hand-rolled hems, and our neckties are also all stitched using a hand slip stitch (that's right, no sewing machine involved folks). The bowties have less hand stitching due to the logistics of their construction, but still have the same attention to detail as our other products.

Clearly, I could go on and on about Winslow for paragraphs. It's just so darn exciting to work with a wonderfully inspiring and driven friend on such a cool project. But, I'll spare you any more ramblings here and instead point you to our Winslow blog, Etsy shop, and Instagram feed for more.

Two: Tunisia

Yep. You read that right Tunisia. Kevin and I took an extended hiatus to visit our old friend Thomas in Tunisia, and to meet his lovely lady and our new friend Rachel. The trip was jam-packed full of wonderful experiences, quality time with our friends, and good memories. Also, lot of pictures. Here are a few highlights.

Exploring the Roman Colosseum at Al Jem.

Overnight trip into the Sahara Desert on Camels

Ancient cliffside houses in Chenini

Beautiful hand woven rugs

Traditional Tunisian decorated blue door while exploring Sidi Bou Zid

Beach time at Raf Raf

Truly, it was one of the best trips of our lives. Kevin has shared lots more pics here on fb if you're interested!

Churchill Family Yurt Tour 2013: Cape Disappointment

Our fourth yurt tour stop took the Churchill family down to the very southwestern end of Washington to Cape Disappointment State Park. Don't ask me why it's called Cape Disappointment. Despite reading all of the state park placards (with determination) I did not learn. Sure, I could look it up. But I wanted to read it on a flippen' placard, okay?

Well, that got off to a more sour note than intended.

Let me start again.

This was the BEST YURT TOUR STOP YET! Really. We discussed this in detail during several of our beach walks and we both agreed. There's a TON to do at this state park, and we didn't even do it all in our first visit (assumption here is we'll be going back). First though, before I jump into the weekend activities, I've got an announcement to make: we bought a new car! It's a dark gray 2004 Volkswagon Golf. Call us modest people, but it's pretty much our dream car. We hope to have him for a long time (in this non-rust-creating state we now live in). We bought him on a Friday and set off for yurt tour early, early Saturday morning. It was nice to take him on a nice long drive right away. Here he is parked outside our YURT!

Saturday was spent doing two different hikes to the two different lighthouses at the park. That's right. There's not only one but two lighthouses to visit here. This is because this is where the mighty Columbia River meets the Pacific, creating one of the most unpredictable and difficult to navigate sandbars in the world (according to the placards).

 

The other cool thing about this area (among other things) is that it's where Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery first made it to the Pacific Ocean. We skipped the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center this time (who brings $5 in cash on a hike in the woods?) but agreed it was something we could do at a later trip. The view of the ocean, the mountainous Oregon coast, and the Columbia River bar were spectacular. The lighthouses were super cool, too, and really made me want to live in a lighthouse. Can you do that? Do people still do that? Hmmm...must search for a degree program in lighthouseology. Oh! I almost forgot to talk about the old military battery on the top of the hill. It was build pre-WWI to guard the Columbia River entrance (again, nod to the placards). It was pretty cool to explore.

There was one major disappointing thing about Cape Disappointment (couldn't resist). Our fire. Major disappointment. The wood the camp store sold us was super wet. Seriously, it wasn't smoking...it was steaming. So after burning up all of our kindling, old man's beard (a type of lichen), and paper and still not being able to get the bigger logs to really catch, we turned on the old propane grill and cooked out bison burgers and asparagus there. It was so sad. Even our Oregonian neighbors took pity on us and came over to offer more kindling. They probably thought we were city slickers who didn't know how to build a fire. I mean, that's what I would have thought. It was sort of comical really. The guy came over with some really dry kindling, obviously got it to light up right away, starting piling on some of our wet wood, stood back, looked pretty proud of himself, said something smug like "that'll do 'er" (I don't really think he said that), wiped his hands and went back to his camp. Yeah, guy. 15 minutes later your dry kindling was ash and our wet wood continued to steam. We got enough heat to make s'mores and lined our fire pit with the rest of the wood so it could hopefully dry out from the (little bit of) heat and be good to go in the morning. Really, it was more of a smoke than a fire, and the wind was so unpredictable we kept getting harassed by random smoke plumes. We kept joking that we were turning into smoked salamis. Ha!

Then, we took a walk down to the beach, did some beach combing, climbed around the rocks a bit, then discovered a new fun beach activity:

It's a beach see-saw! Or shall I say SEA-saw. Pun intended (always). This one was already set up and we saw some other people doing it first so we knew it was acceptable beach behavior. I think these are the kinds of things people who live near beaches where it's always too cold to swim and too chilly to even take your sweater off 80% of the time come up with. But, since we're those kind of people now, we loved it.

Sunday, we were able to get our now drier wood going better than the night before and were able to make ourselves some fire-coffee, fried tomatoes, eggs, and beans for breakie. Yum. We used the cast iron we broke in at the last yurt tour stop and it's seriously my favorite camping thing.

Sunday we went out on the North Jetty on the north side of the Columbia and Kevin tried some fishing. He didn't really know what he was fishing for. Maybe more surf perch, but we weren't really sure what lives in the in-between of the Columbia and the Pacific. There were plenty of other fishermen (including a sea lion) so there must be something in there, but he didn't catch any of it. I did my usual of finding a nice spot to sit and read.

Previous stops of the Churchill Family Yurt Tour can be found here, here, and here.

52 Tuesdays: Favorite Thrifts #12

What: Vintage Doctor Bag Style Suitcase
Where: Monroe Flee Market
Level of Love: 9 out of 10

Although we've only been to the Monroe flee market a (small) handful of times it has been good to us. In fact, it's been featured in this space before on favorite thrift post number seven. This find happened on a different trip. Probably almost a year or more ago. If you've been to my house, you know I've got a major crush on vintage luggage. Especially of the chestnut leather variety. Seriously, does leather get any more beautiful than this?

This guy felt like a true treasure because I had to dig for him a bit. He was sitting pretty much out of view under a table with some other items sitting in front. But, I spotted my favorite shade of leather, dug him out, and promptly asked how much (this is not the sort of place with ready made price tags). Oh. I also did my two automatic checks for vintage luggage: the smell test and the zipper test. One. Does it smell like old? The kind of old you're pretty sure you're not going to be able to "air out"? Put 'er back. It's not worth it. Two. For me it has to be usable. Either as visible storage space in our storage-space-less apartment or as actual luggage. This guy went on a trip to Vancouver B.C. with us via Amtrak shortly after we brought him home. Not so practical for air travel, but it worked swell for the train. Now, he sits in the living room holding our DVDs.

Oh, extra special bonus: a monogram. I'm not sure why this makes it extra special to me, but I fall hard for a gold monogram. Doesn't even matter who's initials. I just like that this belonged to someone.

Churchill Family Yurt Tour 2013: Pacific Beach

At last the Churchill Family Yurt Tour makes a stop at an actual yurt. It's located at Pacific Beach, which is along the very southern edge of the Olympic Peninsula on the big 'ole Pacific Ocean. Boy was there plenty of beach to go around, and I assure we took long walks on all of them. Oh, and there were t-shirts this time. Yep, we got t-shirts.

Saturday we loaded up the car (something we're getting quite good at) and had our lunch on a beach in the more southern town of Ocean Shores. There were surfers. In full body wet suits, but still. The weather the whole weekend was absolutely perfect. Sunny, no rain, blue skies, and warmer than we're allowed to have in Washington at this time of year.

After arriving at our yurt and getting settled, we decided to head out in search of a spot for surf perch. Yep, fishing. As you may recall, Kevin tried fishing for surf perch on this trip but had been unsuccessful.  This time, he did his research and knew just how to do it. We got there at the right time for the tide and found some nice swirly, rocky areas like they like. Despite this, we were both still skeptical about him catching anything. It just seems sort of strange to us inlanders that you can pull a fish out of the big 'ole ocean. Thus, when he came running back toward my beach spot after about 10 minutes I assumed he was frozen and giving up. How wrong I was! Surf perch number one. He went back out for my dinner, and came back with another in about five minutes. That's my man. While Kevin caught fish, I caught a sunburn, being a little too over zealous of the warm weather and skeptical of the Washington sun's ability to burn.

Oh! I forgot to mention! Before the surf perch we experienced another first! I drove on the beach! Looking back, this was pretty cool. There were lots of others driving on the beach, too, and it was clearly okay per the signage. At the time however, while driving, I was kinda freaking out. I just kept picturing the old Taur getting stuck in the sand and us trying hopelessly to get her out. I was cussing it up in the car (sorry Mom!) while Kevin laughed and laughed at my dirty sailor mouth and general lack of nerve. Needless to say, things turned out fine, and then I decided I loved driving on the sand, that I was a sand-driving rockstar, and thus asked Kevin to take this picture:

Back at camp, we had a surf perch feast! I contributed with asparagus and cast iron corn bread. Then, it was time to make after-dinner coffee and go down to the beach for the sunset. Perfection.

Sunday morning we took another beach walk, then came back to camp for Sunday brunch. Can you tell food is our favorite? Camp cooking = the best. Someday I'll attempt Grandpa Firnstahl inspired cobbler - but that's another story. This time it was leftover cornbread, beans, tomatoes, and sausages (which were brought in case the surf perch thing was a bust).

Then, we started our drive back, stopping at one more beach. And getting more of a sunburn. There was a bit of thrifting in Aberdeen, then home to sleep off the sun. Best yurt tour stop yet.

For a history of the past two stops of the Churchill Family Yurt Tour see here and here.

52 Tuesdays: Favorite Thrifts #11

What: Not sure what to call these exactly? Here goes a really long adjective riddled name: Woven Leather T-Strap Sandals with Stacked Wooden Heel
Where: Monroe, WA Goodwill
Level of Love: 5 out of 10

Lovely leather vintage shoes with wooden heels are one of the number one things I look for at thrift stores but rarely find. At least in a size 8 1/2. These little beauties I almost passed up...not because I didn't love them but because really, do I need another pair of heels I never wear? The thing about these, though, is that it turns out I do wear them. The heel is not super high, and unlike other pretty vintage heels I own they actually fit (why oh why do I keep buying shoes a half size too small and thinking it will end well). I've worn them them three times now on outings that required a medium amount of walking without any blister incidents. That's a win.

At this point you may be wondering why they got a five, because it's clear from my glowing review that they rock. It's because I'm painfully afraid they're going to break. Like an irreparable tear in the woven leather or a broken strap. So, I'm trying not to get too attached to them just in case.