We are at the last day of the first month of this new year and I am happy that I have been able to pot about the garden for a couple of days this month. So far this winter seems milder than last year and definitely less rainy. I think last year we did not have an actual break from the rain until mid to late March and then it snowed in April!  Last year we finished our greenhouse, built the garden boxes for the potager and laid out the area, and put in new borders and beds to create...

This is the first time in my life I have given myself permission to not quickly resolve or solve any emotions that cannot be simply labeled as happy or good. This is the first time I am allowing myself to sit quietly with feelings and emotions that are uncomfortable, a bit murky, and a bit muddled. My normal mode of operating is to identify that an emotion isn't "good" and then figure out how to not feel it as soon as possible. I thought what I was doing was healthy, but lately I have been realizing I wasn't resolving anything,...

Many, many moons ago, while living in Budapest and just entering the decade of my 20s, I read Milan Kundera's "Unbearable Lightness of Being" and some years later saw the 1988 film with Daniel Day Lewis. I honestly do not recall much of the novel if I'm going to be perfectly honest and I read it because it was one of those novels you should have read if you wanted to fake being a pseudo intellectual living in Eastern Europe slinking around dimly lit cafes. Which I totally was, obviously. I shall turn again back to this novel and perhaps...

Hello dear doves. I haven't written in quite some time, actually since right before we moved out of our old office and now into our new home in Milwaukie, Oregon. How time has flown. In small odd ways I feel like a different person today than I was even just 2 months ago. Not better, not worse, just different, and I think I'm trying to sort that out and how that all plays in woven into the fabric of Adored Vintage. The cost of running a business has gone up so much this year and I have pushed it off and pushed it...

By this time next week, we will be all moved into our new office. Well, minus myself as I will be bleary eyed, jet lagged and happy having just arrived in Dublin, Ireland. The rest of my team will be settling into our new quarters. I should note, that my trip to Ireland was planned many, many months in advance prior to us knowing we would be moving in the same week I would be leaving. I'm noting this because it comes off braggy, for lack of a better word, to go "Ooo look at me going to Ireland while...

This past weekend I hosted my first ever Harvest Moon dinner/seed sharing party, a celebration of friendship, food, and flowers on the day of the harvest moon, the fullest moon before the autumn equinox. The table was laden with dishes that celebrated the flavors of summer and hints of the early autumn produce. My friends brought desserts like homemade cream pie with locally grown peaches and an abundant basket of freshly picked wild blackberries. We had a summer melon salad with cucumber and chicken with french tarragon and lemon. There were cheeses and crackers and dates and almonds with herbs de Provence....

I thought when writing and sharing this news I would feel sadness, but I don't. Instead I feel a sense of relief and a weight lift off of my shoulders. In Winter 2019, full of hope and happy anticipation we opened a new chapter of Adored Vintage right in the heart of Portland, and with surprising relief, I am sharing that this chapter is officially closing in September as we are relocating Adored Vintage headquarters outside of Portland entirely.  I feel like I can breathe and give myself space again to dream, create, and look to the future with hope within the...

I haven't been home much the past month or so because there are seasons when you're running a small business that you just get very, very busy. This is that season for me, or rather the start. It also happens to be an odd season for gardening, especially for myself as a newbie gardener. There are so many tasks and things I must get done in the garden that I just have not had time for and this brings a slight heaviness to my heart. I have not been able to keep flowers pinched or bushes pruned. I haven't turned...

T he two new additions to our in house label, Atèlëtte, is an ode to beloved vintage garments in my vintage archives collection. The inspiration for the Elanor top was taken from a vintage 1970s dress I had in the shop once upon a time, and the inspiration for the Colette Slip were taken from various slips from the 1940s and 1970s from Adored Vintage's vintage archives as well. I spent a lot of time revising the Colette Slip to make sure it would be a garment that could function as a foundation garment but also lovely enough to wear on it's...

In the past week or so I have felt a renewed warmth towards wanting to create again for Adored Vintage. In truth I have replicated my own creations over the past couple of years because it was what "performed well" on Instagram, but in the past 6 months or more, this has not rang true. Like all other small business owners and creatives who in various degrees of reliance, depend on social media platforms for marketing, this alarming drop in engagement and visibility gnawed at me. Not only was I not enjoying creating content for Instagram, it also started to feel...

This has been the wettest, coldest, dreariest Spring season I have ever experienced since moving to the Pacific Northwest back in 2014 so everything in the garden is coming up much later and is delayed. But I suppose that is what it is to be a gardener, to accept that things are what they are and things will be beyond your control. So one must practice patience and learn to live and let live in the garden.  At the time these photos were taken (a dreary morning) there wasn't much blooming in the garden, so I snapped photos of what actually...

Lately life has been a bubbling stream of busyness and I have been finding myself needing a bit more space and always reaching and searching for more time in the day so I can make an attempt to do "nothing things".  There are seasons in my life when this is not possible and for me this is the season. Though at the moment I am trying to think if there ever was a season where I had any significant stretches of time where I did nothing and well, nothing comes to mind. How do I change this for myself? What...