It's been awhile!

Merry Christmas everyone!  Yes, it's been awhile, a LONG while since I've blogged.  I've had a pretty good reason though!  :-) 

When my son was born last August (yes, in 2010), it took us 4 very long months to figure out that he had an intolerance to dairy.  We thought it was simply just "colic" but in reality he was having a reaction to anything with any type of milk protein in it.  So after 4 months of lots of tears (on both his part & mine), I had to drastically change my diet to accommodate my little man.  You wouldn't believe all of the foods out there that have some type of milk protein in them! 

In any event, that little 4 month time period put a kink in me getting my Etsy shop up and running, and also didn't inspire me to blog at all!  But after my little 16 month hiatus, I am back and ready to go! 

I opened my Etsy shop again this past week.  I only have a few things in it right now, but plan to add more in January.  You can find it on Etsy by searching "TheVintageNestingCo".

Here are my Christmas trees this year....the first picture is my regular tree in our living room.  If the bottom looks a little sparse, I will happily assign blame to my 16 month old!  He has terrorized my tree this year!  ha!  So I finally had to move all the ornaments up to the top of the tree.  :)  

 This tree was my grandparents tree.  It is a vintage, 1950's aluminum tree.  I. LOVE. IT.   It used to have one of those color wheels that went with it, but I was told that it broke several years ago.  So I decided to adorn it with pink ornaments and put it on a little side table in my entryway.  Most of the ornaments are vintage, Shiny Brite ornaments that I've collected over the years, but some are also new ornaments.  I love mixing vintage & new. 

Until next year, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you and yours!  I promise it won't be 16 months until you hear from me again! 
Tiffany

Introducing The Vintage Nesting Company

Welcome to our blog! You are about to embark on this journey with us as we start our new company, The Vintage Nesting Company. Thanks for stopping by and joining us!

Jason and I have been praying about starting our own business...it is something we have thought about for quite some time now. As of late, we felt as though God was pushing us to do something out of the ordinary and our circumstances proved that it was time. I kept hearing "step out in faith" over and over again in my head....

You see, I have been an avid vintage collector for years. I am fascinated by vintage things and their history...I always wonder where it was made, who had owned it and how it might have ended up in an antique store after so many years?

Shortly after Jason and I met several years ago, I asked him one day if he'd like to go to downtown Franklin with me to look at antique stores. I held my breath as I waited for him to answer...and guess what he said? Yes! He said he loved looking at antiques and loved the history behind them! What?! I couldn't believe my ears...wow, God SO knows how to match us up with our soul mates, doesn't He?!

In short, that is how Jason and I came up with the idea for this business....a love for not only vintage things, but also the history and stories behind them. And wrapped up in all of that is mine and Jason's love for each other. What better way to start a business than with love? :)

Now to the fun part...buying things for our store!  Several weeks ago we found an estate sale and told ourselves we would only buy something if it jumped out at us, and also only if the price was right. (I love to negotiate prices!!) We also had prayed asking God to confirm to us that we were supposed to be starting this business by allowing us to find items at this sale that we could actually make a profit on. (very important piece of info in starting your new business--turning a profit!)

So we dropped Dalton off at his last day of school and drove to downtown Franklin to the estate sale. We pulled up to the home and walked in. We started walking around the house; the exciting part of searching for antiques is the looking! I walked through the kitchen and saw nothing of interest. Almost immediately I had a sinking feeling in my stomach, thinking to myself, "Oh we aren't going to find anything here..."

I knew what I was looking for--things of interest, unique things, things that are old, really old. I quickly walked from the kitchen to a hall bathroom and reluctantly walked in. Hanging on the wall in the bathroom was a mirror. Not just your standard bathroom mirror that the builder puts in, but a beautiful, very old, wooden framed mirror. I quickly called to Jason and asked him to look at it. We pulled it off the wall and I instantly could tell this was a very old mirror, just from the way it was built. Jason took it down off the wall and I noticed something odd on the backing of the mirror...what looked like a drawing or image of two people's faces with some writing around it. Odd. But at that point I was more interested in the mirror itself. I was guessing this mirror was at least 100 years old. There was no price on the mirror, so I went to ask the woman in charge if the mirror was for sale and if so, how much. She said she wasn't sure, that she'd have to place a phone call to the person in charge.

                                                                          

As we waited for her to do that, we began walking around the rest of the house. There was an entire wall of books that I began to look through. I found some really great ones...The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Black Stallion, The Black Stallion Returns, Vogues Book of Etiquette and Manners and History of American Literature. All of these books were published before 1950. Old books, if they are in good condition, are definitely good items to buy! We set those aside and kept looking.   (This image below is the inside of the book, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer that we found.)

We went upstairs and I noticed an old print of a little, European boy dressed in all blue. The frame was old. Yet, I hesitated because I was not familiar with this item. (Note to self: Don't buy items if you aren't familiar with them, or if you don't have a good feeling about it!) I liked the print because it had really vivid colors, so we went ahead and added it to our pile. (We later found out that this was a very popular print from the 1950's...called the "Blue Boy")

The lady in charge of the sale found us and told us she'd sell us the mirror in the bathroom for $115. We quickly countered and offered her $75. We also offered her $2 each for the books (they were originally marked as $4-$6 per book) and $30 for the little blue boy print. Sold! And just like that we had made our first purchases for our store. :)

We took everything home and began to look into the history of the mirror. Jason did alot of research online and found that the mirror was made by The Memphis Picture Frame Factory by a man named M. Henochsberg. What we found was The Memphis Picture Frame Factory burned to the ground (including all of its contents) on January 6, 1880. The fire claimed the lives of two local firefighters. So our mirror was made prior to 1880. Someone owned this mirror prior to the factory burning down. See, isn't history fun?!


The next thing that we did, or should I say that Jason did, was remove the "backing" from the mirror. Remember how I said it looked like two faces and some writing on this "backing"? Well, Jason removed the backing and guess what we found? An original movie poster (a half sheet as it was called back then) dating to 1935. The poster or half sheet was for a musical/movie called "Reckless" that featured none other than Jean Harlow. If you aren't familiar with Jean Harlow, she was a huge sex symbol and big time movie star in her day. She was nicknamed "the blonde bombshell". Unfortunately she passed away at the young age of 27 from uremic poisoning and kidney failure--both complications of scarlet fever, which she had contracted as a young child. The movie "Reckless" was one of the last movies she made before her untimely death in 1937. (Here is what the "backing" looked like and then the front of the poster itself)

I could not believe we had found this poster! I was giddy with excitement. It was in good condition considering it had been on the back of this mirror for probably 60 years. It had yellowed considerably; the edges were frayed and had holes where it had sat behind nails for so many years. But the colors were still very vivid. Jason and I figured this poster had to be valuable. So once again we went on a hunt to track down someone who might know more about this poster...

After more research, we contacted the owner of Heritage Auctions, the third largest collectibles auctioneer in the world, and he told us he was interested in our poster. We had to act fast though, because the July auction was set to close in a week and the next auction for vintage movie posters wasn't until November. So we took it to the UPS store, watched them carefully package it, and off it went. Now to wait for the auction in July!

Isn't God so awesome! Even if our poster sells for the lowest estimated amount, it will still be a bonus for us. Nonetheless, we definitely feel God's hand all over our new business and know that God has opened this door for us to now walk through. Sometimes you just have to take that step of faith before God opens the door so wide for you that you can't help but RUN through it.

Thanks for taking the time to read our very first blog! (The next one won't be so long!)
Jason & Tiffany