A Brooch Here, An Earring There....

This is a post about improvising and making do. This is also about one of the most valuable things loving vintage has taught me, but I'll get to that later.

I haven't been putting much effort into things lately as, surprise, surprise, I'm once again in a funk. My great achievement yesterday was adding a vintage brooch to my incredibly modern and lazy outfit. Doesn't seem like much, but it put me in a better state of mind.

I guess what got me so excited about this brooch was what I did with it. 

Before the brooch, this was just a t-shirt, jeans, and a lightweight sweater. 

After the brooch, this was a t-shirt, jeans and a cleverly placed vintage brooch on a lightweight sweater :)

Yeah, well, at least now it looks less like a t-shirt!

Another small bright spot for me was being able to wear my black flats again, finally. 

Some time ago, our lovely pup, Sam Fisher, made a light snack out of the button on my shoe. While I was away on my Wild West Adventure, the button then decided to detach from my shoe leaving me with this lovely silver disk:

Now, I've had these shoes for several years and they are far past broken in. Perhaps a rational person may have decided to throw them out at this point. Rational-smational; I dolled them up.

Digging through my stash of broken and mismatched vintage jewelry I happened upon an old clip on earring I liked and clipped it where the black leather button had once been. Now, I couldn't have one shoe looking all glamorous and the other not, so I switched out the remaining button for another, non-matching but fun, clip on earring. 

Good as new! Well, sort of, until something else falls off or the dog chews them completely (thank goodness he's growing out of that).

And so here's moral number one of today's story:

Wearing vintage and loving old things has taught me that things don't always have to match, things don't always have to be perfect, and just because something is a bit flawed or worn, doesn't mean it deserves to be tossed away. 

(and if you want to get a little pensive about it, I suppose this can and should be applied to life outside material possessions)

And, my second learned lesson of the day: 

Take things one day at a time, and celebrate the little things as you go.

Even if those little things happen to be a brooch and two earrings.

Ah, there's that familiar light at the end of the tunnel. 

X

Happy Sailing