Wednesday Decor // Our Favorite Kitchen Accessories

So, I have a confession.....I think I'm becoming domestic.  Prior to meeting Zach, I could have cared less if we had a pasta maker, mixer, or the right kind of knives.  All I cared about was a blender for mixed drinks in college.  Mom called me out on it when she bought me one for my birthday, yeah mom, you were right.  Recently I saw a post on A Beautiful Mess where Emma shared her kitchen essentials.  Great minds must think alike!

Since moving in with someone who cooks up a storm & who's always creating new things, I'm now falling in love with kitchen gadgets! I'm going to try to share more recipe type posts here on the blog & have been thinking about what gadgets we consider essential to our kitchen.  Some of these are simple & some are more complex but all of them we use multiple times a week.  Most of them keep cooking simple & all of them make cooking fun.  Since we're gearing up for our annual pasta making Valentine's Day tradition, I thought I'd share our kitchen gadgets:

CANISTERS
We have a lot of counter space in our house.  It's so great because we are able to have everything at our finger tips.  Things aren't hiding in cabinets & being forgotten about.  We also don't have that much pantry space.  In fact we don't even have a pantry, just two big cabinet we keep food in. We use this counter space to our advantage & love having two sets of canisters - one vintage set & one new set - on either side of the stove.  We have the clear glass canisters above with flous, sugar, brown sugar, & powdered sugar.  Each has a scoop & are right at our finger tips.  The other set contains different kinds of pastas for easy access. (here are our sizes: biggest, big, smaller, smallest!)

MIXER
Santa was extremely, extremely good to me this year & brought me a load of useful things for the new house.  Like this mixer.  After not having a way to make meringue for the pies at Thanksgiving I am now able to whip up anything I want!  I've used it to quickly mix up brownies, but can't wait to use it more to make bread, cakes, whipped cream, & meringue!

CART
Recently Zach brought a little cart from his parent's house for our kitchen.  When both of us are in the kitchen cooking together, it can get a little crowded & the cart helps for a little more space to chop with out elbows running into each other.  Plus it's going to be great for our annual Valentine's Day pasta making from scratch.  Because it's on wheels it moves around our kitchen with ease.

TOASTER OVEN
I have to say I never really cared for toaster ovens.  All I ever needed to do was make toast & toaster ovens were a bit too much for that....all those dials.  Zach has showed me the error of my ways....you can make so much stuff in a toaster oven!!  I turn to the toaster oven more & more for quick meals.  I make hot sandwiches, toast, crescent rolls, & anything that might require preheating the oven.

TONGS
Tongs are just great utensils to have.  Pick things up, turn things over, grab hot toaster oven pans, toss things around...they are pretty handy.

BUTTERFLY WINE OPENER
We have a pretty stocked wine rack & as simple as it is (and so unoriginal) this type of wine opener is the easiest to use.  Very little work for an awesome return - a glass of wine of course!  Our wine glasses are from the Williamsburg Winery from our wine tasting from last spring.  I'm just now developing a taste for wine & one of my favorites is a white table wine called Winter White from Leelanau Cellars.  We've only been able to find it up north though!  I'm looking forward to expanding my wine taste & trying new things.

CROCKPOT
If you don't have a crock pot or haven't ever used one I highly suggest getting one.  I love that you can prepare a meal in the morning, have it cook all day, then have a delicious, home made meal waiting for you around dinner time.  You can even prepare the meal at night, put it in the fridget, then pull it out in the morning & turn on the crock pot.  There are tons of crock pot recipes I really want to try but Zach is so creative he comes up with wonderful meals on his own.

MIXING BOWLS
For obvious reasons, mixing bowls are on the list.  We have a variety of sizes & smaller prep bowls.  These are great for mixing batters, marinades, dressings, etc.  I've recently found a recipe for bread baked in a big glass bowl & can't wait to put my mixer to use on that one!

PASTA MAKER
Somehow this didn't make it into the picture! Zach wanted one for Christmas & this is the one I got for him.  We haven't used it yet, we'll get to it this Saturday.  Making your own pasta is fun so I'm glad we have this litte accessory to help us out!

THINGS WE'RE STILL LOOKING FOR:
KNIVES
We have steak knives but we've been on the hunt for good kitchen knives.  This is something Zach's been looking for.  We have one good paring knife but our bigger knives just don't cut it (pun intended!)

STOCK POT
Zach loves soup! So we're still on the hunt for a stock pot to make oodles of soup in.  Oodles, I tell you, oodles!

* * * *

Well, there you have it.....all our favorite kitchen essentials.  You wouldn't guess what's happened though: our new microwave just went out!  I'm going to call or take it to Sears to see what they say about the warranty.  I have found the paperwork that was with it, so here's hoping!

What are your kitchen essentials? Do you cook a lot?

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ReSelling // How We Keep it all Straight

In this brand new adventure we call selling awesome vintage stuff there's a lot we have to learn.  At first, we didn't keep record of stuff because a lot of it Zach already had & it sorta was just a hobby to do together knowing that we didn't have any room for the things we'd continue to collect.  Once we sold the first thing, we knew it was time to get serious.  So amid the bunches of receipts & Zach keeping things in his head, we knew we had to do something different.

The glorious world of vintage shopping often looks like this:

But then when we get home, it starts to look like this - less glamourous but still pretty awesome:

We're trying to get into more of a schedule...and I'm trying to keep us from going out & getting more inventory when we need to sort through what we have.  The move & renovation took a bit out of our semi-organization but we've tried to get back on track.  here's what we've done:

Created an Inventory Sheet

We sat down one Sunday night & Zach put his spread sheet skills to work.  We created an inventory sheet that tracks sales, profits, costs, investments in the shop, & payouts.  This has helped a lot!  I've actually replicated this sheet across all the shops.  This spread sheet is through Google Drive & we share it across our email addresses.  That way if ever Zach needs to access it he can & I can access it on all our devices.  Google Drive is pretty awesome like that!

Solid Inventory Nights

Once we went through & filled in the spread sheet with our current inventory, I've been making it a goal to put in solid inventory nights where we not only list the cost but also decide what to charge.  A lot of the time we talk about the price we'll list when we're our looking for inventory.  But inventory night is when we see how it all plays out.  Keeping costs low ensures that our listing prices are reasonable & acceptable.  Also, it's pretty fun to be surrounded by awesome stuff while sitting on our new carpet!  I think the spare bedroom is going to become an inventory room & I kinda like it.  Though I haven't fully decided if putting things in the closet is the right way to treat some of these pieces that deserve display.  Salt & Pepper shakers go well with bedroom decor right?

Solid Photography Days

These have been the hardest.  If you notice, and I'm sure you do, that the product photos changed a bit after we moved.  And while we were in the process of moving there was no proper place to photograph.  I tried & tried & tried but the photos came out crappy.  Now that we've got the house done there is a perfect little corner in the spare bedroom perfect for photographing!  Since I've got a lot of things besides the vintage shop going on, I try to get in a big chunk of photographing done each week.  I need to be better at this.  I would like to be on top of photographing things as they are added to the inventory sheet.  Meaning once a chunk comes in, it's photographed.  But usually I only get around to photographing enough for a decent shop update.  I'll go more into my dream schedule below!

Solid Listing Times

Just like with photographing, I make sure I have a solid chunk of time dedicated to listing.  I love Etsy's draft feature!  I can create a few drafts & list them throughout the week.  Personally I think this is best because your products stay at the front of the Etsy pages.  I try to list one or two items at a time over a period of about a week - 6 to 10 items usually.  We really want to build up the shop with more than two pages....but man that mess is hard!

Listing Goals

We've decided to set goals each month regarding how much we'll list & how much we'll promote.  I think this is a great new idea rather than just leaving it up to well I'll get some done this week.  This way it's more planned & just overall better for business.

Ok, now I want to share with you our dream vintage listing schedule:

We go on an awesome trip & come home with an awesome haul -> new inventory is unpacked grouped, etc -> inventory is taken & spread sheet is filled in -> cleaning & measurements -> photography -> editing & listing.

I guess that is everyone's dream schedule, but I really want to start working in batches rather than in pieces if that makes sense.  It's all about growing & learning  and we've got a lot to learn!

(if you're into more posts like this - inside looks & behind the scenes of vintage stuff - check out Thrift Core.  Van is pretty awesome, really encouraging, & a great all around person!)

What's your process?  What have you learned as you've gone through?

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Make it Monday // Valentine's Day Safety Pin Sweater

This week is Valentine's Day!! What? Can you believe it!  I'm pretty sure if we're not spending this weekend putting down the baseboards, we'll be doing our annual Valentine's Day pasta making.  (You can find last year's yummy post here.)

I stumbled upon this wonderful Safety Pin Heart Sweater DIY over on Trinkets in Bloom & fell in love!  When we were in Virginia for Christmas I stopped by Forever21 to shop their plus section - which I love! - and found this awesome heart sweater.  I usually don't pick up sweaters because I feel that they don't flatter me well...but this one I couldn't resist.  I've been wearing it way too much.  Last week when we were in Wisconsin, I wore it all week! I decided to spruce it up even more for Valentine's Day with a safety pin heart!

I followed the tutorial but added a smaller heart inside of the bigger heart, in small gold safety pins since I was running out of bigger safety pins!!

I had to keep fiddling with the heart shape to make sure it was staying in a heart shape.  I also think I may try it again by outlining just a small heart in gold safety pins!  There are so many shapes & outlines you can add with safety pins.  I'm so glad I found this awesome DIY to share with you!

Happy Valentine's Day!

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