Porter at 11 months

I missed posting Porter's 10-month update. The most significant thing that happened is that he learned to walk! Porter actually took his first steps on July 15, two days before he hit the 10-month mark so technically, he learned to walk at 9 months. It didn't take him more than a few days to get the walking thing down, and by two weeks after that he was walking all of the time, rather than half walk/half crawl. Now--he runs! I just bought him his first pair of shoes (little brown leather sandals) so he can run around outside.

Here are a few more things about Porter at 11 months:

In addition to running and walking everywhere, Porter can climb like a little monkey! He can climb atop any chair in the house, which means that nothing is safe anymore. Today he was sitting with my dad at the table and in a flash, he was on top of the kitchen table! And then he was so proud of his new trick that he proceeded to do it again and again when we weren't looking.

Obviously because he can walk so well and pull himself up on anything, Porter is very strong. He's not really chubby, but he is solid. He already has a little baby lat spread. :)

Porter has started making this funny squinty face lately. Cracks me up!

To fuel all of his climbing and tumbling and running, Porter still loves to eat. The only thing we've fed him that he has ever spit out in distaste is feta cheese, and I can't fault him for that.

Porter stuck on the table, mad that I'm taking photos instead of getting him down

Porter still adores Maren. She is so good with him and loves him right back. She plays and wrestles with him and he just loves it!

Porter three days after he started walking

Porter still loves bath time, but he's not as fond of swimming. He tries to climb out of the floaty but isn't quite steady enough for the baby pool, so I have to have a hand on him at all times. I thought he'd enjoy swimming more than he does. Oh well.

Porter at the Southlands fountains

Porter continues to look just like his daddy. I recently found The Mister's certificate of citizenship that has a photo of him at age 18 months. The Mister had blond hair but otherwise Porter is absolutely identical to him!

Porter has six teeth: the two on the bottom and then four on top. Chomp!

Porter today, August 16

We love Porter so much and love the personality he adds to our family. I can't believe he's almost a year old! Because he crawled so early it didn't seem like he was a baby for very long at all. He's already a toddler and now nothing is safe! :) Life with him will be anything but quiet, that's for certain!

I'm busy crafting (still working on the Craft ADD piles from the weekend), so I don't have anything to post today except a picture of buttons.

Mmm....vintage buttons. Thrifted vintage buttons. Cheap thrifted vintage buttons, to be exact. My favorites are the pink ones on the card, but I do love that pile of yummy white shell buttons up in the corner. Which would you rather have: a pile of vintage buttons, or a pile of M&Ms? I think it's pretty obvious what my answer is.

Estate sale finds and cute shoes

Whew. Thanks for your commiserating comments on my last post. Let me say that I've been to plenty of estate sales, but I guess I've had the good fortune that they are usually far more fun than the two I experienced this week. I've found a particular local estate sale company who I really like--their prices are super, their sales well-organized and well-advertised, and the vibe is fun and not super-competitive and grabby. I guess I've been spoiled by them! I think maybe I'll just stick to their sales from now on.

Photographic evidence that you don't always have to be the first person in the door to find goodies at an estate sale:

The Hires crate was from a sale put on by my favorite company. It was $3 and I dragged it out of the garage well into the afternoon of the first day. For my three bucks I also got dozens of spider egg sacs (shiver) and enough dirt that it left a rectangular dirty spot on both the floor of my trunk and the ground (gag). But I love the orange lettering (which you can barely see)--I think it will be perfect for Halloween! The Red Cross Paris map, Swiss postcards, and ornaments were from another sale. The bag of turquoise glass bead garland was from the thrift (seriously! You'd better believe I searched every single rack to see if I could find any more) and I love the old Pyrex labware bottle, which I also found at a thrift. That will be fun for Halloween too.

After I hit "Publish" on my rant yesterday, I cooled down a bit and then lifted my spirits in one of the surest ways I know: cute shoes!

Cheap cute shoes, because I do have a parking ticket to pay, after all. These are from Payless, where there's a buy-one-get-one-half-off sale going right now, plus I had a 20% off coupon as well so they were even a better deal. They're so cute they almost make me wish it was Fall. Almost. Not quite.

What are your plans for the weekend? Mine include cleaning up the messes I've left on every horizontal surface in the house. My Craft & Decorating ADD has reared its ugly head this week and my poor house is littered with half-finished projects. My dad is coming to visit for a few days and it would be nice if we could actually use the kitchen table for eating. Crazy, I know.

PS--I took the plunge and bought myself a domain name! I don't think it should be any different if you're seeing this through a reader, but if you want to visit my blog you can use either the old address http://frauleinh.blogspot.com or my new domain, http://themerrymagpievintage.com. Next up--trying to figure out how to add pages to my blog.

When estate sales go bad: a long vent

Two days of craptastic estate sales, which would not normally be cause to make me so cranky but I think those coupled with the wind and heat today, the mess in my house, the baby who is being too needy and the DOG HAIR EVERYWHERE are just combining into a big black cloud over my head.

Yesterday's craptastic estate sale: I signed up to receive emails from estatesales.net and got this notification for a rare Wednesday sale. Go ahead and read the ad and see if you're not drooling like I was. It's okay, I'll wait.

Back? Drooling? Thought you would be. I got a babysitter for Porter (because I knew I'd need two hands at this sale) and arranged for Maren to go home after school with a friend in case I was late. Drove WAY downtown, parked several blocks away, and got there just minutes before the scheduled 2:00 pm opening to find probably 50 or more people already waiting. There was a sign-up list, but it was cut off at 1:45 and the porch was so packed I couldn't have gotten to it anyway. They started letting people in off the list, 10 or so at a time. I finally got in, and the place was a madhouse. Teeny-tiny house, probably built in the 1930s or 40s, no A/C, and PACKED TO THE GILLS with neat old stuff, just like the ad promised. Except that all that stuff had already been snatched up by the people in front of me so I had the pleasure of watching everybody walk around with goodies, while I tried to find anything that might have been overlooked. I found a few things (emphasis on few) and finally went to stand in line. The line was all through the house. One room had a window A/C unit so it was cool in that room, at least.

I waited in line to pay for at least 30 minutes. Only one woman was taking money and apparently she was having long conversations with everybody or something because it took forever. The prices were no bargain, and I didn't even have anything that great, so I'm not sure why I didn't just drop it all and leave. Maybe I felt like I was already so committed that I might as well stay. The woman behind me in line had three huge boxes of GOOD loot. Amazing stuff, the stuff I would have grabbed if she hadn't gotten to it first. The prices were high to me but she is a dealer and so I'm sure she'll mark it up a whole bunch. Glad that at least she was behind me in line instead of in front of me, because I'm sure she had several hundred dollars' worth of merch in those boxes, and I heard her say as I left that she'd left her money in the car. What?

I finally got out of there, ran to my car and cranked the A/C and drove through horrid traffic home to pick up Maren. And the more I've thought about that sale, the more I have realized how NOT FUN it was. Junking should be fun for me, and that wasn't it. I hated seeing everyone get to all the good stuff before I did. That may sound petty, but it's true. There was just not a good vibe in that sale at all. It felt competitive and greedy and ugly and stressful. There were people switching price tags and people being crabby to each other in line and it was just bad, bad, bad.

I had hopes that today's sale would be better. It was closer, and I could take Porter and save the expense of paying another sitter. The ad sounded promising (a pink fridge? yes please!) and I drove over after dropping Maren at school. Whoever writes their ads has a promising career in fiction-writing, at least. There was no vintage clothing--that to me implies a certain amount of coolness. Yesterday's sale had vintage clothing. Cool vintage clothing that I'd wear today if it fit me. Today's sale had the ugliest stuff your grandma has in her closet that she's never thrown away for the past 30 years. There was a ton of fabric, and a cool pink kitchen, but the basement was horridly stinky. I stayed down there for longer than I should have--it was the kind of sale where you think there should have been something neat, if you just kept looking, but sadly there just wasn't. And now I have that stink in my nose and I think I may have to go wash my hair and change my clothes to get rid of it.

I paid for my meager finds, only to go to my car and find A PARKING TICKET. Way to add insult to injury. Apparently the City and County of Denver is making up their budget shortfall by writing parking tickets to people who have the temerity to park 6" further than the curb than the law allows. This was in a residential neighborhood, mind you--with nice wide streets and hardly anybody around. Do you have parking cops in your neighborhood, whipping out their yardsticks and counting infractions in inches? Because the City and County of Denver certainly does. And woe be unto anyone from the surrounding suburbs, who isn't versed in the parking regulations of every single municipality in this huge metro area in which they might find themselves. Because now, today's junk just cost me an extra $25.

So yeah, it isn't always vintage Christmas goodies and old tablecloths. Sometimes it just sucks.

Etsy spotlight: BiblioBags

I first met Autumn when we both lived in Savannah, GA. I was newly married and I think she was too, and we went to church together. That was such a fun time in my life--there were more than a dozen young married couples in that ward, all of us transplanted from different places, all of us hundreds or thousands of miles away from our extended families. Most of the husbands were either in the military (like mine) or going to SCAD or one of the other colleges in the area, which meant they were often gone or busy with schoolwork. The wives either worked (like me) or went to school or stayed home with their new babies. We became each other's families for a little while.

We moved from Savannah to Colorado six years ago but I was able to reconnect with Autumn through the wonders of The Book. She recently started an etsy shop called BiblioBags and I love what she makes so much that I wanted to share it with all of you.

Autumn makes book bags. Not bags to hold your books--bags made from books! Autumn takes new and vintage books and transforms them into the cutest darn purses you've ever seen!

Little Women purse with handmade cameo button

Since most books aren't thick enough to make a purse that would hold much, Autumn modifies and reinforces the spines to make them wider and stronger. The books are lined with coordinating fabric and she even includes pockets to hold your cell phone and credit card slots.

1960s Secretary purse

For many of the purses, Autumn has even sculpted custom closure buttons made from clay to match the theme of the book, like the nautilus shell she made for her 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea bag:

I adore this Audrey Hepburn bag. Isn't her photo styling cute, with the Audrey-esque skinny black jeans and black ballet flats?

Audrey Hepburn book purse

But I think my favorite is this adorable Nancy Drew clutch. This should be no surprise since I recently posted my love for Ms. Drew.

In addition to the book bags, Autumn also makes cute 3-D paper sculpture greeting cards (she's offering free shipping on her cards right now!) And if have a beloved book or want a unique gift, she even accepts custom orders. Go check her out!

Some Enchanted Evening

On Wednesday night, The Mister and I got fancied up and headed downtown to watch the traveling Broadway production of South Pacific. This was something I'd been looking forward to since we heard the 2010 theater line-up at the end of last year! I've loved the music of South Pacific since I was a kid--my dad had the soundtrack to the 1958 film version and listened to frequently (after he listened to it as a kid), so I learned all the songs.

When the show was revived on Broadway back in 2007, I knew it was something I had to see, and I was thrilled to find out that I could save on an airplane ticket and see it right in my own city.

Most auspiciously, the run was scheduled right during the week of my dad's and my birthdays. Unfortunately, he couldn't come, so I've got my fingers crossed that the tour goes through Salt Lake City next year so he'll have a chance to see it (the show in NYC closes later this month). I was able to score a pair of excellent seats on Craiglist (8th row, smack in the center) the day before the show for a heck of a deal, which made the whole thing even sweeter!

The show was really, really marvelous. If the tour comes through your area, go see it--you won't be sorry! The singing was fabulous (especially the actor who played Emile--he's an opera singer so his deep baritone is rich) and the orchestra was remarkable as well, as they're using Richard Rodgers' original orchestrations and a full pit, rather than the small pit & a synthesizer that most traveling shows these days use. My only regret is that we didn't get to see this guy:

Mr. Schue as Lt. Cable (swoon!) A shirtless Lt. Cable, to be precise. :)

The entertainment continued on the drive home as well: a sold-out Lady Gaga concert was just down the street and the shows got out at roughly the same time. Add that to major construction and lane restriction on the interstate and we had a massive traffic jam as eight lanes of traffic were funneled down to one. It was bumper to bumper for miles--that's not the exciting part, however. We were sitting in traffic and I noticed a police car in front of us. Then I noticed a police car to the side of us. Then all of a sudden, we were literally surrounded by police cars and in a blink, a dozen cops were out of their cars, weapons drawn and pointing at the car that was directly in front of the police car that was in front of us! My gosh, I thought we were going to have to hit the deck to keep from being shot! Thankfully, the suspects in the car complied and everything was peaceful, but it was still startling and that combined with the traffic turned what is normally a 30-minute trip home into nearly two hours.

My actual birthday was Friday. Since we'd had our big date on Wednesday for the show, I opted to keep things quiet and we went out as a family for sushi. The Mister managed to sneak cupcakes from my favorite shop into the sushi restaurant early, and the waitress brought them out after dinner with lit candles. It was a completely delightful surprise--that Mister is a sneaky one! It was a great day and I'm looking forward to year #32!

Enabler Alert: Primitives by Kathy

How do you like my new vintage flower pot? It's about 6" tall and the perfect color of  pale greeney-blue.

Ha! Fooled you. :) It's from Home Goods, though it's made to look vintage. I found it the other day and I adore it! There were two on the shelf and I had the presence of mind to go back for the second, because Rule #1 at Home Goods is the same as Rule #1 at the thrift store: buy it when you see it, because there's a 97% chance if you go back for it, it will be gone.

The marking on the bottom says "Pottery by Kathy Phillips". Apparently this is a division of a line of decor called "Primitives by Kathy".  You can check out their catalog on their website, and  I've seen several of their items before in boutiques and vintage-type stores, even though the brand name was not familiar to me. There is some very, very cute vintage-style Halloween decor that I may just have to order. There's also a line of tableware and there are even a few more cute vintage-style flower pots similar to this one in the clearance section for less than you'd probably pay at Home Goods, if you were even lucky enough to find them.

I Spy

Whenever I get a Pottery Barn catalog in the mail, I like to play a little game. Perhaps you play too?

I pretend I have a zillion dollars to spend. :)

After I've furnished my imaginary country estate, I like to play another game called I Spy. Often, the things that I find most intriguing in the catalog photos are not the items for sale, but rather the props that the photo stylists (who I think are 1. Very Talented and 2. reading the same blogs as the rest of us, given the number of ideas I've seen lifted straight out of blogland) are using to decorate the spaces.

I got a PB Kids catalog a little while ago that was all back-to-school stuff: monogrammed backpacks, ridiculously overpriced lunch sets, etc. I flipped through the catalog quickly because we already had a backpack for Maren, but then I had an I Spy moment when I saw this photo on one of the last pages:

Cute backpacks, right--but I was looking at what they are hanging on. Let's take a closer look:

So darn cute, right? The bright colors of the yardsticks are killing me! And does it remind you of something?

How about the yardstick coat rack that Mandi at Save it For A Rainy Day made a few months ago?

I've been on the lookout for old yardsticks all summer long at the estate sales & antique stores I've visited, but I've only found a few and only one of them is a color. Seeing this cute Pottery Barn coat rack is going to make me redouble my efforts to find the colored sticks for certain!

Apology

I owe you all an apology.

I'm sorry.

You see, if you went out junking last weekend but you weren't able to find anything good, it's totally my fault. I was hogging all the Junk Mojo. Thursday, Friday and Saturday were some kind of non-stop junk bonanza for me, what with estate sales, garage sales and thrift store shopping. It was heady, it was junky, it was heaven. And also, it was a wee bit on the greedy side so this weekend I'm staying home and bequeathing all of my Junk Mojo to the rest of you!

The spoils from last weekend:

You've already seen the two quilts, but they're so pretty let's just have a look at all of that feedsack goodness one more time:

At an estate sale I found another folding ruler, bringing my in-house total to eight. I also picked up a silver cheese server thingy for another project to be shared later, once I actually get around to it. The vintage linens were from a church sale: a printed runner and cloth napkin (which would probably make a darling throw pillow) and a tea tablecloth & matching napkins with pagodas worked in the teeny tiniest of cross stitches.

From the Christmas files, a pile of pink lovelies from a garage sale that looked like nothing special from the curb, reminding me that it's almost always worth a quick look. Also, a pair of quilted satin vanity boxes, headed for etsy.

From the thrift, a set of six darling salad plates in blue with red strips and gold rims, just a few weeks too late but perfect for next year's Fourth of July table. Also, three tiny gold-striped glasses and a handful of colorful vintage plastic clothespins marked Denmark.

A matching Vera tea towel & apron set, a Pyrex bowl and a Fire King bowl that match, and an unused set of NOMA bubble lights.

Not pictured is a vintage glass light fixture and an awesome 5' x 8' space-themed area rug for Porter's room that will be perfect once I get it cleaned.

May the Junk Mojo be with you!

Confessions of a Magazine Junkie

confessionsMe: Hello everyone, my name is Heidi, and I'm a Magazine Junkie.


Everyone: Hello, Heidi

I love magazines. I always have. I was telling my mom the other day that the reason I haven't picked up a book yet this summer (seriously atypical for me) is because I have a backlog of magazines and I just can't get caught up. In some cases I have more than one issue waiting for me--I can't get the current one read before the next month's shows up in the mail. I don't think she believed me, until I started naming all the magazines that we get in this house.

I subscribe to:

• Country Living
• Scrapbooks, Etc.
• The Ensign (a mag from my church)
• Sunset*
• Conde Nast Traveler*
• ReadyMade*
• Cooking Light
• Entertainment Weekly
• Family Fun
• My Home My Style
• Better Homes & Gardens

And then there's the occasional issue of Martha Stewart Living I buy in the store. On Sarah's recommendation, I picked up an issue of This Old House and really enjoyed it so I could see myself reading that in the future too.

In addition to my subscriptions, The Mister gets:

• Sports Illustrated*
• Money*
• Forbes*
• Fortune*
• Triathlete
• Runner's World
• Men's Health
• Men's Fitness
• Backpacker
• Outdoors
• Climbing

And Maren gets:

• The Friend (also from our church)
• National Geographic Little Kids
• Highlights High Five

Good grief, now that I see it all written out it's even worse than I thought. We're drowning in magazines! I keep all of my Country Living issues and the occasional Martha, but otherwise I'm pretty good about reading through my mags, tearing out a few sheets to keep and then tossing the rest in the recycle bin. Another member of this house who shall remain nameless but receives 11 magazines his very own self is not as conscientious about getting rid of his magazines and lets them pile up all over the place, driving his wife crazy. Not naming any names, I'm just sayin'. Ahem.

Add all those magazines to the 160+ blogs that I follow and the catalogs I get in the mail occasionally, and you can see why I haven't cracked a book in months. All of those starred titles were freebies that we got with frequent flyer miles, so we're not actually spending hundreds of dollars per month on magazines. I'm waiting for the subscriptions to run out pretty soon and frankly, I'll be glad when they do because it will mean less clutter around here.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have two past issues of Cooking Light and the latest Family Fun to go through. Gotta go!

Quilt brag #2

Today's quilt is nowhere near as beautiful as the one I shared yesterday, but it's still made of feedsacks and was cheap, so I think it's pretty cool.

 It's not fancy--a simple nine-patch quilt and the stitching and piecing is kinda rough. The lack of precision says to me that it was made by either a child or someone who didn't sew much.

Heck, that's probably what my first attempt at a quilt would look like.

 It's definitely made of feedsacks. You can still see the blue writing on a few of the white rectangle pieces (look in the center above)

And here's a square that still has a part of the paper label attached

And on several squares (like the green one above) you can see the holes where the feedsack was originally stitched up the side.

There are some pieced squares that appear to be intended for a bow tie quilt

And there are plenty of yummy old prints like these

And these

And these cuties.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with this quilt top. It's going to need a good cleaning because there are a lot of dirty spots and even some masking tape residue. I don't think it's in good enough condition that I want to pay to have it finished (doing it myself is totally out of the question) but it's kind of useless on it's own. If I can get it clean, I'm actually thinking that I could take apart the quilt top and make some pretty darn cute pillows with the squares.

If you found this quilt top, what would you do with it?

Quilt brag #1

So yeah, I'm totally going to brag in this post. I FOUND A QUILT!!! A vintage wedding ring quilt with the most gorgeous feedsack prints all over it. It's in really great condition. And it was $20. And I love it and I might just marry it.

Wanna see the object of my affection?

And how about some close-up shots of all that feedsack-y goodness?

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

I realize the story would be even better if I'd found it wadded up in a garbage bag for $2 or something ridiculous, but for me this is as good as it gets. On Friday morning I went to an Estate Sale (that was more like a garage sale) that was run by a family and the lady was pulling the quilt out of it's zippered bag when I walked up. I asked how much it was and she hemmed and hawed and finally asked, "How does $20 sound?" I couldn't dig in my pocket fast enough! I only had $17 on me but she was sweet and agreed to hold it for me while I loaded both kids back into the car and raced to a gas station with an ATM, got kids out of the car to go in, got cash, kids back into the car, back to the sale, and kids back out of the car again. (Do you see why I prefer to get a babysitter when I go junking? Yeesh.)

So twenty buckaroos for this beautiful quilt is a serious SCORE for me. A quilt like this would easily be priced at 4x that in an antique shop, plus I got the added rush of finding it! I've already asked The Quilt Whisperer for cleaning advice for the tiny bit of yellowing I see. And guess what else? I found another feedsack quilt on Saturday! It's actually a quilt top, and I'll show it to you tomorrow. Right now I need to go pet my new quilt some more.

What I read in between BSC volumes

While I was reminiscing about my beloved Baby-Sitters Club books, I started to think about the other book series that I read during my tween & teen years (probably while waiting for the next BSC volume to appear):

 

There was The Sleepover Friends series by Susan Saunders. This series was about four girls (Stephanie, Patti, Lauren and Kate) who took turns having sleepovers at each others' houses each Friday night. Stephanie was quite the fifth-grade fashion plate, wearing a wardrobe consisting of only red, black and white clothing. I tried to do something similar but that got the kibosh pretty quickly when my mom told me that no fifth grade daughter of hers needed to be wearing black all of the time, like an elementary school Goth-in-training. I did have a red, black and white bedroom until I went away to college, so the color combination stuck with me long after I was too old for the books.

 

The Sunfire romance series, by multiple authors. I read these a bit later than the BSC and Sleepover Friends--I'd say when I was in middle school. Each book in this series had a girl's name as the title and was set during some significant event or time period in U.S. history. The plot invariably featured a plucky heroine, who was torn between the two hunky guys illustrated on the cover. Veronica was about the Pearl Harbor attack, and I remember reading Jennie (about the Johnstown Flood) and Caroline (who dressed like a boy and went to California during the Gold Rush) as well. I read as many as I could get my hands on, which wasn't many because my library only had a few and I had a hard time finding them at bookstores. My favorite was Amanda, which was set during pioneer times. Amanda was a spoiled Eastern girl who went West with a wagon train wearing a beautiful and highly impractical gray-green silk dress. I've never seen these books while thrifting but I'll keep an eye out for them from now on, since apparently lots of them do pretty well on eBay.

Another series I read post-BSC was the Satin Slippers series by Elizabeth Bernard. Even though I quit taking ballet lessons in sixth grade when I moved from Nevada to Utah, I never lost my love for it (still haven't, actually). This series was about  Leah, a dancer who got the chance to move to San Francisco and join a professional ballet company.

 

The Nancy Drew Mystery Stories, of course! The Clue of the Broken Locket was the first one I ever read. I'm not sure if I read the entire series, but I'm sure I came pretty close. I even read some of the 80's updated Nancy Drew Files.

My dad got me hooked on the Dirk Pitt novels by Clive Cussler when I was in middle school and I read them all through high school as well. I loved the combination of history, archaeology (did you know I was originally an Archaeology major in college?) and our dashing hero, Dirk Pitt. Sahara was my favorite of the series, but I thought the movie version that came out a couple of years ago was a total disappointment (despite the frequent appearance of Matthew McConaughey's shirtless abs).

I read some of the Sweet Valley Twins books and a few of the Sweet Valley High series as well, but I was never enamored of those as I was The Baby-Sitters Club or any of the others. What books did you read as a tween/teen?

BSC4EVAH

The other night, I stayed up WAY past my bedtime reading blogs devoted to The Baby-Sitters Club books. I was led down the blog rabbit-hole by this post on one of my favorite new blogs, which led me to this post on one of my least favorite blogs (I know most people love Dooce, but I can't stand her. I don't like Pioneer Woman either. So sue me.)

Anyway, the comments on that last post had me rolling. Who knew I was in such good company as I waited for my monthly trip to Waldenbooks in the mall to get the latest Baby-Sitters Club book? I always had them about halfway read on the way home, except on the lucky occasions that there was a new Super Special available.

I was so enamored of the ridiculously detailed descriptions of Claudia's and Stacey's awesome wardrobes that at one point I actually copied several of them out in a notebook, presumably so that I could do my best to imitate them. I'm not sure I ever pulled it off and I highly doubt my mom would have let me out of the house in one of Claudia's artsy get-ups (I favored Stacey's cool NYC-style outfits over Claudia's hot messes) but I did my best to pay homage through my earrings. I used to spend my baby-sitting money on funky earrings--I had (among many others) one pair that said "In" on one side and "Out" on the other earring, a pair of huge gold circles with "Don't Worry" on one and "Be Happy" on the other, and a pair of black telephones with cords that fastened around the back side of my ear, .

I eventually sold my entire collection of BSC books (and the pink plastic visor I won in one of the drawings advertised in the back of the books) in a garage sale. I kind of wish I still had them so that Maren could--oh, who are we kidding, I think I want to read them all again. There's a new BSC book out this summer--Ann M. Martin wrote The Summer Before about (obviously) the summer before Kristy popped out her great idea. Maybe I'll just have to check it out from the library and relive my youth!