Pampers Pure Diaper Review

Hello KVC blog fans. I am sorry I haven’t been updating the blog much in the last year and a half. Life has been crazy including a new baby in the house.

Thomas arrived on July 29th, 2019 at dawn weighing a whopping 9 lbs 6 oz. He bypassed the newborn diaper size and went straight into size 1’s. At 2 weeks old he is just about out of size 1 diapers already, we grow our babies large in the KVC household.

Speaking of diapers I received complementary package of Papers Pure Protection diapers from Influenster to try on my newborn, which was super awesome because if you have ever bought diapers you know that cost adds up quickly.

I did compare the Pampers Pure to the Pamper Swaddler diapers. The Pure have a softer lining and are about 1/2 an inch larger all around compared to the Swaddler.
The Pure was also very absorbent which is important for a baby who is a pee pot like Thomas is. The designs on the outside of the diaper were adorable as well.
All in all the Pamper Pure diapers were gently on my newborns tush and did not cause a rash unlike other brands that have the same features.

Thank you Influenster for these free diapers and allowing me to review them for you.

~Kristen

January Jewelry Sale

During the month of January all jewelry in my Etsy shop are 20% off, no coupon code needed.

It’s Been A While

I know it has been quite sometime since I last wrote a blog post, not that I didn’t try it was my internet not allowing me on to WordPress. Stinks I know.

The last half of  2017 brought many changes to my household to include sending all of my school age children to public school, the have previously attended a private preschool and were homeschooled. So that was one heck of an adjustment for my oldest daughter and myself. While they are at school I was lost on what to do with myself other than go back to bed for a few more hours with my toddler. I started volunteering at our local food pantry, help has been desperately needed there as most of the volunteers are at least 65 years old or older. One of our volunteers just turned 94 years old, I can only hope I can look as good and be as active as she is at 94.
Volunteering takes up two mornings a week and the occasional extra day when we have our food deliveries, I have enjoyed volunteering and giving back to my community. I even bring my toddler with me while I volunteer, she keeps the ladies entertained on those morning.

Another change is buying a farm, my husband and I are in the process of buying our own farm, while we haven’t closed yet we have taken over the care of the farm and animals that live there. We won’t be moving for a while as the house will need a large amount of renovation to it, so look for those renovation blog posts hopefully starting sometime in April or May.

That is all I have time for, I hope each and everyone of you have a blessed day,

~Kristen

Spring Cleaning Time Again

Every spring I get in a super spring cleaning mode, simplify everything turns out to be my motto. I get so far then I start to slow down. This year I have already purged a couple of bags full of things and have my whole attic to go through. My husband and I are looking to buy a farm and need to purge all of the clothes my kids have outgrown that I have been keeping for the next kid. I will go through and keep a few things but I’m tired of holding on to stuff, it is time for it to go and to finish adding on to our house.

So this spring my goals are to

• Clean the attic out
• Donate or sell or trash what I don’t need
• Try to clean one area each week (that way I’m not overwhelmed)

Simple but easy and hopefully attainable goals.

Until Next Time,

~Kristen

First Date

Thank you for reading my 3rd installment of fictional stories. If you love this dress as much as I do please check it out here.

Dear Diary,
Tonight is the night, I finally am going on a date with George Dunning. He is so dreamy with his wavy hair and sparkling green eyes. I could just sit and stare at him all day long. Susan doesn’t think he is attractive at all but she is dating Eddy who I think is just adorable, not date-able but adorable nonetheless. Plus George is super smart, he is at the top of our class and I keep hoping he will end up being my partner in science class just so I can pass the class.
English and P.E classes I enjoy but science and math are so boring, my math teacher Mrs. Thomas really knows her stuff but her voice is so monotone it puts me to sleep within minutes of her starting to explain a problem.

Back to my date with George, I decided to wear my lucky brown knit dress with the dark brown pom-pom off the collar. It is my lucky dress since that was the dress I was wearing when he called to ask me out and it is the dress I was wearing when I found $5.00 in the parking lot of the grocery store. Mama doesn’t know I found $5.00 so I am saving it to buy her a special birthday present next month. I am thinking of wearing my hair up just in case he puts his arm around my shoulders my hair won’t get pulled, those kinds of things are important think ahead of. Who knows he just might try to kiss me, oh how I hope he does.
Mama said not to let him get fresh on a first date and that we need to learn about each other first. What is there to know, he is dreamy, drives a beat up truck to school every day. He brings his sister and brother to the middle school before coming to the high school every day. So I know he is a good brother, I see him drive his Mama to the grocery store and to church every Sunday. They go to the church across from the diner Papa likes to take us to after church once a month, I don’t particularly like their food but I go just for the chance to see George one extra day a month.

Oh look at the time, I need to get dressed and do my hair.
I’ll tell you all about my date tomorrow, eek I’m excited!

Patty

Thank you for reading First Date, I hope you enjoyed this short story. If you enjoy what I am writing please leave a comment and share this post with your friends.

Until next time

~Kristen

Sailor Girl

In another installment of story time. A fictional story I made up about a dress I have in my shop.

Just like the yellow sister dresses I found this pretty sailor girl dress at a flea market, I instantly fell in love with it and made sure it came home with me. This pretty is already listed in my shop, you can check out the listing here.

Sailor Girl

Daddy just bought a yacht much to Mama’s dismay, she told him not to but he never listens and buys what he wants. A new boat means new boating clothes and Mama ever the proper one made sure I was dressed in the best. She found my new sailor dress at Lazarus on a freshly brought in rack of clothes. I do have to say of all the sailor dresses I’ve had to wear this is my favorite. It is an off white dress with blue trim and red sailor knot bow in the front, plus the fabric is this so I won’t be too hot out in the sun. Mama said it was A Kate Greenaway Keepsake dress, I don’t know who that is but I hear she is a great designer of children’s clothes and Mama said I should be honored to wear one of her creations. I mean it is a nice dress and all but it is still just a dress. Now my friend Betty, her Mama sews all of her clothes and she always has the best looking dresses in school well at least I think so.

Today we are heading to the yacht club now that Daddy bought a yacht we are now card carrying members of the yacht club. It seems a little pretentious to me but I’ll go anyways because I heard that Burt Conway’s Dad owns a yacht and I want to see if our yacht is bigger than his so I can hold that over Burt’s head when he is mean to Betty. I asked Mama if Betty could come with us today but she told me maybe next time because she was afraid Betty would embarrass her for some reason. I don’t see why she would I mean I’m usually the one that embarrasses her. Accidents just kind of find me. Just last weekend after church I was walking slowly and lady like to the car like Mama is always instructing me to and I tripped over a large rock and landed face first into a big mud puddle. I was covered from head to toe in mud and gross water,  put a hole in my new stockings and my shoes squished when I walked in them.

Daddy is very understanding of my clumsiness, he usually holds my hand when we go somewhere in case I do fall he can catch me. On Sunday he skipped church and went to buy a yacht much to Mama’s chagrin.
The yacht is beautiful, all white with gold stripes down it. It’s tall to, I think it has 3 levels in it Daddy said, I really don’t care about that. I just love to sail, Daddy always takes me sailing on the weekends during the summer. Sometimes we go out for a few days and come home all sunburned, when that happens Mama usually throws a fit since young ladies of 10 aren’t suppose to be sunburned and look like a pirate. I don’t know where Mama gets these silly ideals but I go along with them for the most part because it is just easier than fighting with her.

Thank you for reading another one of my stories, I hope to be bringing more of those to the blog soon.

Until next time,
~Kristen

The Sister Dresses

This past fall while at a flea market I found this set of yellow cotton sister dresses. So adorable and the price was right that they just had to come home with me, if only I had 2 girls close enough together to have them wear them but alas my oldest is a 11 and the youngest is 18 months old. While I was photographing these I kept wondering about the girls who originally wore them. So I decided to come up with my story. This story is completely fictional and original to me.

The Sister Dresses

Mama, Patty and I went shopping for some new Easter dresses since Mama didn’t have the time to make new dresses for us since she started her new job as an office clerk for Papa’s dentist office. She made us try on 6 or 7 dresses before settling between a soft buttery yellow and a pair of pink dresses. Patty kept grabbing the pink dress in her size as she loves the color pink but I asked if we could get the yellow dresses instead. Mama said “Patty don’t cry please, we will get you the pink dress next time sweetheart but for Easter you must wear yellow this year.”

Patty always gets what she wants, so imagine my surprise when Mama chose the yellow dresses like I asked. I knew if I asked if we could get different colored dresses that she would say no because Mama insists that we match for every holiday. For Christmas Mama made us wear dark green plaid, I hate green and I hate plaid. I looked like a human gift complete with a giant red bow on the top of my head. I almost had to walk sideways through doorways so I wouldn’t knock my bow off the top of my head it was so large. Patty of course just loved that stupid big bow, I took mine off and threw it in the back of the closet when Mama told us to get ready for bed. Mama still asks what happened to that stupid bow, after I threw it in the back of the closet I haven’t seen it since and I did try to look for it. I’m pretty sure there are Borrowers living in our house as we are always losing socks but that is a story for another time.

Well Mama got our dresses cleaned and starched for Easter Sunday, Patty and I wore little white gloves, white shoes and stockings and pearl necklace that Daddy got us for Christmas. Grandmother bought us matching yellow hats with small white daisies on the brim, I loved how I looked that Easter morning. Patty fussed the whole way to church because her dress was yellow not pink even though Mama bought our dresses 3 weeks ago. Papa finally got her settled down right before we pulled into the church parking lot.

After church we went to Grandmother’s house for Easter dinner and to hunt Easter eggs, we were very careful not to get our dresses dirty but Patty found some old lipstick and got a bit of it on her dress and Mama was not happy. Between Mama and Grandmothers tricks to get lipstick out but that was one stubborn stain.

Only I got to wear my dress one other time after that Easter and it was to church in June, I grew out of my dress after that. I’ll never forget that Easter and my yellow dress.

The end.

Until Next time,

~Kris
http://www.kvclothing.com

The Polishing Project

Several years ago while perusing Pinterest, I found this image of silver trays and bowls being displayed. I immediately fell in love and started my search for silver trays (silver plated really) so could do my own wall display. Needless to say I don’t have nearly enough trays but I have a start to my own wall display. I even have a tray kind of like the one in the middle of the picture that I picked up at a thrift store for a $1.00, what a bargain.

Image Courtesy of Dishfunctional Designs 

The down side to silver or silver plated anything is the black patina that it seems to accumulate, now I love a good patina I just don’t like the black stuff I feel like it is dirty.
So with the help of a few other vintage shop owners I was pointed towards using a chrome cleaner as it will not scratch the silver yet is effective in polishing the silver. After a quick trip to Napa Auto Store, I was pointed in the direction of Nevr-Dull. I started off polishing some silverware that was in desperate need of a good polishing to see how well it worked and if the money was well spent. Obviously it was. A can of Nevr-Dull was approximately $8.00 for the can.

The spoon on the right didn’t look to bad before I started polishing it, I thought it was literally a golden color. Imagine my surprise when I behold the beauty of the polished piece. Don’t get me wrong I still liked the patina on the spoon on the right but as I am going to attempt to list them this week they needed to be polished.

So lets get back to trays. This circle tray was pretty grody and has some serious gunk on it that I still need to get off but I was amazed at the difference halfway through polishing it.

The difference was noticeable immediately.

This oval tray is just beautiful and one I can’t wait to display some day. This tray I tried to do a few different pictures as I cleaned it but sometimes polishing got distracting so they aren’t the best quality photographs.

Before Picture

Before Picture

Just the edge

. Just the edge is polished in this picture, it looks brighter already.

The rim 

The whole rim of the platter is polished, you can still see the gunky along the sides.

Finished Product

The finished product turned out beautiful. Like I said before I probably need to do another session of polishing to get a few of the harder to remove spots off. Overall I’m very pleased with how this platter turned out and I’m planning on serving my Thanksgiving turkey on it.

Until Next Time,
~Kristen

This listing process

Good heavens I haven’t written a post since September. Between homeschooling, soccer, preschool, business and my husband’s activities which included running for our county Recorder office. He won by the way. Our lives have been crazy busy, but if you have been keeping tabs on the shop you should have noticed all of the new listings I’ve been busy working on.

Several weeks ago I took somewhere between 500 pictures that required editing and listing, it evened out to be about 100 new pieces for the shop. I try to take 5 photographs of each item to show all the angles and important trappings.

I’m going to talk about the process I go through for a piece after I have acquired it.

Cleaning: I clean almost every garment even if it is just a freshening up.

Steaming: I steam the wrinkles out of everything, I never use an iron on my clothing. Mostly due to the fact irons and I don’t get along, plus when I use my steamer I get the added bonus of a facial.

Photograph: As I stated before I try to get take at least 5 photographs of each piece to show every angle, imperfection,  what makes it unique, label etc. I then take my camera home and edit all of those lovely pictures I took, usually just cropping them a bit and resize them a tad.

Measure: I measure every piece and hand write my listing out in a notebook that comes to the studio and home with me. I have filled 2 notebooks already and I’m on my 3rd one for this year. I used to use bits of paper but I would lose them, so now I stick to notebooks. Plus if I ever happen to accidentally delete a listing, I can look through my notebooks and rewrite the listing out.

Research: Once I get my notebook home I go through and do research on each piece, if there is a brand label even better I try to find something comparable not only to help with SEO Tags but for price as well as history. I use the Vintage Fashion Guild daily as they have a lovely Label Resource and are just a great resource for all things vintage clothing related.

List:  Once all of that work is done, I get to go through Etsy to list this is where my handy dandy notebook comes out. Once I have something listed I draw a diagonal line through that listing and write the amount I have it listed for so I know it is done.

This isn’t a very sophisticated procedure but it works for me until I can find a more efficient way to list which will probably come in once I get a computer up in the studio for me to work from.

Until Next Time,
~Kristen

A Sewing Wish

Sometimes I wish I could sew as well as my Mom and Nana Janet, especially when I am listing vintage sewing patterns and I find one that I really would love to be made into something for me instead of listing it in my Etsy shop.
Today was one of those days as I listed several new vintage patterns, as I looked at the pattern imaging how the dress would look on myself I realized I need to learn to sew well. I can do basic stitches, patches and buttons but my skills of sewing from a pattern is sorely lacking.

Perhaps I should start attending the sewing lessons my daughter takes in the winter time as she will be starting on patterns soon from what I have been told by her sewing instructor.  I remember my Mom driving to Steubenville Ohio to learn to sew when I was a small child and with that knowledge she would sew my siblings and I new clothes. My favorite thing she ever made me was a pair on white and yellow striped pants. However the second time I wore them my brother punched me in the nose and I bled all over them before I could get a paper towel. Sadly the blood stain never came out, but I remember those pants fondly.

~Kris