My vintage style gifts / Τα παλιομοδίτικα δώρα μου

Vassiliki is one of my best friends and of course she knows I adore everything vintage or vintage style. She currently lives in Aachen - Germany but she often comes to Greece. At the moment she 's here again and look what cute gifts she brought me.



Two replicas of old advertising tins, ready to hang



and two victorian children figures made of cardboard. I have something in mind about what to do with them.

I love getting this kind of gifts!

My favorite kitchen item

No, it's not my Tupperware collection, nor my 50s style Smeg refrigerator because I can't afford one. It's my tiny empty tomato pulp cans. Nothing rare or special but I love their old fashioned style and their red color. I buy them in the super-market for less than 0,50 equally for their outside and their inside. They are produced by and old greek canning factory and I am glad they never "modernized" or "renovated" this package, I hope they 'll never do. I have them standing on my window sill next to a vintage tin box of the coffee I drink.





Here ΄s another kitchen decorated with vintage style cans.

The photo is taken from an old issue of greek magazine Inside.

Turquoise earrings

Back in the eighties when big, plastic, bad taste jewelry was in fashion, a different kind of jewelry shop opened in my neighborhood in Athens. It sold beautiful, handmade, elegant, imaginative, artistic jewelry, made mainly of sterling silver and gemstones - it was too early for the mixed media trend in jewelry making. I don't want to say that I was so sophisticated that time, as a teenager I wore what most girls wore those years, but when I first entered this shop it was like entering a new world. Every time we visited with my mother, usually when we wanted to buy a "good" present, I wished that there were a lot of people shopping at the moment, so that the lady who owned the shop would delay to take care of us and I would take my time to enjoy all the fine, amazing things in there. Sometimes I believe that this thing I have for jewelry began in there. In the summer when I was 13 my mother bought me that sweet pair of earrings made of sterling silver and turquoise chips in some kind of transparent medium - resin maybe. I loved them and wore them a lot until I forgot them in the depths of some drawer. I rediscovered them a few years ago and started wearing them again. The shop doesn't exist anymore but it is amazing how fresh the earrings look after almost 24 years. And they always remind me of summer.

Grandma's hair barette

If you ever become a regular visitor to this blog you will soon find out how much I love old things. But not only old, even those that just have a vintage style. But the ones that truly come from the past, I really adore them. They bear an irresistible charm on them. They belong to times where people took the time to create beautiful handmade things of great craftmanship just because mass production was an unknown word.

I have such an object which I keep like a treasure. It's my grandma's hair barette. I don't know if it has any real money value but for me it's precious. My grandma (who has passed the way) was born circa 1905 and lived most of her life in Constantinople.This hair barette belonged to her when she was a child so you see it's an antique. It is hand carved and made of tortoiseshell. I love the design, it looks so romantic. I like to think how precious this object would be to a girl in a time that big stores full of women accessories sounded like science fiction. Isn't it just beautiful?