A Fresh New Look And Some Of The Past

Hello friends…here’s to the last days of January and a great week ahead. I’m so excited that my blog has a fresh new look, and I have been tweaking here over the weekend! I hope that you like it as much as I do…what do you think? I’m always striving to make…

French Santos Shabbyfufu

things easier for you to read and navigate and many of you are reading on mobile, so this should help.

Times change, and I think that it’s important not to keep up with the Joneses or be on on trend…but to be open to change. I’ll be coming up on my TEN year blog anniversary this summer. Wow…when did that happen and where did the years go?! I’ve removed the first few years of pretty lame content because it’s frankly just not very interesting. Let’s not even talk about my poor photography back then. Hah!

I was an early blogger who had to learn to do everything on her own. There weren’t many of us back then and social media wasn’t yet “a thing”, so we were able to focus on writing and photography and making friends with other bloggers. Many of the bloggers that I was indeed friendly with back in the day are sadly no longer on a blogging path. I miss them and comments that were plentiful and free flowing.

vintage book with lilacs

One of the first blogging books on the market back in those early days was Blogging For Bliss by my then friend Tara Frey. She fell off the radar and none of use knows what happened to her… perhaps it was blogger burnout. The book title hit home to most early bloggers who were blogging as creatives and artists and sharing our own work in our on-line journals of web-logs. My friend Rhoda of Southern Hospitality recently wrote a wonderful post on her ten year anniversary and although I didn’t know her back then, I can relate on many levels. We were all pioneers and yet we don’t want to become the dinosaurs of the blog world (or the real world:-), so we keep doing our thing.

shabby chic necklace by shabbyfufu

I have to be completely honest that I had no intentions of EVER starting a blog when I first hit PUBLISH in August of 2007. I was (and still am:-) an artist, a dreamer…that girl with her head halfway into the clouds who looks for beauty daily. I love the creative process and have dabbled in many arenas from painting to pottery, jewelry making to photography and more. I don’t consider myself to be a professional at anything, but I’m human and a woman who doesn’t mind putting herself out there in a judgmental world.

vintage pen and paper with lilacs

My writing skills can definitely use lots of tweaking, but the more that I put pen to paper (so to speak) I feel the words flowing as thoughts come out. I’m okay with that and am at peace with how I am now that I’ve gotten some years under my belt. Back to the origin of my blog and why I started…I was basically creating my own social media in a day when there was none.

blush vintage prom dress shabbyfufu

If you possibly know of me from way back in the late 1990’s I started selling beloved tattered vintage items on eBay. I was already a shop owner of my own little space in a now defunct local antique mall and when the web opened up the possibility to reach more people I found it fascinating! The yard sales were plentiful where I live back then and my good friend and business partner at the time would go out for half a day on Saturdays and hunt down the best vintage pieces. We put the larger furniture pieces in the shop and I photographed and sold the shippable items on eBay. I still create and you’ll find me on a much smaller scale in my ETSY SHOP.

french style child mannequins

After a few years websites for sellers came into being and I opened one under the name of SHABBYFUFU. That name was given to me via my friend and then business partner. I’m doing some rebranding right now and although I loved the moniker back then I don’t want to pigeonhole myself…but I’m not sure that I’ll actually change that. I still love vintage items and although I don’t often go yard sale-ing these days, there are treasured pieces in my home that are vintage. Shabby pieces that have a distinctively FRENCH FLAIR with PLENTY of PATINA and fufu:-)

It’s more difficult to find some of what I have nowadays and certainly more difficult to find as a seller that used to make great profits. Times change, styles change and the buyers that I had are mostly downsizing collections. The younger buyers are crushing on mid-century modern and boho…and those styles of my youth are making a comeback and what they seek out. My own look and aesthetic is decidedly French and with a love of French country and many past trips to France that isn’t likely to change. I’m going through my collections, scaling back, downsizing, selling and donating and updating my home to a modern French country design.

Time to update my blog as well and I hope that you enjoyed my little history lesson today. Honestly I didn’t intend to ramble on and I’ll be back soon with some fun posts planned!

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