Owl Really Featured on Thrift Core

I am so excited to announce that my little booth was featured on Thrift Core! I have been faithfully reading Thrift Core for over a year - Van is such a great communicator and she has so many helpful tips on selling vintage! She is very inspirational and I was so honored when she asked if she could feature my booth and some tips from ME!


You can read the post here - be sure to add Thrift Core to your daily reads. It is GREAT!

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Google Reader Replacement: The Old Reader

Probably by now you've heard that Google Reader is going away this summer. A lot of people have been scrambling to find a replacement that works similarly - have you found your replacement yet?


I have! I have been using The Old Reader for a month or two and I really like it. It looks almost exactly like Google Reader and functions the same way too - you can use j, k, and the spacebar to navigate through your posts just like in Google Reader. You can group subscriptions, save them, and even share them. The Old Reader has a social media aspect to it in which you can add friends and share posts with them.

A lot of people are switching to BlogLovin, which is great, but it doesn't allow you to import Craigslist subscriptions, which I would have a hard time not following!

If you haven't found your replacement yet, I hope this helps! There are some very visual options out there,but I just wanted a very straightforward text-based RSS reader and found what I was looking for in The Old Reader!

If you're new to Owl Really, welcome! Please check out my favorite posts and consider subscribing! :)

The Kindness of Bloggers

I've been faithfully blogging for almost 2 years now and I have met and corresponded with some amazing people! I want to share just a few of those people because I've been the recipient of some awesome kindness from bloggers lately!

First up, I won this awesome giveaway from Betty Crafter! She has a love for crewelwork (like me!) and she even developed her OWN crewel pattern inspired by some of the most popular vintage patterns. I am so impressed by her talent! She held a giveaway on her blog and I was so ecstatic to win! I am completely intimidated by the project but I hope to work up the gumption to start it soon.


Secondly, through my mom, I was introduced to Robelyn of Redneck Chic. She is SO crafty - I don't think there's anything she can't do! She recently visited Nashville and she stopped by my booth at the antique mall and LEFT ME A PRESENT! What! She is so kind and thoughtful!!! Check out this awesome messenger bag she made!!


And finally, the oh-so-wonderful Eartha Kitsch opened up her garage to me, Lisa, and Rae and let us raid a stash of amazing vintage items that she was getting rid of. We could take as much as we wanted! It was like a vintage-lover's dream come true! I came home with 4 boxes full of awesome things, some of which you can sorta spy in this photo. I was running out of daylight and wanted to pack everything safely, so I was working like a madwoman to transfer and wrap the breakables into rubbermaid tubs.


Amazing, right????

I feel so thankful to be in such a kind and generous community!

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Owl Really: New Blog Design!

I am so excited to have my first professional blog design! I play with Photoshop and designing and with all the tweaks I have made over the past year, my blog looked like a mish-mash of designs. I wanted something sleek and professional, so I contacted Kaelah and she worked me into her schedule! I love her design work and Honeybean and I'm so honored to be one of her clients!

Blog before:




Blog after:



It is much cleaner and sleek. I love it! Feel free to click here to see it full-size and in action if you are reading in an RSS reader!

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Blog Crush: Elise of enJOY it

Not to sound like a blog stalker, but I wanted to introduce you to a new blog crush of mine!

I'm not sure how to put this, but there are a lot of blogs in the world and there are many bloggers whose lives seem so perfect that they can make you feel badly about yourself. (Sidenote: if someone makes you feel that way, unsubscribe! Don't put yourself through that!)

Elise Blaha is not one of those bloggers, though! I found her blog last month and have been super impressed with her outlook on life and her unique content. She is so crafty and I am so inspired by all her projects.

She writes in a very down to earth manner and is honest about struggles and life. She doesn't try to make her life seem like a magical, perfectly stylized fairytale but you can tell she genuinely wants to enjoy life among beauty and things that make her happy.

Also, I aspire to have as many plants as she does. :) She has the upper-hand though, living in Southern California with great weather and tons of light filtering into her house!

Check out her blog and dig around and find a new project to tackle!

If you're new to Owl Really, welcome! Please check out my favorite posts and consider subscribing! :)

Bloggers at the Dress Barn!

Recently, Lisa from My Pretty Baby Cried She Was a Bird emailed a few of us local vintage bloggers because she had been invited to a bloggers' night out at our brand new Dress Barn. None of us really knew what to expect, but we were super excited for the opportunity to all meet! I had met Rae, Rae had met Eartha, and Rae and Lisa had seen each other at estate sales but never met. It was so, so fun to all hang out!

The Dress Barn ladies were super sweet and the new store at Opry Mills (our outlet mall that just re-opened after the flood of May 2010) is beautiful! We had a lot of fun hanging out in the dressing room!

Dressing room shot! Me, Rae, Eartha, and Lisa.

With their purchases! Eartha bought a really cute handbag, Rae got an awesome tiki-style dress, and both Lisa and I picked up some new shades.

Here's Rae with her fun new dress!

We also got to meet Adrienne of What Lola Wants! It was so fun to hang out and be girly!

Lisa recapped our time together here and is giving away a $25 gift card to Dress Barn! Eartha, Rae and Adrienne also wrote about our blogger meet-up!

Have you had a chance to meet any of your blog friends? It's a blast!!

If you're new to Owl Really, welcome! Please check out my favorite posts and consider subscribing! :)

Do You Have Alt Envy?

If you're like me, a lot of the blogs you read have been doing amazing Alt Summit recaps and you've been living vicariously through your blog friends while trying to tame your Alt Envy.

(If you haven't heard of Alt Summit, it's an amazing blog/design conference in Salt Lake City. It just took place last week and the internet has been abuzz about how incredible it was!)

We are so lucky that in this digital age, we can still learn from Alt even though we weren't there. Here are some of my favorite round ups and wrap ups from Alt!

photo by b.a.d. photography

My friend Heather of Joy Of All Crafts attended Alt Summit and posted notes from the various panels she attended. Check out Successful Collaborations / Building Relationship with Ad Networks / From Blog To Book.

She also got the chance to interview my favorite* designer, Emily Henderson! Read the interview here!

Dottie and Alix from Modern Kiddo posted a great recap full of beautiful and super fun photos from their time at Alt!

photo by b.a.d. photography

Danni from oh, hello friend posted a recap of Alt with a ton of great blogging tips.

Nicole from Making It Lovely created a Storify page for the Twitter conversations happening during her panel, Growing a Readership. You can learn a lot from this conversation!

photo by justin hackworth

Here's a great Pinterest board that also gathers lots of Alt Summit posts and you can see more Alt Summit recaps on the Alt Summit Blog!

I think the biggest lesson I've learned from the recaps is to be true to yourself and focus on relationships and not numbers.

Here's hoping I can go next year and experience it for myself and learn firsthand!

Did you go? Have you read great recaps? Let's talk Alt in the comments!


*Hahahah, wishful thinking! In your Google Reader, it probably said "my friend designer" but that is not the case, sadly! What a slip! I meant to write "favorite." :)

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