Addicted to Esty

Why does it seem like these things always come in waves?  A friend of mine, posted on facebook that she and her mother were going to start selling headscarves on Etsy.  I checked out her page, and it turns out her stuff is AWESOME, so I totally bought one, then another one.

Then, my beautiful and stylish friend Melissa posted a picture of herself wearing the most fabulous Steampunk Houndstooth scarf I've ever seen.

Gorgeous!

So yeah.  The Etsy shop where she got this: Flutter, was having a 70% off sale and I'm not made of stone!  So I bought two (I told you, I always buy two of things), but they're totally cheap and unique, and, as Melissa pointed out--Made in the USA!  In fact, when I ordered my headscarf from my friend Rayna, she even sent me a personal message on facebook.  I mention all this because it reminds me a bit of when I was in San Diego at the zoo.

The San Diego Zoo is world famous (they put that on all the signs, so it must be true), and it is wildly overpriced.  It was $40 to get in.  That's $40 for everyone--very young, very old, students, doesn't matter.  That $40 gets you a whole day's worth of animal viewing including pandas that were actually awake, and the chance to have a chat with knowledgeable zoo keepers (I asked if the pandas actually have sex, or if they have to artificially inseminate them, which seems like a weird question until you learn that the pandas at San Diego Zoo are the ONLY pandas in zoos anywhere in the world who actually have sex with each other.  Pandas are so weird--adorable, but weird).  Plus, on everything in the zoo that was for sale, they included the line "More than 85 percent of every dollar you give will go toward the San Diego Zoo's wildlife conservation efforts."  So those wildly overpriced socks that I bought will help conserve wild spaces and save endangered species!  Worth it!

I think Etsy appeals to a person's charitable side, albeit in a less overt way.  If I buy another headscarf, I'm not only getting a gorgeous, hand-made product that will make me look good, I'm supporting Rayna and her  mom instead of some greedy corporate machine like Wal-Mart or something.  It's like the new push for Small-Business Saturday, which now follows Black Friday.

The trick is, to not let this line of thinking lure me into spending more money on stuff I don't need just because buying it makes me feel good.  It's still shopping, after all.  For my xmas shopping this year, I'm going to do what I normally do, and that is start at Craftland. Craftland is a treasure trove of home-made crafty goods that are actually awesome (not like the home-made ceramics statuettes my Aunt Betty used to make and give as gifts), like this t-shirt I bought last year:

Everything is made by local artists, there's an incredible variety of stuff and it's just fun to go there.  Plus, I always secretly hope that I'll be walking around in a fabulous scarf or accessory of some kind, and someone will come up to me and say, "that scarf you're wearing, I made it, I'm glad you like it". That never happens at Old Navy.