GARAGE SALE AMERICA by Bruce Littlefield

As the approach of fall settles across America, you've got to wonder...do I really need all this stuff in my house? Or vice versa...OMG! My home needs something unique & special because it looks just like the latest catalog of Pottery Barn! Well, buyer & seller beware, Bruce Littlefield, author of GARAGE SALE AMERICA, has just written the perfect book on how to garage sale shop America like a pro. What? Are you kidding? A book on garage sale shopping? No! This isn't a joke. Everyone needs help and shopping a garage sale can be one of the most frantic shopping experiences that a girl can face! This quarky book is nothing short of a hiring a professional garage sale shopper to help you sort out all the issues that could potentially come up. On top of that, Bruce did his homework. With a thousand dollars in his pocket and a map to America, he struck out across America in search of garage sales and the people behind them. There really was no better way to for him to collect, research, and organize some of the best tips that this country has got to offer.

One surprising element of this book, is that his garage sale expedition is also a wonderful cultural record of America today. But, don't forget at the heart of this book is a wonderful guide to shopping and hosting garage sales. It is packed with tips on how to buy and sell anything and everything that ends up on the table. 

Ultimately, garage sale shopping is a passion. It's the journey that's the destination, as they say. Get swept up in this sweet and happy style guide to shopping at on your neighbor's lawn. This is one book, unlike the brass elephant lamp sitting next to your bed, that you'll never ever want to part with!

 

The Interview

Bruce Littlefield loves to design, garden, write, and laugh. It'll be evident in this interview that his style and advice is every bit as charming as his wit.

1.    Bruce, you are an American culture expert and a garage sale king. How do you know if you’ve got junk on your hands or treasure? 

If you can't remember where you got it, what it is, or if you've been saying you'll fix it for more than a year... IT’S JUNK!  Value is what it's worth to you. And, I find that only things with a story (or gold content) are actually valuable to me. For example, a shell that a wild dolphin dropped in my hand and my grandfather's wedding ring have such value to me that I could never part with them, even though they probably have very little monetary value.

2.    Have you ever come across something that shouldn’t have been sold like a personal letter found inside a book?  If so, what did you do about it?

Human hair and Preparation H. I've seen both at garage sales and both grossed me out. The human hair was a woman's family collection, each envelope was marked "Little Timmy, 1936" and "Uncle Fred, 1940." Asking price, $35.  The Preparation H was partially used!!!!!!!  It was going for a quarter. Both, I had to pass up. As for finding letters, I love when things like that are sold.  They have new life. I think the writer would be thrilled to have a new reader, especially if she's dead!

 

3.    I know people that hold onto everything for dear life because “one day it’s going to be worth something!”  What advice do you have for pack racks?

Unless it's your grandma's wedding china, get rid of it. Look, only things that mean something to you are worth something...Otherwise, let it mean something to someone else. Don't be scared to even let go of a family heirloom if you think it's going to the right person. I'm always amazed at the notion of keeping something in a sealed box, like a Barbie, hoping that one day it will be "worth something."  That poor little girl that has to stare at that thing and not play with her. Can you imagine the torture? {He laughs} Get that babe out of the box! Don't try to start a museum..Mattel will take care of that!

 

4.    When does garage shopping become an obsession? For example, I lived in Chicago and it just so happens that the garage sale shopping was extremely awesome.  Now after a few months of this, I realized that I had issues with collecting table service. I mean I could serve a party of thirty! What advice do you have on collecting objects from garage sales in which you only have one opportunity to buy?

I talk in the book about the "one that got away." There's nothing worse! It eats away at you like a bad dream.  My advice is...If it's a good price, grab it.  Then, host a brunch for 30! Your friends will love you, and if a piece gets broken, you're not crying.

 

5.    After the spirit of the hope-based adventure (as you call it in the book) dies down and you’re left with a bunch of stuff, what is the best way to integrate new garage sale finds into your home?

 There are two ways:  First,immediately start using the things that are useful, like glassware, tablecloths, fancy espresso makers. Second, find what things give you emotional satisfaction and decorate around it. In the book, I talk about the old kid's camp truck.  It belonged to a kid named "Butch."  I designed the guest room in my house around it.  Guests love to stay in the room I call "Butch."  Everything in there is for a kid and it's so much fun!

 

Bonus Question!!
Is there any object in America that you are praying to find sitting on a garage sale table? Is so, can you tell us what it is and what you would do with it?

Keep your hands off the Franciscan Starburst dishes!!! Sold only in jewelry stores in the 50s and 60s. My grandmother and her friend Reba collected it and gave it to me. I adore it and finding a piece at a garage sale is equal to a mountain climber topping everest or a gold miner yelling, "Eureka!"

With that, enjoy one of the last perfect weekend's in September. Host a garage sale or visit one, but make sure that you've got a copy of Garage Sale America in your hands! It'll help you unload or acquire all the riches and wonders of the world!

Watch Bruce on the Today Show talking about Garage Sale Shopping!

Need immediate help on eliminating clutter? Watch this!

IT'S A BREAKUP, NOT A BREAKDOWN by Lisa Steadman

Every woman has experience the Big Breakup. You know the one. It
shakes our foundation, sends us running for cover, and makes us feel like
we never want to fall in love again. And even though it’s
a devastating natural disaster, after all the
mind-numbing, soul-stirring, heart-wrenching pain comes the pleasure: in
rediscovering yourself and your amazing life, of relishing in your
girlfriends’ company, and of eventually meeting someone new  --
someone who would have gone unmet had you not done through your breakup
in the first place.







Enter Lisa Steadman, a multiple breakup survivor, who shows you
just how to reinvent your breakup -- and your life.




No more
wallowing, no more  “woe is me,” no more Sex &
The City
reruns.  With Steadman’s help, this celebratory survival guide
helps
you see your Big Breakup not as a breakdown but as an opportunity to
break up with a relationship that's no longer working and move on.
With her Movin’ On plan, this breakup promises to be the first
day
of the rest of your relationship life!



Breakups are inevitable life situations. Every woman has had at least one major breakup! The trouble is that many woman haven't got their head wrapped around the positive effects of a breakup. Lisa Steadman's book is a fantastic breakup guidebook for women of all ages & all types of relationships. Modern Girl Style insists that this book is a must for woman. Buy it, put it between your dictionary & thesaurus because it's a rockin resource book that will help you through those trying times!

The Interview

1. What started your website The Breakup Chronicles? Was the leap from
your website to your first book, It’s a BreakUp, Not a BreakDown, an
easy transition?

I started my website after going through a really
difficult breakup. I knew I needed to breakup with this person – he
wasn’t the right guy for me but I was so afraid of the unknown.
Ultimately, I did breakup and decided to create a website where people
could share how breaking up with the wrong person is the right thing to
do. How ending the wrong relationship – whether you got dumped or did
the dumping – can be an amazing transformative experience that leads
you in the direction of your most fabulously authentic life. And as a
bonus, how eventually your breakups and lessons learned lead you to
your perfect partner.

2. The title of your book is fantastic! How did you name your book?

I’d love to take the credit but my publisher came up with the title. And I absolutely love it!

3. If break-up pain is universal, then what are 3 universal cures for a broken heart?


1.
You absolutely must create distance from your ex – if you have to stay
in touch (if you have kids, etc), you need new boundaries. No booty
calls!
2. You need a support system, aka your Boo-Hoo Crew to help you thru the initial pain
3. Give yourself time to mourn the loss, aka celebrate your slump

4.
How can women in low-points in their current relationships understand
the difference between needing to wake up, break up, and move on versus
needing to work out relationship issues?

(Adam Sandler in the Wedding Singer)





This is incredibly
subjective. What I tell people is that if they have tried to make
change in their relationship, and still the bad outweighs the good,
that may be a sign to move on vs. continue working on it. However,
change is hard and walking away from a relationship is hard. What I
find is that people don’t make these kinds of relationship changes
until it’s more painful not to.

5. The Breakup Chronicles is
giving readers a sneak peak at The Breaking up with Bad Love Habits
Program. Is this your next project? If not, can you give Modern Girl
Style a glimpse into what we can expect from you in the future?



This
is a project I am so passionate about! I just finished an e-book which
will be available on my site very soon. And I offer coaching as well.
Basically, the Bad Love Habits program takes people on a step by step
approach to help them identify their limiting relationship beliefs,
reframe them, and then guides them on how to recreate a happy and
healthy view of love and relationships. I was my very first client in
the program and it definitely works! I am now very happily hooked up
with my perfect partner, thanks to the work I did.

(Woody Allen's Annie Hall)





Bonus Question!!!
What women do you admire for their strength, courage, and ability to rebound into happier & healthier lives?

I
admire women who triumph over adversity and come out stronger and
better than before. Arianna Huffington, Oprah, Hilary Clinton, Tina
Turner.

ONE DANCE IN PARIS by Julia Holden & Author Interview

The Book

Sometimes, the less you’re wearing, the more you’re hiding…

Linda Stone is a tomboy waitress taking orders from snobbish Harvard students in Julia Holden’s second novel ONE DANCE IN PARIS. She’ll be the first to admit that her life is less than fabulous and that’s before she gets caught arrested for riding in someone else’s car. Her home life isn’t much better with her distant father who never reveals a single word about her dead mother.  However, everything changes the day that a mystery package arrives in the mail from Las Vegas that includes a picture of her mother dressed in a showgirl outfit.  With Linda’s father still choosing to be tight lipped about her mother’s history, the package grabs her curiosity so intently that she dashes off to Vegas to find out what ever the truth might hold. Luck must be on Linda’s side. People crawl out of the woodwork to tell Linda about her mother and the guarded family secret. Once she’s deep into the family mystery, Linda has to make a choice between her aimless existences in Boston or being a seductive Sabrina-like woman that falls in love with a man she meets in Paris.  Will Linda learn how to love her self and the man that puts everything on the line for her? The odds look good. But, you never know when you’re talking about showgirls, the Folie Bergere, and dance acts only fit for the Moulin Rouge!   

In glamorous show-stopping form, Julia Holden deftly tells the story of a woman who is search of her mother’s history and her own identity. As bits and pieces of her mother’s life begin to reveal glittering performances, Linda Stone and the reader begin to understand the importance of showgirls, dance, femininity, and sensuality. ONE DANCE IN PARIS is a magnificent book on the spirit of femininity, the art of seduction, and the power of women.  Get inspired to follow Linda Stone on a journey from Boston to Paris.  This book is so sweetly written that you might even be signed up for dancing classes by the end of the book. ONE DANCE IN PARIS proves that anything is possible, anything.

Meet Julia Holden

Or is it Julia Holden? Yes, Julia Holden is a pseudonym.  Her biography states that she works in Hollywood and had been an executive at a major Hollywood Motion Picture Studio. The only thing that the reader can know for certain is that this lovely talented writer is likes hot tropical climates, since she admits to a recent location to Hawaii, and that she is deeply devoted to travel, fashion, and drinking good wines, the evidence is in the writing. So, consider yourself lucky! You're about to get an insider's look into the world of Julia Holden...

 
1.    Linda Stone, the heroine of your second novel, ONE DANCE IN PARIS, discovers her own femininity through the discovery of her exceptional family history. How did you discover this tough-edged character and create the story of such a remarkable transformation?

From the start, I was concerned that Linda be nothing like Jane Stuart, the main character of my first novel, A DANGEROUS DRESS.  The two books have some superficial similarities – both protagonists are launched on their journeys by discovering glamorous garments from their families’ pasts – so I wanted to make sure the main characters were very different.  Jane is sweet, breezy, funny, basically a good girl who gets caught up in a fabulous whirlwind and just hangs on for the ride.  My publisher, my editor and I all wanted Linda to be someone very distinct, which led to her starting out her story with this angry, edgy attitude about the mother she never knew.  She’s certainly not a “good girl,” when it comes to sex, or anything else.  And she begins the book with just a dreadful self-image.  Starting from there gave her enormous room to grow and evolve.  By slowly discovering who her mother was, she gets to figure out who she is, too.  And along the way, gradually, she starts to appreciate how special she herself really is.  I adore the character, and it was really rewarding being able to help her find herself.

2.    From Las Vegas showgirl costumes to shopping at Parisian department stores, Linda Stone manages to shop everywhere. How does fashion play into your story?

Now that you mention it, I guess there is a lot of shopping.  That goes for my first book, too, so I suppose some of it is just a reflection of the fact that I love to shop.

But there’s more to it than that.  We all know the adage, “You are what you wear.”  Linda starts out wearing ugly T-shirts and skinny boy jeans because that’s how she sees herself.  As her self-image starts to improve, for the first time in her life, she begins to conceive of herself as attractive – and buying pretty things helps convince her that she really is pretty.  But ultimately, I think the book turns into more a story of “You wear what you are.”  By the time Linda is ready to put on her mother’s infamous, nearly naked “costume” from the Folies Bergere, she doesn’t need to hide behind pretty clothes.  She has figured out that SHE is fabulous, inside and out.  I think that’s why she’s finally willing to confront the world wearing … well, almost nothing.

3.    Your biography states that you’ve never taken a single writing class except one in high school that was taught by none other than Frank McCourt, author of Angela’s Ashes.  Were there any lessons that he taught that directly impacted your writing life?

I can think of at least four things I learned from him, two of which came from his class, and two later. 

First, I remember very distinctly, he told us that to be a writer, YOU HAVE TO WRITE.  That may sound obvious, but it’s not.  He urged us to write, as often as we could, and to be disciplined about it.  Every cab driver in Los Angeles will tell you that he has a great idea for a screenplay.  And maybe some of those ideas really are great.  But until you sit down in front of a computer screen night after night wrestling with structure and dialogue and figuring out how the hell to fix your second act, you’re not a writer, buddy.  (That lesson came in very handy during the writing of ONE DANCE IN PARIS – see my answer to your next question!)

Second, he was a wonderful storyteller.  He loved to talk, and there was a gorgeous music to everything that came out of his mouth.  I think the lesson I learned was that, first and foremost, writing should be storytelling.  Brilliant prose is great, but it’s not enough.  If a writer isn’t telling a story her readers will care about, she’s not doing her job.

Third is a lesson I learned from his success with ANGELA’S ASHES.  That was his first book, and I think he was 65 years old when it was published.  So he was a great inspiration to all of us who somehow didn’t manage to become 20-something wunderkinds.  My first novel wasn’t published until I was (let’s put this discretely) past 40, yet Frank’s success made me feel like I was ahead of the game!

Finally, as a teacher, he was just the nicest man.  He cared about his students.  He wrote college recommendations for me, and for a lot of other kids.  So his success was a nice object lesson that, at least once in a while, nice guys really do finish first.

4.    What was your writing process like for this book? How long did it take for you to write it?

It’s like they say on TV:  Don’t try this at home.  There were a lot of things going on in my life at the time, personal and professional (meaning my day job), and I was incredibly pressed for time.  But we had published A DANGEROUS DRESS at the start of July 2006, and my publisher wanted to keep the same release date for 2007.  So I ended up writing ONE DANCE IN PARIS, evenings and weekends, in the space of two months flat.  It was grueling.  Exhausting.  Insane.  And exhilarating.  Frankly, I suspect that the emotional intensity of the book derives from the intensity of writing it.

5.    ONE DANCE IN PARIS is a beautiful blend of the glittering high-heel seductive shows like Folies Bergere.  Do you think that showgirls, from Josepine Baker to the infamous dancers of the Moulin Rouge, continue to inspire our culture today? If so, why?

That’s an interesting question.  Yes, I think we continue to be influenced by showgirls – as evidenced, for example, by the success of the movie Moulin Rouge.  (And if readers want my opinion of that movie, they’ll have to read ONE DANCE IN PARIS!)  I think we are intrigued and inspired by the power and perfection and sensuality of those figures.  But the showgirls who influence us, as icons of style and sex, are all figures from the past.  Sure, modern-day showgirls are still popular in Las Vegas, but they certainly aren’t the iconic figures they once were.

That’s probably because showgirls used to be considered extremely naughty and daring.  When Josephine Baker danced in a costume made of bananas and not much else, she pretty much set Paris on fire.  Nowadays, though, skin and sex are so commonplace, I’m not sure anybody would notice.  I think old-time showgirls were a lot like old-time movie stars: they were so enthralling because there was still some mystery left.  Today, thanks to bloggers and paparazzi and whatnot, we know way too much about our movie stars, and I think that makes them far less interesting.

Maybe there’s still hope, though.  Maybe someone will read ONE DANCE IN PARIS and be inspired to resurrect the Folies Bergere and find a headliner who’ll be sexual and mysterious, and who can still make all of Paris burn.  Now THAT’S a show I would pay to see.

Bonus Question!!!
If you could suddenly be graced with the talent to dance, what style of dance would you most like to perform and where would you like to perform?

That’s easy. 

I would be a member of the New York City Ballet, I would dance at Lincoln Center in New York, and, if I had my way, I would dance nothing but the amazing, perfect ballets choreographed by George Balanchine.  Sigh.  If only.

Which I guess is a giveaway of my intention, someday, in some shape or form, to write a ballet book.  If I can’t dance it, perhaps writing it will be the next best thing.

Modern Girl Style is looking forward to more work from Julia Holden - that much is certain!