Here’s an easy way to embellish your life, especially your living quarters, your wardrobe and your food. Simply add garnish.
Placing new (only on sale) or thrift-store found throw pillows on your couch, placing some art work above it and scattering antique books about can completely change and enhance your living room. Wearing a fun vintage rhinestone pin or wrapping a scarf around your neck or your waist - another way to inexpensively spruce up your wardrobe. Finally, you can make the meat loaf or the salmon sit pretty with some cucumber or radish flowers. All that it takes to garnish your life is some dedicated thrift shopping or a few more minutes spent in the kitchen with fresh produce.
Garnish your home:
I have been sprucing up my home and my wardrobe with thrift shop finds for many years. Pillows, especially needlework or vintage fabric, are fun to find and usually reasonably priced (about $3-$4 each). I always buy the unstained, good condition pillows, but there are cleaning products you can use if you find a pillow you can’t live without. Most all of the art work in my home has come by way of thrift shopping. I found 1950s Dali and Chagall lithographs, vintage film posters which now decorate my walls. Most of these prints were reasonably priced (less than $10 each) and much cheaper than purchasing online - although if there is an artist who uplifts you, most likely you can find him/her on the internet.
My daughter, the designer, likes to buy antique books for their covers and place them about her living room (beautifully covered antique books are much in demand by high-end designers for their clients’ homes). In this way, you can tell a book by its cover, because to the designers that’s all that counts. Placing books in your living room also adds an elegant or homey touch. I generally buy books for $1-2 each - again at thrift stores or library book stores.
Garnish your wardrobe:
I am a scarf collector. i favor the vintage long silk scarves (they cover a multitude of sins), but I generally purchase at thrift stores for artistic design and scarf designer. i found my favorite Pucci scarf at a thrift store (the only one I’ve run across in 20 years). But a vintage silk scarf, of fine quality, can be found in the $3-$4 range. Particularly popular are vintage scarves by Vera (especially if you love florals). These scarves, with handrolled edges, are generally of much higher quality than any knock-offs or even high-end new scarves, which sell for much more at department stores. A scarf can spice up a simple t-shirt or plain dress. Scarves are not very popular at thrift stores, so you can probably find some easily. My other favorite wardrobe garnish is a vintage pin. I have them in sterling silver (old Mexican), Art Deco and Modern florals (sterling and brass) and even copper. I have some vintage rhinestone pins, as well, but good quality pieces are getting harder to find at decent prices. You can get an idea about design, price and which vintage designers to look for, on eBay. There are also many books about costume jewelry you might like to consult. Again, I like to buy in the $5 and below range for each piece. This is truly a treasure hunt these days.
Garnish Your Food:
In terms of food, garnishing means adding edible ornaments to make the food more appealing to the eye and the palate. Usually, restaurant chefs add a slice or tomato or a few carrot sticks to the entrees. Not so in France, where the chefs are masters at it, and where garnish is known as "garde manger) and considered a fine art. Serious cooks and chefs use garnishing tools to cut, pare, curl and decorate. But with a little practice, you can turn out some cucumber flowers, orange cups and stuffed tomatoes. Garnish can dress-up your food! There aren’t many books on food garnishing, but plenty of how-tos on the internet. If you have time and produce on your hands and could use some more art in your life, by all means, garnish.
The Art of Garnish
Many of us have cut back on our expenses and our purchases. It looks like we could be trapped in this lack-luster economy for some time. But that doesn’t mean you have to dig into your savings account to enhance/garnish the meat loaf or the simple little black dress. By shopping carefully and only at thrift stores, sales and farmer’s markets- you can treasure hunt and design at the same time. Viva la garnish!
