Pretty. Quirky. » This ain't your mama's vintage

I posted this link to Small Batch Creative over at Zero to Twins for this awesome project of restoring family photographs and having them printed in a book (non-professional photographers could use a service like Blurb — we used them for our wedding photos and the albums turned out beautifully).  But that site is appropriate for the vintage love over here as well — you must check out their painstakingly detailed refurbishing of a vintage work cart into a coffee table. The finished product is ten bazillion times cooler than anything you could buy in a store. I’m particularly impressed by the fact that they had no idea what they were doing at the beginning of the project yet turned out such an amazing piece in the end.

Oh, we have entered the dead zone of thrift store/estate sale/yard sale/rummage sale shopping. The fall, with its plethora of church rummage sales and flurry of estate sales, is behind us; ahead of us lies the long, white, cold stretch of hell known as “winter” in Chicago. Blergh. We went south for the holidays and got back last Friday; I had plans of doing some thrift store shopping this week but all four of us contracted the nastiest cold while in Arkansas and have been hacking and whining about the house instead of going on second-hand adventures. I did stop by the Salvation Army on Devon yesterday, when I dropped a bag of baby clothes off — it was miserable pickings, y’all. It might pick up at the thrift stores in a week or two, because the New Year usually sees people in an unusually productive, organizational mood and the charity thrift stores profit from this burst of industriousness.  Maybe I’ll get a chance to check back during the week next week.

The biggest news in our house this week is that we broke down and bought a new television set. I’ve been watching a 19 inch tube TV, a cast-off of Justin’s, for about 12 years now; our poor nanny, who has little to do but watch TV while the babies are napping, could be found hunched in the only comfortable chair in the living room, squinting at it, on any given day. I know it seems crazy to buy a new TV just for the nanny but really it was for me as well; even though I don’t watch TV that much anymore, it was getting pretty hard for me to see it given the size, my aging eyesight, and the fact that a TV that old isn’t at the top of its game. I have some money in savings from some freelance work that I do for my old corporate employer so the purchase — and choice — was primarily mine, which didn’t sit well with the resident tech pro in the household. He was gunning for a fancy 60 incher, but as soon as I saw it in the store, I knew there was no way I was going to bring that thing into my home. It was so huge I felt like it would somehow be projecting from INSIDE MY BRAIN. We settled for a 50 inch TV that was half the price of the one he wanted to get, and he is grudgingly supportive of my purchase. Of course, finding room for it in the living room meant shuffling even more stuff around, which I have done plenty since the arrival of the babies — all of my beautiful collections are slowly but surely being boxed up and put away. Today, the last of my hats had to be taken down. They’re some of my absolute favorites, so I’m not getting rid of them, but I’ll have to find a safe means of storage for them.

The new TV is sitting on top of what I had previously been using for craft supplies, so I shifted a bunch of stuff around, unearthing, of course, a ton of stuff I had forgotten about. I took photos so you could see (because that’s productive, right? Stopping to take pictures every five minutes?).

I bought these at the Andersonville Neighborhood Sale about six or seven years ago.

They’re tiny little Japanese lanterns, about 2 to 3 inches high, attached by strings to long sticks:

I’m assuming they were meant to be stuck in fruity, exotic tropical drinks in the 50s and 60s — the people I bought them from were unloading a ton of ancient restaurant  equipment. I have held on to them for this long, always intending to break them out at a party to fancy up the proceedings but of course I never have…I’m going to try to take some better pictures and get them up on etsy. They would be so cute used in a craft project.

Here’s my collection of vintage doorknobs:

I thought for half a second of getting rid of them, but it took a while to amass so many (they’re usually so expensive, but every now and then I find them super cheap and I always grab them up). I have been obsessed with using them on furniture re-dos since I did this project a couple of years ago (can’t believe how fast time flies) but, of course, I haven’t been doing a whole lot of furniture refurbishing lately. If I had, I would surely have found something to use these awesome, wooden, hand-carved drawer pulls on:

…or these really cool metal ones:

I’ve got eight of those! I love them. I can see them spray-painted, in the right situation. Also love these gesso appliques, which someday will be embellishing a cute little piece of furniture for my tiny girlie:

Anyone know what the heck these are for?

I bought 24 of them for $3 at a thrift store a long time ago.

I’m sure I’ll use them for SOMETHING someday.

Last but not least, I found this little duck just thrown into a drawer:

I have a thing for vintage rhinestone pins. My intention is always to use them while wrapping a special present — pinning them to the ribbon — but then I get all stingy at the last minute and decide not to use them. So instead they get thrown into a drawer and forgotten about.

My apartment is nothing but a big opportunity for multiple New Year’s Resolutions.

Hope your New Year is off to a marvelous start!

This is quickly turning into a blog where all I do is complain about estate sales I went to over the weekend. Forgive me, but I have to discuss, in particular, this one that I stopped at today. Mind you, my Saturdays have become precious time that I cannot afford to squander, what with it being the only day I have to myself, so every estate sale needs to meet a pretty high bar in my mind in order for it to be worth my time…this one did not even come close. I am hoping that some of my Chicago peeps who read this blog occasionally went — it was way out west off of Irving Park, and had primarily lamps. The bottom floor was practically uninhabitable — no one had been living there for maybe 20 years or so. It had horrifyingly disgusting shag carpet in some of the rooms that was almost completely obscured by dirt and grime. Some of the rooms had wallpaper that had been torn off in large chunks and some of the rooms had this weird, stucco-like finishing in a really bright blue with glitter all over — this was the finish on the walls as well as on the ceiling.  I guess the person who lived there might have repaired lamps — there were dozens of them, and lamp parts, and silverware. That’s right, the sale was mostly silverware and lamps. I just got the worst vibe from this place, in addition to feeling really, really dirty upon leaving. I made the mistake of popping into the detached garage on my way back to my car — it opened up onto this cavernous space that had rafters way up high and, sitting in the rafters, were hundreds of garbage bags full of fur fabric scraps. A lot of the scraps were hanging out of the bags and down from the rafters, giving the impression that you were in a slaughterhouse. SHUDDER. The entire experience was like something I would dream in a nightmare after eating sushi too late at night. I am dying to talk to someone else who went who might want to speculate on what the hell was going on there.

Needless to say, I did not purchase anything from this sale.

The only other sale I went to was one done by my beloved Candace of Candace’s Antiques. She primarily does estates on the south side, around Beverly, but was on the north side this morning, which was nice; although I have driven over 25 miles for a Candace sale before, and been damn happy that I did. She has the BEST sales — they’re usually dirty digs, with lots of great stuff piled up in the corners of the basement. And her prices are amazing. PLUS: she is SO NICE. I got to her sale around 10, got about halfway down the hallway and had to leave — it was SO CROWDED. I felt smothered immediately and was afraid I was going to have a panic attack. Because I am a giant, anxious freak, I have to have a clear means of exit from any building I am ever in and there just wasn’t in this place. It was wall to wall, and generally, you can’t even get to the good stuff when a sale is like that, so I went ahead and went to the weird lamp sale, got lunch, and came back. It was STILL crowded, but I had to be getting home, so I chanced it. The basement was huge and chock full of stuff, but it was so packed with people and I was so claustrophobic,  I couldn’t really dig in. About fifteen minutes after I was there a really strong smell of gas started wafting through the house, and people started murmuring about it, and even though a man told me it was just the heaters kicking on, that was about all I could take so I got in line — forty minutes later, I was out the door. Forty minutes! I’ve never been to one of her sales where it was that crowded. I think I would prefer driving to the south side, if it keeps the crowds to a minimum! I have this feeling that there was a lot of other stuff there that I would have loved…in the olden days, pre-twins, I would have gone back on Sunday to check out what was marked half price. Alas, those days are over. I did get this way cool vintage umbrella that I think I’m going to put on Etsy:

Justin and I agreed that it’s very Zooey Deschanel from New Girl — if you’re not watching that show, I would like to know WHY NOT.

I also got a sweet pink and white chenille bedspread in super shape — it’s in the wash, so I’ll have to take photos later. The only other thing I got was this adorable wrapping paper:

I think I’m going to try and use it for a background for a framed photo of the babies.

Can you believe that we’re almost a week away from Christmas??

I love this purse I found at the thrift store last week but I can’t figure out what to call it. I finally put it on etsy with the description “embroidered,” in quotation marks, with an explanation of my confusion. It has a tag that says “handmade in Japan” yet it totally looks like faux embroidery.

And a close-up:

Whatever it is, it’s super cute. I kind of wish it had a different strap, though, I don’t care for the gold.

Hope your week is going well!