VINTAGE GIFT GUIDE

Another sign that I'm getting a little older is that I think getting a vintage gift would be lovely. When you're a kid you want shiny and new (ew ... it's used?). But the idea of someone hunting for a perfect, unique gift is a lovely sentiment to me now.

So I bring you my vintage gift guide. Of course, half the fun of buying vintage is the hunt, but here are a few of my favorites. If you are new to shopping on Etsy, until December 12 they are offering a promotion in which you get $10 to spend on another purchase with a $50 initial purchase with this link.

1. Cocktail picks set: I almost didn't add this sweet little set because I absolutely love it and I'll be sad when it's sold. But I don't need it. Probably. Somebody needs it though. $16.30 but it ships from France, so get on it.

2. Tin cup: It's cute, from the 1930s, charmingly dented and could be used for about a billion things. $45.35, but it's another piece from France so shipping will be higher.

3. Rattan mirror: Serena and Lily has a mirror exactly like this that will set you back more than four times as much. Pick up this one for a fraction of the price and you'll have a much better story to go with it. $43.48 and yeah, from France. I think I got stuck in an Etsy French loop or something. 

4. Ironstone tureen: Bestill my heart. This is a beauty and in case you hadn't noticed, ironstone is tres chic these days. $75, and thankfully ships from the U.S.

5. Mini globe: I'm not sure why I like this so much, but I think this tiny (8 inches in diameter) globe is so cute and would look great on a desk or bookshelf. Plus, globes are just cool. $90.

6. French olive basket: This galvanized bucket, which was used to collect olives, has just the right about of age on it. $75, and ships from Oregon (not France).

7. Brass faux bamboo box: There is no such thing as too many boxes. Everyone needs cute things to collect other things and this fits the bill. $28.

8. Lakeshore sign: This looks a little "crunchy" (to borrow a phrase from "American Pickers") but it would be perfect for a cabin, beach house or summer home. Or even just a beachy decorating scheme.  $165.

9. Brass and marble hanging planter: It's brass and marble and you can put just about anything in it. What's not to love? $48.

10. Amazing teak nesting tables: OK, these are expensive. But they are incredible and someone I know needs to own these. So one of you, please buy these, and send me a picture of them looking amazing in your house. (You can see this falls under the "Gifts for yourself" category.) $695.

11. Metal flower frog. I love vintage frogs because they are cute and interesting and useful. This is a little charmer. $12.50. 

12. Spun fiberglass chaise lounge: I have no idea what is going on with this chair but it's the craziest patio furniture I've ever seen. And for that reason alone it's pretty fantastic. Pick your favorite eccentric family member or friend and have this baby delivered straight to their house. $285. 

In case you missed my Custom Gifts for Gardeners gift guide, you can find it here. 

How's your shopping going? I'm pretty much stalled out with lots left to buy.

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Last day for the giveaway!

I'll be back later to show you a couple small updates that we've done in the house, but for now I just wanted to remind you that today is the last day to enter the giveaway for the vintage botanical chart from Bonnie & Bell.

Don't miss out!

Step away from the chair

I happened to be driving past the local thrift store this weekend and just popped in for a quick run through to make sure I didn't need anything (ha, need, that's funny). Things were pretty well picked over, which seems to be the usual state of things at this particular store as I understand the employees usually grab the best stuff.

I did, however, walk past a pair of the cutest little chairs covered in a peach velour. I love velour. It is a creepy fascination, but I'm positive it goes back to my childhood. My dad had a rust-colored velour shirt (this was the '70s, after all) and I would sit on his lap and rub my face against his shirt. So now I love velour.

Anyway, I sat in one of the chairs and it was remarkably comfortable. The cushion could use a little firming up, but otherwise it was great. And then I pulled up the skirt and saw the cutest fluted legs. And I loved the three-button tufts on the back.

And the best part? They were $6 each. Are you kidding me?

Especially with my newfound love of upholstering, I thought this would be the perfect first fully upholstered chair to take on.

Except there is no possible place in my house for these to live. And I already have an upholstery project in waiting in the basement. And I always fall in with expensive fabric, so even though they only cost $12 for both of them, I could easily see this being a $400 project. And I'm not running a furniture store.

So they had to stay. Even writing about them makes me want to run back there and see if they are still there but I must resist.

Step away from the chair, Erin. Step away.

Art at last!

We've been looking for a new sofa sort of off and on and a few months ago I walked into the place where we bought our last sofa and talked to the same designer who sold me the one we currently have. I told her exactly what I was looking for and she walked me around the showroom pointing out everything they had that might fit our needs.

The conversation went something like this:
Furniture girl: How about this one?
Me: Nope. Too tall.
FG: Oh, here's a nice one. What about this one?
Me: No, the arms are too skinny.
FG: OK, well, we have this one over here that might work.
Me: No, I don't care for that one either.
FG: This is why I love working with you. You know what  you want.

I'm not really sure she meant the first part of that last statement and but I know she had the second part backwards. I rarely know exactly what I want, but I do know what I DON'T want. I know the right "one," whether it be a sofa, art, lamp or even a husband, when I see it but I don't know exactly what I'm looking for until I lay eyes on it.

I also don't do placeholders. Early on in my decorating-my-own-place life I bought an awful Ikea chair that filled a space in a room just because it was cheap. I hated it. It was uncomfortable and kind of ugly and I think it scarred me for life. Since then I'd rather sit there with nothing or use something I already have that I don't like rather than buy something to fill in "until I find the right one."

And that's why the huge wall behind the banquette in the kitchen has been blank for three years. It drives me nuts and every time I show a picture of it I included a little asterisk about how I knew the wall looked stupid blank but I was waiting for the right piece of art to come along.

I can't tell you how much art I looked at, but none of it spoke to me. I thought about making my own driftwood sculpture or even painting my own canvas, but those certainly would have been disasters.

Since the kitchen is one of the most light-filled rooms in the house, I liked the idea of bringing the outside in with some kind of botanical, but I didn't want anything fussy or formal. And then I (well actually my friend and design sympathizer Roisin) found these vintage German schoolhouse charts at the Etsy store Bonnie and Bell.

Of course picky old me was not satisfied with the charts that were in the store. No, I needed something special (I told you, I know it when I see it). So I started working with Bonnie and Bell owner Linda to find just the right thing. I swear the woman is a saint. She poured through piles of vintage charts (she has all sorts of contacts in the European antiques world) until we found the oak one on the right. Then it was just a matter of finding the right partner for it. I really loved the colors in the Sundew, but then I did a little research on Sundew and found out it's a carnivorous plant and as weird as this may sound, I just wasn't comfortable with a carnivorous plant hanging over my table (visions of "Feed me, Seymour, danced in my head). The same went for some of the zoological charts Linda had. I absolutely love the chickens chart, but I have a hard time thinking about raw poultry while eating much less looking at chicken innards, as pretty as they may be.

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So I did a little research on these old charts and found one that I knew would work: horse chestnut. So Linda set out to find that chart for me and sure enough, in a couple weeks she located it for me!

I was so happy when I unrolled them. They are so lovely and wonderfully but gently worn. It's completely charming that they aren't totally perfect. One was printed in 1967 and the other in 1977 so they aren't THAT old, but just perfectly aged.

I once heard a designer say that every room can use a little black. Before I hung up the beautiful botanicals, the only black in the entire kitchen was the black cords on the pendants over the table. Originally I was worried that so much black on the wall might overwhelm the room or make it unbalanced, but I think it adds just the right statement to the room and actually makes those cords fit in more.

Check out what it looked like before.

And now after. Which do you prefer?

I'm so happy I waited to find the right thing for that wall. You know it's right when it just feels like home. And that corner just became my new favorite place in the house.

And one last look from a different angle (where you can see my homemade seed packet art works great with them.

There's great news to go along with this post. Bonnie and Bell's Linda (who apparently didn't tire of me even after I sent her on a wild goose chase) has agreed to work with me on a giveaway. Stay tuned for details!

A day at the auction

My bidding number. Go figure.

 I went to an auction Sunday. For FIVE hours. I had no idea auctions lasted so long (I left before it was over). Normally giving up almost an entire Sunday to stand in an dank old building would be akin to torture but I did it anyway because:

1. Some of the items being auctioned off were my godmother's and I wanted to have a small piece of her.
2. It was raining. All day.
3. There is a snake (or possibly thousands of snakes) in my garden. This means I cannot garden. I saw the little bugger Friday night slithering on the edge of the driveway where it meets the garden. It was approximately 1 foot long and a half-inch or less in diameter. It was a garter snake. I ran (flew?) to the highest point I could find, which happened to be up the front steps to the landing by the front door. And then I stood there for a good 10 minutes debating how I was going to get inside given that the front door was locked and I was obviously going to have to go to snake level to get back into the house. During that time I realized that yes, perhaps it was ridiculous to be cowering from an itty bitty snake, but I also realized that if it was that small, it's probably a baby. Which means mom and dad are probably lurking nearby, along with thousands of brothers and sisters. I know garter snakes are "harmless" but I can say with authority that my nephew was bitten by one when he stuck his hand in a kayak with one in it (see why I like paddleboarding more than kayaking?) and also it's not so much the threat of death that bothers me about snakes but just the general slithery bits.

So anyway, I ended up at this auction with my sister-in-law. It was really sad seeing the belongings of a person I loved being auctioned off, but I understand that her family had to find a way to get rid of some of her things. Still I got a little emotional and I'm sure it was a bit weird that there was a girl crying in the back row of the auction for a couple minutes. And that kind of emotion can be a bad thing at an auction.

Fortunately both my sister-in-law and I were pretty restrained about buying things. I don't want to become one of those people on "Hoarders" who is drowning under a pile of dead people's belongings because they can't bear to let go of that person's stuff. So my goal was just get pick up a couple things to remind me of Mary and not to buy anything I didn't have a purpose for. The bad news is that I did not succeed. The good news is that at least I didn't buy anything big that I don't have a purpose for.


I got this vintage soda bottle cooler. When I was bidding on it I actually thought it was a milk box, but a person at the auction told me it was actually for soda bottles and I now see that the holes for the bottles would be too small for milk bottles. I haven't been able to find any information on the internet about it, but I think it's pretty cute. I paid $30.

I missed out on a really cute side table. It was two-tiered with a spiral spindle going up the middle and would have been really cute painted out. I stopped bidding at $12 and I think it went for $15. I'm kicking myself for missing out on that one.

And that's probably what led to my next purchase, in which I can only assume that my mind was taken over by some sort of alien auction mind sucker. But basically I saw this little stool (the auctioneer described it as a piano bench, but my mom tells me it was probably an organ bench) and knew it had to be ancient. The upholstery is obviously in really bad shape but it's incredibly sturdy. There is a chip out of the veneer in one spot but otherwise the wood is in good shape. I truly have no idea what I'll do with this. I paid $10.

There is a chip out of the veneer here, but it's unbelievable how thick that veneer is. Maybe 1/8th inch or so.

You gotta love a good claw foot.

I also missed out on the coolest little parts box (and I failed to take a picture of it). It was very old (I'm sure it was my godmother's father's, since she inherited their house) and had the cutest little drawers that were all filled with goodies. I stopped bidding on it at $120. I realize now that I should have asked the person bidding against me if he wanted what was in the drawers or the box itself because I would have gladly given him the contents if he would have stopped bidding (much earlier on).

I got a cute little creamer and tea cup that is a pretty aqua color. It looks a bit like fiestaware, but I don't think it is. I just thought it was cute. That was $10.

In the funniest moment of the day I also picked up a print and a photograph of sailboats. The print was actually DeWitt print commemorating the 25th anniversary of the magazine and it was signed by my dad (the publisher). The photo was an old photo of one of my family's sailboats. My parents and grandmother are in it. First I thought I'd pick them up because no one else would want them. Then I thought that it would be really weird to have these things hanging in another person's house. They combined them into one lot and for a minute there it looked like I was going to get both for $5. And then the auctioneer made a big fuss that the print was signed (um, may I point out not by the artist!) and suddenly a guy started bidding against me and the next thing you knew I was paying $60 for to pieces of art I could probably find in my parents' basement if I looked hard enough. Oh well.

That's my family on that boat. It would have been weird to have it hang in someone else's house, right?

And I also got one lot of 13 glass pieces. From the back of the room they looked pretty good, but of the 13 there are only three that were really interesting: a glass pitcher that will be pretty as a vase if nothing else, matching shot glasses and a small green glass bowl. I took one dish (new with a tag still on) and brought it to work (my godmother also worked here) to use as a candy dish and the rest will get donated.

There was a ton of furniture at the auction and some of it was quite nice. There was a really cute set of four mid-century modern chairs that went for $60 or so and tons of bedroom furniture that went unsold. One totally over-the-top bedroom set surely cost a lot when it was purchased for what I'm guessing was a Tuscan-inspired McMansion. Someone got four pieces: a dresser with two mirrors, an armoire, a nightstand and a headboard for $100. Here is the dresser in all its incredible ugly-ness.

My sister-in-law picked up several things including this original artwork by a famous local artist (who happens to be a distant relative—I didn't get the art gene). It's not my cup of tea, but it is an original. 

She also got this cute Kiwi bird, which unfortunately came with the ugliest eagle figurine ever. I can't show it here because it's bound to become a gift in our family's white elephant exchange in the future and I wouldn't want to ruin the great surprise for anyone.

There were all sorts of other things: incredibly sports memorabilia and collectable dolls and teddy bears that went for pennies on the dollar of their value which was sad to watch (I know Mary would have much rather had the bears taken to Children's Hospital than for people to buy them for $10), but I knew I couldn't save it all. One sort of poignant thing that came out of it was that I realized the importance of not letting possessions rule your life. There were three 8-foot-long folding tables stacked with teddy bears in boxes. I had given some of them to her because she collected them. But in the end they just cluttered her house and probably her life and for any person coming to that auction who didn't know her, they might have thought that's what her life was about. I know it was so much more.