These things find me...

I had to pull a quick u-turn as soon as I saw this guy sitting next to the curb, on my street. I caught just a glimpse out of the corner of my eye, but sometimes I believe I have a trained eye when it comes to finding treasures in the trash. There are plenty of times when I turn around to find that it really , truly , is only trash. But, I've also had plenty of finds that are trash to one person and a treasure to me.

In this case, I grabbed this clock of the curb, and knew It had found a good home. There is one spindle broken, and the hands and face need some love, but with the amount this clock is worth, I am going to get him to the clock doctor asap.

What my life looks like at 30...

I just celebrated my 30th birthday, and I always felt that by the time you turn thirty you need to have things figured out, and life underway. As I approached my birthday I felt like maybe I wasn't where I needed to be at this milestone. Maybe I should have more of a path cleared.

I turned 30 on the 5th of July, and now that it is here, I am exactly where I need to be at this point of my life. I have a wonderful, supportive husband, a beautiful 4 year old son, and another on the way. There is nothing else I could be doing at this point in my life that would be more rewarding than what I'm doing right now.

New Rocker

My Valentine gave me a new rocker base on the 14th. It was very simple to remove the old base and attach the new one. I know these are seen everywhere, but its been a wish for a long time to own one. This shell chair is the one I bought out of someones backyard, for $25, before it slowly rotted away in the elements.

West German Pottery

I have started a small collection of West German pottery. I prefer the more subdued colors, rather than the bright ones. I have not invested much time or money into this collection. All of the pieces were under $5 a piece, and were not sought out, but stumbled upon. I love the texture of the lava glaze, which are the two light colored pieces on the left.

Morrocan rug

The last two pictures here are of a new rug that I got off of c-list. I actually ended up buying two, after I brought home the first one and loved it so much. One is 13'x7.5' and one is 11'x6'. They are antique and made from goat leather and river reed. They both have such great character to them and great texture. They were listed for quite some time and the price slowly continued to drop. Finally at $40 each I couldn't pass them up. The pictures that were on the listing didn't do the rugs justice, and I have to say i hadn't ever seen this type of rug before to compare them to.

Once I brought the rugs home and got them into place, I started noticing them all over. The first three pictures are from Roman and Williams, but I just noticed this rug in an old Domino, and in a Living Etc.
I will try to post a picture of the other rug in our entry way, it has a different design.

New Flatware

This is our new set of silverware. We always end up missing pieces, ending up with 3 knifes, or 2 spoons.

This weekend we went to a huge indoor garage sale and brought home this set 62 piece set. It goes well with the dishes we use, which are a vintage brown drip glaze.

Bathroom redo, for the cost of paint

I have been wanting to redo the bathroom for quite sometime.

Our shower surround is some kind of laminate, and it has been that way since we moved in. I would love to tile it, but I'm afraid to start a project like that, with only having one bathroom and no experience tiling.

I had been putting off doing any thing to the bathroom since I couldn't do it the way I wanted to.

I had finally had enough, and decided that I wanted to like the way our bathroom looked.

I bought paint at home depot, the paint-plus-primer, and that was it. Everything else used to redo the bathroom we already had.

I started with a light gray, and painted the walls, ceiling, and trim the same color. I then took both light fixtures down, and replaced then with a nice pan light I already had in the garage, and used a simple vintage porcelain socket for between the medicine cabinet and mirror. I paint both with primer and flat black spray paint. I then used 2 large round white bulbs, for both fixtures.

The medicine cabinet was found in an alley, and it was primed and painted flat black. It was found without hinges, so we used two left over hinges from our kitchen switch. My husband then hung the cabinet on the wall , next to the mirror, that I also replaced. The mirror the husband has had for a long time, and had never really found a place.

For the hand towels, I used a hook that I also had laying around, and attached it to the wall, by the sink. I found an old gray cotton cafe curtain with my fabrics, and decided to cut it in half, and hem it to make the two new hand towels. I also switched out the handle and the cabinet under the sink with a simpler handle, also left over fro the kitchen.

I had been trying to come up with a way to hide the shower, and decided a floor to ceiling, wall to wall curtain would do the trick. I had the tapestry with my fabrics also, and it was almost the only piece that was large enough. My husband then used piping as a curtain rod, and an extra piece for the toilet paper holder/curtain tieback.

The rug is also something that I already had, just a cotton saddle blanket. We may do one more long pipe for a towel bar for our bath towels, but for now there is a hook on the back of the door for those towels.

I am very happy with how the bathroom turned out, and you can't beat it for the expense. It only took a couple of days of work, and now I wished I would have done it sooner.(and that all the other rooms would only take that long to paint)

Your thoughts please...

I know the upholstery choice is awful, and it is not original. But, if you look past that, aren't the bones beautiful? This sofa at one point was webbed, and most likely when the webbing started to go they replaced it with plywood. I was not able to find any sort of makers mark on this, but I believe it is designer. I love the way the top of the backrest, widens and curves slightly in.

I'm torn.

Does anyone know anything more about this sofa? Can you see past the awful fabric? Or am I just looking too hard, and this is nothing more than thrift junk?

Danish modern lamps

We picked up these Danish lamps yesterday at the salvation army. I thought the pricing was a little high, marked $9.99 a piece, but the current sale was 50% off electronics, so a deal was had at about $5 each. They have modern fittings and cords, and I believe that they are dated '92. They are very similar in design, yet the differences let me know they are handmade. Both lamps are signed, and still have stickers in tact that read, Made in Denmark. I can't find anything on the web about the artist, but I'm sure its because I'm not sure of the signature. If anyone can steer me in the right direction, I would appreciate it.

( I don't want to sound cheap when I say the price was a little high, and if these were at a dealers, they would have been a lot higher. I believe as thrifting is becoming more popular, the thrift stores are hiking up their prices, and most don't know the difference between the lamps I bought and lamps from Target.)

* I am also still trying to work on my photography, if you have any suggestions i would love to hear them, try to think of these pics as product shots. I'm trying to still go for something a little more interesting, not just a bright light and a black velvet backdrop.

Little bits...

Just a little bit of what's going on in my life and in St. Louis at the moment.

(*sorry about the fuzzy photo.

** the couple of pics in there were taken New Years day after the tornado, I feel awful for everyone that was effected by the tornado in and around St. Louis.)