freshvintage

Meet Us at Clover Market!

On Sunday, October 24th, my sister, Erin, and I will be having a meetup at The Clover Market in Ardmore, PA! The Clover Market is a vintage outdoor market featuring a select group of sellers with antiques & decorative collectibles, vintage jewelry & clothing and original art & artisan crafts.

We were invited by the show's creator, Janet Long, to have a get-together and an informal talk. Erin and I will be sharing some of our favorite antique shops in the area. We'll also be talking about the "faux" antiques that many popular catalogs are selling now, and then we'll hunt for the real thing as we walk through the market. We'll be meeting up at the Clover Market tent at noon. 

If you've been there before, it will be worth the trip to visit again - there are many new sellers this week, along with past favorites (such as my friend, Allison, and her partners from Nannygoat Antiques).

And who knows, maybe local antiquer (oh - and singer) Patti LaBelle will be shopping along with us!

Eddie Ross and a Lobotomized Goose at Terrain

Last Thursday night, I attended the "Stylist's Secrets to Fall Design" event with Eddie Ross at Terrain at Styer's. Terrain is the totally cool store that is owned by the Anthropologie people. There is only one Terrain store in the country, and, lucky me...it is about 20 minutes from my house.

I first learned about Eddie when he was on the Bravo channel's Top Design show. Since then, I've been following his blog. When I read that Eddie and his partner, Jaithan were doing an event at Terrain, I emailed them to let them know that there were a lot of great antique stores near Terrain (including Brandywine View, of course). They ended up going to the shop on Thursday. Yay!

Here's Eddie giving us some ideas on decorating a tablescape and using fall vegetables for entertaining and floral displays:

One of my favorite tips was using a gooseneck gourd to hold a dip and vegetables. My damn camera battery died, so I didn't get a picture of the finished product. But you lay the gourd on its side (like a sleeping goose, if a goose slept on its side). Then, hollow out the big part of the goose (give your goose an appendectomy) and hollow out the bulbous part at the top of the gourd (that would be a goose lobotomy).  So, it is similar to hollowing out a squash, but there are TWO places to hold your dips or hummus or crudite. And they used chalkboard plant stakes to write the name of the dip. I love that idea.

As part of the price of admission, we each created our own floral arrangement using a pale bluish-green pumpkin. Four people each shared a project table that was set up with a pre-carved pumpkin filled with a piece of floral foam, along with the supplies that we needed.  AND THERE WAS WINE! Which explains why they already hollowed out the pumpkins for us - they obviously didn't want anyone handling sharp knives.

There were two flower carts filled with a huge variety of flowers. We could pick any flowers we wanted for our arrangements: hydrangeas, stock, scented geranium, scabiosa, and lots of other fancy flowers whose names I don't know. It was interesting to see how different everyone's pumkpins ended up looking.

Eddie and Jaithan were so gracious and funny. They floated around the room and helped all of us with our arrangements. I am terrible at flower arranging, so they both helped me make my pumpkin look less like bug with antennae and more like a pleasing autumn centerpiece. The Terrain employees were so friendly, too. They kept the wine flowing and made sure that we were all having fun. Here I am with Eddie:

One of the highlights of the night was meeting Janine, who is a reader of freshvintage. She has a booth at Heritage Antique Center in Adamstown, PA. I will definitely stop there next time I hit Renninger's. Start that blog, Janine! 

I met a few bloggers, too: Amy, Shannon and Lizzie. Lizzie was smart enough to have a camera with a charged battery in it, so check out some photos on her blog. She's even got a photo of a lobotomized goose stuffed with orange peppers and bean dip.

And here's my final product, sitting on the barn wood hutch in my family room:

Thanks, Eddie & Jaithan!

Geography is Totally Cool

Until last month, we never had curtains on the sliding glass doors that lead to our deck. We don't have any neighbors who can see into our kitchen and the sun doesn't shine into that room for a long period, so we never really cared. Plus, we have a lovely view of a big red barn.

But then I found a map of the United States that was nearly the same width as the doorway.

And voila! We have a new shade for the kitchen.

We've only pulled it down a few times, just to show my neighbors. Who usually roll their eyes and laugh at me. The joke will be on them when my kids know all of the state capitals by the time they turn nine. This will surely make them the envy of all of their classmates. (And will guarantee a few sound beatings on the bus.)

It was easy to hang: I screwed two hooks into the wall above the trim and hooked the map using the two holes that were in the metal bracket at the top of the roller.

At the same sale, I bought a pull-down map of the world, but it was too narrow for these doors. I might hang that as a headboard above my bed. I already have part of my globe collection in my bedroom, so what's another map?

Have you ever seen a pull-down map used as a headboard? Should I question my sanity? How would you use one in your home?

Bird-in-Hand, Blue Ball and Super Guys

Last Friday was my take-off-from-work-and-try-out-my-new-minivan day. And it was fabulous! I first went to Shupp's Grove in Adamstown, PA for a few hours. And then I headed north to Renninger's in Kutztown to meet the lovely Sue from Vintage Rescue Squad. (And then we had a few beers here, if you need to know the post-junking details.)

Doesn't every flea market have a "linens lady" who seems to have lots of good cheap linens. Shupp's Grove has one of those ladies. I think she steals them from the washline at old folks' homes. This quilt was ten dollars. It is not in perfect condition, but it is definitely usable and beautiful. The bottom line is that it has no brown stains.

One vendor had a ten dollar table, but gave this chalkboard to me (the bigger one) for five dollars. I didn't even ask for a lower price. I just looked at it for a minute, and then she walked over and said that she would go lower. Ummm....okay. She was selling the chalk line-maker thingy and the penmanship book separately, so I snatched them up, too.

A husband and wife team was selling a huge array of new old stock. Or is it old new stock? I don't know - my head hurts. It is new, unused stuff from old stores. There were sanitary napkin disposal bags, aspirin tins, matchbooks, price tags, donut boxes (sans the donuts). And lots and lots of notebooks, composition books and writing tablets from the 1940s and 50s. That's what I bought.

The Lucky Star notebooks are known for the prizes that you can win if you send in your proof-of-purchase (the star on the cover).

Unfortunately, you have to do A LOT of notebook-buying in order to earn a prize. If you send in 25 stars, you get eight photos of movie stars. Fifty stars gets you a fountain pen. Wow.

I found a stack of circus signs from one of the regulars at Shupp's:

This corner shelf is rockin' some nice curves. Those scallops along the bottom are cool, but the back of the shelf is hiding the best part...

The shelf was made from an old "Leather" sign. I wish the wording was on the front of the shelf, but most people probably wouldn't like it that way. It is sitting on an aluminum Goodform chair that I found at Renninger's.

I usually prefer older typewriters, but I loved the mint green keys on this Hermes 8 Typewriter. This is the same model that was owned by Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. That one sold at auction for $25,000 last year.

We are having a big Holiday Open House at the Brandywine View Antiques on November 6th & 7th, and I've been on the lookout for vintage Christmas trees. I never see them at flea markets or yard sales. Until I hit Renninger's! Yay!

It is a four-foot high Silver Glow aluminum tree. The vendor took 15 minutes to take it all apart and put each branch into its sleeve.  I can't wait to put it back together again.

I've been buying lots and lots of folding rulers in the past few weeks. I love how each one has a different color painted on the top. I think it was Michele from Perch Home who first showed me how to fold them into stars. I'll be decorating our space at Brandywine View with lots of stars this holiday season.

This yellow & aqua stool is probably going into my kids' bathroom. It is a nice match for the rug that I recently bought from Garnet Hill. Not only is the rug the perfect size for our bathroom, but it has my "signature colors" - aqua and lime green. It costs way more than I would normally pay for a bathroom rug, but I found myself staring at it every time we'd get a new issue of the Garnet Hill catalog. Yes, I was obsessed with a rug that will end up covered in pee and pink toothpaste. Oh, well.

I scored this set of five books by Madeline Brandeis and Bernadine Bailey, each featuring a different child from a European country. They were published between 1929 and 1935.

These cubbies are the dirty, vintage version of Ikea's Expedit shelf series. But - the lucky person who buys this from me won't have to spend three hours putting it together!

Remember my blog post that had a crude reference to Intercourse on a pillow in the title? That's the post where I mentioned some funny town names. Well, I found a bunch of cardboard signs with a few strange Pennsylvania towns at Shupp's Grove. Alas, there was no Intercourse. And you know what happens when there is no Intercourse? Yes - Blue Ball. Or Bird-in-Hand. I guess it just depends on your mood.

I only get to shop with Sue a few times a year (if I'm lucky). We had already planned to do a swap of something that each of us liked on the other's blog. She wanted my wooden Underwood Typewriter box. And I wanted her Basketball poster for my kids' playroom. Perfect. But Sue always throws something extra in the mix.

I did think it was a little odd when I read the box that she handed to me in the parking lot. "A Gift for a Super Guy". Ummm...when last I checked...

This is way better than any of the purchases I made that day.

I know!! Now my peter heater has a cock sock companion! They are certain to be lifelong friends. But - I am a little concerned that my old peter heater might be a tad envious of his more - ahem - patriotic friend.

Someone's going to have fresh-smelling undergarments!

The random number gods have spoken and this time, it looks like the early bird got the worm. Comment #2 was the lucky winner of Home Economics: Vintage Advice and Practical Science for the 21st-Century Household:

 


Congratulations to Kim from Midwest Musings!  And an extra-special thank you to Quirk Books for the giveaway!