freshvintage

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?

Santa's Lemons, Horse People and Vintage Pennants

I am a few weeks behind in keeping you updated on my finds. But I am sure you don't mind. Cool junk is cool junk, no matter when I bought it.

The chippy gray & green cupboard in the middle of the photo above is made from an old fruit crate. Someone added a door and a bent nail that acts as a knob.

I brought it onto my deck to hose off the inside, and I saw a familiar face peeking out. The shelf on the inside of the cupboard must have been from a different fruit crate - one that held lemons. Why did the fruit company think that Santa would be the perfect person to advertise lemons? Don't quite understand that one.

This print is titled "The Fastest Stallions in the World". This should sell pretty quickly since there are a lot of horse people around these parts. I bought a horse print a few years ago and sold it in the blink of an eye. And by horse people, I don't mean half-horse, half-human. I mean people who like to ride horses.

I bought all of these vintage coloring books from Marjorie's sale that I mentioned in my last post.

This one had a ribbon closure and included paints and crayons (still intact):

They are all in this fancy suitcase called a "Trip-Taker":

The pennants in the suitcase will join the collection that I am taking to the shop to sell. Maybe I'll display them on a length of twine with some clothespins?

I have one pennant on display in our kitchen. I bought it a few years ago when we moved into this house. It is from 1915 and it celebrates the 65th anniversary of our neighboring town, Kennett Square, PA. It hangs next to my Amish bonnet and a photograph of the 1935 graduating class of the local high school.

And last but not least, I recently acquired a ten volume set of the "Sexual Education Series" by Dr. David Keller, copyright 1928. This series contains such classics as "The Sexual Life of Men and Women After Forty", "Sex and Society",  and "Sexual Diseases and Abnormalities of Adult Life". I can smell your jealousy.

These little red books contain enough fodder for ten blog posts. Here's a quote to get you started, from the book titled "Young Woman's Sexual Education":

At the parties and dances she should absolutely avoid any form of drink with alcohol in it. She should learn to say NO and mean it. Some young men consider it a good joke to go to a party and put liquor into the punch on the sly. The right kind of young girl will cut all such people from her society in the future. [...] An older man hearing of such things should quietly first talk the matter over in a quiet way with the boy or his father and if that did not stop the practice, then he should isolate his family from such practice just the same as he would if they had small pox.

Or maybe the older man should spike the punch with small pox, and then no one would have to worry about ever possibly having any fun.

Weekend Diversions and My Invisible Bird

I haven't been shopping for junk lately. I've been spending too much time here:

That's my deck. It usually has barbies, empty beer bottles and three-day-old banana peels on it. But I classed up my act a little bit for photographic purposes.

As my Facebook fans know, I planted some gerber daisies in a falling-apart tool caddy. (Read about all of the cool old stuff that they use for planters.)

We headed to New Jersey over Memorial Day weekend. My dad lives at the beach, near Atlantic City. (You may remember that fact from this heart-warming story).  My mom lives on the way to the beach. She decided to build an inground pool a few years ago as a sickening ploy to distract us on the way to my Dad's.

We always seem to fall for her trickery.

The regular pool was a little chilly, so the kids kept gravitating towards the hot tub. Here are 11 of the 15 grandchildren on my side of the family.

I don't think all the chlorine on earth could kill the poop and pee bacteria in there. I wonder how many times my mom has shocked the pool since Saturday.

The next day, we headed to my dad's. During the 40 minutes between my mom's house and my dad's house, I saw at least 15 yard sales, junk-filled antique stores and new-to-me flea markets. It took all of my strength not to tell Chris to STOP THE CAR! I would have sacrificed a few hours at the beach for a few hours of junking. My family doesn't share the same sentiment.

Look. Maeve's totally not even having any fun:

And Finn looks like he would much rather be following me through a dusty antiques store than playing on the beach with his cousins, Peter and Cade.

Whatever. Someday they will learn about real fun.

Oh - but I DID hit a pre-Memorial Day estate sale.  This might make up for a whole weekend without going to yard sales.  It is a four-feet-high wire birdcage with a detachable planter at the bottom.

Here is the planter part:

Can you see the sliding door? It gives me easy access to my bird. (That's what she said.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

How about a behind-the-scenes look at how I rigged the birdcage? In order to take pictures of it, I used string to tie the birdcage to the railing on the second floor of my entryway.

It was kite string. Which was really stupid, since the birdcage is very heavy and the string is very weak. Lucky for me, the string didn't break and the birdcage didn't collapse. I would have hated to explain the scratches on the wood floor to Chris. "It was horrifying! I was taking pictures of my invisible bird for my blog and the kite string snapped and nearly crushed me." I don't think I would have gotten much sympathy.

Touches of Vintage in a Boy's Bedroom

Last year, I shared my photos of my daughter, Maeve's vintage-inspired bedroom. Finn's bedroom is a work-in-progress, but I'll show you what we have done so far. We moved into the house three years ago, but still haven't painted his walls. Or any walls in the upstairs for that matter. We are taking our time (or we are just lazy - you decide).

The mahogany dresser was from a yard sale for $25. The veneer on top was in bad shape, so I peeled off as much as I could, and then hemmed a piece of blue fabric to lay on top. The huge framed 1970s world map on top of the dresser was also from a yard sale ($10). The red shelf was a floor sample from Pottery Barn Kids - there's a matching one on the left side of the big map. The map below the shelf is made by eeboo and came with stickers that say things like "I live here" and "My grandparents live here".

I bought this retro metal office chair at a yard sale for three bucks. I tried selling it, but no one appreciated its curved legs, olive-drab elegance and worn leather cushions. So I said, "Screw it! It's going into Finn's room".

But, really, I don't think a seven-year-old cares what he sits on while he is busily gluing legos onto shoebox lids.

I've written about typewriter tables a few times before. They are so easy to find - I just saw one at a yard sale last weekend. I love this one in particular because it has a bottom shelf for his books. And because I paid one dollar for it. Which constitutes instant love.

I gave Finn his first (last?) sewing lesson a few weeks ago. Shhh...don't tell his friends. We made the throw pillow (above) out of colorful tape measure fabric made by American Jane, which has since been discontinued. I thought it would blend well with his prized Pez collection:

 

His goal is to fill up the entire shelf with an army of Pez soldiers. I think he is on his way.

Pink Wine, Vintage Wallpaper & The Battle of the Allisons

My in-laws just left after a week-long visit. You know what that means...local sightseeing along with lots of antiquing. We visited Gettysburg, PA for a couple of days and stopped in nearby New Oxford to fulfill our antiques-shopping obligation.

We also had a lovely Easter dinner at my sister Megan's house. This was the first time that the Allisons have spent Easter on the East Coast. Frankly, Chris and I were a little worried. The conversations at my family's holiday dinners tend to steer towards subjects like poop and public drunkeness. (Hopefully, never the twain shall meet.)

My family welcomed them with open arms, especially when they saw my in-laws' contribution to Easter dinner: a can of wine. Yes, the paint-in-a-can comes in a blush! It is called Pail Pink. I'm not usually a pink wine drinker, but I like this one because it isn't too sweet.

Among my non-wine purchases this week were a Redmon picnic basket, a very heavy German Christmas tree stand, an square ironstone bowl, a old drawer, fancy muffin tin, vintage wallpaper rolls, glass spice jars, and a never-used pink and white striped blanket.

The blanket is a brand called Golden Key, a subsidiary of A&P Supermarket (which was at one time known as Great American Tea Company). The original paper label is sewn into the corner:

The vintage price tags in the square ironstone bowl are a recent purchase from eBay and the glass spice jars were from a local thrift store. The German Christmas tree stand pictured above ($12) and muffin tin ($4) were found at the New Oxford Antique Mall. When Erin and I sold our junk at the Kimberton Antiques Show last year, we sold all of the muffin tins that we brought with us. I snatch them up whenever I see them at a good price. One of my favorite muffin tins sits on my dresser and corrals all of my jewelry.

I finally found vintage wallpaper! This is a first for me. Two rolls are the same pattern and appear to be complete. I don't think these are very old (1960s?), but I love the pattern. The roll on the bottom of the photo is definitely older. Maybe from the 1930s.

After spending two days learning about the Battle of Gettysburg, the Allisons had their own battle when my father-in-law Jim spotted this beautiful pitcher and bowl at the Pennsbury-Chadds Ford Antiques Mall. It has aqua-colored flowers, no chips or cracks and was a steal at $40. The Allisons usually sell these for at least $100 in their booth at an antiques mall in Cle Elum, WA. My mother-in-law Mary didn't want to buy it because it was heavy, breakable and the cost of shipping it home to Yakima would substantially eat into their profits. Jim bought it anyway.

After a few days of Mary's subtle, yet acerbic, ribbing, Jim threw in the towel and agreed to leave it at our house. When they left for home this morning, Jim was practically kissing Mary's feet and sobbing in apology. It was quite a turnaround from his attitude at the antiques store when he first bought it.

I am convinced that Mary has powers beyond this world. She is like Officer Parkman from Heroes who uses mind control to make people do things against their will.

I told them I would sell it at my next sale (whenever that is) and send them the profits. But I'm digging the way it looks in our living room/office:

My Vintage Christmas

 The green table has found a temporary place in my home. (Well, I'm not too sure about the temporary part yet). My favorite post-Christmas bargains are sitting on top: three glittered houses that I found at Target a few years ago.

I went totally old school with our Christmas tree this year. Usually, I am so anal about using only white lights, matching aqua and green ornaments (the freshvintage palette) and some special ornaments that family members have given us over the years.

This year, I went completely nutso and bought colored lights. I know - so crazy. The small ones andthe big fat 1970s ones. Damn, those big ones get hot. That's what she said. (Sorry - couldn't resist.) I also hung all of the Shiny Brite ornaments that usually just sit in my garage, waiting for my next sale.

My mother-in-law gave me this vintage glass bird ornament:

I filled a big glass candy jar with vintage ornaments and put it on top of this white cabinet, which is in my living room now. I found the jar at Goodwill for a few bucks.

These just arrived in the mail today from eBay: over 500 Christmas price tags.

 

Yes, I surrendered once again to my ridiculous love of useless old price tags. Nothing but death can keep me from it. (That's a quote from one of my favorite movies. The first person who leaves a comment with the name of the movie wins a sampling from my vintage price tag collection. Forget it! WE HAVE A WINNER! To my sister, Erin: You cannot participate. Don't even try it, byatch!)

Here's a hint: The movie has absolutely nothing to do with vintage price tags.

A few nights ago, I bought this Gingerbread Train Kit for the kids to assemble. Doesn't it look so cute on the box?

 

That's bullshit. This is what the picture on the front of the box should really look like:

 

Waaaay cuter.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Take a gander at my interview with Sarah from The Wedding Hub's blog. I sent Sarah a nice, safe photo from my 2001 Key West wedding. But, for my dear readers, I am crafting a special blog post to share the down and dirty details & more photos from my wedding. Look for it in the new year.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thanks to Marty from The Ephemera Blog for including me in his list of the Ten People All Ephemera Collectors Should Be Following. Sure, it's not People Magazine's Ten Most Beautiful People list, but it's something. Thanks for the love, Marty!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My list of Top Ten Vintage-Inspired Blogs is being featured on Blogs.com. It was hard to narrow down my favorites to only ten. If you have any favorites that I missed, leave them in the comments so we can all take a look.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

For more "That's What She Said" fun, check out this video that includes every "That's What She Said" line from The Office.

Adamstown: Good Bathrooms & Bad Eggs

Renninger's in Adamstown, PA was small enough that Erin and I were able to hit Shupp's Grove on the same day. I found great stuff at both markets, but the atmosphere at Shupp's Grove is much nicer: shady trees and better bathrooms. I purchased a few more things than I photographed for this post, but the total for everything in this post is $160.

Do you see that red metal box in the middle of the photo?  It is FILLED with vintage decals. The box was probably used as the store display - it has dividers for different sizes and prices of decals. I'll have to write a separate post to share the decals with you. These are a couple of my favorites:

A vintage globe to add to my collection, a stack of Country Club Sweet Cider labels (these were for gallon jugs of cider), two sets of card games/flashcards, a small medicine cabinet and an old Order Book:

The man who sold me this Order Book had tons of neat journals, ledgers, photos and other ephemera, but his prices were a little steep. I would have bought a lot more from him, but he wasn't willing to budge on his prices. I settled for this book, which is definitely worth the $25 I paid for it (despite the fact that it is falling apart).

This isn't an ordinary Order Book. It is the diary of a Lancaster County Mennonite farmer that spans from 1896 to 1926. It contains his labor accounts, where he lists his farm workers, their hours and how much they were paid (one dollar a day). He has a page that lists the subscriptions to farm journals, how much he paid and when they run out.  But the best pages start in 1907, when he began writing a short sentence for each day of the month. Most of the farm-related entries are about tobacco, so I think that was his family's major crop. But there are also references to growing cherry and peach trees, corn, strawberries, blackberries, watermelon, sweet potatoes, pigs and cattle.

The farmer was a member of the Herr family, who are some of the earliest settlers of Lancaster County (and, more importantly, make a mean potato chip). I've been reading the journal to see if I can figure out if the farm is part of the Herr Family Homestead. There are some mentions of the Hershey family, too.

On each page (which is a month's worth of entries), there are a few references to attending funerals. This page from December 1914 has twelve burials. You can see that someone marked off each burial. I thought that it may have been the flu epidemic, but that didn't happen until 1918. Maybe they all had some bad eggs.

Fast forward 50 years to these ten vintage activity books:

This one is filled with blank pages, but the cover is my favorite:

I bought another Redman picnic basket, created by the Redmon Company in Peru, Indiana. You can see my others Redman baskets here, here and here. The basket had a pie shelf inside, along with these bingo cards. The seller told me to keep the Bingo game because someone else was supposed to pick them up and never did. Sure thing, lady!

Here are a few of the 115 assorted metal stencils that I bought at Renninger's. Most are numbers, but there are a few letters, too. They have a tab on the bottom, so they can stand up on a shelf. Tre industrial chic, no?

This is my big purchase for the day - a wooden rack. It may have been used as a baker's rack. Or it could have held shoes or textiles in a factory. My mother-in-law, Mary, has one in her kitchen, and I always loved the way it looked. I totally copied off her. It is in my family room because I don't have room in my kitchen.

It is a little impractical because the shelves are made of widely-spaced dowels. Mary suggested getting glass cut to fit the shelves.  For now, it is holding a couple of quilts and a chenille bedspread.

The old cast iron casters are in great shape, but the wood could use some conditioning:

I thought about using the rack to store wine. But then I remembered that wine doesn't last long enough in my house to necessitate any type of storage.

How would you use the rack in your home?

I will slap you

There was only one estate sale in the area last weekend, so I ran into local bloggers/dealers Dona & Connie while I was there. They packed Dona's truck to the brim. I walked away with just a few things, but then noticed that the house across the street was having a sale, too. While I was paying for my pile of stuff, the homeowner's son walked into the garage, looked at my pile and asked, "Is someone really buying this stuff? Why would someone buy this?".  In my mind, I told him that someone would buy it because his mother is a sucker and was selling it all for a pittance. And then I slapped him in the face (in my mind).

Here's a white matte pottery planter, five apple green shutters, a pink apron, set of six floral-painted tin coasters, and a daisy throw. Does anyone know if that type of flowery knitting or crocheting has a name?

I found these at a thrift store. The heavy mother/baby statue appears to be a garden ornament. It is made from cement (or plaster?), and then painted to look like wood.

I have a feeling that the lovely ladies at the thrift store thought this pitcher was a Made-in-China castoff from HomeGoods. God, I love when people are wrong.  I think this one's an oldie.

 

And for something vintage-inspired, but not quite vintage...here is the new lamp over our kitchen table: the Porter Pendant from Pottery Barn. It has an adjustable cord and weighted pulley that let you adjust the height.

And the part that I am most proud of? Chris and I actually installed it ourselves. My whole family just pooped their pants from the shock of it all. I don't do electricity...ever since I stood in my brother's bedroom with a flashlight while my dad asked me to "keep an eye on that broken outlet while I go to the basement and flip the breaker". He wanted to see what would happen. Well, I'll tell you what effing happened. The outlet exploded in my face and my brother's bed caught on fire. I took my fried bangs, hauled ass out of the room, and ended up in the fetal position next to the front door. Thankfully, I was just far enough away from the explosion that I wasn't burned.  And there wasn't too much damage to the house because my dad ran upstairs with a fire extinguisher. My dad, the accountant: not the handiest of men, but at least he was prepared.

A New Backdrop

It's not too often that I find this many great things in the dead of winter. I spent $45 on everything in this post. All from charity thrift stores.

My favorite find is the Goodform aluminum office chair. These can fetch a lot of money for mid-century modern furniture collectors. I found a great website that shows many of the models of Goodform chairs (this one is #3325), and some history of the company that makes them, General Fireproofing Company. This is the second aluminum office chair that I've found on my junking journeys. You may remember that I bought a similar chair last summer - the one that I accidentally dropped on my foot.

I also found a 1950's strawberry tablecloth with 4 matching napkins, an ironstone brown/white transferware pitcher, a black painted parlor chair and a brown and blue plaid wool throw. I originally thought that the throw was new when I saw the trendy color combination, but then I noticed an old fabric label from "William Ayres & Sons, Philadelphia". It's an oldie.

The silver ice bucket is not marked - I have no idea how old it is. But is looks damn cool, even it is a circa 2002 tarnished bucket from Homegoods. I also bought the glass tea canister, the French vocabulary book and the 1939 illustrated book called "Where Did Your Garden Grow"?

Here are a few of the colorful pages from that book:

 

These books are from my local thrift store that offers a bag of books for three bucks. I made out pretty good this time. I looked up a few of the books on eBay, and found that five of them sold for $15-$25 each! The book titled "Stillmeadow Kitchen" seems to be worth the most.

And now, let us address the big fat orange elephant in the room. Yes, we painted our family room last week. I love it - Chris is still warming up to it. It is hard to tell from these photos, but it is an orange creamsicle/tangerine color. I found the paint chip at Lowes - it is an Olympic paint called Mandarin.

I was inspired by the colors in the pillow below (formerly a napkin) and decided to use the orange/green color combo in my family room and kitchen. It actually looks good with the dining room colors, too.

My neighbors have already started joking that our house looks like a crayon box. Screw 'em! Neutral isn't in my vocabulary.

PS: That rooster weathervane lamp is the first purchase I ever made in a thrift store (12 years ago)!