Chrome Director's Chairs

My current love affair with all things brass is certainly not over, but in an effort to avoid '70s flashback-induced seizures when you walk in my house, I'm trying to add some other metals to the mix.  Like chrome.  Because chrome definitely has nothing to do with the '70s...  Wait a minute... Oh, never mind.


Via Living Livelier

Anyway, since seeing this picture I've been in love with the idea of some chrome director's chairs.  I actually adore everything about the entire vignette and even have a suitable place for a small "game table" in the living room.  However, it turns out these puppies, although not rare, are not likely to turn up for $5 on Craigslist anytime soon.  A girl can dream.

Catherine and Jarrett (of Bungalow Bungahigh) actually scored theirs for $5 at a Salvation Army.  That makes me a little nauseous and a lot jealous.  In that order.


Via Bungalow Bungahigh

It looks like the going rate is around $200-$300 a chair.  Etsy and Ebay have options. 


Poltrona Frau Helleu Chair via GQ

Unfortunately, except for this one that goes for $8000, I haven't found any options for a similar look with new chairs.  If you guys know of any, give me a heads up please!

New Camera

This post's sole purpose is to show you how gorgeous my kid is.  Consider yourself warned, baby haters.


Cover for Mini-GQ maybe?

I got a new camera - whoo-hoo!  Not a fancy DSLR or anything, so don't get all excited about the prospect of decent pics on this here rambling mess of a blog.  I got this one, in case you're interested (on clearance and I used a gift card so it was super cheap!).  So, of course, I took my favorite model out to the park and started snapping away. 

He's getting so grown up, it kills me.  However, I do admit that I love having a kid old enough he can hang out around the house fairly unsupervised without me worrying if he's somewhere eating light bulbs or something equally dangerous.

Speed Thrifting

Being a single car family means that some days I spend most of my lunch break commuting my boyfriend to his job before hurrying back to my own.  I love those rare days when traffic and karma align to give me an extra 15 minutes of lunch break before I have to get back to work.  Usually I spend it napping in my car (not even a joke - I'm completely sleep deprived and can fall asleep at the drop of a hat), but the other day I decided to literally run into my local Salvation Army for some secondhand treasures.

For the serious, spend-all-day-Saturday-picking-out-shoes shopper, or even the serious thrift shopper, 15 minutes probably sounds ludicrous.  But I'm usually only looking for big stuff, namely furniture, not combing through racks of junk to discover the diamond in the rough.  Don't get me wrong - small stuff catches my eye all the time.  Most of the time, however, it only takes me a couple of minutes to check out the furniture section and see if I'm interested in anything.  What usually takes the most time is the back-and-forth inner dialogue I run between finding something I like and deciding whether or not to buy it - "Maybe.... if... It could work..."  With only 15 minutes to find/buy/pack up the car, I knew I would have to make some quick decisions - hopefully they'll pay off.

Five steps inside the door, in the section I mentally label "usually overpriced so not worth slowing down," I was brought to a sudden halt when I spotted a pretty white lamp.

"That couldn't be a Blanc de Chine lamp, right?"  (Luckily, inside your head you don't need to know the exact name for items - so "Blanc de Chine" was replaced with this picture, which I had seen the night before when reading old Little Green Notebook posts.)

I swooped over to check it out.  I noticed a chip right away, but it looked pretty good otherwise (except for the monstrous plastic-covered pleated shade. 

Jenny, because she's amazing, got her usually-crazy-expensive lamp for $1.  Surely mine wouldn't be $1, right?  Wait, where is the price tag?

After a puzzled search, I gave a little dejected huff because I assumed the lamp was sold already.  With a longing glance, I decided I should at least ask a salesperson.  That's when I spied my lamp's twin sitting with another display.

"WTF, is it a matched pair?"  Yes, it certainly was.  And this one had a price tag.  2 for $20.  My heart filled with glee as I realized my two-day-old dream of owning a Blanc de Chine lamp was about to come true.  Doubly true.  True twice-over.  However you say it.

But I still had about 13 minutes left, so I quickly sized up my competition (the other shoppers) to see if I needed to physically carry around this 3' tall lamp (including gigantic shade) while I perused the rest of the store.  No one seemed all that interested, but for good measure I threw out a "What a ripoff" and a snobbish head toss.  Because I've learned that if you're dumb enough to walk around a thrift store 1.) talking to yourself, and 2.) saying things like "Ooh, that's really a deal" while browsing, someone standing withing earshot will walk over and buy whatever it is you were looking at within thirty seconds of you walking away.  It doesn't matter if they weren't in the market for a new table/vase/jeans.  Everyone has seen Antique Roadshow by now and they all want in.

I zipped to the back and quickly spotted a long coffee table just begging to be made into a bench.

Lane furniture - wood bottom - horrible laminate top (but that would be covered up when you make it a bench.)  Despite being pressed for time, I found a salesman to haggle with and got him to knock the price down from $35 to $25.


Famous Domino Bedroom

I don't have a place for it, but I envision it as a bench at the foot of a bed.  Now I get to do one of my favorite things - fabric shopping!

I was able to pack the car and get to work on time (with 2 minutes to spare, boo-yah!).  It was about then that I started to wonder what my plans for the lamps were.  Right now I'm not sure if I'm going to keep them or not.  They definitely need to be re-wired for safety - this is one of the plugs:

I'm pretty sure the boyfriend could easily handle rewiring a lamp (it's supposed to be very straightforward and the man has done his fair share of electrical work through the years) - but this one has both a regular bulb and the one inside the lamp base, so I'm guessing that's a little more complicated.

They're cute, but not sure if they are my style.  If I keep them, I might try to DIY some black shades like this:


via More Ways to Waste Time

Or I might sell them on Craigslist.  They'll bring a decent profit, even with defects, since I only paid $10 a lamp.

What would you do?

Dotted Pillows

Love these dotted pillows!



Via Made by Girl

The plan is to make a few shams for the bedroom - or maybe one big rectangular pillow.  Using this very affordable fabric (gotta love Premier Prints):

Premier Prints Togo - Fabric.com

Emerald Green Inspiration

I saw this desk posted Isabella & Max Rooms earlier this month and I simply couldn't get it out of my head.

It's from Veranda's House of Windsor - a concept house to put all others to shame.  I was quite possibly living under a rock last July when this place was making its rounds on all the blogs and in print.  Stuff like this happened and lots of other gorgeous, amazing, inspirational stuff.


Via OnlineFabricStore.net Blog

Anyway, I was at Lowes this weekend and stumbled upon this gallon of paint in the OOPS bin with my name written all over it.

Hard to tell from the flashy pic, but it's a wonderful shade of emerald green.  It was even a flat finish (which Honey & Fitz swears by for the best glossy paint jobs), so there was no way I could resist. 

Now I'm on the hunt for the perfect nightstands to give the Oz treatment for my bedroom.  Of course, I hit up my some of my favorite thrift stores this weekend.  No nightstands, but I did score a pair of faux bamboo mirrors for $30.

They're huge, solid wood and getting a glossy white makeover as we speak (the Jonathan Adler treatment, if you will).  They had me at hello - check out the brass corners! 

Unfortunately, they are not staying in my house (trust me, I tried), but hopefully they'll make a profit on Craigslist.  The boyfriend's birthday is coming up, as well as Chelsea's high school graduation (and I still need curtains!) - so I definitely need to step up the side business in the next couple of months.

Lots o' Randomness

First off, I have cedar fever like a mother f***er - so lately I've been feeling like a complete zombie.  (Yay drugs!)  Well, a zombie that sneezes a lot, has blotchy skin and whose eyes are itchy.  Oh, the joys of living in Austin - the 100+ degrees during the summer, the complete inability of people to drive while it's raining, and the cedar pollen - how I love thee so.  Anyway, I'm hesitant to even attempt a blog post since I'm not sure if I can string a complete sentence together, but here goes...

Basically, there are some sales going on you might want to know about.  Bath and Body Works has their 70% off sale on right now - you can snag their signature collection body lotions, body wash, and sprays for $3 (usually $10.50).  I did this deal last year and for some reason decided to buy all body wash.  Not the brightest idea (still have about 4 bottles left) - so this year I went for the spray and lotion, so my stash will be more even.  You can pair the sale with a 20% off coupon code - lots of them out there but I used GIFT20.

And did you know about Home Depot clearancing out Martha Stewart paint?  Since I'm in zombie land, I'm not completely sure if they're getting rid of her paint all together or just getting rid of her current stuff (like, if they were going to do a can redesign or something).  But I did stand in front of the paint chip wall and take like 80% of them for a handmade paint deck.  I'm still upset that I didn't get her colors when she was at Lowes because I liked that palette more.  I wasn't sure what percentage I would get to before my "I'm being a super nerd and just need to walk away" gene kicked in.  Looking back, 100+ paint chips was probably way over that nerd alert (even if I did get my son to do half of the dirty work for me so I could hope people  would believe we were just having a cute mom/son/artsy moment) and I should have just got one of each - like a military coup - in and out.

Finally, our car was recently in the shop.  And not all that surprising if you knew what kind of luck we've been having lately, it has decided to basically fall apart while we are still driving it around.  The radiator went out 2 days after we got it back from the shop.  (Yeah, it's been that kind of year so far.)  Anyway, I am super lucky to have a mechanically-gifted boyfriend who can do stuff like replace a radiator while I have total girl moments like "What is this?  What does that do? Do you even need this?"  I bought the radiator from Advanced Auto Parts, but bought it online and picked it up at the store.  Managed to save 35%, get a mail-in rebate, and a coupon for $50 off our next purchase of $100 or more.  The lady told me that any purchase over $20 is usually cheaper if you buy it online and then pick it up.  I thought that was good to know, so I'll pass it along.

I've been looking at lots of pretty pics of bedrooms lately, so I'll try to get a less-wordy post out to you soon.  Lots of love and allergy medication!

Buffalo Check Bandwagon

Up until now, I thought I had resisted drinking the kool-aid on the "Buffalo Check is so Current!" bandwagon.  Nothing against buffalo check - every pattern has its place - I just hadn't been as blown away by it.  Until...  WTF?  The HGTV Dream House?  Really?  That's going to be what gets me on the buffalo check bandwagon?

First, let me clarify that I think the designs for the HGTV Dream Home giveaways are usually dreadful.  Like, would sell the furniture and start all over if I ever got lucky enough to win.  They all feel like what they are - brand new houses filled with brand new furniture, meant to be pleasing to 80% of the population.  I get it, I just don't like it.  I hate pretty much everything about the design of this room.  I mean, I'm super patriotic and all (I read American history books for fun) but even I wouldn't want to be getting my dirty on below Old Glory. 

But that carpet!

HGTV

Wall-to-wall buffalo check.  Who would have thought? 

Maybe something much smaller in size - like a bathroom mat?  I even like the idea of the striped curtains as a shower curtain.

Did anyone else see something they liked on the home tour?  I didn't watch the entire thing, so I can't really comment except to say the great room's rock walls look cool but would probably be really cold most of the year.