A Pocketful of Licorice

Evolving

Today, I wanted to share some recent Instagram snapshots of my house. Things are gradually taking shape, although I feel like I've still got a million projects to do. 

The cat's pajamas print from the Black Apple is the newest addition. 

I'm not super keen on fake flowers, and real flowers are kind of a pain to keep up. But I've been rocking these shimmery berries for a while. I really love them. 

I didn't make this afghan, but my goal for the winter is to learn to crochet. I think I can take lessons at the yarn store in Putnam. Will look into it. 

Man, I love ridiculous ceramic objects. 

And I'm feeling the need to embroider more words soon. I just need to find a suitable quote or lyric.

Someday, there will be pictures of entire rooms. Right now it's just little corners that I'm happy with. 

bedroom restyle: Watercolor Elvis Costello said he wanted to be next to a unicorn.

I'm rearranging and restyling this week! Starting with the wall near my bed. Firstly, I made curtains. Or rather, I altered curtains that I found at the Salvation Army to make them pole pocket. So I can finally include the window in pictures. Yay!

When I first moved in, I knew I wanted the large oil painting to be on that wall, but the rest of it wasn't really working for me. I think I'm finally happy with it, but I might add more family photos. Here's what it looked like before...

Part of the problem was that I'm kind of over those two small oil paintings at the bottom. And the mirror at the top there didn't really make sense. I moved it to the bathroom where I can use it to check the back of my hair. 

Here's a closer look at the wall now, complete with poorly rendered arrows. 

The impetus for the restyle was the arrival of my Elvis Costello watercolor. He's about the coolest thing I've ever seen. Check out Sheena's shop! I love her pop culture watercolors!

The wall above the bed stayed the same because I was pretty happy with the way that turned out from the beginning.

So the bedroom is taking shape. I'm reasonably happy with the section that is visible in the first picture. Still working on the other bits. 

In other news, I moved the TV upstairs to a nook in the bedroom and moved the couch in the living room to open up the space and make it better for entertaining. I still need to do a lot of work on the downstairs room, though, so no pictures yet. 

Also, someone I know is getting some snail mail this week, so watch out!

She will know who she is from this picture. 

Bye for now!

more adventures in thrift shopping

I've been meaning to check out the Framingham, MA Salvation Army for a while now. I've driven past it a hundred times, but never stopped until yesterday. Here's the weird thing. If you've ever been to Natick/Framingham, you know it's this gigantic shopping mecca with every store you can possibly think of, and a big mall. So I was there, and I went into Target, Home Goods, DSW, and a couple other places and didn't find a single thing I wanted. Then I went into the Salvation Army and found a ton of cool stuff. I love thrift stores! 

Anyway, it may be clear from previous thrifting posts that I'm drawn to the ridiculous. Particularly ridiculous ceramic objects. 

Case in point:

Yeah. It's a ceramic unicorn bookend with a rainbow airbrushed onto his neck. It gets better...

There are two of them. By far my favorite find of the day. $1 each. 

Their other sides are rainbow free. I'm wondering if they'd look better flipped around because the rainbows don't really go with the other colors in the area. 

Then I found this...

Apparently, I have a thing for unicorns. They just jump off the shelf at me. This one is currently on the bureau at the top of my stairs, along with some old family portraits and figurines from earlier thrifting adventures. 

So, ceramic unicorns were the highlight of the day. Along with ceramic plaques. 

I know. They're kind of ugly. I plan on hanging them all together in a group. I'm building quite a collection. You might recall this one I found a few months ago. None of yesterday's are quite that glorious, but for some reason I like them. 

Especially this one. My theory is that they remind me of the ceramic things my Nana used to make. I've got a bunch of her pieces. She used to have a kiln in her basement.

This one was made from an Atlantic mold by Doris E. in 1978. That's right around the time my Nana would have been into ceramic molds. So I think that's the appeal, for me. 

This one is so hideous it's awesome. 

I think they're going to look awesome as a trio near my coatrack. 

Then I found some books. You can find some good ones if you're willing to sort through a bunch of Harlequins. 

They were $1 each. In fact, I think everything I bought yesterday was $1. Personally, I think Equus was overpriced, given its condition, but it's a charity so I don't mind too much. Books for beach week. 

So, that's it. A bunch of ugly ceramic crap and some books.*  I think it was a very successful day. 

 

*Actually, there was an item of clothing as well, but I think I'm going to do a separate thrift store clothing post sometime soon. 

 

Science!

So, I got this area sort of set up, but I'm probably not finished. It doesn't look quite right to me yet. So far, I like the chair and the bookcase next to each other. I think I like the lamp and the by-color book arrangement. Though, in general, I don't like bookcases completely full of books. I prefer the books broken up with other stuff, so I might change this up a little. I like the old picture of my dad, but I don't like the frame anymore. The picture is sort of stuck to the glass. Not sure how that happened. 

And I like the top part. Brachiosaurus got painted pink. I don't think pink is any less realistic than his former bright green. He could have been pink. If you can't prove it wasn't then it could have been. That's just science. He is strolling past the lovely beach vista of my Salvation Army painting, approaching my Crooke radiometer. Though in this position, the radiometer never really gets direct sunlight. Ergo, it never spins. Sigh. You can't have everything, I guess. 

I think wall art is in order next.  Any suggestions?

on the agenda

One of my next projects is a fresh coat of paint for these. The chair and bookcase have been in my family forever. The chair isn't too sturdy but I still like it. The side table is the one I got at Salvo a few weeks ago. I'm pretty into it. The chair is going to be matte gold. This picture from Pinterest is my inspiration...

The bookcase will be turquoise/aqua. Like this...

And the side table I'm a little undecided about. It definitely needs a paint job. It's hard to tell in this picture, but the finish is in rough shape. I'm considering an olive-y/forest-y green, maybe. I should add that once they are finished, they won't be all next to each other in this spot anymore. Any suggestions on table color?

wtf outfit

So, I got this ridiculous fake bokeh app for my iPhone and I used it to doctor up this picture. Sweet, huh? As you can see, it does hearts. 

I came up with this outfit on Friday as I was getting ready to go visit Kelley and Claire. It's one of those outfits that I put on and wonder if it's a wtf outfit. I started wondering about wtf outfits after finding an anonymous note in my classroom a while back. My policy is if I find it on the floor of my classroom, I can read it. Anyway, in skimming it, I came across the sentence "wtf is Ms. Wade wearing?" which kind of cracked me up. You have to have a thick skin when you deal with teenagers, so I wasn't particularly upset. More like curious. Because I totally wear some questionable things. I try to be creative but sometimes it just comes out weird. So mainly, I was dying to know which particular outfit it was. Kids. 

So this is a royal blue shirt, a yellow and white striped cardigan, that mint green belt from Salvo, and my gold Toms. I need to find a better way to photograph outfits if I plan on sharing them. Kelley thought it was cute. H couldn't have cared less one way or the other. He doesn't really care about clothes. So the jury is sort of out on it. Maybe I should try wearing it to school. 

I can't explain why I like what I like, or what I found at the thrift store

So, the North Providence Sal's turned out to be kind of a jackpot. As it turns out, I found too much stuff and spent too much time in North Providence to warrant a trip to the east side. I guess I was in a thrifting mood because I spent a lot of time carefully considering all of my options. Sometimes I feel impatient in places like this, but yesterday I felt like I could have browsed for hours. I think I was there for two at least. I ended up chickening out in the clothing department. There were a couple of things that had potential. I guess I'm just not confident enough in my ability to alter clothing properly. 

I found a cool side table that I'll share later. It's going to get a paint job, then it's going in my living room. 

The rest of the stuff I picked up was what the Salvation Army calls "bric a brac." Though that term I think refers specifically to decorative objects, and Sal's seems to use it indiscriminately to mean "crap that isn't clothes or furniture." 

Here's the crap I found...

a couple pieces of vintage Pyrex and a creamer. I already have one but I liked the color and it was $0.49. 

Records. Teaser and the Firecat, Tapestry, and the greatest hits of Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass. $1.00 each. Guys, I don't even have a record player. But I plan on having one someday in the near future, for what it's worth. And a pale aqua belt. I don't think it's ever been worn. 

a swan figurine, an amber leaf dish, and an olive tray, I think. It is now, anyway. For all of my many gatherings. That I plan to have someday. 

a duck plaque (don't ask), a seaside painting, the frame of which will probably be painted, and a floral ceramic platter that is going on the wall above my bar. It's my favorite item of the day. It reminds me of something my Nan would have made. 

And that's it! I'll try to remember to share as these goodies work their way into my decor. I swear that duck thing is going to look cute!