Pretty Small Things: decorations and an ottoman

I had a fabulous time antiquing with Kait Moreno today! We went to the Cambridge Antique Market - a five story, vendor based, store. It’s really fabulous and you should go (but please leave some of the cute things for my next trip).

Here are the spoils :)

1. Bentwood Bird - $7
2. “The Boll Worm” print - $8
3. Small brown ottoman - $6 (actually from a little yard sale down the street, but I wanted to go in order of the pictures…)
4. “Room In Use” sign - $19.50 (marked down 70% from $65 woo!)

I almost bought these really cute metal birds, but they’re $37 and I just can’t get myself to do it.  Also, I was on the lookout to find a painting to do this project, but couldn’t find the perfect one:

Maybe next time :)

The Perfect End Table

As I mentioned in a past blog, I’ve been looking for perfect end tables for my living room for fooreeevur (pronounced like this from the Sandlot). Well, Tim and I finally broke down and shelled out the cash for this end table from West Elm that I love love leurve.  

Since both of the chairs there are low and from very different styles, we needed an end table that would be the right scale and neutral enough to fit in without competing stylistically. I can’t tell you how perfectly this end table fits the bill. Well, I guess you can just see in the picture!

I styled the stump with a metal donkey my Dad got me from Mexico, some similarly colored books, and a small jar with a twig. The jar was from a garage sale and the twig is from my back yard. It’s simple but makes us very very happy.

Bonus: Tim and I are moving in September. This is very sad, because this is the best apartment ever, but such a neutral and timeless end table will look good in almost any room. A great design investment :)

Pretty Things Need a Place

I’m definitely an avid lover of small pretty things. I love a combination of vintage, whimsical, industrial, mid-century, who knows what else. With a rather large and evolving collection of pretty objects (don’t you dare call them knickknacks!! Chotchkies?! I’ll never forgive you) I’ve had a lot of fun arranging them in pretty combinations. Here’s my latest attempt to “style” the two bookcases that flank the little sitting area in my living room.

Here are some things I try to keep in mind when I’m arranging:

• Evenly space color: For example I have two green vases and a green model car. I made sure they are spread out, so it wasn’t like “oh hey, look there how you used that green a lot.” Instead it’s more of “wow, these objects are random, but it all works. It doesn’t seem planned… how did you make it so cohesive!?”
• Evenly space and mix finishes: I was really conscious of the finishes I had and made sure to mix them up. For example I have two small bugs: a mercury glass grasshopper and a brass ant. I could have put the brass ant next to brass hourglass I have, but that would have been a lot of brass all together. Instead, I spread it out.
• Rule of threes! I’m sure you’ve heard of this and it is SO HANDY! Now, I think the trick is, three doesn’t mean three objects. It can be more like three heights or three weights. Take the right bookshelf: The top cubby has three items, period. BUT the second cubby has 10 objects (technically). If you count the books and the jar with balls as one thing each it has 4, which still isn’t 3…  BUT, since the large jar/balls is stacked on top of the books and they’re all in the same-ish color scheme it becomes like one bigger object to your eye. Then the hourglass and the grasshopper pop off of it. So, the rule of threes still kind of applies. Hey, you gotta embrace the rules to break them right?
• Height and weight: This one was trickier for me. Height is height right? But weight? Visual weight?  Whaaaaa….?  Here’s the conclusion I’ve come to…

1. Color: Neutrals and colors with low contrast are lightweight. Colors that are bright or have high contrast have more visual weight.
2. Sheen: This one is a bit of a mix for me. Shiny objects look and feel more lightweight, but they also draw your eye in certain contexts. So for this one, I think this is a case by case thing. Most of the time, they’re visually light.
3. Transparancy:  A really simple one. The more transparent something is, the less visual weight it takes up. Glass jar - very light.  Block of (dark) wood - very heavy.
4. Size:  This is pretty simple too, if something is tall and wide, it takes up more visual weight. Tall and thin is less. Short and thin is even less. So my brass ant, doesn’t take up a lot of visual weight at all. The big basket behind it takes up a lot more weight.

SO, let’s take a case study in visual weight.  My lightbulb jar and my owl lamp.

• Color: The Jar has a little color on the top, but it’s not very bright. The owl is dark and has a pop of orange.
• Sheen: Neither are particularly shiny…. 
• Transparency: The Jar is 99% transparent. The owl is opaque.  
• Size:  They’re basically the same size in both height and width. 

The Owl is definitely more visually heavy by color and transparency. Thus, if you put them next to each other (which I wouldn’t suggest because you want to vary your heights) the owl draws your eye and will act as more of a visual center. At least… this is what I’m thinking from my experiments…

Anywho… I for height I tried to make sure that the “pattern” of heights and weights vary from cubby to cubby.

Ok ok enough about staging. I’m probably totally wrong anyway :). But I love it and I guess that’s all that matters. My REAL advice? Check out Emily Henderson’s styling and try to learn by watching. She’s kind of my styling hero and has really encouraged me to mix things up and not worry about matching. I’ve never liked matchy-matchy so her work has been really validating and inspiring.  

I’d also love to hear what you guys think?  Totally wrong?  Vaguely wrong?  Did I blow your mind?  Are you just shocked that I obsessed that much about cubbies?

The Perfect Chair

This weekend was another great craigslist adventure for Tim and me. I found this rocking chair on craigslist some time last week, and we got to pick it up Saturday. Only $35!!



The other bonus was the lady selling it was incredibly sweet and a huge craigslist fan. If you’ve bought and sold a bunch like I have, it’s always a treat to meet someone who enjoys great finds as much as passing treasures along to other people who will love them.

So, a few details about this rocker - It’s solid wood and wicker, which I wasn’t ever in to before but I love now. The texture is a great addition to our room. It’s painted white, as you can see in the picture, but the paint is old and chipping. It blends right in to the antique pieces we already have, but it’s also really low profile, so its proportions are great with the mid-century seating in the room.

Basically, it’s pretty much perfect and I love it :)

Living Room Details Roundup

This is going to be a little bit of a catchall for two reasons… 1. I want to show you my living room as a whole and 2. There are a lot of little things I want to point out that don’t make a great post by themselves.

(If you want to see our NEW living room, check it out here!)

Let’s dig in!

The most important thing to point out is how much I love our apartment. It’s beautifully cared for, has amazing vintage architecture, and we have AMAZING landlords. I’ve come to terms with the fact that it’s all down hill after this - I’m spoiled.

The ceilings are about 12 feet with arching on the seam between the walls and ceiling. The great height is matched by all of the sunlight we get through our 4! windows - three of which are bay windows.



We’ve covered several of the things in this room in other posts. Namely: themantle, theottoman, thephilco radio, thetable lamp, theside table, thepaint, andScrabble letter art. Other things of interest…

Couches and chair: We got these through a combination of craigslist and dumb luck. We started our couch search pretty early and took our time to find just the right one. The result was this amazing vintage couch in goldenrod nagahyde. It’s in amazing condition and was only $80!  When we went to pick it up the woman selling it threw in the great mid-century chair we have for free! We were stoked. It seemed the furniture gods were smiling, but little did we know the extent of our sofa destiny - wow that was bad…

The day we got the keys from our friends who were moving out (we miss you Casey and Cody!!!), they told us they hadn’t been able to have Salvation Army take their old couch away. They asked us if we wanted it or could put it out on the curb for trash day. Something looked familiar… yes, this was the exact same model couch we had just bought in a different colors! Sisters reunited! Someday we might reupholster the green one, it’s had a lot of lovin over the years, but for now we’re just happy to have the girls together again. Weird right?



Coffee table and rug: These were both craigslist finds. The coffee table was a splurge for us, but still a deal at $125. The rug is a little small for the room, but for some reason I love the scale of it. I know, cringe - sorry. It’s from West Elm for about $300 usually, but we got it for $40. Just gotta be persistent!



Floor Lamp: This is Tim’s baby. We were looking around at Fun Antiques in Porter Square when Tim fell in love with it. It’s a little more than we would usually spend at $125, but still a decent price. It’s a vintage industrial type lamp and still has the original tag on it! We’ve pointed it up to get more light into the room, plus I think it looks really sculptural that way. Definitely a huge step up from the Target lamp we had before (sorry Target, you know I love you).

Miscellaneous: Keeping our eyes open and walking frequently has led Tim and I to some great finds. For example…



The clock on the mantle was in the trash!  Works and everything - we love it.

A lot of the glass ware on the shelves came in a crate of vases a guy sold me for $1. He was tired since it was the end of the day, and ready to get rid of things. He even threw in the crate. I didn’t keep every thing in the crate, but the stuff that I liked was great.

The little office lamp and bug printed boxes were from Target, and the rest of the chotchkies were from Pier 1, antique stores, or are family hand-me-downs.

Still to do: I know we need curtains, they’re just so expensive most of the time! That combined with my pickiness equals curtain paralysis. We’ll get there, I promise. We’re also looking to add another chair and side table to put between the book shelves. More posts with those changes to come soon!! …hopefully…