salt & pepper shakers

and now for an update on my salt & pepper shaker collection. i've run out of room atop my kitchen cabinets, so i've been more selective about purchasing/displaying them. my dad (bless his heart) buys me gas station s&p shakers whenever he goes on road trips, but i don't have the heart to tell him i am only interested in old ones. anyway...my interests now lean toward the weird, bizarre vintage ones.

not that weird, but cute: 

mama polar bear holding her cub (estate sale, murfreesboro, $2)

Can't really tell what's going on here:

c

cats? with monocles? (estate sale, murfreesboro, $2)

JFK on Rocking Chair (yes...this is meant to be JFK. it says so on his rocking chair)

i like how his eyes make him look slightly doofy (antique store, nolensville, $12)

Of what value are spiders?

I got a fun book at the goodwill today (50% off day!) called "The Little Quiz Book" (©1956). 

You guys know i am a sucker for illustrations like this, and I think they'd be perfect for Gocco cards or something (what's the statute of limitations for stuff like that? are they considered to be in the public domain yet? i haven't been in college for 11 years so i can't remember...).

The book contains answers to fascinating questions, such as "Is the Black Forest in Germany really black?" and "Who was the first President to travel under water in a submerged submarine?" (In case you're wondering, no and Harry S. Truman). I also scored some cute vintage drinking glasses and a few other novels.

And if you're wondering of what value are spiders? They destroy countless millions of noxious insects each year, --flies, mosquitoes, bugs, and grasshoppers.

Mister Wister the Time Twister

i was looking at a japanese website where i saw these cute things -> which prompted me to look up "petit ours brun" -> at which point i learned it was a french cartoon. so then i ->searched for other french cartoons on youtube and found the following video (i just wanted to explain how i ended up here. i love how easy it is to end up random places on the internet.)  anyway, this cartoon just exemplifies everything i love about the art of mid-century cartoons.






if you're a fan, be sure to check out Cartoon Modern Blog. I got the book for christmas - yippee!

the Stubborn Cowboy

please spend the next 6 minutes of your life watching this short cartoon from 1967 - "the stubborn cowboy".  it will make you smile, and if it doesn't, i don't know if we can be friends anymore. it's funny to imagine a time when it was perfectly acceptable to show a cartoon figure rolling his own cigarettes.




here's another one called "my daddy the astronaut".

antique store treasures

the mister & i went to southern indiana to visit with his family & to "get away from it all" for a few days. the antique/thrift/junk stores seem more untouched compared to the places around nashville, plus you can tell the strong european presence in the community based on some of my acquisitions:

wooden finger puppets, still in the original box. made in czechoslovakia

dutch painted shelf/bar (we'll hang it in the kitchen)

plastic tea canister

irish (?) carved wooden monk/saint dudes

green glass owl pitcher and owl trivet

record carrying case (for my future career as a wedding dj -ha!)

holland dairy metal tray

new desk!

i've been trying to straighten up the office (again...) after R was able to move out some of his music gear. we put about half our CD collection away in storage boxes and the next task: replace our glass top desk with a different desk. i didn't know what exactly i wanted - just something old and cool. so i've been perusing craigslist daily in hopes that i would find "it" and if i found "it", "it" would still be available. i saw an ad for a vintage steel tanker desk and the guy responded quickly. still available! AND...he was willing to deliver (for free!). that's a major score because we don't have easy access to a truck AND the desk is heavy as . he meticulously brought the desk in the house with furniture dollies and packing blankets and was awesome about it all. (the last time someone hauled something into our house {new fridge} they managed to scrape the pergo floor, rip the linoleum in the kitchen, chip the concrete on the porch and bang up for the door frame). so i was so impressed and grateful with the way he brought this behemoth of a desk into our home.

i love it. it's all mad men-y and awesome. we have lots of clashing greens and turquoises in the room now, so i need to figure out how to tie it all in. i still need to file away all my goodies into the 7 (!) drawers.

i have always had a deep rooted love for desks and stationery supplies (i'm channeling my grandpa butch). stamps, pens, papers, staplers, typewriters, tape, erasers. i love it all. i still have some work to do in the office, so i'll be sure to post more pictures when it's finished.

-website w/ restored steel furniture
-and another one

hooray for carolyn!

My pal Carolyn's awesome bookshelf is featured on design sponge today... I am so proud of my super-crafty friend (and jealous of all of her tchotchkes)!

http://www.designspongeonline.com/2009/06/before-after-hollys-built-ins-carolyns-bookshelf.html

china hutch

i spotted this china hutch at an estate sale more than a month ago. i couldn't afford their asking price, so that was that. i left my name/number in case they were willing to let it go for less. over the next few days, i COULD NOT STOP THINKING ABOUT IT. i found the craiglist ad for the estate sale and contacted the lady to see if it was still available. it was! and she'd come down on the price! i told her i'd have to wait for a break in rollum's schedule (and for my neighbor's truck) to pick it up. he's been so busy that finally, her husband offered to drop it off. so i got this bad boy on monday. I LOVE IT. we took our ikea table out, brought the our vintage metal table back in (and covered it with this rad tablecloth my friend liz gave me for my birthday) = kitchen makeover! now i have to fill the hutch with goodies, which will require a big cabinet sort-through - i will display some things that have been hidden and whatnot. we may be looking to get rid of the ikea table, so if you know of anyone...
isn't it funny how much the color changes depending on flash/no flash?

yard sale treasures

i had good yard sale luck today. woke up around 10:30 and searched for "smyrna garage sales" on craiglist, and here's what i got:

first stop: sam davis road; a woman and her daugher, around my age. lots of cool antique-y stuff. i was just going to buy the bird salt & pepper shakers and the yellow glass thing; i liked the painting but part of me wondered if it was a little too "motel art" or "bob ross." (I was laughing at myself for thinking so hard about whether or not i wanted to spend $2 on it). the daughter ended up selling me the painting and the other goodies for $2.75 (!?). the woman said her aunt painted it in the 1920s; her name was lola and she lived to be almost 100. i told her i'd hang it in my computer room. after i heard the backstory about lola, i grew to love the painting and wish i had paid them more for my goodies.

next i ended up off hazelwood; it was an old lady in an electric wheelchair and her husband. she talked at length about her health and how this would probably be the last garage sale she had. also how her daughter owns a salon and wanted to re-do the colors, so there were some salon hair dryers for sale. she had lots of owls for sale & i picked out the coolest ones - 25 cents each! and a plastic purity milk crate for 50 cents.
(yellow glass was from the first yard sale)

i love all my goodies! but i need to watch this owl collection i seem to have started. reminds me of the sorority girl roommate i had in 1997; she was in chi omega and had an entire bookshelf filled with hundreds of owls (i guess that's their "symbol"?) this was the apartment i also shared with a chinese girl who cooked chicken claws.

images that make me happy

i like how clicking different links on web pages can bring you to exciting places. i started out on print and pattern which led me to illustrator helen dardik and her blog (i have a soft spot for helens)...and then to helen's post about mary blair. not a household name by any means - mary was a 'color stylist and designer' for walt disney in the 40s and 50s and worked on my favorites: "peter pan" and "cinderella".  AND she designed the 'it's a small world' ride.  right on!  

i am a SUCKER for stuff like this. if i could live in this alternate cartoony universe, with chocolate milk and elephants and magic slippers and eskimos, i would.  there was an exhibition of her work in san francisco that just closed (mar 18).

we used to have this record.  the choir director on this recording was the choir director at my school in california.