My lunch hour adventures....

Cobalt blue creamer pitcher - gold floral detail

After doing the post Oh Me, Oh Milk Glass! earlier I was just itchin' to dash over to Goodwill on my lunch break! Call it good luck or call it the effects of positive thinking, but the first thing I saw when I walked into the home section was milk glass!

Check out my Goodwill bargains and my other lunch time pictures.... I hope you're all having a great Thursday so far!

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This milk glass plate is a riot....

I actually found a small vase identical to one that I already have except it is clear glass and not milky white. I got it anyway because hey, it was waiting just for me! Plus, at 25 cents how could I resist? Especially with those beautiful hobnails all over it!...

I also killed time at a store up the street from Goodwill called Miami Twice, which claims to be a vintage-thrifty-retro type place but just come across tacky, not to mention it is outrageously overpriced and full of mostly new items. In fact, the same stuff that I find at Goodwill for change, they sell for eye-popping prices. A small opalescent vase for over $100! Nahh. I need to stop going in there hoping things will be different. Ironically they are currently promoting a "super sale" for which I saw no evidence of inside the store... HA!


And then I took a stroll up the strip mall to a new place called Roque's Curiosities, a gift shop with antiques, Victorian and Contemporary Marcasite, silver and natural stone jewelry, candles, oil, incense and more. It was ok, there was more new stuff than antique, and mostly overpriced. I spotted some pretty white and blue hobnail milk glass and snapped some quick photos....

My Soon to Be Bye-Bye Apartamentico

At the end of this year I will be packing all of my goodies up for a move... As for where we'll go, right now my boyfriend and I have two major options to consider and are still undecided... Regardless, by the end of this year my warm and cozy little abode will be no more! :(

Suffice it to say, the last two years have been a constant work in progress to get the apartment filled up and done up! I want to document the fruits of my labors in this sanctuary, my first apartment ever, and the first place I've called home since living at home with the folks... The memories will certainly never be forgotten, and now I'll make sure that the design and decor won't either! Below is somewhat of a mixed batch of recent and not so recent photos taken throughout my wild two years in this apartment. Some were taken at different times than others, and I am constantly moving art, chairs and accessories around as well... But, overall most remains the same, it waits in limbo as the countdown to its dismantlement begins... Enjoy!

(by the way, pardon the bad light in my apartment, as well as the iPhone pictures... I lost my camera and have yet to replace it)

This is what my dining room looked like from April - June of 2009, haha... It often transforms itself into a work area, and I frequently whip it back into a dining room from time to time when things get overwhelming (or when I have a party, like the Fourth of July party I cleaned this beautiful mess up for!). I can't wait until I have a house with a room specifically for all my crafts, projects and before and after renovations! By the way, the one framed instrument with the striped background was an experiment with striped velvet fabric, I wasn't crazy about the idea of all of them looking so busy, so I will only add fabric to one more, (eventually) the one diagonally across at the bottom right.

Anyway, this is what it currently looks like.... (new table base found at dumpsters in my complex, see my post "A Productive Labor Day Weekend" for more...

My wall of various art pieces: my drawings, my photography, trinkets and more

I got that stunning vintage black paper cutout of the peacock at a garage sale in a wood frame for $2!!! I put it in this copper frame from a Goodwill that only cost me $1, it looks much better :) The keys and lock are antique, the Jack Daniels statue belonged to my father, the milk glass pieces were a gift from my boyfriends mother (she has tons of it and gave a lot to me because she doesn't like it much anymore, yay for me!)

The tea light holder is a German crafted/hand painted piece I found at Goodwill... The shadow box with wine corks is my own personal artwork (see my post "More of My Arts and Crafts" for more of my "Shadow Corks"). Here are close-ups of a few....

That Buddha head on the stand was from a DOLLAR STORE :) The brass Asian Foo Dog was a thrift store find, it's an incense cone burner! The photo in the background I took when I was fifteen while in Paris, France.

My grandmother gave me this antique trunk, she had stowed it away in her garage for many years... thank you abuela!! Now it is home to my big book collection!

Those doors leaning against the wall are from an antique china cabinet that was falling apart due to water damage on the base, it was part of a lot of furniture being thrown out when my great aunt was moved to a home.... I could not bare to let their beauty go to waste, so in a fit of genius, I grabbed a screwdriver and took all four off. Now they are leaning/hanging in different parts of my apartment, I like to move them around often too... Love'em! Also salvaged from the same home was the cabinet they are sitting on, it's an antique record cabinet that I sanded, I have yet to stain it so I covered it with a long piece of green and white fabric with a Moroccanesque print. The lamp is antique, with blue bubbled glass detail - got it from a thrift store downtown for $25.

My antique leather top side table...someone threw this table out in their front yard!!! Oh the joy I felt as I spotted it coming around the corner, can you hear my tires screeching?? On top is my antique lighter collection (the pink beauty is recently purchased from eBay)... check out more photos below....

This is the close-up sale picture from when I bought this beauty... It's a vintage Evans fine bone china lighter and ashtray combo... it can stack too as you can see... I LOVE IT!!!

That was all from my living and dining room, here are some images from my bedroom...

This picture is from when I first got this antique side table at a downtown thrift shop for $25 or $20, I think... Since then I have hung more items on the wall and switched out lamps. I'll post an updated photo soon!

These are just random pictures of the crazy Buddha/perfume bottle/soapstone trinket box vignette I have hangin' out on top of my dresser... The man (Greek God Hermes carrying a caduceus) is a very old antique brass lamp that belonged to my father, I remember it sitting on his work bench "banco" when I was growing up and I always loved it... It doesn't work, but perhaps some day I'll fix it. For now, it serves as a great art piece and reminder of my father :)


That's it for now, though I plan to take better quality photos before I dismantle it all... Let me know what you think!

A productive Labor Day weekend and some random surprises...

I haven't had a lot of time lately to finish composing any of the several draft posts that I have pending, however I wanted to do a quick post with some photos of things that went on in my life this past (long) Labor Day weekend, it was a very productive one for me! I was able to accomplish many of the things I had planned...

I spent time with my mother collecting pieces of her gorgeous succulent plants in the backyard and potting them, then painting the terracotta pots various bright colors, they came out beautiful! This will definitely be a topic all on its own in the near future, with tips and ideas on potting plants and succulents, as well as featuring images of the terrariums I made after inspiration from a post on one of my favorite blogs, Design*Sponge. Stay tuned!

I also spent quite a bit of time cleaning up my apartment and remixing a few spaces, such as the dining room. I switched out my current table base with a funky robin egg blue iron table base with bamboo shaped cast legs... someone in my apartment complex dropped it off at the dumpsters just for me to find! score! haha... Anyway, it provides more support for the glass than the other base did and its color (which I originally planned on changing) has grown on me and I think it complements all the funky colors in the space... As for the other table base, I will find another use for it soon. Now that I look at it, the blue table base is in way better shape anyway. The paint is crackling off on this one, I have always meant to repaint it, but its rustic charm always ends up seducing me into procrastination! Now that I don't need to rely on it to hold up anything, I can direct some attention to its renovation! It's an antique piece that I inherited from a great aunt, it is part of a set of two that originally held up a large rectangular piece of glass; however, since my dining area is way too small for that, my mother and and I split up the bases and now we both use them with round glass tops... ;)

The apple green wall features four framed musical instruments (I got these at Big Lots, along with my favorite Beatles art: Richard Avedon portraits of all four Beatles 1967... Since I was so anxious to get that wall done, I printed all four on a regular office printer and stuck them in dollar store wood frames that I painted and jazzed up! One day I will get nice legitimate prints, one day, hehe... And, as a side note, I can't stress enough how much I love the eclectic look of using different dining chairs!!

I cut the palm branch from the palms hanging into my patio and the bougainvillea from the corner of my complex... I love the combination, especially with the dry branches I kept from a past gift arrangement! It's fast, it's easy, it's free and it's gorgeous!

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What else? Oh yes, I cleaned my patio! What a pain... My patio is pretty long for an apartment/condo unit, the drainage is bad and since we are on the first floor with palms along the wall of the patio, we get a lot of dirty drip down water during times of heavy rainfall (which is nonstop here these days!). So anyway, suffice it to say it gets nasty so frequently that it's overwhelming! Well, I cleaned it again, I am anxious for the cool weather and I want to spend time on a clean and beautiful patio... I think it looks great, which it always does after I clean and switch around the furniture and pots, but let's see how long it lasts this time!! :)

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I accompanied my mother and grandmother to JoAnn Fabrics and (though I don't often look for fabric there because throughout my design jobs I have amassed so much gorgeous fabric, but....) I stumbled upon this awesome print, it looks like Ikat or Native American to me and it was 50% off, coming out to $4.99/yd... I bought two yards and now I'm brainstorming as to what to do with it!

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Another surpirse... a peacock! On our way back to my moms we spotted a peacock in a neighbors yard and when we stopped and called to it from our window it came right up to the car! What a treat! It was hungry and its leg looked swollen, so we went home and my expert bird feeding grandmother whipped up some crazy concoction of bread and fruit for him...

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Last but not least, my aunt gave me an authentic Lampe Berger Paris scented burner... It looks like a purple onion, my very own "Glass Onion" yeah! Here is a picture of when I first lit the stone to get it going... And, I just noticed, you get a sneak peek of one of the awesome succulents I planted over the weekend. It's in the background in the purple Goodwill ceramic planter I found a few weekends ago. Also on the table are various vintage ceramic containers, the yellow one if from Antique Mall Y'all down south and the salmon pink one with the gold painted knb top was $1.75 at a Goodwill! Score! Oh, and don't mind my Matryoshka dolls lurking... my collection is growing fast, I have two that I bought while in Russia and many others from garage sales! Whee!

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