it's been a long time

dear little blog i apologize for being a bad blogger. once i came home from my visit with leigh i was just not in the mood to blog. i've had a lot on my mind. a few weeks after returning home, al proposed! i immediately became overwhelmed when school started, work got busy and i began thinking about the wedding. so i'm sorry, i have been spending so much time on my laptop that the thought of blogging just didn't sound fun. so we have a date, and a venue. that's it. so much more work to do. i'm pretty sure i'll make myself a birdcage veil, or i might pop into lovejoy's attic to look over their veiled vintage hats, i saw some really cute ones in the window recently. i need to project manage this wedding and i'm just not in the mood. i wish i either didn't have school or work, but alas i have both. and i have insomnia.

wp fluorescent

fluorescent orange seems to be grabbing my attention everywhere these days, i guess that's what that color is all about. we stumbled upon a great estate sale up in forestville this weekend on our second cabin trip. the woman who owned the house was a bit of a shop-aholic, but the goods weren't what really got me, it was her choice of wallpaper. we walked into the laundry room to find the most perfect paper ever.


the living room and dining room had some pretty good metallics, but my phone didn't capture them very well.


nothing prepared me for the kitchen paper, i was in awe. the estate sale guardian couldn't believe how excited i was and that i wanted a photo of these chickens and roosters. they are now wallpapered on my phone.



i did end up with a $6 food processor (a sunbeam oskar!) , some old sunset magazine cookbooks, and a gorgeous vera scarf which kept my greasy locks covered for the duration. to get the goods for $5 along a viewing of this papered home was heaven. i wanted to go back on sunday but we had too much to do.

closed

pine paneling here we come! we are heading up to the cabin today around noon (maybe after scoping out a great looking estate sale). my car is jam packed with stuff, and it doesn't even have any of the furniture we want to take up. we've got to borrow david's truck in a few weeks for that load. boy do i wish our kitchen looked like this, alas it's mostly white cabinets and a light counter top, but we've got some plans for improvement. i'll document all the updates and changes as they happen, our goal is to get a lot of color into the now very beige space. this kitchen belongs to the lucky marusica, and i do love her style. the only similarity we have is the electric stove, which is not going to be an easy transition after cooking on the wedgewood. we need to add propane to the house and get a gas stove in asap. it looks like rain up there, but i've got plenty to do inside. al plans on diving, but we'll see if that happens.

want

this house has so many great things in it, i wish our cabin could look like this. we'll definitely be replacing a lot of the furniture the current owners are leaving behind for us, so we have plenty of time to find the perfect pieces. i'd love an old bed like this, but i bet we can't find a queen size from the 50s. i also really think we should have some fish on the walls. maybe one fish is enough, but i'm going to find it out there somewhere. i'm excited to bring out my chenille yellow bedspread, it doesn't quite fit the bed or decor in this house, but it will be great up there. it's really similar to this one, but sunny yellow. hmm...more yellow.

cyclo

after i grabbed everyone from the airport yesterday we took a drive out to cheap pete's to pick up the game fish cyclopedia. it's quite massive and there is really only one wall in the entire house it will fit on unless we hang it in the really dark hallway. the bamboo frame looks amazing and it's really impressive on the wall. it's hanging too high now, needs to come down about a foot, but we needed a safe place for it to rest and we had a nail in the wall already. once al got home we took off for some dinner at pot de pho, then headed to north beach for some dessert at stella pastry & cafe. we dropped the family off at their hotel and al and i came home to look at furniture on craigs list and ikea.


i hope to go grab this quartite creative corp lamp after we eat some breakfast, visit the de young, and stroll over to the rose garden in golden gate park. there is a great looking estate sale today, i hope i can talk them into going.

where to start

leigh tagged me to post about what my "style" is. i'm not sure where to start. i guess for me it's all about color and old stuff. too bad we live in a very white house now, although sometimes that can be nice. we just miss having some color on the walls. i want to have a turquoise room one day. i don't know if al can stomach this, but he's pretty open to trying things, and i think once we painted a color that intense, it would have to stay put for a while.


i fantasize about having a large installation of heath tiles in my future home. this fireplace looks particularly awesome because it's so bright against it's black health tiled background. i find any bright color combined with black stunning.


i love complicated bedding patterns if it's done well. i hate too many large puffy pillows, but this one is just right. you see a few different pinks all working as a team. the pop of the gold and green pillows is perfect. i really like this entire house, posted on sfgirlbybay yesterday. you can see some other bed photos with different combinations and i would love to do this, i just don't have room to store all those blankets.


one of my most beloved items here at home is the avocado green sofa i grew up with. i've always loved it and it sat in our living room in north carolina where it was hardly used. when my parents decided to replace it, my dad shipped this baby from north carolina to me in sf! it came with all my grandmother's china and i bawled while i opened all the boxes. i have some other family pieces, including a china cabinet originally owned by the lowry's (grandparents), which had been passed down to my parents, then to my sister, now it's with me. my grandmother's dishes (which she purchased for her own mother) fill it now.


one of my favorite corners of this house is filled with random treasures. some estate sale finds. there are a few things that leigh got for me from lisa's now closed store, the pickled hutch (back in the church street days). al's skateboard sits here, ready for quick trips to the store or a ride around the block (last year's birthday gift from me!). a snake plant sits in the old planter that was left in the basement at the ellsworth house. i only wish the wall behind it was a nice pea green.


my current dream house is for sale in portland right now. i'd like to get decorating in there...

estates, take two

saturday evening i regretted not getting a few other things at the estate sale and this has happened to me before. i did some research on the franciscan star burst pattern and decided i should have gotten all the pieces. the set wasn't complete, but there were several dinner plates, bread plates, a split serving bowl, and a pepper shaker. sunday morning while al made tiramisu for our italian themed easter dinner, i headed back to the sale. when i walked i was told all items under $100 were half off. i scooped up the dishes and found the wrought iron chandelier that had haunted me all night. al wasn't that hot on it, but i knew $35 for this was a steal. yesterday i paid half that.

estates

al and i go to estate sales almost every weekend. sometimes they are gross and completely a waste of time, and sometimes i'm ecstatic to find a few cheap & mismatched things. today i found a pink pyrex baking pan ($4) to match the butter yellow one i love so much, a franciscan star burst creamer, and a turquoise sugar bowl that looks like it was born to go with this casserole. i'm always tempted to keep the things i find, but most of them end up in my etsy store because i don't need more stuff. one day soon i hope these finds are going into the cabin.

new old stuff

after visiting my family in north carolina last month, my parents sent me home with their very old & loved cast iron pan. i've been in serious want for one of these for several years, and i don't know why i never bought one. i'm so glad i didn't because i love this pan. every time i use it i think of mom making cornbread back in our house in cary. we've cooked with this at least once a week since it came home and met our wedgewood. i found the orange cast iron grill pan at an estate sale recently, and sold it's mate on etsy.

sale

the estate sales were rather blah today. there was a bounty of them, al and i went to 4 or 5 (i've already forgotten). the only things i found were these two teeny, sweet japanese ceramic pieces. when i say teeny, i mean teeny. they measure about 1 3/8" wide by 2 1/2" long & 2 1/4" tall. when i got home there was a note from katie thanking me for helping her with her new blog, and the colors just all sort of fit together. the boxes are filled with two lovely truffles. oh so nice with my cup of tea.

orange

lately i've been really taken with these two orange trays i found at an estate sale. one is on the kitchen table, protecting it from messes, and the other is on the coffee table. everything looks so sharp and clean against that orange.

early birthday

aurin and i spotted a set of 4 framed prints at a consignment store in north carolina last month. we could not stop laughing at them and she ended up buying them for me as an early birthday gift. this is the pear song.