Vacation thrift finds!

Well, it's a rainy day here at ChezQT and I am neck deep in canning projects. This time of year is always crazy with the garden produce coming in nonstop and getting ready for back to school, plus trying to squeeze in all the fun stuff I wanted to do with the kids. So that's my excuse for not blogging a lot lately.

But I still thrift and collect when I can, so here's a sampling of some of the stuff I picked up lately!

We recently spent a week and a half at our cabin upstate. One rainy day up there, I cleaned out a lot of the stuff we don't use and took it to a thrift shop in the local town. I dropped off four big trash bags full of stuff! And the bonus was I got to shop at the store too, and this is one little shop that hasn't yet succumbed to the high prices of the big chains. Nothing in the store was more than $2!

You can bet I was super excited to find Pyrex on my vacation- I was going through withdrawal at this point, and these were just what I needed! The snowflake divided dish (with lid!) was $2, the flamingo plate was 25 cents and the turquoise vegetable bowl was $2 at a flea market (more on that later!). I already have the snowflake DD, so this one will be for sale. I'm trying to resist collecting the Pyrex dinnerware, so will have to let the plate and bowl go too (eventually!)

These little handled crocks are GlasBake and were 25 cents each. I think I will keep them up there for a while, at least through the fall when I will use them for soup!

This orange ball pitcher was (yep, you guessed it) $2! I will be taking it to the booth.

The pottery vase was $1 and will be a nice addition to the collection of white pottery I already have up there. The two saucers are Taylor Smith Taylor Cathay.

I love this hand painted cookie jar and it was only $1! It's really big, like a gallon size.

But probably the best score of all was this vintage suitcase. I went up to the checkout with my arms full of (mostly breakable) stuff and spied this off to the side, under a pile of other things. I had to ask if it was even for sale. The ladies were so happy someone wanted it- they said it had been there for weeks- that they almost apologized for asking $2. I packed it full of my treasures and they all made it home safely, and in style.

Oh, and the table all these are photographed on was a flea market find. It's an old farm table I bought at the flea market for $5. The oilcloth was definitely too far gone to save, but the table underneath has a great patina, which I will show you in a another post!

Tour of Chez QT- our Living Room

OK, so I've been talking about this for a long, long time. And then I proceed to blabber on and on about thrift finds and Pyrex.... Well, now it's finally here- the living room reveal!

Last year we (OK, me) decided to revamp our living room. Part of this was by necessity, in that we had to move our entertainment center and some other furniture up to our mountain cabin, so we would have living room furniture up there. And it was also necessary to bring up some of the beautiful mid century modern furniture I had stashed away in the basement!

So here is the only "before" shot I could find- the plaid sofa left over from my husband's bachelor days kind of epitomized the entire room. The coffee table got a MCM makeover, which you can read about here.



I did not paint or really change the overall color scheme. Our walls are kind of a terra cotta color and the sofas are still olive green, although they are new and more modern-looking. The rug is the same burnt red color that used to match the drapes, but then I found these amazing deadstock pinch pleat drapes which you can read about here.

So, to start the tour, you come in through our original 1960 three-paned mahogany door. At one time we almost changed it to a more modern door, but I am super glad we decided to keep it. The wood is beautiful; it just glows.

The oak cabinet is a reproduction of a vintage ice box. It doesn't really match the style of the room anymore, but we do need the storage for videos and records. (Yes, records- as you will see I have many radio/record players in this room.) That is a 1946 GE tabletop radio next to the atomic lamp and the two amazing Rosenthal candle holders I got from Dana over at Mid2Mod! The B&W photo is a family piece, as are a couple others in the room. All the photos are B&W because there is plenty of color elsewhere!

On the right of the door is a little nook that is the perfect size for this 1946 RCA console radio. The front flips open, as you can see, to reveal the radio dial. The record player is under the left side of the top. That is a vintage weather station (Bakelite thermometer/ barometer) on top. There is a round mirror up above (see first photo) and I would eventually like to have a hanging modern ceramic light (W. German style) here, but haven't found the right one yet.

To the left of the door is the main living space, with the large window and large sofa backing it. The other sofa is a loveseat, which we had to special order from Rowe, because apparently no one buys loveseats anymore. They just buy a big sofa or sectional and two Lay-Z-Boys, I guess. That is the same coffee table I posted above, it just looks a lot better now with hairpin legs and a Dansk Kobenstyle enamel piece on top!

You can see my favorite photo of FDR and a 48 star US flag there on the left.

Here is a detail shot of all my vintage planters on the window sill. The two on the right are German ceramics, which I collect.

The leaded glass cabinet was inherited from my Grandmother- she had it removed from a house they lived in long ago. It was built in, so some of the sides are a little rough- which is cool with me. I have a couple more radios and vintage electronics in there, as well as my collections of tiki mugs and cocktail shakers on top. They are up there out of harm's way, because normally this room is full of my kids' toys and books. (I had to get up so early to take these photos, before they came down and filled it with their clutter, LOL!) And another radio on the left at bottom, a Zenith black dial chairside.

Continuing around the room is my famous TV-quarium in the corner. It's a 1950 Motorola that I took the guts out of and put an aquarium inside. The clock is a George Nelson repro, and the owl TV lamp with glowing eyes is a fairly recent thrift find.
 

In place of our giant entertainment center we brought up this 1958 Motorola HiFi console, which had belonged my husband's parents. It has the perfect sleek modern vibe and is a great platform for my light up globe and another vintage TV lamp. On the left are two W. German fat lava planters that actually match. I found them separately, almost a year apart. One thing about this living room, almost nothing is new. The only things not vintage here are the sofas and the TV.

If you would keep going at this point, you'd be in our kitchen. I've done a post about that here, although things are significantly different now that I should probably do another post on that! Oh well, stay tuned I guess!