Some finds along the way...

Good morning friends! I hope you're doing well.

We have been busy getting ready for another trip to Birdsong Cottage this week, so I don't have any time at all to create anything (the story of my life lately). In the meantime, I thought that I would share a few things that I bought while up in New England. These were found at Brentwood Antiques in Hampton Falls, NH. There were a lot of very pricey fine antiques in this store, so I initially thought it wasn't for me, until a got to a little booth in the back that specialized in vintage laces and such. Need I say more!

A baby's dress, some lace and a bar pin...



A closeup of the lace...

A closeup of the detail on the dress...



A closeup of the pin...

These four items totalled $13.00. Wow!

Lovely gift wrapping from Hungary...

Greetings from The Perch!

The other day I received something from eBay, with the seller being located in Hungary. I love to bid on vintage photos from other countries because it's always interesting when you receive your treasures to see the postage that is used, and sometimes, if you are lucky, you find beautiful old writing in a foreign language on the back of the photo. I save any of the envelopes that could be used in a collage project down the road. And surprisingly, often the postage is not any more than for something ordered within The States.

This was the first time that I ordered anything from Hungary and was so glad I did. The pictures below will tell the story!

I love the way this seller took the time to make my name

and address look so beautiful.

And within the mailing envelope the giftwrap was

wonderful...



A closeup of the giftwrap...

And what was inside?

This gorgeous old ballerina photo...

...with the added bonus of beautiful

old script on the back...



I love that the seller took such care with this package. In this age of on-line ordering, constant advertising, and concern only about the bottom dollar, it's so refreshing to see this level of going "the extra mile" in customer service.

Have a wonderful day!

 

 

Painting the vintage iron beds...

Happy Saturday!

We are leaving tomorrow for Birdsong, but I thought that you might like to see how the old iron beds turned out. My husband sanded and cleaned them, and I painted them yesterday. As it turned out, the railings were worthless, so we are going to figure out some way to use the headboards and foot boards with modern mattresses, box springs and frames. No big loss, as most of the time you don't get railings anyway.

Here are a few shots of the unpainted beds...



Here is what I used on them...

And voila!

Here they are painted...

This is the detail on the twin bed.

It looks like there were several previous coats

of paint over a lot of rust.

Oh, well, I guess chippy and old is the look

we wanted!

And this is the detail on the full-sized bed...

We hope to bring up at least the larger one next week, and will attempt to buy the mattresses while we are there. I think I know what I want to do for bedding, but that will be in a future post. Next week we hope to get the laminate flooring ordered, the new baseboards purchased, painted, and installed, and the rest of the walls painted. On the next trip up we hope to get the flooring in. There is a 7-9 business day wait to get the flooring...not what we had hoped for! 

I hope that you're having a great weekend! Thanks for stopping by.

Limelight Hydrangeas and enamelware...

Good morning. I hope that you're having a great one!

The other day I trimmed back the spent blossoms on my hydrangea bushes by the back of the house, and decided to cut some of the Limelights which are still blooming beautifully in white. I decided to put them in an old piece of enamelware that had been sitting on the front porch. How pretty are these?

"Thoreauly Antiques" in Concord, MA...

Good morning to all! I hope that you're having a great week!

As promised, I wanted to share with you some of the sweet little finds from the other place that I love to visit when we go to Concord, MA, namely, Thoreauly (a play on names for Henry David Thoreau) Antiques. It is a great shop composed of various vendors, many of which cater to the mixed media artist.

A sweet little book...

...with bible verses...

...and beautiful illustrations...

Some illustrations from an old children's book...

...with the added bonus of more pretty pictures on the

reverse of the pages...

Some beautiful old button cards...

Another flapper photo, this one with a horse.

This was a reproduction, but I couldn't

resist buying it anyway...

This cute little girl in black.

I have a Halloween vision for this

little darling...

And the sweetest old ballet shoes.

Lately I have been collecting old ballerina photos,

so I couldn't resist these...

One of these years maybe I'll even get to use these lovelies in some art!

I hope that you're having a creative day. Thanks for visiting me.