Thrift Shopping

Recent Purchases: New & Old

Hello lovelies! Sorry we took the week off. Our family reunion took place over the weekend, which we had to move inside because it rained all day long. However, we didn’t allow the weather to stop us from having fun! After the fun was over I fit in some time for shopping. I can always make time to shop!

gray and teal bedroom, teal desk, gray nailhead headboard, brass lamp

First up, is a beautiful brass lamp I bought from the Goodwill for a mere $10. I originally had a different brass lamp (pictured above), but it came as a pair and I was advised by Milla to move it back to the dining room. So that left me lamp-less for a few hours until I found this beauty!

It’s a nice a heavy brass lamp, I especially love the raised leaf design. Here’s a closeup. And that beauty to the left is my new gold round mirror. I’m only showing a sneak peek because the room isn’t quite ready for full viewing. I bought the mirror from Marshalls for $39.99, aren’t the intertwined circles amazing!

The Ugliest Mirror of Them All

Posted on May 8, 2012 by Kahli Posted in Decor Inspiration, Inspiration, Thrift Shopping | 6 Comments

I haven’t been to the thrift stores in a few weeks when I usually stop in a three times a week. I guess it was my way of trying to save money and I was sick of thrift stores because all of the shopping we did for our birthday party. I went to the Goodwill on Thursday intending to buy a brass lamp for my bedroom and it is probably a good thing that I didn’t find one since I have too many lamps in the house to begin with. While I didn’t find the lamp I was looking for, I did find this hideous mirror.

…and yes I did buy it! I think even Breeze was perplexed with all the details on it. When I showed it to Milla, her first question was: “Kah, is that fruit?” Sigh, yes Milla it is and pine cones. My intention is to spray paint it a lovely shade of teal. Spray paint can cover all evils. The mirror only set me back $12 so it won’t be a complete waste if I don’t like it.

I have a feeling I’ll love it though. When I convinced myself to purchase it, this is what I envisioned. Can you spot the fruit?

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I love Chairs!

Posted on April 25, 2012 by Kahli Posted in Furniture, Thrift Shopping | 4 Comments

If you’ve been coming to this site for awhile you would know that I have a problem with collecting chairs. Sometimes I don’t have a place for them and they sit in the corner. I don’t always buy every cute chair I see, but sometimes I can’t resist, like the black and white houndstooth armchair I spotted last week. However, a chair with french details and caning is always hard to walk by.

french cane chair

It took an hour to convince myself to buy the chair because of the other chair in my room, but I’ve moved that into the dining room for now. The chair looked great in my room, but I felt like the caning was such a great feature that I removed the upholstered back.

Doesn’t it look better, now that the beautiful caning is exposed? I have no idea what I’m going to do with the chair at the moment as far as giving it a makeover. I’ll add it to my long list of indecisive ideas. My bedroom is in shambles after the flooding on Friday. Milla’s bedroom was hit worst than mine but we didn’t have any major damage besides Breeze’s new box of cat litter. Speaking of Breeze, animals are great in the time of emergency, in fact if it wasn’t for Breeze I wouldn’t have known that water was leaking from my neighbors’ apartment into ours. He alerted me early enough to where I could move the important things. The neighbor had unknowingly left the water on for over 30 minutes in a clogged sink….

Yay for renter’s insurance. Now that the carpet padding has been replaced we can resume our projects.

Obsession: Vintage Blue Mason Jars

Posted on April 18, 2012 by Kahli Posted in Decor Inspiration, Inspiration, Thrift Shopping, Vintage | 8 Comments

As the title states, I love mason jars, especially the blue Ball Perfect Mason brand. I’ve been looking at mason jar decor lately on Pinterest after purchasing three jars from the thrift store. This is one of my favorite photos. The pink peonies are just so vibrant against the blue tinted jars.

source

So needless to say my mason jar collection has expanded from three jars to 9. I’ve decided to display 8 jars on my window ledge. Would it be overwhelming to put flowers in each jar in my window?

Ambitious Projects….

Posted on February 20, 2012 by Kahli Posted in DIY, fabric, Furniture, Thrift Shopping, Upholstery Projects | 4 Comments

I can’t believe that we’re down to only posting once a week! Where is the time going? The days are going by faster and faster and it seems like there is not enough time left in the day for us to complete the abundance of unfinished projects that are still looming. One of those projects include two wing back chairs.

These chairs need to be completed by March 24th to be used as props for our party. I think we’re on schedule as of now because we removed the fabric from one of the chairs. We found the chairs on Craigslist for $20 a piece and they are the exact same. As you can see we’ve already removed the fabric from one chair. I hate removing fabric because there are like hundreds of staples in this chair and we all have several bruises. With four people assisting in the removal process it still took a few hours. Read more

The Gift That Keeps on Giving: Lucky Vintage Finds

Posted on February 13, 2012 by Kahli Posted in Furniture, Thrift Shopping | 3 Comments

Hey there! I bet you all have been wondering where we’ve been for the past few days…we’ve been super busy planning our birthday party. Birthday planning is hard work! We’re turning 25 and that’s something we felt needed to be celebrated. As I stated last week, our theme is a vintage french theme, so we’ve been continuing to collect vintage inspired furniture and things. We were essentially planning our party in a backwards fashion, buying before booking the venue. Last Wednesday we began to get discouraged while searching because nothing was going as planned and we had a bunch of vintage items sitting in our living room like a second hand store. But the good news is that we did finally find a venue!

Now onto the point of this post…this lovely vintage tea cart we purchased via Craigslist for an absolute steal! This beauty was $40 and in excellent condition!

Vintage Delights: Deals of a lifetime

Posted on February 7, 2012 by Kahli Posted in Thrift Shopping, Vintage | 10 Comments

This has been the best week ever for thrift shopping. I’ve been driving around the Baltimore area daily hitting up stores before unwillingly going to work. We have bought something daily since Sunday and have not been disappointed. And while we may been spending money, we haven’t spent a lot of it. Let me clarify that we are not thrift hoarders, we’re buying all these items for a purpose: We’re having a birthday party! Over the weekend we decided that we needed to have a party for our 25th birthday and the ideas started snowballing from there. We’re going with a lavish french inspired theme.

Anyway, onto some of the things we have purchased…

We purchased this ornate sterling silver 2-tier dessert stand in 2010 for $3 and never had an opportunity to use it until now. Impulsive buying for the win! Today I went to the Goodwill a purchased several pieces of catering equipment. The round silver chafer is one of the three I bought today for $19 total.

Thrifty Finds: Fabulous Cane Sofa & Chair

Posted on January 31, 2012 by Kahli Posted in Furniture, Thrift Shopping | 4 Comments

Who loves thrifty finds? We certainly do, and look at this beauty we scored on Craigslist! For a mere $65…

and it included a matching chair! Jackpot! This set will live comfortably in my aunt’s home.

I really love the details, everything from the finials to the caning. We have plans to reupholster the set. We’re thinking something bold for the side chair and something subtle for the sofa.

I’ll be back later with some inspiration photos hopefully…the search begins!

You’re So Vain: New Vanity Desk

Posted on January 14, 2012 by Milla Posted in Furniture, Thrift Shopping, Vintage | 8 Comments

Hi all, Milla here! How are you guys? Me? I’m just glad the weekend is here.

So lately it seems that I have a knack for showing up here at the end of week to do a post. I’ve been at my parents house every Friday for a while so maybe it’s inspiring me. However, we are not talking about their decor because that needs major work. Maybe it’s the brand new computer. The screen is huge! Anyhoo, the point of this post is to continue showcasing our thrifty purchases from this week.

Over the weekend, Kah and I decided that I needed a desk for my bedroom, because you know we’re impulsive like that, so on the hunt for a desk we went. And it actually didn’t take us long to find what I had mind. I was looking for a vanity type desk, but not a traditional vanity with the mirror attached. Remember in my last post I discussed moving that huge mirror from behind my bed? Well, my plan was to purchase a desk where I could prop the mirror against the wall on top of the desk. Below, is how it currently looks in my bedroom:

1930's Vanity Desk

Missing in Action: The Good Excuses Post

Posted on January 13, 2012 by Kahli Posted in Furniture, Thrift Shopping | 8 Comments

Where in the world have the twins been all week? You may have noticed that we haven’t updated in a while! Yikes. I’m here to tell you that we haven’t just been sitting on our butts (well not for the entire week anyway).

This is what we have been doing:

Cleaning, cleaning, cleaning, oh and buying. The two of us spent the entire weekend helping a relative clean her bedroom. That may seem like an easy task for most people, but we’re talking about 10+ years worth of crap. Our cousin is 29 going on 30 (or 25 as she likes to believe) and she is what we like to call a hoarder. Not the compulsive or disgusting type, but the type who keeps things with the intention of “using” or “needing” it in the future. Needless, to say it was very liberating to at least get her to fill up 3 trash bags, “winning”!

Speaking of winning, we’ve been hitting the jackpot on furniture purchases lately. I’m only going to share one item because I didn’t get to take pics of the others. We purchased a buffet for our neglected dining room from craigslist. This is the first purchase for the dining room in some time, because our dining room served a better purpose for thrifty finds than actual dining. Remember, that tidbit earlier about cleaning, well our dining room got some much-needed attention.

Five random pillows, six random lamps, and ten pictures frames later, we now have space for the new buffet.

dining room buffet

Isn’t it lovely? I love the style of this buffet and it only cost $55 plus for $35 delivery. It really does suck that I could have saved $35 if we had a bigger car, but I would have most likely spent near that amount on gas for the 25-30 minute trip each way. And me and Milla didn’t have to activate our twin power to haul it in ourselves. Read more