Vintage delights

During one of my frequent trips to the thrift store I stumbled across a delightful bundle of vintage gift wrap.

For me this was really exciting because it combined two of my favourite things – vintage era and gift wrap – win for me!

Here are a few shots of my favourite patterns from the bundle.

Don't you love these wedding prints?

 

And these fun patterns?

 

And these adorable ones for kids?

 

I think this one is my favourite from the bunch.

Can you believe this package was only 35 cents? I wish there was a year printed on the package. I'd love to know how old it is.

 

Now that I have all this great paper, I need to find some gifts to wrap and some creative uses for it in home décor projects. Any ideas?

Phone shelf update with vintage jar organizer

We keep our phone, pens, sticky notes and other odds and sods on one of the shelves on our ladder shelf in our eating area off of the kitchen. It was a boring little shelf with our pens et all being held in a tired-looking black desk organizer that I'm sure came from the dollar store eons ago. It had been bothering me for awhile, but I just hadn't gotten around to doing anything about it.

Here are the "before shots".

 

Notice the black book on the left? That is my address book that has got to be about 15 years old AT LEAST. It is soooo out of date, I'm not even sure why I still have it. As you will soon find out, it DID NOT make it into the update! 

I had this charming vintage, coloured-glass jar that I picked up at a thrift store (you can read about other coloured glass pieces I've collected here).

 I thought it would be PERFECT to store the pens etc. And it is! See?

The wire handle holds the sticky notes just right and the lid works to store my clips. Did you notice the nicely coloured pens in the jar? A re-organized pen jar calls for some fancy pens! I dug them out of my craft area. I will get more use out of them on the shelf here than stuffed away in a drawer in the basement!

Here is the finished shelf (clearly my other shelves now need work).

Did you notice my addition? I wanted to add a little something extra to the shelf besides the phone and a jar for pens. I had some little  vintage books that I'd picked up at a thrift store a long time ago (these were also stuffed away in the basement). They are the perfect size and the red adds a little pop of colour. They are very beautiful OLD books and I think I will have to do another post about them someday soon. One of them is a New Testament from 1921!

In order to make them stand on their own, I fashioned myself some homemade book ends out of a cardboard box I salvaged from the recycle bin.

I cut out one corner of the box and cut it in half lengthwise.

I taped the two pieces together to fit the width of my book stack, and VOILA! The perfect book ends. I hid the cardboard inside the covers of the two end books, so they aren't visible from the front or sides.

What do you think? Was the shelf update a success? I am happy to be putting to use some items that were just sitting around not doing anything.

*My apoligies that my photos aren't the best, it was dark outside when I took these shots so the lighting wasn't the greatest.

Check out my Link ups page to see who I'm linking up with this week!

Vintage charm in a box

On my most recent visit to my parents' place, (side note - they still live in the house that I grew up in and it's even the house where my mom grew up - talk about family history!) I was in the kitchen with my mom when she pulled out her recipe box and sighed "look at this mess!" She was referring to her overstuffed, disorganized recipe box. The age of searching for recipes online and printing them out on letter-sized paper has wreaked havoc on recipe boxes everywhere! Can anyone relate to this?

But that's not really the point of this blog post. She continued on and commented that she had had this particular recipe box since she was a young girl in 4-H club. I did the math and we're talking almost 50 years here - now that's vintage! (just the box, not my mother.) It's the only recipe box I've ever known my mom to have and I remember it well. Now, having a love for things of a vintage nature I have a new appreciation for this little metal box that I've seen all my life. It is so perfectly 60's and full of retro charm. I'm so glad she kept it all these years! It was definitely worthy of a mini photoshoot, so I emptied out its disheveled contents to capture all its angles.

Now if I would just organize all my mother's recipes for her, I just might become her favourite daughter...just kidding, my mom would never play favourites. But perhaps recipe organization is a subject for a future post.

 

Chalkboard update and fancy chalk

I nabbed this cute little chalkboard at a yard sale this summer for only a dollar. The price was right, but a makeover was definitely in order. Here's a photo of the before (well, it's partway through its makeover, I got excited and forgot to take a true 'before' photo, but you get the idea).

The natural wood look wasn't doing it for me – a little too folk artsy.  At one point in its life, I bet that little knob at the top had a pair of wooden folk art hearts hanging from it by a piece of twine... I knew right away that it needed an update.

Here is the finished product after I painted it white, repainted the chalkboard area and scuffed it up the frame a bit to give it an aged/distressed feel.

I had these little clips just sitting in my 'office stuff' box, so I decided to use one on the board to give it a bit more functionality.

Here is the finished product. The clip is attached to the little knob on the board with a scrap piece of fabric and I added a coordinating decorative brad to the clip just to make it extra cute! The final piece has kind of a vintage country look to it, much better than the original folk art look.

Right now I am using it as a birthday calendar and I can clip coupons to it that I will use when gift shopping.

A new chalkboard deserves a good box of chalk, right? I had my eye on the 4-pack of nicely sharpened chalk from Martha Stewart's office supply line at Staples. But I couldn't bring myself to pay $4 for 4 pieces of chalk! (Sorry Martha.) I opted for the 12-pack of Crayola chalk instead – it was only 95 cents. 

I thought to myself, if Martha can sharpen chalk, surely I must be able to as well. So I tried it out when I got home and it worked out perfectly! Who knew? I'm so pleased with my lovely sharpened chalk that I got for a fraction of the price.

Thanks for stopping by and checking out my new chalkboard and fancy sharpened chalk!

Linking up with:
{aka} design
organize & decorate everything
beyond the picket fence

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Coloured glass

My blog has been severely neglected these past few months, but with good reason. I'm the proud mama of a handsome baby boy! Though he's hardly a wee babe anymore. It's hard to believe the little guy is already six months old! Now that life seems to be on a bit of a routine, I figured it's time that I get back to posting some entries.

I am working hard at finding décor pieces to finish off our living/dining area. This is a slow process since I am painfully thrifty and hate to pay full price for anything. It's most satisfying for me to find items at thrift stores and garage sales. Kijiji is also a favourite shopping locale. The hunt for a good bargain is half the fun for me!

That being said, I've slowly been collecting some vintage coloured glassware - vases, jars, bottles. I love these fresh colours for spring/summer along with the intricate designs and unique shapes. So pretty and cheerful!

Right now I have them arranged on the sideboard in our dining area. It is neat to see the different shapes, sizes and colours work together to create an interesting display. The overall sideboard display needs more work in my opinion. Any suggestions?