I Probably Need This

I've never eaten a sardine, nor do I ever plan to, but I still think I should probably get this antique sardine box.

- Cathleen 

Pulling the Trigger

I'm finally doing it! I'm pulling the trigger on the Brunschwig and Fils Battle of Valmy wallpaper for Teddy's room.


Brunschwig and Fils
Battle of Valmy
BR-60311.01
Do you like my blurry photo? 

A dear friend of mine, Molly Bruno, owns her own design firm Molly Bruno Interiors, and I'm ordering the wallpaper through her.

Molly is incredibly talented and can meet all of your design needs. She created a beautiful design board for Clementine's room that was both inspired and sensitive to Clementine's wants. We've slowly but surely been purchasing the items Molly suggested to turn Clemmy's room into a fresh, age-appropriate space. 

I'll keep you posted on the wallpaper. I'm so excited to get it up in Teddy's room.

Happy Tuesday!

Grace



PS- There's still time to place bids on some of Jillian Dressed's collection I'm selling on eBay... check it out!

Swings & Arrows + Jillian Dressed = Awesomeness!

Hi readers! My dear friend Jillian of Jillian Dressed has an awesome blog featuring amazing outfits she puts together. Jillian and I taught together for a few years and she wore an inspired outfit everyday. She's helped me out with so many outfit dilemmas and now you can keep up with her even if you don't work at the same school anymore... woot woot!

That's Jillian... duh!

Jillian and I have teamed up to sell some gorgeous pieces of clothing and shoes she no longer wears... check them out, bid and win! A lot more will be posted in the next few days. In the meantime... enjoy.

Happy Thursday!!
-Grace

Dog Days

Poor Nelson he's been eating his dog food and drinking water out of some of my mixing bowls for the  past 10 months. I have not been able to find a dog bowl that I like enough. I don't want to go with plastic or metal since it will be out all the time I want something that looks nice. Here are some bowls I've found while digging around on the internet.

A cute water bowl from Frontgate. Has a food dish counterpart. 

A simple stoneware bowl from Williams Sonoma. 

A vintage dog dish found on eBay. 

A odd pair found on google images of a Blue Willow set. 

So readers, help me out! What do you like? Have you seen anything online or in person that would fit the bill?

- Grace

Significant Object: Sweet Tooth

This little sweetie is one of my most prized possessions. I won this Sweet Tooth candy dish on Ebay last March, after spotting something similar in the pages of Domino magazine years before. I searched every flea market stall, Etsy vintage shop, and dusty antique purveyor I happened upon, and finally my hard work paid off. One of the best things about finding once treasured cast-offs like this—besides the sweet, sweet victory—is imagining the life the object had before landing in my covetous hands.

Did it once reside on the desk of a dentist with a wry sense of humor? Though surely not filled with sugar rewards, but more likely, those cheap tin rings they used to hand out to kids for good behavior. Or did it ever corral the loose brown pennies on an old granny's dresser top? I can also imagine a young boy stashing all of his most important artifacts inside the tooth's cavity; flat rocks, rusty bottle caps, spiked jacks, sticky wooden ice cream spoons—because you never know when one of those might come in handy—and that superball he fished out of the neighbor's pool drain, found floating next to a dead frog.

Come to think of it, I'm not sure I ever washed it out...


- Cathleen

Artwork of the Week: Shrunken Heads!

Vincent Price's Shrunken Head Apple Sculpture Kit by Milton Bradley 1975

Yes, you know that if it's endorsed by the pretty mug of Vincent Price, this shrunken head kit MUST have been amazing! Milton Bradley put these out in the 70s, five years before my time, but I discovered this vintage set while searching for Halloween-y things to post this week. There are a few available on Ebay and one from LovesAllThingsYou on Etsy, so pick one up if you're looking for the perfect finishing touch to your mad-voodoo-science-lab party. You never know, you may just have an artiste's touch when it comes to sculpting disfigured shrunken heads. [Or you could just try the old-fashioned method.]

Included in the kit: 

1. The Shrinker

2. Face Templates

3. Plastic Sculpting Tool

4. Synthetic Hair (white and orange)

5. Little White Beads (teeth)

6. Large Black Beeds (eyes)

7. Watercolor

8. Jar of Gloss Finish

9. 3 Pieces of Aluminum Wire 

10. Cord

11. Instructions

12. Apple Hanger

13. Wing-nuts and various pieces for hanging the apple and attaching it to a lamp

Happy Halloween!!

- Cathleen 

(last photo via drgangrene)

Artwork of the Week: Butterfly Wings

Bird in Flight, $39 via xpltx904 on Ebay

made with butterfly wings from Malawi Africa, framed 9 x 11"

Butterfly wing art, a popular motif in jewelry from the 1920s-1950s in England, can also be found in a lot of more recently made South American tourist items depicting tropical scenery and kaleidoscopic patterns on trays and other travel souvenirs. I prefer the bird and animal collages created from these gossamer fragments and mounted under glass. They remind me a lot of the work of Giuseppe Arcimboldo, known for his painted assemblages of fruits and vegetables that formed highly detailed portraits of people's faces. But in this case, I really love the representation of flying things made from other flying things. 

Some of the winged images I've included here are vintage and some are from today, but all of them, in my opinion, are pretty amazing. 

Two Parrots on a Branch, $24.95 via rubisco on Etsy

made with butterfly wings from Nigeria, framed 10.25 x 8"

Gazelle Antelope Goat Animal, $39.95 via udderlygoodstuff on Ebay

from Cameroon West Africa, framed 8.5 x 11"

The Parrot, $29 via xpltx904 on Ebay

made with eight different species of butterfly wing, framed 6 x 8"

Set of Two Parrots, $178.55 via michlilypoppy2010 on Ebay

framed 42 x 26 cm each

Birds, $45.99 via illkniterate on Etsy

vintage 1980s, framed 22.5 x 17.5"

- Cathleen 

Saddle Pad Blankets

Welcome back everyone! I hope everyone had a successful holiday season. I was completely spoiled by my husband who bought me an iPad which I've wanted for.ev.er. Thank-you Brian!

I am also lucky because I got to visit with Catie who came into town. Her husband's family lives in the DC area so they come to visit often.

We didn't plan to dress alike or to look like we both got hit in the face with a brick- sometimes these "amazing" coincidences just happen. 

This past week an old friend from my interior design days piqued my interest by telling me she had a candlestick she bought to have changed into a lamp. When researching it on the internet she began to believe it was worth a considerable amount more than she paid and asked me to come over and take a look at it. My connoisseur skills are lacking and I was able to determine by looking at the piece that I didn't know. She showed me around her house and in her daughter's room she had a wool plaid blanket as her comforter and I was instantly smitten! I love the sophisticated campout look. This sent me on an ebay rampage to find a similar one for my daughter's bed which has always had comforter issues (we currently have an unduveted down comforter). In my search I came across a genre I had never seen before. Saddle pad blankets!

Here are a few of my favorites which I found on ebay. 

I just love the bold use of color and pattern. I'm in love and I don't even ride horses! As you can see a lot of these seem to come from the same seller named tackmarket. What do you think? Do you think they are as impressive as I do?

-Grace