One Month in Photos.

Backtracking.

Candlepin.

Inexpensive Furniture.

Mr. Lizard. One of many.

Favorite place in the world.

Door reconstruction.

Tiling. Still.

Brimfield.

Hoping next month is just as much fun...maybe with a smidge more house work thrown in. :)

May Brimfield and Other Fleas.

In the days leading up to the May 2011 Brimfield Antiques Market I was super excited, but I was also a little worried. We had decided that since we didn't need anything terribly bad that we would go on Sunday, which is the last day of the event. In the past we'd had good luck that day because typically the dealers just want to clear out what is left. So, not a great selection, but great prices. Back to why I was worried. The week before then the weather forecast was showing a steady prediction of 60-70% chance of rain. Boooo rain. But we figured that it'd still be fine with umbrellas and maybe the rain would be light. By the day before the prediction was up to 100%, but scattered showers. Scattered, fine. We were committed. I love Brimfield.

The prediction came true, but scattered showers actually turned into scattered thunderstorms. In general we were not really bothered by them. When the rain got heavy we would just seek refuge under a tent. Hanging out with a young couple from Brooklyn and checking out their cool wooden folding chairs, hearing stories about quilts made in Virginia or dodging a surly grandpa and his cane.

Most of the morning went on like that. We had heard from tent to tent that there was a bigger storm coming...and it seemed to be causing a mass exit from many of the vendors. But we just kept on shopping. And then it came.

We popped under this tent when our umbrellas weren't cutting it anymore. After a while we realized how hungry we were and popped into a random pizzeria (see sign on the left) that was in a building that more resembled an insurance office. Like I said, we were hungry.

This guy was carrying it out by the armfuls.

After a sort of kind of tasty pizza lunch we wandered a little more, but in the end nothing came home with us. It was still a surprisingly good time picking through what was left while small rivers of water began to run through the tents and wandering through the rain. Maybe next time we will get lucky...cause you know I'll be going!

There are actually many many flea markets around the Boston area...another one of my favorites is Todd Farm. We've been a handful of times and scored some pretty sweet stuff (which I thought I'd blogged about before, but can't seem to find it?). Anyway, here's what we got there recently...

These super sweet educational flashcards from the '60s. They are pretty big, about 24"x12" each? And double sided! So the picture below shows all four, one side, then the other. I luff them, not sure what they were meant to teach, but they are hilarious. We just need to get some frames and we will have four pieces of interchangeable art. This find totally goes to P, I think we paid like 2 or 3 bucks for them.


These were my find of the day. I thought these old wooden hangers were so cool. I think one was stamped with a hotel name (the one you can see) and the other was stamped with some local company in Boston. I think they will be great on a hook on the wall next to the closet, kind of like a valet hook.

After Todd Farm we drove around and made our way out to Plum Island and decided to check it out. It was super cute, no pics, just drove through, but I'd love to go stay there some time. On the way there we passed by a Garage Sale and decided to stop. It was pretty lame, but for some reason I got drawn into this huge box of old old old children's books. It seriously looked like this lady had robbed a library. We picked out three random books that had cool illustrations. My favorite is the Nothing Ever Happens on My Block in the middle below. Hilarious. And yes, I do realize it's a little strange for a couple that has no children to be buying children's books...maybe if they'd add cool illustrations to grown up books I'd buy those instead. :)

The First Step.

It's admitting you have a problem, right?

Last Friday morning I peered out the window and to my crazy cluttered hoarding joy realized that our current upstairs neighbor had purged his apartment of years of junk. So like any completely sane and normal person I happily skipped toward the front door while simultaneously squealing something to P about chairs on the street. To his horror, not 15 minutes later, I had drug this through the front door.

In my defense I left the second chair on the street, and passed up our neighbor's offer to another chair in the basement. In case anyone's counting, this makes chair number three needing reupholstering. Totally normal.

Brimfield 2010 Round 2

We decided that we did not want to miss out on the last Brimfield Antique Fair of the year, so we headed west on Saturday and I am so glad that we did. The fair covers acres and acres of land and features dealers from all over the country. The May show was my first experience here and this time around was just as great, if not better! I didn't forget my camera this time so that I could share some of the good, bad and just plain weird from the show.

Rousey, we thought this would be the perfect addition to your new apartment. :)

This booth had tons of bobbins, yarn, cast iron items and chocolate molds. We scored a handful of items that I have some great ideas for.

We loved this Turkish hand woven rug from the 1930s (the one on the left). It had great neutral colors and an awesome texture.

Just some of your typical shoppers. The fields stretch down this road on both sides for miles.

The vendors do a great job at keeping up with the trends. These carts have been all over the interior design world lately. I don't remember seeing any at the May show, but this time we saw dozens.

This woman's booth featured mostly scavenged items from restaurants...chairs, tables, glassware and this awesome sign.

Junk food galore.

Great alternative to the traditional Halloween jack-o-lantern.

This was by far the most random booth that I noticed. It included a variety of lawn art, a snow mobile, furniture, some kind of large reference books and more. That guy in the yellow shirt was seriously contemplating purchasing Marilyn.

And now for the really really really really weird. These two lovely ladies were found in two totally different locations...very far from each other. Is this a new trend I missed out on? Costume display on slutty mannequins? Yikes.

More later on what we brought home from Brimfield!

This dolphin's splashing, getting everybody all wet. But this ain't Seaworld, this is real as it gets!

Ahhhh, I don't think I am capable of thinking of a boat ride without thinking of that song. So what were we actually doing on a boat this past weekend? Whale watching! I can not even tell you how much fun it was. I bought the passes through one of those discount coupon sites (Groupon, Buywithme, etc.) back in the spring and, of course, waiting until right before it expired to use it. So off we went bright and shiny Sunday morning up to Gloucester, MA to hop on a boat. I was sort of nervous, because I wasn't sure what the ride would be like...ok, I was scared I was going to get seasick. The waves really were pretty big, but I was a champ...as long as I was sitting down. :) I got even more nervous because the onboard Biologist (how cool is that?) said that they had recently been having to travel extra far to find the whales, anywhere up to two hours out! Ummmmmm, ok. So, guess how far we went? That's right, a two hour boat ride all the way down to Provincetown! Ok, so I am going to tell myself that I did the North Shore and the Cape all in one day...hardcore. So anyway, we got there among all of the other whale watching tours and immediately latched onto following around one group. It was a group of Humpback whales with two calves and their moms and then a few others, as many as eight at some points! They were feeding the whole time and would come up and float/swim around and then go into a deep dive for a couple of minutes. It really was amazing. We were out there for so long and saw so many things. Some of my favorite things were:

1. Learning about how the areas of intense teal green around the whales was actually the plankton in the water...maybe phytoplankton...something like that. (see pics below)

2. At one point when our group of whales was on a deep dive we spotted what looked like a huge whale in the distance "being surface active" (that's what the Biologist said it was doing). Surface active translates to awesome. It was breaching (like you see on shark week) completely coming out of the water and slapping it's fins on the water. The best was when it turned upside down and slapped both fins on the water at the same time, it looked like a giant white bird sitting on the water flapping its wings. A-mazing.

Here is a video of the action...hope it works!

After the super long boat rides I was DYING to get some food. During my mom's last visit she was on the hunt for some good fried clams and sadly never found any. :( So when I saw a piece on the local news on where to get the best fried clams I quickly informed her that the next visit would not be a disappointment. Since we were in the (general) area I thought it would be a good idea to test the place out, you know, to make sure it tasted ok. :) We drove on up to Ipswich and finally made it to the Clam Box (after passing ALL of the other famous clam places, but I wanted THE BEST). Through my research I knew the line would be long...but we really wanted those clams. Now, to be perfectly clear, I have never actually had fried clams. P used to eat them at "Ryan's". This may seem like the bar was set really low, but I generally am pretty picky about seafood...and after all the hype these clams had a lot to live up to. So, we waited, and waited, and got sunburned standing in the line, and waited, and after an hour we reached the building! I hopped off to snag us a picnic table while P completed the ordering process. They were worth it. So so yummy, enough said. We split a plate and couldn't even finish it, and we were famished by that point in the day (4:00!).

While researching clams I also learned about an antique shop in the area called "The White Elephant" and it's nearby "outlet" shop. Well, of course, I had to go to the outlet shop...it promised to be full of "junk at low prices", my favorite! The icing on top of the junky cake were the beautiful white horses across the street. I scampered across the highway through a break in speeding cars squealing something about petting them, only to find a double electric fence. Maybe next time? I am telling you, these New Englanders are very exclusive with their animals of the barnyard variety, but I do think I finally found the equestrian holy grail of these parts. Essex, MA seemed to have another barn around every corner, complete with fancy horses grazing out front. My heaven. I of course then went rooting through piles of junk at the White Elephant and found, a really cool old card table, a really cool old wooden spice cabinet, wooden apple baskets and a great old wooden for sale sign. It is all still at the White Elephant if anyone is interested...talk to P about why it didn't get in the car with me. So what if I want to be a hoarder? Seriously considering going back for the spice cabinet...if that's even what it was...picture a really tall card catalog like in a library...but used for spices and such? Anyway, it was outside just rotting away, but the perfect little drawers with their little labels were doing just fine...maybe they could just allow me to remove it from the property as a favor to them? For free? No?