Entry Inspiration

I just found the most amazing vintage bench. A neighbor brought it back from her grandmother's estate in Pennsylvania. It did need a little TLC before it was ready for its debut at Unlisted.

I worked on it last week and today it had its first showing!

Here's how it looks in our current space:

Did you know you can follow us on Facebook to get the latest news on the items we're bringing in to the store? You can also follow me on Instagram, but you'll also get a fair share of food, dog and travel photos too!

Back to the bench...It really got me thinking how perfect it would be in an entry way. I always like to provide some sort of "landing place" in an entry way. This way there's a place for guests to place a purse or even a place for you to leave mail or keys. So I turned to Pinterest and some of my favorite blogs.

Here are a few of my favorite ideas for how to style this.

First, keep it simple. Add this to a narrow hall under a few family photos. Easy as that!



Via Beneath My Heart

 
Or add a couple very simple pillows for texture and color. Hang a big mirror above so you (or guests) can check their reflection before heading out the door.




Via The Polo House

And this is my favorite. Form and function all in one! Add a couple baskets for hats and gloves...maybe shoes if that's your thing. Some simple hooks above can house coats, hats or a seasonal decorative item.



Via Bless 'Er House

What do you have at your entryway? Right now I have a console table with a lamp, a clock and a big mirror above. Hmm, maybe I should rethink selling this bench. I just love it!

Hope you're having a great week,
Karli

Brick and Mortar

Update November 2015: We are not longer vendors at the Vintage Vine. You can find us at Unlisted: An Artisan Boutique and Market. We are thankful for our time at the Vintage Vine.

Where's your store?

Do you have a shop?

Where can I find you again?

Up until last weekend, the answer to that question was, "You can read the blog and find us at the Paris Street Market once a year."

And that was a bummer. We wanted more. We wanted the chance to build relationships with our customers and set beautiful displays and curate a set of merchandise to make people happy.

And then it happened.

They say timing is everything and they don't joke! Karli started doing research into vendors like us who had been successful at opening a retail store and she stumbled upon the website FindItOnTheVine.com. One phone call to the shop and the rest is, as you say, history.

 

The Vintage Vine is the cutest little store located in Historic Downtown Littleton. The building itself is a craftsman style home. The manager of the store and concept, Stacey, is a hard-working, kind-hearted, keen-eyed woman. Along with Stacey and seven other vendors, we now share the space---and boy what a lovely space it is!!

 

We have a portion of the back room, which we share with another absolutely lovely lady named Polly. Ironically enough, Polly and her daughter share their business as well. Could this be any more perfect?!

 

 

 

So, we hope you visit the store if you're ever in the Denver area. We hope you'll follow along on the store's Facebook page and the website to keep up to date on all that latest happenings.

We are grateful. We are excited.

And, yes, we do have a store you can visit us at!

All the best,
Karli and Kandy

DIY "Pottery Barn" Inspired Decor

I love Pottery Barn.............I love browsing through the catalogs, I love searching the website, and I adore shopping in their stores. 

Their style is my style.  I love an eclectic, collected look, mixing the new with the old.  I get inspiration seeing the way they set up rooms and displays, doing just that.  Being an antique dealer means I always have an assortment of collected items just waiting for their next location.

If you have been following our blog, you'll know that I have been working on my Master Bedroom Makeover for quite some time. Take a look at these posts.  Since I'm doing it on a budget, using some of what I already have, and only adding or replacing what I really need to, it is taking me a while to get it right.  I never just go out and purchase "a new look."  What fun would that be?  I love to try using what I already have (sometimes I steal from other rooms).

That said.........Karli took me to a Pottery Barn store just before Christmas and I finally found the bedding I had dreamed of for our bedroom.  I found their Pick-Stitch Quilt and Pillow Shams in white to be exactly the look and feel I wanted...... washable cotton with the look of a vintage quilt, yet stitched in a more modern design.  They were on sale so they went home with me.  The weight of this quilt is perfect too.  I could not be happier.

I am still trying to figure out what I want at the end of the bed, (a throw or quilt)  but I have not found it yet.  The final reveal of the Master Bedroom is yet to come.

But, I am moving on to a new look for the top of the armoire.  It used to look like this........

After the new gray paint, I changed it to the style shown in the picture below.  I was trying to add some white, going for a more feminine look.  This was OK but it really wasn't right with the more Arts and Crafts look of the armoire.

We'll call this Look #1: Shabby White Frames

Now for some new "Pottery Barn Inspired Looks."   I am taking things from other parts of the house and "trying" them out on the top of the armoire.....trying to get that "Pottery Barn" look.


Look #2: Ceiling Tin

Look #3: Framed Driftwood

Look #4: Framed Metal

        


Look #5: Vintage Landscapes

I actually love several of these "looks" and I am having a difficult time deciding which one is best.

I could use your help! What do you think? Leave me a comment and let me know which you like best. One winner will be chosen at random on February 1st to receive a $20 Pottery Barn gift card.*** (UPDATE---the winner was selected on February 1, 2014. The drawing is now closed)

I'll be waiting...Kandy

We linked up to Jennifer Rizzo's Fabulously Creative Friday!

Vintage Brooch and Earring "Necklace"

I've been seeing lots of very expensive necklaces that look like they're made of old vintage brooches. Instead of buying a new one, I decided to make my own for a wedding we were attending this winter.

I hit up my local antique mall and started my hunt for the perfect old jewelry. I found one fantastic brooch and several sets of clip earrings. I purchased them and then began planning how I'd lay them out.

While Mom was visiting, we took a trip to the craft store to purchase a chain and some safety pins to attach all the jewelry on a necklace. Seems easy enough...


Except it wasn't. The jewelry didn't lay right and I had a terrible time attaching them all in the layout I had planned.

So what does a girl do? Understand, I'd pretty much planned my entire outfit around this necklace... (forgive the slightly blurry picture...it was taken at the wedding)

I pinned the suckers right to my dress. That way I was sure I liked the placement and they wouldn't fall out of place. I had a couple girls say they loved my dress and the bling sewn on. (HA! My trick must have worked...it was a $20 Target dress!)

Because I love the large brooch so much, I've worn it a couple more times just clipped on a chain. It looks great by itself too.

Hope you all had a wonderful holiday season!

Here's to more projects in 2014!
Karli

I linked up to That DIY Party @ DIY Showoff 

 

Change Your Wall Display: Empty Frames and Keepsakes

The truth is.....I love to rearrange and redecorate! I really miss that aspect of running the Antique Store. To me, constantly changing out the windows and displays was my idea of "fun". In my own home, though, I think sometimes I get a little lazy. It is time to change that and past time to freshen some areas.

Since the Master Bedroom is still a work in progress, I like to confuse myself by moving to another area for a different project. I moved into what I refer to as the "Daybed Room."

This room is very monochromatic, all whites, creams and khaki. It is dedicated to vintage décor, and oh yes, it does contain a daybed. 

Here is the area over that daybed.  It has looked like this for several years and it is hard to dust the stuff on the shelf. That is the problem with shelves over beds.

Before

During...get it all out of sight while you start over.

After Here's the new wall display.

 A close-up of Cousin Jessie from the late 1800's.

A framed collection of vintage lace dress collars and old door knob back plates.

The large frame came from an estate sale. I love what's left of the chippy paint.

You can easily see how much I love old frames. I do have quite a collection of them. And the fact is, I have quite a lot of stuff! I can take a walk out to my shop and bring in a whole new assortment to use on any display. I realize that many of you do not have antique store inventory in a shed out back. But, you can still get a new look by just changing out what you have. Take something down, move it to another part of your home. Don't be afraid to put a hole in the wall. You can easily patch and repaint if you change your mind. Just do it!

The before again...

And the after!

Making small changes like this project make me take a second look at a room that I have perhaps ignored for a while. As I walk past, I actually look in. My husband even noticed and said, "I like what you did on the wall."  That is a huge comment for him.

I'll be moving on to other parts of this room next week.

Happy Changing,
Kandy

Displaying Found Junk On A Patio Wall

You may remember in an earlier post the damage that was done to the roof of our garden shed when Dwight and I took down part of an aspen tree......well the weather has now improved so we decided to repair the damage that we caused.  We replaced a board and the roof shingles.  Fixing all of that meant that we needed to get to the inside walls of the shed, locating nails.  Needless to say, we found it necessary to empty the shed to get to those walls.

As we sorted through 30 years of stuff, I found some "junk" I had forgotten that I had.
It is all "family stuff" that I had hauled back from Oklahoma, knowing some day I would find a place for it.  Here is the saved stuff we uncovered in the shed.....


These are old cistern cups, used to bring water up out of a cistern or well. These were my Grandpa Ray's and had been used on the farm in Okla.

 

A rusty old saw blade and a gear.

                                     

These are a pair of rusty old hames, part of a harness which would have been used with horse drawn farm implements. These were Grandpa's too.

           

This is an old drawer front I found who knows where....... You can not see it but it has the letter "F" stamped on the front.
It will be great to hang BBQ stuff off of the handles, or not!!!

I hung all of this assorted "found junk" on the wall outside on the deck.  I already had the grapevine wreath hanging there, so I just incorporated it all for a unique display.

I bet I can truly say that no one else has a wall quite like ours!

           
I would love to add a pillow to the chair, but the squirrels have been known to destroy things on our deck.  I also need to re-stain the deck later when it gets a little warmer, but decorating this wall inspired me to look forward to spending time out here this summer. 

I want to try planting in the cistern cups, too......I think they would be great for succulent plants, like hens and chicks.  I have one more set of these that I'm saving for Karli.....she might want to do the same thing.  If nothing else, they are great conversation pieces!  Did you know what they were?

Happy Deck Time, Kandy

A Spring Antique Sale

As some of you may recall, in my former life, I was an Antique Dealer. When the store closed I took my inventory home. I have had one big sale here at home, but, for the most part, I have just been sitting on all that stuff.

I keep my "stuff" in my barn, where I have a showroom set up.

I did a show last weekend, a money-maker for a ladies organization raising funds to offer scholarships. I paid for an 8' space, set up my booth area, sold my antiques and vintage items, and then I donated 10% of my proceeds to the ladies club. It was for a good cause and a fun outing since I haven't been playing with "my antique stuff" for quite a while.

A good friend of mine, who is also an antique dealer, joined me in the venture. She brought her items to add to mine. Then another friend, also a dealer, gave us some of her items to sell as well. It was a joint effort!

We started setting up by creating walls with two sets of shutters.

Love using these to divide areas as well as hanging on.

  
The "girly" side of our booth was the perfect spot for hats and frilly feminine items just right for Mother's Day giftgiving.

Love the black and white

 This is a close-up of an old cabinet door. I painted the center with Chalkboard paint and added vintage hooks.

                        

 A broader view of the "girly" black and white side. You may recognize the chair from an earlier post.

           
The old metal display unit is perfect for hankies and gloves. I used this at the store for several years and people always wanted to buy it.

This metal rack was originally used for candy in General Stores.
You can see more white ironstone on this earlier post.

A closer look at one shelf. We even sold some of the burlap flower magnets. See our post on how to make these.

               
This part of our booth was dedicated to vintage gardening.

A potty chair from the 1950's holds a potted rose plant.

             
Layering on top of the enamel top table with an old wood box allows for more garden items.

Love the pink and green for Spring!

                              

The garden items even filled the floor.

                
It is still early for "real" plants in our area, however the silk ones made everyone think of Spring.

The little potted flowers were just too sweet!

                    

 The little watercan holds my business cards.

              

Would you believe we did not plan to wear similar jackets!

             
The sale was not quite the sucessful day of selling that we were anticipating, but we did have fun planning, hauling, setting up, visiting with customers, tearing down, boxing our stuff back up, and then hauling it all back home. (Really!!!)

That is the way it goes sometimes!     CARRY ON!!!

Happy Spring,
Kandy