Save the Pink...Lamps?

Yesterday afternoon, when I got back to town after work, I was driving across our town square when I passed by a new junk shop.  It has been open for around two weeks now, and I finally had an opportunity to stop in.  I feel justified in calling this a junk shop, as there was no real organization to the store, things were displayed on old card tables and in boxes lining the floor everywhere.  I'd call it a step below a thrift shop.  I like to go in these junk shops because you never know what you are going to find.  Sometimes it's a treasure, sometimes it's nothing.  So, as I'm walking up to the store, I glance in the window and see a fiberglass lamp shade, and think to myself...jackpot.  I walk in, go up to the window, and there are two pink ceramic lamps with great fiberglass shades.  I look for the price tag...$5.99 per lamp..hmm...don't usually spend $6 on a vintage lamp, but oh, what a find.  A matching set!  I grabbed them before one of the other people in the little store decided that a vintage pink and gold lamp might look good in their house (there were two other shoppers there at the same time as me).

I shopped around a little more and found a couple of other treasures, paid for my finds ($14.95 for everything), loaded up the car and went home.  When I got home I discovered that one of the lamps had been broken at some point and repaired, but the repair was done very well, and if it hadn't been for a chip missing in the base, I probably wouldn't have found it.  It doesn't hurt that the gold flecked design on the fluted conical base is great for hiding the repair.  Even the fiberglass shades are amazing!  The only thing that could make them better is if they were tiered shades.

The lamps were quite dirty, and I would say that they had been in storage for a while.  The plugs on both of them are broken, and will need to be replaced.  I have done this before and it's quite simple, just need to make a trip to the discount store to get the parts.  What to do with them???  I seem to be developing a lamp collecting syndrome...I have way too many for a 2 bedroom house!  I'm sure that I'll find a use for them.  I think that they would look great with my Heywood Wakefield bedroom set, but it's set up at Mom and Dad's, and they don't get the whole retro thing (but strangely they do like the bedroom set - go figure).  They would think that these lamps are hideous.  Oh well.

I did a little searching around on the big auction site (see the post below) and found that the pink and gold color combination must have been very popular.  So, as Pam did with Save the Pink Bathrooms,  I think I might want to start a movement to encourage everyone to Save the Pink Lamps!

Other finds at the junk shop - a box full of green Shiny Brite Christmas ornaments, a vintage coffee cup, and a VHS copy of Fahrenheit 451.

I'm off to be on the teacher float in the Christmas parade today in the town where I teach.  Hope you have a warmer Saturday than I'm going to have!

Pink Lamp Perfection

Looking for your own vintage pink lamp?  Check out these finds!  Save the Pink Lamps!

Movie Friday: Holiday Inn

Another of movie on my yearly Christmas must watch list is Holiday Inn starring Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire.  This is the movie in which the iconic "White Christmas" song was introduced by Bing Crosby.  (Bing Crosby is a must-have for Christmas music, by the way).  It covers several holidays, but I still prefer to watch it at Christmastime.

According to the information from the poster on YouTube:

"Re-release theatrical trailer for the 1942 screen musical, HOLIDAY INN, starring Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire, Marjorie Reynolds and Virginia Dale. When a vaudeville performer and his partner split up, he retires to a country which he coverts into an entertainment showplace that is only open on holidays. The delightful film, brimming with Irving Berlin tunes, was nominated for three Oscars and carried home the coveted Best Song stautette for the enduring song, "White Christmas"."


This isn't my favorite Christmas movie yet.  I'm planning on featuring it in a couple of weeks.


Have a great, stress-free Friday!

I Think I'll See the USA in this Chevrolet!

I really wasn't planning on doing a CL post today, I really wasn't, I promise.  But, sometimes those plans change.

I was doing my daily search for a vintage gas stove, and came across this ad:

"HERE'S MY STORY - I am an original 1959 - 1 ton Chevy. I was purchased by a man named George Decker. Good ole George purchased me brand spankin new and took me over to the camper people and had a camper built on my back. He was so proud of me, he even put Cadillac fog lights and a Cadillac emblem on my hood. George called me the "Cadillac of Campers".

He equipped me with a complete extra parts store for a 1959 Chevy. I have spark plugs, points, condenser, plugs, wires, radiator cap, thermostat, distributor cap, rotor, extra generator and regulator, extra hose clamps - everything to do an emergency repair.

I am so special in many ways and one of them is that in today's world if you don't have electricity or a generator and your 12 volt battery is dead you would not have any lights. Not me - I have 2 gas lights, one is over the table and one is over the stove and refrigerator area - how's that for special?

He must have liked to talk to other people a lot because he had 2 CB's, one in the cab and one in the camper. I don't know if gas was a problem back then but he equipped me with a regular gas tank and also set me up with the flip of a switch I can switch over to propane.

Me and George ventured out to see the states to the tune of 114,000 miles. By the way, another one of my options is a very handy 10 foot 3/8" rubber credit card. It comes in handy when I run out of gas in the middle of the night.

Well, I am still here but my "good buddy" George passed on after 28 years of a great friendship with many, many good memories. After George passed away, his best friend took me in and kept me in storage for 20 years with all of his vintage fire trucks. Now I am in Missouri with renewed promises of having many more new and great adventures and I've been promised that I can even show off my pink sink, pink stove, pink refrigerator and pink toilet. We're all still original you know! I have been gone long enough that people must think I am new again because they turn their heads like they have never seen anything like me before. When my new buddy parks me, they all come over and look at me like I'm from outer space!

All I am really, is an original, complete, old 1959 Chevy!!! Asking $9,000 or make me a reasonable offer to consider!" 

You can see the original CL ad here and get the contact information if you are interested.


I think this is one of the most amazing mid-century finds I have ever come across!  It combines my two loves: mid-century houses, and antique cars.  I can see myself now, driving to Colorado to spend a few days hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park and staying at a campground in Estes Park.  I'm sure that it would get a lot of attention!  It even has all of it's original pink appliances and bathroom fixtures!  How perfect is that?

Wow, I can't believe that it is Thursday!  Where has this week gone?  Have a great day!

Spring Fever?

I know that it sounds crazy, but the temperature here keeps fluctuating from highs being in the 30's to highs in the 60's or higher.  It is playing havoc with me.  It isn't even Christmas, and I am starting to feel a little spring fever.  I guess I just need a good snowfall to snap me back into my winter spirit.  Winter has always been my favorite season, because I love snow and the crisp clean air and look to the world after a heavy snowfall.  Ice can be beautiful too, especially when you get just enough to cover tree limbs but not cause them to break.  One of my favorite sights on my commute to work on a winter morning is having a clear sunny winter morning following a day of ice accumulation on the trees.  I drive east to work in the morning, and the sun sparkling through the ice on the trees is breathtaking.  Anyway, before I ramble off topic any more, back to spring fever...I also can't wait for summer when my landscape is in bloom again.  We've all heard of Christmas in July; well, today I'm doing July at Christmastime.

One of the first challenges that I tackled after I moved into the house was removing years of neglected landscaping and starting over from scratch.  My goal has been to try to keep the front of the house more formal looking, and have the back be more like Granny's country garden, with my favorites planted intermixed with each other to give a very old-fashioned country kind of look.  Much like my grandma had on the farm.

This is the first year that my bee balm has done well.  I wish that I had been able to get a picture of it a few days earlier...it looked much better than it does here.

I love my hibiscus.  I even planted some more this year.  Hopefully it will do well next year as well.  In the first two pictures you can see the Lutheran Church behind my house and the parking lot in the third picture.  They are very quiet neighbors! :)  You can also see my white honeysuckle covering the fence in the third picture.  The fence isn't very nice looking, but I need it for my dogs, so I have been working on hiding it as much as possible with large plants such as the hibiscus, and with vines, such as the honeysuckle.

Speaking of the honeysuckle, I have planted both white and pink.  The pink blooms forever, but doesn't smell that well.  The white smells amazing.  I wanted to live outdoors while it was blooming!  Actually, because the weather was so cool this summer, the white honeysuckle never stopped blooming, and it is usually done by the beginning of July.

Also in the back yard is my clematis.  No yard would be complete without one!  I took this just as it was beginning to bloom, but it was loaded this summer.  If you keep them deadheaded, they'll bloom most of the summer.

Now that I have finished with my plants in the back yard, I'll move along the side toward the front.  I love my butterfly bush.  My foresight in planting it next to the cream colored house wasn't the greatest since it has white blooms, but it always looks great.  It was just starting to bloom in these pictures.  It is just outside my bedroom window (which is to the right of the bush in the bottom picture).  I keep my computer desk in the corner of the room so that I can look out this window in the summer and enjoy the butterflies (yes it really attracts butterflies!) and humming birds.

Moving to the front of the house, I planted simple evergreen shrubs in front of the bedroom to the left, with taller evergreen shrubs at the corners of the house.  In the planter box in front of the living room I planted yellow marigolds and red salvia.  The colors for the university that I attended were red and yellow (sorry, crimson and gold, to be more exact) and all of the flower beds on campus were always filled with red and yellow flowers.  I have kept the tradition going now with the shack.  These colors just really work well together.  In the spring I have red and yellow tulips planted in a red / yellow alternating pattern along the sidewalk.

Well, this did absolutely nothing to curb my spring fever...ugh.  Have a great Wednesday!

Vintage Stove

At the top of my list for my next big purchase for the house is a new (vintage) kitchen stove.  I seem to find an endless supply of electric models, but gas models in my area are more difficult to come across.  I am open to either a 40" stove or a 30" stove.  My house was built to accommodate a 40" model, but as the years passed, a 30" model was installed and a cabinet was built-in to fill the gap.  I really don't want to lose the storage space, so if I find a 40" model it will need to have some storage in it.  I have found it to be nearly impossible in my searching to find a 30" gas stove from the late 1950s or early 1960s.  My search continues!

Today's stove find is this great 30" electric model manufactured by General Electric.  The owner "thinks" that it needs a new element in the oven.  To say the least, the oven needs work...but for the $60 asking price, I think it would be worth buying it and giving it a shot.  You can view the CL ad here.

My Estate Auction Secret...

I am always getting comments about what wonderful deals I get at estate auctions, and the people that leave these comments are right, I do feel like I get great deals.  I have a couple of secrets to my successes in these great finds to share with you.

1.  The mid-century style bug hasn't caught on in my area yet.  Most people want new things, not what they view to be old "junk" from the mid-century era.  This works in my favor, although many people think I am crazy for wanting some of this stuff.

2.  There are several auction services in my area.  I tend to follow auctioneers that have a smaller following.  Usually things at these sales go cheaper because there are fewer people attending the sale.  I would estimate that there were no more than 40 people at the auction that I went to on Saturday where I got the great finds.

3  I tend to buy things because I like them, not because they were made by a big-name company.  This gets me some great finds for low prices, because when there are mid-century buyers present, they want the big-name items, such as McCoy pottery.

One auctioneer that I like to follow will sometimes have mid-century buyers, but that is the only auctioneer that has any kind of mid-century following.  They did the sale where I got the brass and marble lamp with the velvet shade that I shared recently.  I still was able to get great deals there.  This auctioneer recently conducted an auction that was more crowded than I have ever seen, and they sold the most amazing pair of 1950s table lamps.  They were around 3 foot tall and had amazing 3 tier fiberglass shades with a design printed on the inside so that it would show through the shade when the lamp was turned on - the pair sold for $125.  Needless to say, I didn't stay at this sale long, as a mid-century buyer from out of town came to it.  Oh well, you win some, you lose some!