yard sale bandit

the last few weeks marty and i have spent our saturday mornings scouring the city for budget-friendly used shit treasures to dress up our home. although we have managed to find some amazing pieces, it hasn't all been smooth sailing. looking for yard sales on craigslist is like looking for anything else on craigslist - you're going to find normal people with decent taste and you're also going to find the people who are using their old crap as a ruse to kidnap you. my personal favorites included the girl who was selling the entire contents of her kitchen (such as half-empty bags of cornstarch and paprika) and the guy whose moving sale included his, ahem, used adult magazines.

i found this beauty in the lower garden for $8. its owner was giving away free beer with every $2 purchase. well played, lady. well played.

still haven't quite figured out what to do with this amazing ikat fabric... pillows? reupholstering this crazy/amazing chair i bought from the beer lady? 

for $5. right. 

 fiesta ware! in turquoise! this was one of those yard sale moments when you look around and say to yourself, am i the only one seeing this? is it a yard sale mirage?! and then you try not to knock anything over as you lunge at it. true story.

this is just adorable. enough said.

don't quite know what i'll do with these yet. i'm sure pinterest will hook it up.

a natural accent for our bedroom

cocktail nook

i've been a terrible blogger and haven't bragged with pictures of my adorable new orleans apartment (well, except for here). so, over the next couple of days, i'll share some of the "nooks" becky and i have carved out of our little place. our apartment being as little as it is naturally lends itself to the creation of nooks, since there isn't enough space to really create separate areas; that, and we don't have enough furniture for that sort of thing. after i saw this post on a cup of jo, i knew we would need to have a fully stocked, old school bar (um, hello?). becky came up with the idea of mad men-inspired crystal decanters (which we have yet to fill with booze), and i obliged by seeking them out not surprisingly in my parents' basement. my parents also had this amazing bar cart, which happens to have been one of their first purchases in the united states. how cool!? from chicago in the 1980s to new orleans today, it is now adorned with some select libations and a traditional albeit slightly scary-looking mask.

finals.

in case anyone noticed that i dropped off the face of the earth, i am going to take this time to use my all-time best excuse that has gotten me out of birthdays, family parties, grocery trips, boring errands, doing dishes, and being a normal human being altogether throughout the last 3 years: i am in LAW SCHOOL. finals have taken over my life, yet again. given that this is my sixth and final finals season, i am going to make use of it yet again and beg your forgiveness for the continuing lapse in updates and my boring life in general.

the last 537298089032 days of my life (or so it feels) have been spent at the library. this is infinitely boring and not worth discussing. since the best library ever is one mile from my parents house, i have reacquainted myself with my childhood twin bed and moved in for the time being. that said, i sadly have nothing new to share. i walked home from the library today and normally would have shared with you some pretty pics from that exciting experience, but instead i spent the walk on the phone with my long-lost friend tony (no, not her!) and didn't take any shakeitphotos. so of course one of many afternoon study breaks consisted of fun pictures of my parents' house. enjoy!

my mason's collection! see, i told ya

i love this lamp

look familiar?

i love this little snail!

the artist, josef lacki, has a series called "venentian carnival," and this one of the series. my parents bought a bunch of mardi gras masks in new orleans last year and adorned them like so!

okay, i'm off to continue my exciting life.

easter weekend!

easter weekend is upon us, and because marty is* in town, i all of a sudden have a very full weekend. tomorrow we're driving out to inverness to have good friday dinner with his family and grandparents, saturday we'll be blessing the easter basket (aka, i'll be eating bread and hard-boiled egg out of the basket in the backseat of the car on the way to church) and eating dinner with my family and friends, and on sunday we'll be good chreasters by going to church and brunch with my dad, followed by sunday dinner with marty's family. so busy! knowing this would be an issue, and in consideration of the fact that my mom is out of town (ew, that was such a lawyerly sentence), i decorated my parents' house last week:

how funny is this guy? a very non-traditional easter rabbit, i think

my mom has amassed the most beautiful hand-painted easter eggs. every year i get more and more jealous of her ever-growing collection. pretty soon i'm going to have to start siphoning a few of them away from her...

i don't know where this big guy came from but he's awesome

polish artists take the palms from palm sunday and create these beautiful pieces...

which my mom wraps carefully and laboriously in plastic every year and prays to the easter bunny that they'll survive in the basement

*by is i mean will be. someone didn't realize his flight was not today until he showed up at the airport this morning and was informed that his flight was, in fact, tomorrow.

where i get it from

i spent sunday with the rents since my dad just returned from poland. after i delivered my homemade banana bread, dad went to take a jet-lagged nap and mom went to write some emails. i was left to my own devices and had brought nothing to do except for my trusty nikon and my family law book. i was far from desperate enough to read for school so i took in my dad's camera collection:

some might call this cluttered - i think it's pretty cool

the vintage photographs might be overkill...

but how cool are these cameras?

he also collects clocks... and books...

among a myriad of other things.

it's quite the menagerie.

so we've solved the mystery of the origins of my love for photography and penchant for collecting things

what do you collect? mark and i cannot be the only ones...

my future kitchen

a few years ago, i started collecting Mason's Vista ware. it all started with a garage sale and now i have a pretty serious collection. in case you don't know, this is what it looks like:

image via little french garden house

i love its beautiful pink/red color and whimsical country scenes. since pink and teal go so well together (and they are two of my absolute favorite colors), i dream of a kitchen with delicate hints of pink and teal throughout in order to properly display my mason's collection, but in a more rugged fashion than above (although the armoire and hints of green and lace are adorable)

look how well the colors go together:

images via green wedding shoes, little french garden house and style me pretty

i've delegated this edna hibel print to my future kitchen:

poor lighting doesn't do it justice - but it does have hints of teal and light pink, i swear