Our Vintage Master Bedroom

The night before the Mad Men finale, we hosted a party for some of our friends that are Mad Men fans. Many of the folks had not seen our upstairs, so we straighten things up and let them come up and take a peek.  Since everything looked so nice, I decided to take some pictures.

We have lived in our house for almost 10 years and it has taken us about that amount of time to get it just how we wanted it.  We started with good bones.  The room had all of it's original woodwork in the blond stain and the hardwood floors were in good shape.

I found the reproduction banana leaf barkcloth and just loved it.  I decided that the colors in the barkcloth would set the color palette for the room.

Initially there were curtain rods over each window with big heavy curtains on them that extended past the windows quite a bit.  We took them down and decided to show off the blond woodwork around the windows.  We had flat panel barkcloth curtains made that could be hung on a tension rod inside the frame of each window.  We thought about doing roman shades but the cost for each flat panel was $25 and each Roman was $100.

The first piece of furniture we got was the Encore Dresser by Heywood Wakefield.  We bought it off Ebay from a guy in Arizona.  It has the original Wheat finish that is in very good shape.   The seller was coming up this way so he dropped it off for us. I love the small drawers and large mirror.

The small 3 tiered table under the window is a West Germany piece.  It is one of the first pieces of MCM furnite I ever bought.  I got it at an Antique Store in Milwaukee back in 1996.

When I started collecting in 1995, I was drawn to California pottery.  Over the years, I have picked up many pieces especially Hedi Schoop and Sascha Brastoff.  The figures on the dressers and 3 tiered table are all mostly Hedi Schoop.  The plates over the dresser and the tile on the side of the dresser are Sascha Brastoff.  The tile is a full signature piece which was a very exciting to find.

In the picture below, the grey pole lamp was a freebie from some new neighbors down the street that were going to throw it away.  The piece closest to the window is a Heywood Wakefield Desk Chest.  If you pull on the top handle it drops down and could be used as a desk.  I use it as my nightstand.  I got it off of Ebay as well.  The seller had refinished it with a Heywood Wakefield stain you can buy off of Ebay.  It is a pretty good match color wise.  The finish is not as smooth as a professional job but it is ok.

We wanted a bench at the end of the bed.  We went to a sale where they were selling used hotel furniture. We found a cheap but comfortable bench that had terrible fabric on it. Since we had some of the barkcloth left over we decided to have the bench recovered.

We have a California King so I have never been able to find a good vintage bedspread.  So I got a new one that tied into the colors of the banana leaves.  The shams were a find on ebay as well and it was great as they were already made and in our fabric.

The dresser is Encore Heywood Wakefield.  We found it along with some other pieces at the Elkhorn Flea market.  All the pieces had been painted white.  We got an excellent deal on them because of that.  We then took all the pieces down to Springdale to have them refinished.  Springdale did an AMAZING job on the pieces.  It is a shame they are not around any more as their work was always excellent.  More Hedi Schoop pieces sit on top along with a small collection of blue spaghetti poodles.

I love vintage costume jewelry so I have found a way to combine it with the ceramic pieces I have.  The two lamps  on the dresser came from the first auction we ever went to back in 1995.  We got to the auction at 8am and of course our items didn't come up until 4:30.  But they were worth the wait.

We love our bedroom.  The only real issue is that dusting is quite the endeavor!!!  Any decorating article I read says you should surround yourself with things you love.  We are very fortunate to have a room that fills us with joy in every corner.

Rebecca

A Very Merry Pink Christmas

Happy New Year to all!!

We had a great Christmas and I hope you did as well.  This year was fun as we tried to incorporate our new Pink Aluminum Christmas Tree into our decorating.  For Christmas, I typically decorate the main floor (living room and dining room) along with the family room on the lower level.  I do a 99% vintage Christmas with all the little 50's/60's Christmas items I have picked up over the last 15 years of collecting.  Most pieces are white, red and green so working in pink was a bit of a challenge. 

I decided to narrow my pink items to the living room where the pink tree is stationed.  I searched my various boxes of Christmas items and came up with a few pink Christmas items but not enough to decorate the whole living room, so I had my work cut out for me.  A search of ebay showed that vintage pink Christmas items existed in all sorts of condition and price ranges.  Also there seemed to be many folks that did some handcrafted items with vintage materials that were neat.

So a daily scouring of ebay, hunting local thrift and antique stores, a few new items, a few handcrafted items by others and myself and voila I had my pink Christmas.  I am very happy with the results and the fun I had creating it.

Here is the tree that started it all.  I posted on the blog back over the summer when I found this at the Elkhorn Flea Market.  A very exciting find!  We positioned the tree by the fireplace in the corner.  I found two kinds of pink plastic sputnik ornaments from an ebay seller.  He found these at a Nordstrom Display sale and had quite a few of them.  I did a combination of the spikey kind, the more rounded ones and then some round glass ornaments I found in a Rockford antique mall.

I could not find a pink tree skirt, so I bought a really cheap white one from Walmart and covered it with some pink satiny, shiny, sheer fabric from Joanns. The white one was thick enough to cover the stand and carpet while the pink fabric gave it a very elegant look. I basically just wrapped the fabric around the base as I am not someone that could sew a tree skirt together.

With the tree in the corner, I added some of my other pink finds.  My husband bought me the lighted pink wreath from treetopia as an early Christmas present.  The pink bullet planter was an old white one that was pretty beat up.  I cleaned it and spray painted the planter and legs with a pink spray paint made for plastic.  I let it dry and then gave it another coat.  The little black tips on the ends of the legs were intact so I just covered those with painters tape so that they would stay black.  Next year I hope to create some sort of little scene in the planter. 

On the end table on the lowest level, you can see a three light plastic candelabra.  The candelabra is the typical one you see at Christmas.  It was originally cream colored and a good find at a $1.  I got out my trusty spray paint again and painted it.  I added some silver leaves from a flower pick from the Dollar Store and I found some pink nightlight bulbs at Wal-Mart to finish it off. 

The plastic Merry Christmas sign was a find at a local thrift store for about 75 cents.  The Merry Christmas part was covered in gold glitter glue with much of it having fallen off over the years.  I scraped all the the old glitter glue off and then removed it from the flower and greenery.  I spray painted it with the same paint as the bullet planter.  I gave it several coats and then reattached it to the flower and greenery.  I had the pink shadow box so I filled it with some of my pinks finds.  The wire tree is something I have had forever and I added the pink ornaments to it.  The ones towards the top are clear ornaments with pink tinsel inside.  They were another find at the thrift store for about 1 dollar.

                                                                       

The upper ceramic Christmas tree was a new find for this year.  We found it at an antique mall in Beloit, WI.  It is white and gold with small pink birds.  It is lit a bit different than other ceramic trees.  It has holes on the underside of the "branches" that shine the light down on the birds.

The lower tree is more typical of ceramic trees.  I got this several years ago at an antique store in Beloit.  I had admired it on several trips and then one time it was 50% off so I scooped it up.  The ashtray next to the tree has a pink bow and blue bell decoration so it fits in nicely.

This great shadow box was an ebay find.  There is a gal on ebay that takes reproduction ornament boxes and creates these little scenes.  I saw another one of her creations and told her that if she created an all pink one I would bid on it.  She did and of course I was not the only one that liked it.  There were several bids but in the end it was meant to be in our pink Christmas.  She created it to hang on the wall with the small pink ornament hanging off the bottom.  I liked it too much to take a chance hanging it, so I took the ornament off the bottom and set it on the table.

I bought these little plastic trees from Joanns and spray painted them pink and set them around the room.

I wanted to keep the ornaments on the pink aluminum tree to the three basic styles I mentioned above.  So I had to figure out what to do with the other pink ornaments I had.  I pulled out my small white tree and turned it into a pink and white tree.  The bells are from ebay.  They are Shiny Bright but made of plastic.  The snowball type ornaments were ones I had and the small pink glass ornaments were ones I found at a flea market a few years back.  I really love this tree and feel like the white tree really helps the pink ornaments stand out.

I love old paper products.  The only issue is that I like to look at them but won't use them.  Who could use up these darling napkins?  A great ebay find from a seller near where I live.  Too bad I didn't run across these at the estate sale or thrift shop.  They are new old stock still in their plastic.

To add some kitschy fun, we picked this up at Menards.  The great thing is you can take the hat off and use it year round if you are so inclined.  

I ran across this pattern on some wrapping paper on ebay.  It is so cute, several pink poodles with candy canes and pink starbursts.  It was new so I thought maybe I could find it at one of the stores.  I could not find the wrapping paper but I did find these treat boxes at Marshalls.  They also had some gift tags in the same pattern.  Next year, I hope to create some ornaments from the gift tags. 

The pink stocking is from Target.  I bought 8 of them and next year hope to decorate them so each family member can have one with their name and some fun designs on them.  The pipe cleaner tree was made by me.  I got the idea from Kate on Retro Renovation. She made some out of silver pipe cleaners.  I took her idea and did mine in pink.  I used some jewelry pieces and ornament hooks to make the ornaments for the tree. 

Our big shadow box is across the room from the pink aluminum tree.  I filled it with pink ceramic angels, a pink feather angel and some pink vintage greeting cards. 

The metal ornament tree (in the foreground below) came from the same person that I bought the pink aluminum tree from.  It came with green glass ornaments.  I changed them out and added some pink ones I had.  The pink felt table runner is one of my favorite items.  It has lots of bead work and is so very cute.

 So that is the tale of our pink Christmas.  It was so much fun to find the various items and even to make some of them.  In case you are wondering, I did use up my can of pink spray paint!!  =-)

I hope 2013 is a great year for everyone.

Rebecca