Hit up Palm Springs for a little thrifting action on what turned out to be an ‘extreme’ wind day. Unusually strong gusts mixed up the fine desert dust with low hanging clouds to create a strangely ominous apocalyptic wasteland. This was some crazy end of the world type wind.

Anyways.

Despite the wind, shopping happened.

Having a soft spot for broken down classics, I grabbed this vintage Knoll Bertoia Diamond Chair on my thrifting route. For more than a year I’ve watched this puppy gather dust at one of my favorite consignment spaces as the price was repeatedly knocked down until it just recently hit $50. No rational person wanted to touch this thing because of a few broken welds and lovely dusting of rust, but I guess I have time to repair it?

Of course. Throw another project on the pile.

Perhaps I’m a tad blind to its many faults, but ever since missing out on this Bertoia, the hunt has been on for a similar piece to fill the sad black hole left in my heart. With some welded love and the addition of a full cover, this wounded specimen will be all sorts of design gorgeous.

Otherwise, Palm Spring thrifting was fairly sparse with only the usual ceramic pieces and this awkward Tom Wesselman amateur style painting found and purchased despite the crazy wind and my waning enthusiasm.

I must stop buying thrift store art, but it was impossible to resist that furry little blond bush.

Oh, J.BEAN, you perv.

The wind apocalypse eventually cleared up early in the evening and the floating dust clouds made for an incredible sunset. Palm Springs is always pretty beautiful.

Enough of that nonsense.

Enjoy your Thanksgiving! – or – Enjoy your normal weekend!

With pie and such!

Long I have pined for the perfect gray duvet and by some strange bi-coastal internet twitter miracle, this enduring quest seems to have come to an end.

It’s really all thanks to Daniel, wonderful (and similarly duvet obsessed) splendid man about town Daniel, who twittered with Anna from Door Sixteen and I about our initial hopes in finding the perfect gray duvet and then our ultimate disappointment when the CB2 Coast Bed Linens ended up being a bust.

But…because they are in New York, where shops besides JC Penny exist, Anna and Daniel just popped into Muji and stumbled on this great warm gray linen duvet…that is unfortunately nowhere to be found on Muji’s website.

I got a flurry of texts and pictures of what looked like a fantastic (and affordable!) duvet and proceeded to beg for them to purchase and ship one of these lovelies to the west coast to live in my house.

By the way, we don’t have Muji in Hemet. Shocker.

Then Daniel, even though he’s in college and working like crazy on projects and busier than a rabid squirrel, was kind enough to grab me one of the last duvets and mail it out to me like a goddamn sweetheart. Like a completely perfect and lovely human being.

That gray duvet longing runs painfully deep. Daniel gets it. Oh yeah, he gets it real good.

Apparently though, I took my sweet time posting about this, since it all went down in what? August? What happened? Is this not summer still?

Anyhow.

Besides the greatest duvet ever, there are a few new things around the guest bedroom that I’ve been meaning to post about.

Like these sort of brutalist studio pottery things. Someone got all crazy with that ceramic knife. So angsty.

Feel that powerfully emotional thrift store ceramic turmoil.

You knew that some kilim pillow style action would leak into the rest of the house. Say what? There are some actual colors in here besides black, brown, gray or white. Crazy.

I don’t believe I’ve mentioned this fine Craigslist procured vintage safari chair.

Awwww yeah. Awwww boy.

Sling that thing all up in here.

Hold on, I got distracted by that devilish safari minx. I cannot forget to mention that after months of use, I really dig the new duvet. It gets better with every wash and sort of shifts color in different light; sometimes the color feels warm and sort of taupe and then shifts to cool and silvery gray. It’s like a magical creature that transforms day to day.

I love it and can’t thank Daniel enough.

Possibly worth noting, this thing above? This is about as ornate, flowery and “fem” as I can get.

That’s just a detail shot of the vintage brass Moroccan lamp that I can never photograph properly in the guest bedroom, which – surprise surprise – I still really love and don’t want to get rid of. Unlike everything else I own. I’m possibly going through some weird, “WHY NOT START FROM SCRATCH” phase that is really unproductive. Stupid dark wintertime.

And these bright things down below…

…these are luxurious flowery yellow billy balls. The only flowers I’ll own.

Wait, are these flowery? I don’t know and apparently am too lazy to google, but these last forever and thrive on neglect.

Just like my grudges.

Come on, I just can’t resist you. Work it you hot thang. I’m liking what I see and the way you move? Regal. Confident. Sexy. Frugal. I love safari and I don’t care who knows!

Oh, wait. Oh, craphole.

Now that I’m thinking about it, I probably should have bought two Muji duvets. Since…I never want to give you up. I never want to let you go.

Stuck at home alone with temperatures hitting the 100′s over the long holiday weekend, I went super stir crazy and fussed with the more temperate areas inside the house that had been suffering from months of neglect. The living and dining room were functioning as wayward storage rooms for all the extra homeless bits and pieces of art and lighting and crappity crap that somehow accumulates when laziness wins. The living room has suffered the worst cluttering as my new “shipping zone”, since packing furniture outside is an exercise in bikram yoga and tears.

Things were a mess and still are. Deaccessioning more stuff is still a requirement. Hello Craigslist! Hello smaller stuff in the shop!

I did clean up everything, vignette, adjust and add a few pieces here and there, although, really, nothing major has changed.

This little Tapiovaara chair is a lonely floater from a recent acquisition of a few Finish chairs. I love the shape and construction and it’s simple shaker aesthetic.

Of course it’s also where I make guests sit if they’ve been naughty.

Still need a new wall hanging for above the fireplace. Please please please – world – throw me a brutalist bone.

Fresh and clean and adjusted.

Still need to come up with a solution for the big back wall to replace the old pipe shelving unit. Have a few ideas brewing, just about zero to no motivation. I am considering adding some sort of desk type thing with storage, because sharing one desk between two heavy desk users? Not so fun anymore.

Hey. I need a another small house just to decorate and work on. By the beach…or a lake…or a storm drain. Somewhere cooler. Those are supposed to be cheap – almost free, right?

Slowly the house is getting put back together and rearranged to reflect the much less hoarded out state we had been living in for the past few months. I can’t even show pictures, it was just too horrifying. You will just have to imagine stacked piles of furniture and odd bric-a-brac overwhelmingly overflowing through the entire living and dining room.

It was so bad that we had to create a single hoarder style path to the front door. So, so incredibly bad that delivery people gave us funny looks when the front door wouldn’t open all the way and kept asking if we were in the process of moving.

Now we are blissfully decluttered and I’ve been rearranging all the leftovers into some sort of coherent floor plan as well as getting excited about acquiring a few new pieces.

During the big sale, I deaccessioned a large part of my studio pottery collection. While there is still a ton of ceramics sprinkled here and there, it feels good to be able to go a little more minimal in vignette town. Now to somehow resist the urge to scoop up peoples old high school ceramic projects…

Here’s a peak at a recent Craigslist acquisition. It’s a Danish rosewood credenza which is currently being repurposed as a media unit in the den.

We still need to mount the TV on the wall, but this thing is so much better than the dresser we were using before. This puppy hides away all the cables and ugly boxes and frees up so much visual and physical space that my heart is all aflutter. I can’t wait to have everything fully installed and looking banging…but I just do the furniture thing. I’m leaving it up to Jeremy to figure out the boring electronic stuff.

Ceramic collection? Getting out of control.

Almost every surface in the house is starting to get covered in vintage pottery. It could be worse, I mean it could be covered in dolls or Precious Moments figurines.

*I predict vintage popularity of Precious Moments in 2020. Stock up now.

**For real though, do you guys ever wonder what the next big vintage collectible thing will be? I do all the time. Love to hear your predictions…

I don’t know if anyone has noticed but I have gone a whole month without thrifting – which must be some sort of crazy miracle. We’ve been so consumed with prepping and painting the exterior that all that fun weekend free time evaporated into sunburns, sore backs and clumps of paint stuck in various body hair.

This Sunday there was a freak thunderstorm that rolled into Hemet that destroyed our plans to finish up painting the front of the house. I took the opportunity to break my thrifting dry spell and hit up a 50% off estate sale and a couple of thrift stores including the brand new Goodwill (Hemet’s one and only).

The estate sale was pretty much a depressing bust but I went enticed by and ended up buying this vintage spider leg table. I’m kind of clueless about where to put it in the house but was sold on the low price and elegant curves. When I pulled up to the house with my loot the Boy sarcastically stated, “Oh, another table? Yeah, we totally need some more of those.”

The new Goodwill doesn’t have a huge furniture or home wear section but I did spy this credenza for $50. It was in pretty rough shape and wasn’t super design exciting, so I passed on it even though I’ve been on the hunt for a credenza for the master bedroom.

I did pick up some ceramic pieces…of course…

I loved the graphic black etched pattern on this little pitcher. I wish it was larger – I’d totally use it too water my thirsty house plants.

I also grabbed this vintage Heath serving bowl and platter set. It’s pretty large and in fairly decent shape. Great for chips…or stew…or soup? Good for something…

Well, first of all, thanks for all your ever so charming advice about our T.O.P situation. We did actually look at a stove this weekend, but at 36″ it was too small (which sealed the deal that we really need a 40″ – which in turn – is so much more a pain in the ass and costly).

So the whole convection oven thing is seeming like a really good idea…

Which means we are still undecided. Now I’m thinking using it for hardscaping the front yard might be a better solution. Awww, fickle fickle renovation.

But anywho. Ceramics!

I’ve found these little babies and the group of three larger pieces over the past few weeks. All I can find recently is ceramics…maybe it’s all I’m looking for.

Oh, and check it out, I got a log to stick in the fireplace. OOOOOOOOOOO, spooky – it looks like it’s floating.

Getting up early to go to the estate sale did have one benefit – I got to go to like 20 or more thrift stores on my way home. Thank you iPhone for your guidance.

I was hoping to find some spectacular things, but it was sort of a bust. Except for my new favorite not-ironic portrait painting.  RAD.

This little walnut tray is cool and looks like a blank eye staring at you; I also got a little wooden apple storage thingy at the same store.

What did I actually buy at the estate sale? This little West German gray and green stripped vase. Talked them down from $22 to $20. Ugh. What a waste of time that place was.

I also got another tall gray West German vase and a little Hopi ceramic bowl. No big scores, maybe next time.

I also picked up a few other things while on the thrifty rounds. This ceramic lama and bull are hilariously weird and SO heavy. The bull is branded with with like a WS (I think) but otherwise unmarked. Love the crazy texture and blue lips, it’s like they are suffocating under all that ceramic fur weight.

I also picked up a cream Eames side shell chair on a low lounger h-base that needs a little bit of restoration love and a flokati fur pillow.

To celebrate the new shop and terrible weather I went out thrifting in Palm Springs. My fun find this weekend was a Jaru gold ram head from the 1970′s. Looks like the ghost of KWID is infiltrating ye’ old brick house…

What the hell is Jaru? I didn’t know but a quick Google informed me that Jaru was a Californian pottery company started in 1950 by Jack and Ruth Hirsch that made some unquestionably ugly ceramic pieces.

Other versions HERE and HERE. Ram-tastic!