I headed out of the desert into the wilds of Los Angeles on Saturday night and ended up crashing a party at Gregory and Emily’s sweet pad with all the Apartment Therapy LA folks. Thanks guys for letting me drink your booze and go through your stuff. I also got to check out the progress at Laure’s new pad – which is looking posh, even without a sofa.

Afterward, I headed to Bianca’s crib to crash for the night and get up fresh and early for shopping madness at the Long Beach Flea Market.

It was a sweetly perfect morning in LA, so of course we immediately left town for the heat and long ticket lines of Long Beach.

I picked up my buddies Danny and Mel since they love hunting for deals. Ah! What? Maybe that’s Erica and Bianca back there. Aren’t we wacky girls? I want to punch us too, don’t worry.

Flea markets start super early in the morning, but since we are not bright or chipper early risers, I think we rolled in solidly around 10am. Shockingly, it was PACKED. Much more attended than I’ve seen in a few years. Sweaty and poorly prepared, we made our way into the hordes.

OK, so the following things are for the swank bachelor pad I imagined with my mad flea marketing skills (and crappy iphone pictures).

This fantastic painting inspires it all.

The bachelor guy I imagine would own this painting (that he picked up at a garage sale) because it reminded him of his old dog “Hulkster”. He’s a sort of sloppy “dude”. Friendly, a bit distracted, likes to pretend he surfs but really doesn’t, you know, aimless but cute. Maybe he ran into a little money through some accident caused by LADWP or something. I don’t know, he’s mellow, doesn’t like to talk about it.

Firstly, he needs a ginormous slab coffee table for $400 to stack beers on and old magazines.

Maybe a comfy chesterfield for playing video games and macking with ladies. Only $275 if I recall…

Perhaps, an upholstered ottoman for $30 to kick his feet up on and a giant moose rack mounted above the fireplace to show off his manliness to visitors. I think this 59″ spread was $600 and the seller told me that all antlers are shed yearly, which was a fun moose fact I didn’t know. The things you learn at the flea. Now I kind of want some moose antlers.

A graphically awesome Mexican rug from Oaxaca for $80. (I almost bought this, like seriously considered ponying up the cash. I balked since I secretly only wanted to spend $60)

Then a nice slate blue wing back and ottoman that my dude would pretend to read books on to impress ladies. He think it makes him look like an intellectual. What a dummy.

Of course, some sort of boob-like pendant lights, a steep $75 for the pair. Then this fun just sort of fizzles from there…

I could dig that room. Looks comfy.

Anyhow. What did I actually take home?

This really beat up chair that needs major reupholstering and a giant geometric ceramic planter. Not too exciting. I’m guessing this revelation is a bit of a downer. I was hoping for more deals, but like all deal hunting, it just wasn’t meant to be.

The person who really scored was Bianca. I’m going to take all the credit for spotting awesome things she has been looking for and somehow making them magically cheap. Well, I guess I didn’t really make them cheap, but I swear my thrifty senses were tingling.