Inspired!

Our little family spent part of the day in downtown Northville again, eating at Sizzling Sticks, getting ice cream at Rebecca's, and checking out the shops. 

I fell in love with Lorla's, an amazing shoe store where our stroller had no hope of fitting.  I had to make my visit fairly quick, but I will return...

Having caught an episode of Cash and Cari on HGTV earlier in the day, Mike and I both wanted to check out the store associated with it.  Within seconds of stepping into RePurpose I realized this Cari chick has my dream job of conducting estate sales and refinishing some of the furnishings for her own store.  It made me think of the finished part of my basement where my grandparents' 1960's furniture lives in harmony with the mid-ninties Art Van Clearance Center couches, where French honeymoon photos hang on the walls near the vintage postcards I bought in the flea market in Nice,

where Mike's souvenir pint glass collection lives one flight down from my grandpa's shot and highball glasses,

where our tube TV waits to be called vintage.

This furniture with it's famly history and retro style, the postcards connected to a honeymoon memory and arranged neatly in a frame, the way the old functions with the new...this space reflects a part of myself that tends to get lost in the functioning of day to day life, a quality I strain to bring out in other areas of my home and occasionally my wardrobe.  Oh, how I love a thrift store!

I fear this basement space may need to be renovated in the next couple of years to accomodate a bigger playroom.  The sharp edges of that fantastic furniture are not toddler-friendly.  Here's hoping the economy improves quickly enough for our home value to meet our remaining mortgage, in time for us to relocate to a bigger house and move Michael and Sophie into separate rooms when they outgrow toddler beds.

In the meantime I've been trying to figure out what to do with the nursery windows for over a year now. 

The cordless blackout shades that will replace the deteriorating Roman shades are in the mail to us, but I want to do more.  RePurpose inspired me.  I thought of old chenille bedspreads, the kind that inevitably inspire my mom to reminisce about her childhood, cold hardwood floors in the winter, sharing a room with her sisters...

 This morning I bought this on Ebay.

The seller said it's not in perfect condition, that it's been cut and is missing a few puffs.  Had I been patient enough to bid rather than "Buy it Now" that information might have inspired me to bid low, but instead it confirmed that this fabric is ready for reincarnation, that I won't be destroying something still perfect as it is. 

Sometime this summer this bedspread will become valances and a pillow or two.  Stay tuned!