No Pattern Required

By Sara In AZ

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OK, so I have 2 different things for y’all this week. The first one involves Milk Men! You must be wondering why on earth I would be getting into the subject of Milk Men – other than the fact that they were pretty popular in the 50s, and, well, they are kinda retro. And, the answer is………because of Mad Men. Mike was flipping channels the other night and he came across this Mad Men parody called ‘Milk Men’ from this show called ‘Atom TV’. Well, I am totally Mad Men obsessed and I just had to share this one with y’all. Please click on the link HERE to check out the clip. You will really get a kick out of it – Barbara are you still out there, you will love this! Let me know what y’all think!

And, then there is the Gravel Art. I have actually seen this called Pebble Art and Rock Art too. I once saw an original box where it even called it Mosaic Art. Anyway, lately I have been finding some of it at the local thrift stores – so, of course, it had to come home with me. The first one is a Peacock picture, this one is actually pretty elaborate. It must have taken a loooong time for someone to do all of the work on this one. Ruth actually had come across a set of this one, and another bird, on one of her antiquing trips she featured recently. Click HERE for a link to that.

The next 2, well,  I was not sure what they were at first until Mike informed me that they were Chess pieces. Duh, Sara! Then I felt like a real idiot, but I guess that shows you how much I play Chess! I thought they were cool anyway. These are a lot smaller than the Peacock picture, at approx. 1 foot square.

The next set of 3 are my super-duper FAVES! They are totally retro atomic looking! I just love them. They measure approx. 9 inches wide by 2 feet long.

The blue and the pink ones are so perfectly done, it is amazing. The green one looks like someone could have been rushing it a bit! I can just picture a Mom and her kid doing this as a project, and the kid hating every minute of it. “Mom, can I go play now?”   I have been trying to find some gravel to fill in the sparse areas on the green one, but it is not easy to find gravel to match this old stuff. I looked at fish tank gravel but it was not fine enough and I can’t use glass because it is shiny and this gravel is totally matte. Anyone have any ideas?

By Sara In AZ

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OK, so a while back Mike and I were possibly going to be moving to Colorado. With the possibility of a move, I started checking out real estate online a bit north of the Denver area. Well, I came across this Mid-Century Dream House in Fort Collins, Colorado – which is about an hour north of downtown Denver. My Mom was living in the Denver area at the time (my aunt and uncle also live there) so I begged, and I pleaded for her to go check out this house for me – and she did! Thanks Mom! Unfortunately, Mom is not as much of a psycho picture taker as I am, so there are not that many pictures to show you all…………..but you will get the idea anyway. Man, I probably would have been in this place all day long taking pictures, they would have had to drag me outta’ here. This house was built in1960 and is a total time capsule!

The first pic is the only pic I have of the front of the house. That is the real estate agent and my cousin walking up the path.

These super awesome decorative blocks were in the front entry, just beside the front door.

In the formal living room the whole wall had this awesome flagstone fireplace and built in blonde bookshelf/cabinets.

Check out that awesome original light fixture in the formal dining room! The ceiling for both the formal living room and formal dining room was covered in this tongue and groove blonde wood with these awesome beams. Oh my gosh, I am in love!

It is kitchen time! And the kitchen does not disappoint. It also had the tongue and groove blonde wood with the awesome beams! As you can see it also had the original light fixtures and the original birch cabinets. Just lovely! I wonder if that counter top is gold flecked Formica??? I’ll just bet it is.

Here is the other side of the kitchen.  This side backed up to the flagstone fireplace and had a cute little indoor grill!

Here is a picture of one of the bathrooms! Hooray for turquoise! Check out that turquoise toilet in the mirror and the gold fleck Formica counter top! I think I have gone to retro heaven!

Here is the pink bathroom! I SOOOO wish that I had more pics to show y’all. Mom said that it had all pink fixtures though. Check out the cool decorative tile in the shower.

Here is a pic of the back of the house. Love, love, love those original light fixtures!!!

Finally, here is a floor plan of the house that the real estate agent sent to me. It will give you a pretty good idea of the layout of the house.

So, this house was for sale alllllllll the way back in September 2006 (gosh time flies!) - that is when I was looking at it anyway, for I *think* around $280,000. We obviously never moved there or I would be writing to you all from Sara’s retro dream land right now. He He!  I was totally in love with this time capsule house and I tried to keep track of it to see if/when it ever sold, but I do not think it ever did sell. I think the owners just pulled it off the market and have held onto it ever since. I sincerely hope if they ever do sell it that it goes to someone who adores Mid-Century. Please retro gods – can you hear me???

By Sara In AZ

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I don’t know about y’all, but I am crazy about fabric! Especially Bark Cloth fabric! I recently came across Diamondhead Fabrics,  a company that carries a lot of the fabric designs made by Big Kahuna- and it also seems to carry some other manufacturers as well.  Big Kahuna has some really terrific retro/atomic prints – and I can vouch for the quality of their fabric, it is really nice thick, heavyweight Bark Cloth. I really like the aspect of being able to buy this fabric new because I have been sorely disappointed in the past with some of my vintage Bark Cloth falling to pieces from dry rot or other problems. And then there is always the problem of ‘do you really have enough for the project you want to accomplish’. Well, with Diamondhead Fabrics all you have to do is place a minimum order for 2 yards and you can decide how much to get. And get this – all of the Bark Cloth I was looking at was priced at $15.95 a yard w/free shipping!!! I know I have seen some other “new” Bark Cloth cost as much as $40 a yard, even more sometimes. Not all of the cloth featured on the Diamondhead site was Bark Cloth – but all of the cloth I have featured below is Bark Cloth.

Check out the awesome “Jetson” pattern in different colors! I can just picture some plinch pleats in these.

And here is a modern type print on Bark Cloth. This one is also made by Big Kahuna.  This print comes in Chocolate and Black colors as well.

And here is a tropical Bark Cloth print from Big Kahuna. They have more prints that they show on the Big Kahuna website, but you cannot buy anything from Big Kahuna, as they do not sell to retail customers. You will need to go through Diamondhead Fabrics for all of your purchases. Diamomondhead also shows more tropical patterns on their site, but not all of them were Bark Cloth.

I don’t know about y’all, but I may have to think about making an order soon!

Here are some super cute atomic offerings right now on Etsy!  I adore that razor!

I love these Retro Guest Tuesdays, because we all get to see the great projects everyone has been up to!  The rehab of these shadowboxes was so cool, and I am DYING over the finished product.  Fantastic job, Sara, and I love the color!

OK, so I picked these Shadowboxes up at an antique store recently, and as you can see they needed a ‘leetle’ bit of help! Oddly, I bought these at 2 different antique stores right next to each other. They are almost exactly a matched, mirror image, pair except the one on the right has a little pole holding up the upper shelf. I got them for $10 each, and I *think* I saw my Mom roll her eyes at me (just a little bit) when I picked them up.     I could not help myself though, I had to have them because I knew I could make them ‘all better’. I just  love that ridgy/grooved wood they used on a lot of this type of stuff back then too.

The Shadowbox with the red showing through was in the worst condition. All the white paint along the bottom was flaking off ( I think it was exposed to water at some point because I could see a faint water line) so I had to get off all the flaking paint that I could and kind of sand it down a bit. The other Shadowbox was filthy too, just no chipping paint! Yippee! So, I got them all prepped and ready to go and then I had to decide, hmmmmmmmm – what color should I paint these??? I could not go with boring old white, no way! So I thought about all the wild 50s colors I could paint these: red, pink, turquoise, yellow – nothing seemed right to me. Then I thought of my favorite swivel chair I bought at an Estate Sale, and the funky lime green/Chartreuse color. PERFECT! So I went with Rust-Oleum Key Lime Gloss!

So I painted, and I painted, and I painted, and I painted some more – then I went back to Home Depot for more paint – and paint, paint, paint,  annnnnnnd I had to go back one more time! It actually took 3 cans of paint to get a decent coverage on these shadowboxes. EEPS!  Hello, Home Depot! They must have thought I was tagging my neighborhood in my own special color of wacky green. I am now known at my local HD as “Sara the Key Lime  Tagger”. he  he!  You can see in the next pic why I needed a lot of paint, it seemed like the red kept showing through. Don’t want that!

I also had to paint glass backers for these shadowboxes. These both came originally with a back. One still had the original black painted glass back, so I could only assume the other one had a glass backer as well. One trip to Ace and we came home with our new glass backer! Since one was already painted black, it just needed a touch up over some scratched areas. Here I am getting ready to paint the clear glass.

And, here are the finished black glass backers!

Hooray! I am finished with the painting, and now they just have to finish drying – I only got in a little bit of trouble for painting part of the clothesline green too  ! Oops!

And, here they are – the freshly painted and newly glass backed shadowboxes. Ta-Da!

 Here they are, finally hung on the wall, in all their kitschy glory!

I don’t have any great finds this week to show you guys, so we get to see Sara’s great finds instead.  Thanks, Sara!

Sooooo, last time you saw some retro pics around Globe and Miami Az. This time we will check out my retro-tastic finds from Globe/Miami!

First up is a funny little book Mike found for me called “Four Little Bunnies”  with photographs by Harry Whittier Frees. 

Apparently Mr. Frees was well known in the early 1900s for his photographs with all different kinds of animals. The book was first published by Rand McNally and Company in Chicago in 1935, and has no stated author. My edition is from 1939. I think the text was kind of secondary to the book, as the pictures were the BIG story really! Mike saw this and knew we had to get it, as I am crazy for rabbits! This is the most charming book, it has dozens of different pictures with bunnies dressed all sorts of zany ways. I cannot imagine how he was able to actually get all the animals dressed and photographed, it must have been crazy in that photo studio!

Next up is the Pink General Electric Structo Kitchen!   

We found 3 pieces of this General Electric Children’s Kitchen Set and totally fell for it. Who here does not love pink, I mean, come on, pink is the bomb! So, since it was pink, and metal cabinets, to boot – we had to have! I cannot find much info on these toy cabinets. I believe they started manufacture in 1959, and there were (possibly) 9 pieces in total that you could get. Looking online I have seen a double wall oven, a dishwasher, a refrigerator, and a regular cabinet. If I have my information right you could buy these separately for $7- $9, or the whole set for $60 – which was quite a chunk of change in the 50s/60s! I wonder who was buying these back in the day? It must have been rich people. I would have probably begged my Mom for a set of these (if I was around then) and she would have told me that I could just play with the real cabinets that were already in the kitchen! Anyway, what is really cool about these cabinets is all of the pieces actually do something. Check out the corner cabinet – the drawer works and there is a rotating lazy susan inside, with a real wood chopping block on top!

Here is the stove, and the burners actually light up!

How cute is that?

And finally, there is the sink.

We have not figured out the sink just yet, as it’s wires were not attached when we got it. So, I will soon have Mike, the engineer, on the case to figure it out! It does something with water though, because there is a mini pump mounted under there.

Eventually we will mount all of these to a board with VCT tile on it, as the top picture shows, and have a mini retro kitchen!

Lastly, we have the Retro ‘Mad Men’ antenna! Did I actually say ‘Mad Men’, well yes I did. Mike and I love Mad Men, who doesn’t around here? And, every time I see Mad Men I want to crawl right on into the TV set and have a nice little chat with Betty, Don and the gang (of course, with a Martooni – Sable!). We saw this antenna in a store in Globe, actually I did not know what it was at first until Mike told me (he he), but we left it behind. I thought it was totally cool, but was not really sure on buying it, though it was only $12.  Well, right after we saw this we were watching MM season 2 again (in preparation for season 3) and Lo and Behold in “For Those Who Think Young“  the first episode, it is right there - smack dab in the middle of Joan Holloway’s TV! I could not believe it, the same type of antenna Mad Men used, how totally cool. I saw the same antenna this season in “My Old Kentucky Home” while Joan and Greg are hosting their dinner party. Well, of course, we had to get it now……

You have to love the antenna, it is so retro and funky looking!

So, there you have it – all our retro finds from Globe and Miami Arizona.

I hope you all enjoyed the pics!

This is the ad for the greatest MCM Estate Sale in Michigan. Just trust me when I say there is an ENTIRE HOUSE filled with mid-century modern pickings, and every single one of them is fabulous.  Russel Wright bedroom set, Dunbar sectional, Herman Miller clocks. Gah!

Go to the ad, check out the pictures, come to Michigan and get some great furniture. I am still working on Tom so we can get out to that sale, but I am dying, DYING over this stuff.

By the by, I adore the little round pillows on that sectional!

Thank you Sara, for letting me know about this sale, and torturing me!

Hello, all! So, what do you think of the progress on the new theme?  Do you love it? Hate it? Think I should go back to the old theme?  The only thing I am really struggling with now is that the width of the center column in this theme isn’t as wide as the other, so my old posts are having problems fitting into the new format. Also, I wish I was better at personalizing themes, but what are you gonna do?

Anyway, here is a super cute set of dishes I saw recently at the Cat’s Meow in Bay City.  Tom (who is THE Hubs by the way, I finally decided to use his real name!) gets upset enough when I bring home one dish, let alone a whole set. So I just decided to bring home a photo when it came to these dishes.

Here are a set of really sweet tables I saw at the local ReStore not too long ago.  The wood wasn’t quite the right color for our place (sometimes amazing original woodwork isn’t so great – like when you have to try to match it).  The tables were too gray instead of the light, warm honey color of our woodwork.  But I did love them so. And I think they were only $15 a piece. They didn’t last long, so I am sure they were a great score for someone.

Here is a beautiful kelly green couch that was at the local Goodwill.  I did cry a bit over this one.  Hubs wasn’t too thrilled when he saw it, and it really didn’t go into any of our color schemes, so I can see his point.  On the other hand – it was green! Kelly green! And practically brand new. Ah well, such is life!

And last, another great item from ReStore.  I loved this cute green chair.  I thought Hubs would really like this one, but once again, refusal. Not that I am getting down on him. If it were up to me, our house would be packed to the gills already with stuff. It is probably good that he tempers my enthusiasm. And, I know if I really, really want something, he will cave. I just wish that something would have been this chair!

Morning all, happy Thursday to you!  We are almost done with this week. Thank goodness.  I thought this week would drag on forever. Whew.

Aaaaanyway, this week’s Etsy Round-up is in honor of my friend Nahrain, who had two plates of pasta spilled in her lap while we were dining out on the fourth of July!  Nahrain was a good sport about it, but that pasta was hot and she did get cut a little when one of the plates shattered.  She jokes that she took one for the team, though, because we all got free dinner because of it!  That Nahrain, what a trooper. So, this week’s Etsy spotlight is on Atomic Plates.

The first plate is a great atomic mobile plate from susantique’s shop. Love the unique design on this one. This apparently used to be restauarant ware at one time.  I would have loved to eat in that place!

Next we have some Atomic Serving Plates from hausproud. Not sure on this, but I think my grandma may have had the dish set that went with the center plate.  She had great taste….even if she couldn’t cook….

And last, but not least, are these great pretty, swirly snack plates by vintagegoodies. Love the design on these, very cool! Almost looks like an girly atom….