desks, paintings, headboards and Colonels

I wouldn't blame you if, after seeing this post, you began expecting to find a new guest-bedroom headboard every time you open my blog! Yes, I changed it again. It's just so easy ... all I need is fabric, a staple gun, about 5 minutes, and ta-dah: new headboard! It's becoming a bit of an addiction. I still need to go buy some foam and batting for the frame so I can make it softer and the corners more rounded, but it will do for now.

Isn't the fabric pretty? I think the swirly blue and white pattern coordinates well my Walter Anderson print, which was a high school graduation gift to me from a family friend. 

Of course, I'm still shopping for the perfect bedding...

I'm in love with this quilt from Anthropologie, but not quite so in love with it that I'm willing to shell out for the $200 price tag. Maybe no one else in America will like it, and they'll soon be forced to sell it at a dramatically reduced rate;)

In other news, we finally found a desk! Isn't it cute? I just love the skinny little legs. I'm still looking for a cute but comfy vintage chair, so I promise that this large, lop-sided, half-broken chair is not going to be a permanent fixture in the room. It's just the only spare chair we had sitting around!

I had so much fun "shopping" my house for desk accessories.

I put up a little square of cork board to serve as a place to pin inspirational images, fabric swatches, memos, etc. I also hung up the first vintage portrait I ever bought, added an anthro pot, a picture frame with a photo of me and my husband, a Wolfe bird from my mama, a few books, and my great-grandmother's cream-colored rotary phone:)

 And if you've checked out my house tour lately, you've already seen all the new photos, including this one, which shows off that mystery painting I've been blogging about forever! You all know how much I drool over anything mid-century, so having an original mid-century piece of art in my home is just soooo exciting for me!


It was given to me by my grandmother for Christmas two years ago, and I finally figured out a way to get it back to California! We checked it as baggage on our flight home, so if you were wondering what the giant box was for in this post where I mention unpacking, now you know:)

And last, but certainly not least, let me say that I had soooo much fun reading and laughing over the various distinguished names you guys came up with for this gentleman! That might be one of my favorite comment threads ever:) After tallying the votes, taking all of them into careful consideration, and of course consulting with my husband, I have combined 4 of your suggestions and arrived at a name:

Colonel Milton E. Randolph II

The "E" is short for Edgar, but very few of his acquaintances know that. Around town he's known simply as The Colonel, but his wife and close friends affectionately refer to him as Milt. To his mother he was always "Junior".

there's someone I'd like you to meet...

Notice anything new?

There's this serious-looking gentleman, which is simply a print I found by Googling for vintage portraits, printing it off and throwing it in a frame from Goodwill.

I don't have any rights to it, so hopefully this won't get me in trouble, but I'm including it here so you can click it and print one out for yourself if you'd like.

And then of course there's "Mitzi", the lady in that portrait on the left ... 

And then, oh yeah! There's just this ABSOLUTELY PERFECT CHRISTMAS PRESENT THAT MY HUSBAND GAVE ME LAST NIGHT!!!

In case you can't tell, I'm just a little bit giddy over it. It's an original portrait painting from the early 1900's, and after he let me open it I pretty much just spent the rest of the evening staring at it in utter adoration. I love everything about this painting, from the safety pin at the top of his shirt to his bushy mustache to the way the paint has chipped and crackled over the years. It's just too good to be true:)

Now all he needs is a name! Any ideas?

self-loathing in sepia + 91-year-old postcards

I was so amused when I came across this article that I just had to share it with you all. It's filled with old photographs containing self-deprecating captions. I tend to think that only in modern times are we so hard on ourselves and so obsessed with image, but, as the article says, "[these photo captions] demonstrate how little our attitudes about ourselves have changed over the years".

I've known girls that put up unflattering pictures of themselves around their home as self-motivation to work out. I'm guessing that's what one of these women did. She wrote the inspirational message to herself "I just have to quit eating and work hard". Working hard is a good thing, but don't quit eating!

Erma Bombeck once wrote a book titled When You Look Like Your Passport Photo, It's Time to Go Home. I guess this woman wasn't too crazy about her passport photo, either.

This one might be my favorite, because she's saying the same sorts of things I tell myself when someone takes a picture of me that I'm not crazy about. "I'm not as fat as I look here, it's the terry cloth pajamas over my bathing skirt plus wind." You look thin to me, girlfriend!

And speaking of old photographs, have a look at these gorgeous French postcards. Aren't they fabulous? They were all sent in or around the year 1919 (amazing that they're in such great shape) and the writing doesn't seem to have faded much at all. They were a gift from the adorable Amy over at The Petit Fillet (a fabulous food blog, by the way), and I just loooooooooove them!

If anyone reads handwriting well, feel free to have a look at these pictures (you can click them to see a larger version) and let me know what you think they say! I'm awful at reading handwriting, and these postcards have gorgeous, intricate handwriting.

Thanks so much, Amy for thinking of me! I just love my postcards:)

my newly-decorated living room: part one

Yes, you read that right ... part one! There's so much to show and tell about, I really have no choice but to make this at least 2, maybe three posts!


My sweet mama came to see me this weekend, and we had SO much fun getting my new little townhouse all spiffed up. She treated me to a new rug, houseplants, patio furniture, some adorable beachy pillows, and ... this:

Did your heart just skip a beat? Because mine does every time I look at it! It's a portrait painting by Stanislav Rembski. He painted F.D.R, Eleanor Roosevelt, and (ironically) one of the old professors from Ole Miss ... the school in the south where my husband and I met and fell in love:) My mother and I didn't know any of this when we spotted it at the Ocean Beach antique fair, though. We just fell in love with how her hair was in a flapper-esque bob, her cute and mischievous smile, and the fact that she matched my house perfectly! I've been collecting house wares in turquoise, pink and red since I started registering for wedding gifts almost 3 years ago, and to look at our house now, you'd think it was decorated to match this adorable painting, because she fits in so perfectly.

There's no need to go on about how much I love early-to-mid 20th century portraits. I've gone on and on and on about them already on this blog! This one was painted in 1921. I ADORE the 20's, it's my favorite decade, so that makes it even more fun to own. I'd give anything to know more about this cute lady. She must have been very stylish, she's already sporting the long-waisted, low-hipped, minimal-bust-line look that was so popular throughout the 20's. 

Here she is enjoying her new home. My mama and I think she looks like a Mitzie. What do you think? Mitzie is an old-fashioned nickname for the name Miriam, and I can just imagine her at a fabulous 1920's party, introducing herself saying "Hello, I'm Miriam, but my friends call me Mitzie":)


If those chairs look familiar, then you are a faithful white waxflower reader! I first started working on this project just after Christmas! You can read about it here, but this is the original chair ... the one on the left:

We un-upholstered it a few weeks after Christmas, and I was all set to re-cover it when I started thinking that it really needed a mate. I just couldn't think of anywhere where it would look cute all by itself. I held on to it, in it's un-upholstered state, until just a few days ago. I was browsing Craigslist ads, and found this chair for sale for only $50 (but we ended up getting it for $35!)

We bought it from a lady who said it belonged to her mother, who is still living at 104 years old! I was thrilled to finally have a buddy for my other chair, and got to work painting and upholstering them both. It was by far the most difficult thing I've upholstered, and the seat of the one on the left actually needs to be re-done, but I'm pretty proud of how they turned out:)


Come back tomorrow for the living room: part two! It includes homemade shelves and a captain's bench!

french gray and butter yellow

Thanks to some feverish painting by me ...

... and some expert carpentry by my husband ...

We actually finished the dresser last night!

The outside was painted in several coats of Martha Stewart's "Zinc" in a semi-gloss, then it was lovingly distressed by me,

The insides of the drawers were painted in a fun surprise color of yellow...

and each drawer was filed down and fixed up with brand new runners. The person that installed the last ones did a horrible job. Most of them were bent, broken, and screwed in so that they weren't even level. Most of the drawers wouldn't shut at all, and if they did, there was almost no getting them open again. Thanks to the Mr., though, they all work perfectly now:)

Here's one more look at the before & after:

a new project

A few nights ago I was casually searching through the local Craigslist when I found a dresser, quite large with cute hardware and made of solid wood, for $15 dollars! Even though it was 9:30pm and we were about to go to bed, we called the guy up, he said come and get it, and we zipped right over. Luckily he lived in a neighborhood just a few blocks away!

This is the dresser. It's an antique, but somewhere along the way somebody updated it with modern drawer runner-thingies. Some of those were broken and the drawers no longer slide in and out properly, so my husband took them all off and will install new ones when I'm done painting. I didn't get a chance to snap a picture before he took the runners off, so I sort of haphazardly stuffed the drawers back in there to get a photo. That's why they look so unstable and wonky.

The wood is so dark and pretty that it really kills me to paint it at all, but sadly this dresser is a bit of a fixer-upper. A lot of the trim on the drawers need repair, a few holes need filling, etc. and there's just no way to fix it up and not paint it. I went to Home Depot yesterday to pick out paint, and was very excited to see that they finally have the Martha Stewart paints available for purchase there! I love her colors, and love how there's a little symbol system with a symbol on each paint chip, helping you see what colors would coordinate well.

I was immediately drawn to the "Ballet Slipper Pink", and used the little symbol system to pick out coordinating colors. Love this!

For this dresser, however, I am going with a very trendy color scheme since this dresser is just for fun and I plan to sell it when I'm done (we have enough dressers!) I chose Martha's "Zinc", which is a dark gray shade, and found a whole gallon of butter yellow on sale for just 5 dollars in the "oops" section. Gray and yellow seems to be the hot color combo right now, I'm seeing it on practically every decor blog, so I'm going with gray on the outside and yellow on the inside of the drawers for a fun surprise when you open them up.

Working on it tonight, hope to post pictures by tomorrow night or Friday at the latest!

alice in office depot

This weekend, like most weekends, I did some shopping at the Goodwill, thrift stores and the Salvation Army. I was very excited when I found this great frame. It's a great blend of green, gold and blue hues, it holds an 8x10, and I loved the huge, deep frame! You can't really tell how dramatically deep it is in these pictures, unfortunately.

After I bought the frame, I went to the Vintage Printable site and picked out a few images. I saved them to my computer, and cropped them to 8x10 size. Don't forget to do this when using Vintage Printable, because they are all random dimensions.

Then I went to OfficeDepot to have them printed. I actually had all three of these printed ... the Alice one, the "helicopter", as I like to call it, and the owls. I ended up framing the Alice one for now because it matches the frame the best, but I have the other two on hand so I can mix it up any time.

Cost for the frame: $3.99

Cost to have all three images printed: $1.35

Total cost: $5.34

books old & new

Yesterday afternoon our local library held a big sale. Yayyy!! We stopped by and picked up this whole row of vintage books, and a few others not in this picture. They were only 25 cents each, so we got ten books for just $2.50!

And yes, that chair is this chair. It's still in it's sad, un-upholstered state. But I am hoping to have time to work on it ... maybe even finish it ... this coming weekend!

 I loved the cool imprinted face on this book.

Loved the title, fonts and design of this one.

But this one is my favorite. So cute! Love the little propeller.

But we didn't just buy books. We checked out a few books as well, and I couldn't help but notice how tacky they look compared to the vintage ones. They just don't make 'em like they used to!

big cars and-choo choo trains

Things tend to get a bit girly over here at white waxflower, so today I thought I'd mix it up with an idea that I would use if I had a little boy. 

 

As I've said many times before, I looooove vintage ads, and love the idea of having them put in matching frames to make a collection. Wouldn't these be so cute used as art for a little boy's "transportation" themed room? Because who doesn't know at least one little guy that loved (or still loves) all things planes, trains and automobiles? 

These ads can be purchased by the Etsy sellers Anne's Accumulations, Paper Dealer and To The Sky. Vroom Vroooom!