Retroranchrevamp's Blog

A few weeks ago, I took my yearly trip to visit Mom and Dad down in Tennessee. I had another wonderful trip this year — though I didn’t find any vintage goodies at the antique stores we visited — you can’t always strike gold, right? Still always fun to look. Instead of trying to hit up more antique malls, Mom, Dad and I decided to spend some quality time together outside in the nice weather — just what I needed after a long Wisconsin winter. We spent a day visiting Cheekwood Gardens – a huge historic estate with beautiful gardens and art displays in the main house. They were setting up the grounds for some sort of fiberoptic light show that unfortunately didn’t open until after I was out of town (boo!) but even seeing it in the daytime was neat. Above is the Cheekwood Mansion — surrounded with tons of tiny fiberoptic orbs on sticks.

Mom really liked hiding behind these stacks of soda bottles, filled with fiber optic wires and water then popping out to say hello…

The grounds were immaculate. I really liked this shallow pool next to the house…

…another favorite — this giant trellis with huge vines growing over it to provide shade and a secret garden feeling.

Mom and I posed for a few photos together…

… so there you have it — for those of you who wanted to see a recent picture of Mom and I together to compare to some of our older family photos.

…and here I am, dreaming that someday my yard would look as nice as this!

The main house was covered with railings and window grates made from beautiful decorative ironwork…

…then we followed a path out the back and found a Japanese garden!

Dad and I posed in the bamboo for scale purposes…

Another favorite part of my trip was the pontoon boat ride. I don’t often get the chance to ride boats — and when I do, usually my adorable husband Jim will not come with me because he claims to get seasick. I have not tested this theory yet (I don’t want to push it!) but Jim was glad to be home with Leo instead of on the boat with us. Me on the other hand — bring on the boat!

Last year we took the huge house boat tour, which was unbelievable. This year we went the opposite way down the river on the sunset cruise…

There were ginormous rock ledges along the river that were amazing. They looked as if someone had let paint drip down the sides and make all sorts of interesting patterns. We also saw several blue herons — if you look closely, you might spot one in the photo above…

I’m not usually one to say that a power plant is pretty, but the way this one reflected in the water did make me want to take a photo. The tour boat captain said it was made in the 1950s — so there you go — a bit of retro…

Of course all good things must come to an end — but at least my trip to Tennessee ended with a beautiful sunset on the water.

Thanks Mom and Dad for hosting me for another enjoyable trip! See you at Christmas in July at my place!

I have to admit — I like a cocktail every now and then — but it has been a while since I’ve actually done shots. All that aside, when I saw this cute little shot glass caddy with polka dot glasses at my local antique mall, I knew it had to come live with me.

Sadly, it only has 5 matching glasses — and one of those has a chip on the rim, so it shouldn’t be used — but the polka dots totally make up for that, right? The shot glasses are also more narrow than your average shot glass, so finding a few replacements might be difficult. I’ll have to keep an eye out on Ebay, Etsy and at yard sales this summer.

I was thinking — if I could find two more glasses that were this size, the set wouldn’t look too strange. Maybe if I find glasses the color of one of the polka dots they would look like an intentional mismatched set — red, yellow, clear?

Even if I can’t find another shot glass or two for this set, I still enjoy its retro appeal. The set fits nicely in the glass cupboard side of my Broyhill Brasilia dining room hutch — looks like it found a home with me.

I recently scored this retro wire decorative bowl at an antique shop. I like the flower shape of it, but I’m not sure what to fill it with. Any ideas?

There is some chipped gold areas, so I may repaint it too — maybe black? Maybe white?

For now it is sitting on my end table in the den, next to my retro radio and my favorite lamp.

A few weekends ago one of my best friends was in town for a visit. While the mid century bug hasn’t quite bitten her — she does love to go to yard sales, thrift shops and antique malls — so we always make it a point to spend part of our visit out looking for new old bargains. Since she is not into the same style of vintage goods as I am — we never fight over who saw anything first — making for enjoyable and leisurely vintage shopping and an overall good time together.

On this particular trip to one of my favorite antique malls in the area, I happened to spot this fantastic brass plant stand — it even has a convenient carry handle!

If the handle didn’t sell you — those atomic hairpin tripod legs might…

Or the fact that it has enough rings to hold 10 4″ clay pots…

Apparently it is not impressing Leo much — but I love it.

It just so happened that Menards was having a sale on flower pots the same weekend — so I picked up 9 terra cotta pots to fill up the planter. The tenth spot is hard to reach (in the center of the base) and I like groupings of odd numbers, so I decided to skip it for now.

I’m planning to put this on my front porch (even though I’m photographing it in the Tiki Lounge) because our front porch gets more light to make plants happy, everyone will be able to see and enjoy it from the street, and our front porch is not really big enough to put a chair or anything else on it so this plant stand will help dress up the porch for summer while only taking up a little bit of floor space.

Now all I have to do is figure out what to plant in the pots — maybe a mix of colorful flowers and vines? I’m open to suggestions! The front porch is shaded until after noon and then it gets full sun. Bonus points to anyone who can suggest orange and pink flower varieties — my favorite!

When I found these cool vintage numbered tacks in their original packaging during my last trip to the Habitat for Humanity ReStore — I wasn’t sure what I would use them for, but I thought they were so neat that I brought them home anyway — thinking they might be useful somewhere around the house.

The tacks can be pounded into wooden screens and window trim to make sure that each screen can be easily matched to the proper sized window without any guesswork…

The tacks I bought only go up to 25, but apparently they were made to go all the way to number 99 — that’s a lot of screens!

It wasn’t until this year (the third time that we put up the porch screens) that I noticed we have the exact same Acro Hold-Tite tacks on our screened porch screens and frame. Up until this point, we had been using the letters that the second owners of the house wrote on the edges of the screens in Sharpie marker to make sure we were putting each screen in the  in the correct location. The second owners must not have realized these numbered tacks were here either.

I’m going to have to repaint the porch screens and do some general repairs next year — with the looming start of the master bath remodel and the number of yard related issues that need to be taken care of this summer — I won’t have time or energy for that type of project until then. When I do get around to tackling it — I can replace the original tacks with brand new old stock, courtesy of the Habitat for Humanity ReStore.