Ghetto Galleria

I went thrifting yesterday afternoon and didn't buy a whole lot but I saw some cool stuff.

All I bought was a tulle skirt from the River Oaks Goodwill that I added to my growing collection of second hand clothes that I intend to disassemble then reassemble into something fabulous just like that New Dress A Day gal who spent $365 and made 365 new outfits in 365 days. Impressive, right? My goals are not quite that lofty but I'm convinced that I can take a couple of tacky circa 1978 polyester Goodwill garments and remake them into something similar to this:

from Magnolia Pearl

Okay maybe not exactly like that but you get the idea. The only problem is that I keep forgetting that I don't know how to sew. Sort of. I have a sewing machine and when Taylor was little I made a couple of costumes for her using a pattern and everything. But I still wouldn't say that I know how to sew. I just fumble my way through it and hope nothing falls apart.

I would really like to make a dress like one of these only a little more conservative since I am a "mature woman" and I have to consider things such as saddle bags and arm wings when I'm designing. I would also love to have a pair of fabulous cowboy boots to go with my new dress, so I could wear it to the rodeo. Either of these boots will do:

Lucchese rattlesnake

Corral distressed leather

So here I am with no clue about basic garment construction and I'm wanting to construct one from scratch without a pattern. Good luck to me.

Even though I didn't buy much yesterday I did see some pretties. Here are a few things I spotted at the Westheimer Antiques Flea Market:

Romanian seltzer bottles

Wooden chest

Silk lampshade

Metal drawers

Doors out the wazoo

Bust & pink Italian espresso machine

They had some cool stuff, lots of mid-century modern furniture, but it was all overpriced. Maybe it has to be so they can afford their Westheimer address.

I will probably go back and get one of those Romanian seltzer bottles. They really are quite fabulous. They're extremely thick, heavy glass circa early 1900s. They're asking $35 each for them which really isn't bad.

I love the details on that old wooden trunk and could think of a million things to store in the drawers of one of those metal chests if they weren't $300 each. Is that lampshade not to die for?! It didn't have a price on it and I didn't even ask because I knew it would be out of my range.

The dress form (half a dress form? shirt form? bust?) was tempting as was the pink espresso machine but they seemed sort of frivolous so I passed.

They had some really great antique doors with leaded glass panes but the really good ones were several hundred dollars each. They can keep their doors.

On my way home I stopped at the Antique Pavillion on Westheimer just to look around. They are WAY out of my price range but there's always good eye candy in there. The place is huge and one of the employees followed me around the whole store at a discreet distance. I felt like she was expecting me to shoplift an armoire or something. I asked her for permission before I took pictures then she warmed up a little.

I loved Robert Alker's glossy art deco furniture. The comic book desk and side tables were my favorites.

They had lots of amazing chandeliers which are difficult to photograph from the ground in bad lighting with a phone.

I've seen lots of cool chandeliers. I'm on Pinterest. But I've never seen anything quite like this first one. The crystals had no facets at all, they were completely smooth and about the size of my hand.

I love all the little shades on this next one. It had strands of smooth crystal beads wired to its "branches".

This one was my favorite. It's simple yet unusual and the thing is enormous. I would love to have one just like it only scaled down a bit.

I love driving through Highland Village at night. It's like Christmas all year long. It's not some place I would normally shop except to check out the displays in Anthropologie now and then.

You see I am a very discriminating shopper and Highland Village just doesn't meet my high standards. I like my stores unorganized so that I have to dig for half an hour to find what I want, I like them to be located in undesirable parts of town so that I can feel like I superhero if I manage to come out alive, and I really prefer for the store employees to curse at me in Spanish because I don't speak their language. That's my Galleria.