Basement find: MacKenzie-Childs

While rooting around the basement (looking for some wallpaper scraps to take into the paint store) I found some MacKenzie-Childs tiles.  I didn't find the wallpaper (I ended up taking a picture and bringing in my camera) but finding the M-C nestled among other tiles made it a very good day.

We're going to use them as trivets.

(excuse the wrinkled table cloth - I don't iron linens).

Here they are full of food from a potluck we recently hosted:

MacKenzie-Childs is a local artisan studio/farm with a pretty distinctive look.  We have been given a few pieces (as wedding and house warming gifts).

I'm just thrilled to add to our collection. 

Basement Find: Accordion Shutters

As part of our contract for our new house we asked the previous owners to leave everything original to the house.  We had the accordion shutters and other woodwork we spotted in the basement in mind when we asked.  They also left a bunch of paint/primer/etc they used on the house.  Some of the cans are helpfully marked with which room they used it in, but the majority are not.  I've already put some of the paint and primer to use (detailed in a blog post coming up).  They left a lot of random stuff too. We spent last Sunday morning exploring down there.  From the dusty corners we pulled out a great old door, a wood frame that would make a great mirror, and some other random things.  We also found a cool brass tension lamp but Kevin broke it as we were getting it out to get a better look.  I'm usually the Breaker of Things in our family so I didn't mind a bit.

Here are the shutters we pulled out (post clean up - they were pretty dirty to start):

Here are some already installed (what they will eventually look like):

I cleaned the shutters and Kevin did the hard part of figuring out which shutters went together and where.

I'm not sure why these were ever taken down or why modern houses don't have these. They are great - you can pull just the bottom half - giving us privacy from the street but still letting light in. When not in use they fold into the wall.  It also postpones our need for window treatments (we can wait until our budget bounces back a bit).