My Favorite Vintage Rugs & Decor

Not long ago, a reporter asked for my thoughts on decorating with vintage and antique-inspired rugs—dhurries, kilims, etc. You can read the full article here, but it got me thinking about my favorite vintage scores of all kinds. It's no secret that I love things with a past (ahem, my circa-1860 house) and try at least once a year to hit my favorite antiques show, the Brimfield Market. When I travel, I love popping into thrift shops and open-air markets to see what quirky things the locals are unloading. Without fail, the stuff I pick up secondhand always ends up being the stuff people ask about when they come over to visit, so I thought I'd share my top ten favorite vintage pieces and some sources for pre-loved things—just in time for flea-market season.

1. The blue rug

This was our first, and probably biggest, vintage purchase, and it came from the Brimfield market. We desperately needed a rug for our parlor (top shot above), and it stayed there for about four years. The great thing about Oriental rugs like this is that, while they can come off as formal and proper, they're actually super-resilient and great for homes with kids. If a rug is 50+ years old, there's almost nothing a toddler can do to it--spills, muddy sneakers, using it as a runway for toy planes--that it hasn't survived before. A dark and complex color pattern helps conceal splotches, too. Today it lives in our dining room (second shot above), which we painted Benjamin Moore's Gentleman's Gray to match, and even the occasional dropped spaghetti noodle doesn't cramp its style.

2. The hallway runner 

When we bought the blue rug, we bargained with the seller and got him to throw in this runner in lieu of lowering his price. Good move, no? It looks as good today as the day we brought it home. 

3. The bathroom chandelier

A couple of years later, after renovating our master bathroom, we went back to Brimfield and found this chandelier. I have no idea whether it's an authentic anything or its provenance, but it sparkles like mad and looks great with our other hotel-luxe inspired finishes, so I don't care. 

4. The church print

While on vacation last summer, Dave and I wandered into the Hospital Thrift Shop on Nantucket, and walked out with armloads of little decor pieces. My favorite was this print of an old church, simply because it reminds me of the church where we got married. The price tag? $3, but apparently it was "Wacky Wednesday" at the shop, so I got it for $1.50. Yesssssss. 

5. The ink block

This wooden block currently serves no purpose other than looking cool on my bedroom mantel. Hand-carved wooden blocks like these are traditionally used in India to make block-print textiles, which I also love. (Making my own block-print fabric is currently #1,974 on my to-do list.) I got this at the Brimfield show about two years ago.

6. The Turkish (I think) rug

We got this bad boy at—you guessed it—Brimfield, thinking it might work in our entryway, and it was only $165. It's too big for that space, which is why it's currently being used to drape over an ugly file cabinet in Dave's office. Maybe we'll put it in the mud room, if we ever finish our mud room. It's a not-quite-flatweave, with barely any pile, so I think it'll be good in a high-traffic space.

7. The definitely-Turkish rug

It took forever to find this guy, but I got him from an Etsy seller based in Istanbul. He's wool, ever-so-slightly shaggy, and the perfect size for our master bathroom. When I want the space to look all put together, I put some coral flowers in a blue vase on the sink. Puuurrrrty.  

8. The Custom house print

A few weeks ago, I was in California shooting a home for my book, and I went into a decor shop called Bon Bon looking for pieces with personality. This vintage 1974 lithograph caught my eye as I was leaving the store—and it was marked down 50%. I had it shipped home, and I love it irrationally. You'll see him in my book, 'cause he looks great leaned on a long, narrow console.

9. Our Lady of the Loo

When renovating our kitchen, we added a tiny powder room not much larger than a confessional box. When it came time to decorate it, of course I filled it with a crazy blue marbled wallpaper, because I have no restraint, and then put up this odd Virgin Mary-esque portrait I found on Etsy.  I'm itching to re-frame her—the brown wood isn't doing it for me—but she still makes me smile every time I go in that room.

10. The cockatoo

I bought this on Chairish after posting about the parrot trend, and I love it to death.

I could go on and on. There's the sailboat painting I bought online from a seller in Sweden. A kilim rug my husband picked up in Greece. Some Oriental scatter rugs I use as floor mats in my kitchen. Vintage pieces just make a home feel special and interesting, IMHO, and you can bet I'll be featuring a ton of them in my upcoming book. 

My most frequent sources, for now, are:

• Brimfield (clearly)
• Wellfleet Flea Market: For textiles and vintage coffee table books
• Etsy: For vintage rugs and frameable prints
• Chairish: For decor and vintage prints
• Craigslist: For furniture with good bones that's in need of a paint job or new upholstery
•  Woven Abode and Kennedy Rose Interiors: For small vintage rugs

If I get the chance, here are some markets that I've been meaning to visit at some point:

• Rose Bowl Flea Market: A midcentury and boho-decor mecca in L. A. 

• Marche aux Puces in Paris: I'd have to spend about two weeks here. Not kidding.

• Portobello Market: A good excuse for a London trip

• Todd Farm: A local spot I need to hit some upcoming Sunday

What are your favorite sources for vintage? Are there any shops or shows you'd plan a trip around? if so, leave a comment below!

On Heart and Home (or, How I Had a Stroke and Tried to Ignore It)

This is about as much red as I can usually handle. Image via Talk of the House

Red is not my favorite color—at least, not for the home. Red lipstick? I can rock it. Red shoes? Been known to wear ‘em. But it’s not a color I often utilize at home, mostly because it makes such a bold statement. Red says: “Look at me.” Red says: “Pay attention to me.” Chair, pillow, or piece of art, you cannot ignore red.

It’s no surprise, then, that the American Heart Association uses red as a tool for raising awareness about heart disease and stroke, especially in February (National Heart Month). Supporters wear red on February 3 to help raise awareness, and some retailers sell red merchandise to benefit heart health research.

Um, why am I writing about heart disease on a decor blog? Truth be told, it’s something I’ve been meaning to do for a long time. Here’s why.

Two years ago this Sunday, I woke around 6 a.m. as I normally do. When I swung my legs over the edge of the bed, a splitting headache set in: sharp, piercing, and entirely focused on the right side of my head. “Ugh,” I thought. “This is what I get for drinking sweet white wine.” (The previous night, friends had come over for fondue and Riesling.) I stood up and headed downstairs to the kitchen, where I began to prepare breakfast for my kids. As I attempted to slice a strawberry, my left hand kept slipping—I couldn’t seem to hold on to the fruit. I tried again and fumbled, tossing the strawberry onto the floor. I turned to my husband, who had come down to join me. “What’s wrong with me?” I asked him, rolling my eyes. “It’s like my left hand is asleep.” “Maybe you slept on it funny,” he suggested, “or maybe you were leaning on a nerve in your elbow.” He offered to finish making breakfast, and I headed up to get my son, who was just starting to stir.

Upstairs, I lifted my son from his crib and set him on the rug for a diaper change. He was just learning to speak, and as he laughed and babbled to me, I babbled back. Or at least I thought I did: While the syllables formed in my head, nothing was coming out of my mouth.

In the back of my mind, I knew something could be wrong. These are stroke symptoms, said a little voice in my head as I carried my son down two flights of stairs. But as a 35-year-old-woman in relatively good shape, I brushed off my hunches and continued toward the kitchen. I handed my son off to my husband and explained I wasn’t feeling well, and I headed up to my bathroom to shower and get ready for work.

As I ascended the stairs again, a recent Facebook post by a neighborhood acquaintance, Jessica, sprang to mind. An uber-healthy 36-year-old who teaches Pilates and barre at a local studio, Jessica had experienced similar symptoms, followed by her leg going numb in the shower. It was a stroke. After her recovery, she began working with the American Heart Association to spread the word about recognizing stroke symptoms in healthy young women, hence her story crossing my social media feed. I thought about Jessica as I glanced past my reflection in the medicine cabinet, and I stepped into the shower. The little voice got louder–Listen to your body!—but it still didn’t stop me from continuing my routine.

If she could have one, I could have one. Image credit: Jessica Diaz Wellness via Page 38

I stood under the running water, and that’s when I lost feeling in my left hand. I raised my arm to coax some shampoo through my hair, my fingertips touched, and everything was wrong.  It felt as if I was touching a stranger’s hand with my right, and my left hand felt like it was made of thick, dense rubber. “Holy shit,” I thought. “I’m having a stroke.”

I quickly rinsed off, wrapped myself in a towel, and looked at my face in the bathroom mirror. I lifted my brows—and the left one didn’t move. I smiled, and only the right side of my mouth showed a grin.

The crazy part is, I still doubted my instincts. I still thought to myself, “This can’t be happening,” even though it clearly was. I could still walk. I could still mostly talk. “I’m only 35,” I thought. But images of Jessica’s face and fit physique kept flashing through my head, and the voice got louder and louder. If that barre instructor can have a stroke, so can you, it said.

I yelled down to Dave. Thank God I could still yell. I told him what was happening, told him to get our au pair to take our son, and told him to take our older daughter, Sarah to school. “Don’t let them see me,” I thought. “This could get worse.” (This is how convoluted the motherly mind can be—you’re having a stroke, but you still want to get the kids to school.) And of course, since 70 percent of me wanted to deny what the rest of me knew was happening, I called not an ambulance, but a neighbor to take me to the ER. She arrived in a heartbeat, and I climbed into her car.

As we drove the ten minutes from my house over to Massachusetts General Hospital, I felt fine. My hand felt normal again, and I could speak. But as soon as I reported my symptoms—trouble speaking, weakness on one side, a drooping face—through tears at the front desk, a team mobilized. I was rushed through processing and into a wheelchair, then laid on a stretcher in the Acute section of the ER. Within minutes, I was screened by a neurologist and had a CAT scan, followed by an MRI and a few other procedures I can’t remember.

It was a stroke, they confirmed, in the right prefrontal cortex of my brain, which governs complex cognitive behavior, personality expression and decision-making, in addition to controlling parts of the left side of the body. I bawled, and I panicked, and I spent three days in the Neurology unit at MGH while they did test after test to uncover the cause. They didn’t find one—no high blood pressure, no clotting disorder. The only contributing factors they pinpointed were my history of migraines (a correlation, not a cause) and a patent foramen ovale (PFO), a small hole in the heart that sounds a lot scarier than it is. Twenty-five percent of healthy adults have a PFO, and it doesn’t cause any issues for most people. But on the rare occasion that a blood clot forms and travels to the heart, the clot can slip through that little hole and make its way to the brain, blocking blood flow, and that’s exactly what happened to me. To keep it from happening again, I just have to take a daily dose of aspirin, which will thin my blood and reduce my annual risk of recurrence to just a few percent.

Over the next few months, things gradually returned to normal. I regained control of my facial muscles, and the fogginess, confusion, and exhaustion that often follows a stroke began to dissipate. Today I feel almost entirely normal, with the exception of days when I’m overtired from work and shooting my book—on those days, I still sometimes find it takes extra concentration to solve complex problems or take in complicated streams of information. I take 81mg of aspirin daily.

It’s possible I could have completely ignored my stroke on February 12, 2015. And given my relatively seamless, unaided recovery, I might not even have noticed that it had happened. But because I went to the hospital that day, I know to take that one tiny pill each day—a pill that could very well save my life. And the reason I went to the hospital was a woman named Jessica, who shared her story with the world and made me realize that a stroke could happen to me.

So today’s post is about awareness, and paying attention, and listening to your heart and your conscience when they speak. And since we all could use a little reminder once in awhile, I’m going to use it as an excuse to add a little red to my home and life. You can’t ignore these picks, now, can you? Pitter-patter.

1. Letha pillow in red, $52, Joss & Main. 2. Alachua coral sculpture, $45, Wayfair. 3. Brianne rattan barstool, $204, Joss & Main. 4. Hailey table lamp, $166 for two, Joss & Main. 5. Striped tribal kilim, $220, Etsy. 6. Butterfly oval tray, $64, Jayson Home.

For more information about the signs of a stroke, click here.

Obsessed With... Bamileke Tables

Lately it seems like everyone I know is looking for a round coffee table. Maybe it’s that more of us finally have enough space in our homes for big furniture and are now trading our three-seater sofas for sectionals, which are often better suited to round tables than long rectangular ones. Maybe it’s that more of us have kids, and we’re all sick of worrying about someone busting a cheekbone on a sharp corner. Whatever the reason, everyone seems to be searching for just the right round table for the living room: not too tall, not too low, not hideous, and God help us, not too expensive.

In my own search, I kept coming across tables like this one, featured on the cover of the lovely Justina Blakeney’s book The New Bohemians:

Love this book. Get it at Amazon.com... After you read it, I guarantee you'll want your house to start looking all hippie-chic.

Cool, isn’t it? I've learned that these pretty specimens are known as Bamileke tables, and they’re traditionally carved from a single piece of wood. They’re used in special ceremonies by the chieftans of the Bamileke tribe in Cameroon, and depending on the size of the tree trunk that was used, they can vary in size from small stools to large, table-sized drums.  

Here are a couple more shots of these amazing pieces, which look great in homes of all styles:

View fullsize

Source: HouseBeautiful via Dering Hall

Source: Restoration Hardware, which sadly doesn't carry them anymore. 

Source: Better Homes and Gardens

I haven’t brought one of these beauties home just yet (heads up, Dave!) but here are a few that have caught my eye of late. Can’t get enough of that bamileke-inspired pendant light! Swoon.

1. Abdalla carved wood coffee tables, $580 for two, Amazon. 2. Outdoor bamileke table, $1498, Serena & Lily. 3. Carved wood coffee table, $349, West Elm. 4. Arteriors Jarrod large wood pendant, $1488, Wayfair. 5. Bornova coffee table in warm gray, $499, Ballard Designs.

Do you have a favorite? Love or hate the look? Let me know in the comments below.

DIY: Inkblot Wall Art

I’m not what you'd call a “crafty” gal. Sure, I can sew pillows (passably), add a bit of trim to a table cover (with imperfections), and I do own a glue gun. But painting, scrapbooking, pottery, even papier-mache... not in my repertoire.

One thing I’m never afraid to try, however, is DIY wall art—mostly because store-bought wall art is painfully expensive, and I’m not the type to stare at blank walls while I save up for a legit painting by a legit artist. I have DIYed some trendy brushstroke art to fill out a gallery wall in my family room...

I recruited my daughter to DIY some abstracts for my parlor…

...and I framed some of her abstract watercolors to hang above my bedside desk.

This past weekend, though, I decided to go big. We have this wall of framed family photos in our hallway, see, and while I love each of the pics individually, to my eye the full gallery was just missing some oomph. But what could I put in its place?

Meh.  

The answer came to me last week. While browsing Etsy for a set of vintage prints that might work, I came across this trio of inkblots:

Source: KYLOprints on Etsy

Bingo. Mark my words when I say inkblots could be the next brushstroke art. There’s just something so funky, handmade, and appealing about them. And they’re so easy to DIY.

I got to work. After the kids went to bed on Thursday, I assembled my supplies: One bottle of Crayola black tempera paint and one stack of thick paint-and-marker paper. I folded the paper in half, gave it a random spattering of paint, folded and pressed the paper together, and voila: a piece of one-of-a-kind art.

Dave was skeptical of the whole endeavor, but even he had to get in on the action once he saw how much fun I was having.

The first few came out pretty sloppy due to an excess of paint; it all sort of blobbed together and the first three inkblots looked basically the same. Once I transferred the tempera to a finer-tipped squeeze bottle and learned to spatter just a small drizzle of paint on just one side of the creased paper, we were in business.

Once I had nine inkblots I was happy with, I arranged them all in a balanced grid and left them on the dining table to dry overnight. 

In the morning I popped them into the frames. Here’s the finished look. We’re calling the one in the middle Gene Simmons, because duh.

I’m loving the look. Of course, now I need to find a new home for the family photos, as I fear my decor habits might eventually traumatize my kids. (“Doc, when I was five, my mom took down my picture and replaced it with a RORSCHACH TEST. Isn’t that messed up?”) Psychological references aside, however, what do you think?

Desk Chairs That Don't Suck

Guys, I'm about to show you something bad. REALLY BAD.

It’s my husband’s office. Poor guy.

Ugh. 

For years, this room has been a holding pen—a temporary home for things that construction has displaced, or pieces we’ve acquired but haven’t yet placed in a permanent location. For a long time it was our family room, but then we excavated the basement and put a family room down there.  Next it was Dave’s office, and for a time it was an office by day, newborn-nursery by night. (The first kid gets a fully-designed bedroom; second one gets stashed in an empty corner, right?) Everything we don't want to look at gets stuffed in here: workout equipment, power tools, Christmas gifts, and unassembled furniture.

Ugh. 

Ugh. 

It's time to get our act together. It's not fair that my husband, who works from home, has to look at this pile of crap all the time. So I’m now in the process of making some upgrades.

I started with a finding him a desk. It was time to replace the inexpensive metal one we bought 5 years ago (the same kind I DIYed into a bedside table last year). After much searching for a simple yet elegant Parsons desk, we settled on this lovely beast from Jayson Home, which I scored during a killer holiday sale.

Source: Jayson Home

Now it’s time to find the desk’s partner: a great office chair that swivels. This has proven far more difficult than I anticipated, because apparently 95% of the swiveling desk chairs on this planet suck, or they're so ungodly expensive you’d have to work nights just to afford one. Every chair I browsed seemed off: too formal, too feminine, too utilitarian, too uncomfortable-looking, or the wrong finish. Most options looked like they belonged in bad lawyer’s offices, overfunded startups, or the Holiday Inn business center.

Finally, though, I stumbled on a few gems. Have a look.   

1. Rhodes desk chair, $799, Ballard Designs. 2. Sunny mid-back desk chair, $298, AllModern. 3. Tory desk chair, $176, Joss & Main. 4. Prince mid-back desk chair, $110, AllModern. 5. Althea mid-back desk chair, $176, Wayfair. 6. Soho swivel desk chair, $251, Domino. 

I’m still deciding what to get, and of course I’ll need to consider the other furnishings we plan to put in the room, like new seating (soon), rugs (soon), a new light fixture (later), and built in bookcases (much later). All that aside, though, which would you choose? Do you have any favorite sources for good-looking office chairs?