vintage

My Trip To The Colorado Vintage Whites Market

 

Somewhere along the way, I ran across The Vintage Whites Blog on Pinterest, a yummy visual display of all things vintage. And you know I love me some vintage. 

After delving into "the story" of how these two women turned their own love for antiques and crafts into a immersive market experience, I was on board and ready to check it out for myself . . . until I realized that the market existed once a year in five states on the other side of the country from where I was living. Complete and total bummer. 

But wouldn't you know it, just a few months later we moved to Colorado, one of the lucky states that this traveling market visits! Yay for me! So of course, I purchased my early-bird ticket and hit the market held on April 1st in Denver. 

The Vintage Whites Market isn't just your everyday flea market, but a complete experience combining antiques, refurbished furniture, original crafts, live music, food, photo booths, classes and demonstrations. It was everything I hoped for and more. Even the hubby, with his limited patience for browsing, spent three hours touring the market with me and left with a smile on his face. That's saying something! 

My favorite booth was Sundays, a collection of paintings and custom signs. As I reached out to inspect the paintings, a tiny landscape fell over ... literally shouting to me that it was THE one. It reminded me of a landscape right out of a Jane Austen novel. To complete the perfect purchase, the artist was at the booth and happily signed the back of the painting for me. 

Overall, everyone working the booths were so friendly and happy to be there. The crowded space literally buzzed with excitement. Somehow I showed great restraint and walked out with only the one painting, a lovely necklace from Mercer and Jayne, and a t-shirt (because come on....look at that beautiful scripted logo). Even if you don't live in one of the five states that this market visits, you can still longingly read their blog and soak in some inspiration like I will be doing until I can experience it first-hand again next year.   

Vintage Window Decor

Over the years, I've developed a home design style that can be described as Rustic Refined. I love mixing clean, modern lines with natural, rustic accents. When we moved into our new Colorado home, we found ourselves staring at a blank two-story great room wall in serious need of some kind of visual interest. 

One sunny Spring day, my husband I stumbled across a local festival in our hometown of Golden. Everywhere we looked, there were tons of old windows and doors piled up ready to go home with some lucky browser. It so happens, the lucky ones turned out to be us. We loaded the back of our car with a half door and seven vintage windows – the perfect solution to our blank canvas waiting at home. (Fortunately, we only lost one of the windows to bumpy roads.) 

I worked the windows like a puzzle in my garage until I came up with the perfect arrangement. After climbing hesitantly up our shaky ladder, I came to the quick conclusion that I would need to enlist some help and called Wade, our contractor friend over to do the job. The result is absolutely beautiful and an unexpected contrast to the more contemporary style of our home.

If you are in need of large wall decor ideas, vintage windows could be the answer. There are lots of inspiration on Pinterest for all kind of ways to display windows within your own home.