junk style eye candy

where do you go from here?

2011-09-10T15:15:00.001-04:00

Hello beautiful person! Thank you for finding this blog. I'm so glad you came.

I am slowly moving all of the original content from this blog to my new blog, here. I hope you'll check it out. It's all about eco-friendly cleaning, organizing, healthy living, art, design and my life.

Peace out.

bound for the curb

2010-06-20T19:19:00.004-04:00

Some used furniture I'm leaving at the curb tonight. Read about where everything came from and how I decided to get rid of it all on my professinal organizing blog, here.

crown canning jars

2010-03-24T20:57:00.005-04:00

Okay, so I was sitting in my back room last night trying to (unsuccessfully) wait out a migraine, and the late afternoon sunlight coming into the room hit a bunch of old canning jars sitting on a table waiting to be repurposed as display jars for my sewing notions.

I picked up these jars - which are so old that the glass is all warped and uneven - at a church rummage sale several years ago. Until recently they held dried beans and grains in my pantry, but I wanted food jars that were easier to clean, and switched them out for new wide mouth litre jars.

I changed the camera settings for the photo below...

Added Thursday, March 24: I just looked up Crown canning jars online, and found this information:

Canadian Crown fruit jars can be quite common, and were made by several different Canadian manufacturers. A few rare variations do exist, however. If any have ground lips they would be worth more. Sometimes Crown jars have variations in the shape of the crown itself or extra embossing that makes them more valuable. Most of the clear ones from the 40s and 50s are worth about $1 to $3 each.

abandoned road construction sign score

2010-03-21T10:45:00.009-04:00

Okay, so this was possibly illegal (if you consider taking road construction signs that have been left abandoned at the side of the road illegal), but I couldn't resist. Every day on my walk to work I'd been passing by this sign left over from road construction last fall, and I coveted it for my apartment. I was originally thinking of hanging it in my front room, but now I'm favoring the idea of hanging it in the hall opposite my kitchen doorway.

I love this sign on so many levels. The colour (while not, admittedly, blue like everything else in my life) appeals to me. I love graffiti, and while the sign is technically not graffiti, it definitely has that kind of feel. As you can see from later photos below, it's really beat up (although thankfully the wood is not rotting - it was a repurposed from an actual road construction sign (visible on the verso, immediately below), and therefore both made with marine-grade plywood and protected from dampness by the coatings on each face). I won't say any more, except that I find one of these photos really erotic, for some reason.

savon de marseille l'occitane

2010-03-13T19:33:00.002-05:00

I bought this L'Occitane soap on Bloor Street and wanted a special dish to put it in. I repurposed a saucer from one of my teacups.

basket of pears and apples

2010-03-13T19:28:00.003-05:00

Besides having a thing for chairs, I also have a thing for baskets. This photo was taken in September 2008, when I was housesitting for a favorite client in Toronto. She had an orchard on her property, and invited me to pick as many of her pears and apples as I wanted. I glutted myself on tree-ripe fruit the entire week I was there.

washbasin veggie bowl

2010-03-13T19:21:00.005-05:00

I found this enamelled washbasin in a pile of garbage outside a home that was being renovated in my Toronto neighbourhood. The bowl was filthy, but after I got it home and cleaned it up, I loved its beat-up patina - a perfect container for late summer tomatoes.

delftware

2010-03-13T19:11:00.002-05:00

I found this lovely little plate at a church rummage sale several years ago. I don't often use it for everyday, but on this particular occasion I wanted something that would complement the golden colour of the roti skins I was using as a flatbread with a meal of curry.

black creek pioneer village

2010-03-13T18:25:00.017-05:00

I visited Black Creek Pioneer Village (Toronto) in the summer of 2008. I love recreated colonial villages because they're full of the stuff I like to have in my own home: natural wood and fabrics, cast iron, worn surfaces...

I took a million photos that day, but have only included my favorites here. Above is a shot of a wall in the tinsmith's shop. I love the intricate patterns they could make with only a few tools.

Below are some brooms from the broom maker's shop. I bought a cobweb broom in the gift shop before I left, and it hangs in my front room today.

Below is a chandelier from a Mennonite meeting house. I love its simple lines.

The meeting house itself was really spare. I'm not sure if it's an authentic representation of what the space would have looked like when it was being used for worship services.

Below is a tool shed, with plants hanging to dry from the rafters.

A cart in the tool shed.

Another chandelier, this one from the town hall.

The interior of the town hall. I love the colours.

A quilt in one of the homes.

Irons sitting on the stovetop.

A rusty wash basin full of water.

The weaver's shop.

The dining room in the doctor's house.

A shamrock sitting in the window.

One of the many photographs of chairs that I took that day. I also love the colour of the painted floorboards.

A cutting board for bread.

The cobbler's shop.

Rocking horse.

I love the rush seats in the next couple of chairs.

A simple table. Look how wide the boards are.

Another table.

Whimsical "creature" on a windowsill.

Tools inside the mill.

I love how deep the window sills are.

One of the mill doors, studded with nails.

A discarded mill wheel.

I really liked the exterior of this little house. Very simple.

Berries drying in a window.

Dried flowers in a bowl.

I absolutely love the colours in this quilt.

Another bed in the same house.

And yet another bed...

Another chair...

A basket of toys on a porch.

Fleece waiting to be carded.

Sunshine on another basket of fleece.

Inside a barn.

Check out the massive beams.

bloor and bathurst graffiti

2010-03-12T20:23:00.008-05:00

This was one of my favorite landmark bits of graffiti in Toronto, painted on the doors of a former church just south of Bloor on Bathurst. I saw it every time I drove downtown with Brainerd, my former employer, for a business meeting. Our former publicist also had an office right near this intersection.

Other sense memories associated with this graffiti: Roti. (Roti Palace - one of my favorite Toronto restaurants - was steps away from this spot.)

dandelion mud pie

2010-03-12T20:17:00.003-05:00

This was one of my favorite neighbourhood stores when I lived in Toronto. Dandelion Mud Pie sold eco-friendly items for your home. I remember it always smelled amazing inside - like the lavender room spray they sold there. This is their window display in April 2008.

narcissi still life

2010-03-12T20:03:00.006-05:00

Okay, so here are a few junky things assembled to make a temporary still life one February a couple of years ago. The narcissi are growing in a glass bowl filled with marbles and river stones. The wooden stretcher was rescued from a former client's garbage pile. I thought it made an interesting accent in the only window in my Toronto apartment.

orange crate side table

2010-03-12T19:52:00.005-05:00

I have no idea if this is really an orange crate. It's definitely some kind of crate. When my brother and sister and I were little, my dad took this crate, turned it on its end and added a couple of shelves. Then my mom painted it mint green and drew electric stove elements on the "top" with black magic marker. Presto magicko, it became a toy stove for us to play with.

Years later as a teenager I painted it white, and it's been used as some sort of furniture ever since - whether on its end as a shelf, or on its side (above) as an occasional table. As I write this, it's now part of my wall o' shelves.

replica vintage clock

2010-03-12T19:44:00.004-05:00

Okay, technically this clock wasn't a curb surfing find. I lived in a multi-unit apartment building in Toronto a few years ago, and tenants would leave stuff they no longer wanted in the laundry room for other tenants to take. Early one morning when I went down to do laundry, I found this cool replica of a vintage clock.

Unfortunately, after I took it back up to my apartment and cleaned it up, I decided I didn't want to keep it because it was too blue. (I was kind of into monochrome off-white at the time. Kind of still am.) So within a week it made its way back down to the laundry room, to be picked up by somebody else...

junk style christmas tree

2010-03-12T19:23:00.006-05:00

I'm not a big fan of decorations at any time of year, but perhaps even less so at Christmas. It's not that I'm a Scrooge - I love the time of the winter solstice, and the symbolic return of the light celebrated in the Christian tradition. But I definitely don't go in for Christmas trees, lights, or any of the other knick-knacks that many people seem to love.

The second Christmas I lived in Toronto, however, I felt the need for some special THING in my apartment to mark the season. I found a small branch on one of my walks and, inspired by Tibetan prayer flags and various other rituals, decided to "decorate" my branch with paper slips upon which were written the qualities I wished to develop in the coming year. Things like discipline. (To be honest, that's the only one I can remember. Apparently I didn't wish to develop memory. Just saying.)

Anyhow, I offer my Christmas prayer tree as an example of what you can do with found objects to create unique seasonal decorations for your home.

(The pot, by the way, was a gift a couple of Christmases earlier from a client of mine. Her daughter had painted it. I treasured it until it broke.)

good-bye chairs

2010-03-11T18:51:00.025-05:00

My name is Michelle Lynne Goodfellow, and I have a chair fetish. Well, probably not. That is - if fetishes have anything to do with sex. Although... never mind.

But anyhow... I have a chair addiction, I guess. I can't stop buying chairs. And recently I've decided I need to get rid of some of my stuff, and the obvious place to start (because I have so many of them) seems to be there.

Above are two cream-coloured kitchen chairs I got from my local Goodwill back in the fall. I love the way they look - they were perfect in my kitchen when I brought them home - but they really aren't in great shape. A male guest sat in one of them for about an hour one night... and he experienced rung fail.

So I decided to put them out on Sunday afternoon (the day before garbage day this week; London's garbage pick-up rotates on a six-day schedule), and before I carried them to the road, I took these pictures. Also decided to get rid of another chair... but more on that in a minute.

I loved the way the late afternoon sunlight diffused as it sifted through the air of my front room.

These chairs had some of my favorite features, including rough undersides and amateur repairs.

I love the brushmarks of paint on the underside of the seat.

Natural patina...

One of my own botched repair jobs - after one of the cats knocked the chair over and broke a rung outright.

Loose joints...

So below is the other chair - one that a Toronto friend of mine found at the side of the road in Riverdale. I loved the bones of this mid-20th century teak chair so much that I took it home, even though the seat was a mess.

I painstakingly pulled up an old upholstery job, and cut away the original caning on the seat. All the upholsterer's tacks gashed my knuckles as I spent hours trying to pull them up too.

Actually, on second thought I think the wood is beech. But what do I know?

In the end I gave up and replaced the seat with some old plywood boards, cut to size. (Not seen here.) If I didn't have a dearth of space, I'd probably keep this chair around just for the beauty of its worn edges...

canning jars

2010-03-11T12:26:00.004-05:00

I love jars. I avoid plastic food containers like the plague (the phyto-estrogens they off-gas upset my hormone balance), and years ago I started using glass canning jars to store food instead. They can even be frozen, although once in a blue moon a jar will crack in the freezer if the contents expand too much while freezing. (To avoid this if you're going to try freezing food in glass yourself, don't fill the jars right to the top - leave about an inch of space for the food to expand.)

Lately I've been running out of jars everytime I cook something (usually soup) to put in the freezer; on Friday night I went to WalMart (I know, I know, but they have the best selection of canning jars) and bought three sizes: 250mL, 500mL and 1L, all wide-mouth.

Above is a picture of them put away in my pantry cupboard. Yay. Jars. I feel looked-after now.

yard sale-ing

2010-03-11T12:19:00.004-05:00

This post was originally published on my personal blog on June 6, 2009.

Went out yard sale-ing with Laurie this morning. Both of us were mostly brain-dead from lack of sleep (unfortunately due to insomnia in both cases, not anything more exciting). We knew of some neighbourhood sales in Old South and Woodfield, and Laurie said there was a rummage sale at St. Peter's, too, so I let her set the agenda and basically just worked as a loot mule and chauffeur. (I'm teasing, Laurie.)

I didn't intend to buy anything because I'm experiencing a temporary dearth of monies in my bank account, but I couldn't resist these shoes at our first stop - on Elmwood Ave. in Old South. I'm not a shoe nut, but it's so rare for me to find yard sale shoes (never worn, either!) in my size that I couldn't resist. Plus they only cost a dollar. Enough said.

Not quite sure where I'm going to wear these "f*ck me" wedges that add at least five inches to my height, but anyhow...

At another house on Wortley Road I found a card box full of stamps. I need more stamps like I need a hole in the head, but anyhow...

After making the rounds of Old South (where I'm pretty sure Laurie bought stuff too, but I don't remember what), we headed to St. Peter's. The St. Pete's sale was pretty dismal - both in content and attendance - but I did find this gorgeous blue mug for 25 cents. Enough said.

They were also selling baked goods at St. Peter's, and I couldn't resist one of these cupcakes-in-a-cone. I'm not even PMS'ing, so don't ask. Anyhow, it looked pretty in my hand for the 30 seconds or so it took me to eat it.

Walking back to my car I glanced over at Laurie and decided to take a picture of her. Which I don't think I've ever done before, ever. Anyhow, she looked beautiful in the sunshine and I knew it would make a good picture, plus she wants pics of herself for some kind of nefarious purpose that I don't really feel entitled to discuss, so just enjoy this pic of my beautiful BFF.

(I just noticed there's a kind of white mark below her nose that kind of resembles a drip of snot... if she complains, I guess I'll PhotoShop the pic for her. Sorry, Laure.)

The neighbourhood yard sales in Woodfield were the best of the day. Early on I found two baskets (above and below) for $5 and $2. I need more baskets like I need a hole in the head, too, but anyhow...

Yeah, I have absolutely no idea what this thing is. It's some kind of carved wooden foot that's been fastened to this kind of stand, and there are these dowel-y things at the top... my mind hurts just looking at it. I asked the woman whose home it was sitting in front of what it was, and she said, "Honey, if I knew what it was it wouldn't be sitting there."

(If you think you know what it is, please let me know. I'm afraid I won't sleep well until this is settled. Shyeah right, I know - I probably won't sleep well after you tell me, either. Nevermind.)

Awesome house in Woodfield (which is full of awesome houses). I loved this window - it seems very European. There was a tiny little al fresco cafe set up in front of this house, and Laure and I might have stopped to rest if I hadn't bought an awesome table for my kitchen, and wanted to go pick it up and get home for a nap. Which didn't happen (the nap), but anyhow...

Found four palm fans at another house in Woodfield. These could come in handy in church sometime this summer. Except I'll probably forget to bring one with me to church. Sigh.

Picking up the table I bought for $5 from a friend of Laurie's who lives in Woodfield. The table wasn't even for sale, but I asked if she was interested in selling it, because I coveted it for my kitchen. Laurie and Margot were suitably amazed at my organizing skills when packing everything in my hatchback. Just saying.

The table in its new home - with my kitty preparedness items (cat basket and food bowls) underneath. I bought the basket in Woodfield for $1, BTW. I wish I could take a good picture of the top of the table, because it's been painted with this gorgeous sponged-blue effect. Anyhow. I love this table. The legs kind of smelled like cat pee when I wiped them off at home, so I'm hoping either 1. it's not really pee, or 2. my new kittens have no sense of smell.

new rocking chair

2010-03-11T12:17:00.004-05:00

This post was originally published on my personal blog on May 20, 2009.

I'll admit it, I have a rocking chair fetish. This is my latest (not so new, now - I think I got it two weeks ago) acquisition: A bentwood rocker found at the Rotary rummage sale. It cost me $15. I sit in it every day.

Bentwood curlique. I like furniture that is useful AND looks beautiful. And that totally makes me wonder how they got the wood to bend like that.

sunday night curb surfing

2010-03-11T12:14:00.006-05:00

This post was originally published on my personal blog on April 26, 2009.

I love curb surfing. Tonight's score was a dining room chair picked up right outside my front door - a match for another chair I'd rescued a few months ago. I think it belonged to the cute guy with the kids who just moved out - the seats on both had been recovered with a disgusting dusty rose fabric that was filthy with children's paint and greasy blotches. But as with the previous chair, when I removed the fabric, the original pleather upholstery was in great condition, and all it needed was a wipe with a damp cloth.

Above is the frame with the seat removed. I have to apologize for the really lame how-to instructions on this project: Basically I just turned the chair upside down on my work table and unscrewed the seat from the frame. But I didn't take a picture of that part. Sorry.

Nor did I take a picture of how disgusting the chair looked before I cleaned it up. Nor did I take a picture of the tools and screws I used to put it back together. Luckily I had a spare wood screw in my toolbox, since this chair was missing one of its seat screws.

The finished, reassembled chair is on the right, beside the aforementioned mate that I rescued during the winter. I love their simple lines, and the black seats and dark wood look really great in my front room. Oh - forgot to mention that I also waxed the chair backs (the part that would touch the back of someone sitting in the chair), because the wood finish had weathered off both, and they looked a bit dodgy.

Today's find in its (temporary?) new home - at one end of my front room. I need to get some felt pads for the chair legs, so that they won't scrape against the floor whenever I lazily slide it around my apartment. Right now it's serving as an ersatz side table for the chair beside it.

rocking chair

2010-03-07T20:40:00.003-05:00

This post was originally published on my personal blog, the rest of my life, on April 11, 2009.

I have loved rocking chairs since I was a kid. Their soothing action always calms me. It wasn't until I saw contemporary remakes of traditional designs, however - with 21st-century proportions and finishes - that I began coveting a rocking chair (or seven) for myself. I still have this dream of filling my living room with no other seating but rocking chairs, so all my guests can comfortably rock away the hours whenever they came to visit. (Or get suitably seasick. Which might also be fun.)

East of London there is a farmer's market called Trail's End, where a furniture seller carries finished and unfinished oak rockers that would look at home on any gracious country veranda. I visit them every once in a while, sitting in the generously-sized chairs and dreaming of a day when my budget will allow me to purchase one of my own.

Today my friend Laurie suggested an impromptu visit to Goodwill to find a single dinner plate to replace one I'd broken earlier this morning; while in the store, I saw a gorgeous wooden rocker with simple lines and a wide seat, and I was smitten. It was marked $49.99, and I decided it would be my birthday present from my family. When I took it to the cashier, she informed me that it was 50% off! Whoo-hoo! - a rocking chair in perfect condition for 25 bucks.

The sturdy chair (pictured above) is now in my middle room, where its simple wood finish blends perfectly with my bookshelves and floor. A little piece of heaven. Doing a little happy dance about my rocking chair right now...