A few updates- I'm back from Louisville which means, drumroll please - we got me a car! Yay! There is a Nissan plant and Nissan corporate headquarters outside of Nashville, so we were able to get a great deal on a Versa. I understand that a lot of people are adamant about buying American, but we were concentrating on finding something that worked for us (our budget, our needs, gas mileage, reliability, etc) and helped our immediate community. We have family that works at Nissan, so we feel ok about our decision to buy something that supports a company that has brought so many jobs to middle Tennessee. I know not everyone agrees with our decision, but please respect that we have family that works for Nissan and we wanted to support them.
I was able to drive home Saturday to celebrate my mom's birthday with her. I love helping her with her blog and giving her blog-related gifts, so this year I had her header re-designed/coded to a drop down menu. Check it out! The designer I hired is great - Amy did an amazing job and is really affordable - if you have any blog work needed (design or coding), please shoot her an email and tell her I sent you!
My mom and I squeezed some great shopping into our very short weekend together! Below is just part of my thrift haul from the weekend - I only had about an hour of daylight once I got back to Nashville so I had to move quickly and a lot of items need cleaning up before I take photos! So, here goes!
Love this teal lamp! I honestly don't know if it works. I was so frantic today that I didn't have a chance to check. I put it in my booth so I'm hoping it does work. Woops. :) I also love the brass cart I snagged! It's in really great condition! Also got a very Anthropologie-esque owl earring holder and spoon rest, some cute scarves, a souvenir Tennessee plate, a cute juice pitcher, and a really cute small table! Oh, and a print of a "big eye" boy with a guitar and a dirty mustard planter that is currently soaking!
I'll post more finds from the weekend later on! I found some really cute tea sets and such.
Thank you so much to everyone who left such kind and encouraging comments on yesterday's post! It warms my heart to see that our own tough experiences can offer encouragement to people. I received an email from a friend who recently went through a traumatic highway accident and she is still working through PTSD. The fact that I made it through a wreck similar to hers helped her feel encouraged that she won't suffer anxiety forever. I am so glad that God uses our stories to speak to others!
The ironic thing about the 10 year anniversary is that Wednesday is the day the car I've been driving the past 10 years decided to give up! It stalled twice on me and proved to be generally unreliable. We left it parked at my office which meant I was car-less on the 10th anniversary. Very strange!
We went car shopping last night (we had planned to do that in March anyway, thanks to our tax refund and the fact that my car shakes when it starts) and found a 2011 Versa hatchback that we really like. It had just arrived on the lot so they hadn't priced it yet - I'm hoping it comes in under the max we've set for our car purchase and that we can snatch it up tomorrow so I can still go to Louisville this weekend to see my mom for her birthday! We should get a call from the salesman around 10am with the price. Here's hoping!!
I don't have anything vintage-inspired for this Friday Fun - to be honest, it's been a challenging week and I haven't gotten my stuff together for the blog. Hopefully I will be back next week in full effect with lots of new finds from Louisville (please please please!) and a new Joey's Mom post, etc.
I'm going to leave you with a video of one of my favorite bands playing one of my favorite songs. I first heard of The Head And The Heart on a podcast I listen to out of Seattle called TBTL and loved them instantly. I thought I had discovered a little gem, a band that I could love and listen to and not be trendy by liking them. Then I realized that they're a very trendy band to like and very hipster-y. OH well. I still love them! Their album really helps me get focused and be productive. It gets me in the zone when I'm feeling overwhelmed!
The below song is called "Rivers and Roads" and I love the emotion behind it. I most often respond to the feeling of a song rather than the lyrics and this is definitely a "feeling" song for me! I love how it swells up toward the middle/end. Enjoy!
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We're taking a week break from the Joey's Mom series because today is a really important day to me.
I haven't really had a chance to get really serious or really personal on Owl Really, but today is the 10 year anniversary of a car crash that changed my life.
I was a sophomore in college and I was heading home to Louisville for my mom's birthday. I was living at Delta Zeta, sharing a room with my friend Bethany, and developing friendships that I know will last a lifetime. My sophomore year was fun and exciting and I was living it up. We went to frat parties, to themed informals, and to fraternity formals. I was having a blast but I definitely felt like I was missing something.
I grew up going to church with friends and when I was in the 8th grade, I was baptized. I believed and I loved Jesus but in high school, I got lazy and uninterested in attending church. I still believed, I was just pretty lukewarm about my faith, which continued into college.
I met amazing people in college and many fellow believers, but I was enjoying my freedom too much. I loved this new world of being in a sorority and parties and boys! I am thankful that my moral compass never let me do anything too wild & crazy - I was still a great kid, but I was definitely still just a kid trying to figure out life and what was important. Fortunately, I couldn't shake the decisions and the love and the faith I had all those years ago, and I didn't really want to. I just wanted to make it convenient for me.
It all changed March 1, 2002. On interstate 70, barreling toward Indianapolis, I was hit by a semi truck. He claimed that he had his turn signal on to enter the fast lane and changed his mind when he saw me there. We couldn't have collided if he never entered my lane, so I know he was lying.
Upon impact, I lost complete control of the car. I remember clenching my eyes shut and just praying, "Let me live, let me live, let me live." I somehow managed to stop in the grassy median (thank you Lord for that grassy median - if it had been a cement wall, I surely would have died). Scared that the car might explode (irrational, I know), I jumped out of the car and doubled over gasping "I'm alive, I'm alive, I'm alive!" I was definitely in shock.
Drivers all around me slammed on their brakes and came running over to me. A man had his cell phone out and asked who I wanted to call. I had him call my parents and as he was saying hello to them, they could hear me in the background shrieking "I'm bleeding!" I had reached up to my face and ears and found blood. Thankfully, my face and ears were only slightly scratched and it turned out that my only injury was a tiny scrap of glass in one ear.
A woman wrapped a white blanket around me and I was scared I would get blood on it. Strangers held tissues to my face and ears and I still can't forget their kindness - in a world where foreign blood can hold so much danger, I am thankful that they helped me.
The paramedics arrived and held my neck still until they loaded me into the ambulance. If you look at the first photo, you can see a paramedic in blue gloves holding my head while I talk on the phone. You can also see my tire marks in the grass that don't make sense at all. How could my tires have crossed over each other like that? I had no idea then and I have no idea now.
Once loaded into the ambulance, I assessed my situation. I told the EMT, "I think I'm going back to church." He smiled and said he thought that was a good idea.
My parents raced from Louisville to meet me at the hospital in Indianapolis. I am needle-phobic, so I wouldn't let them give me an IV or anything and I really did (miraculously) feel fine. I joked around with the nurses and doctors and some of my best friends came up from DZ to be in the hospital with me.
A few nurses stopped by my room because they had passed my car in the median on their way to work. They told each other somberly, "They airlifted that one." They couldn't believe my condition when they saw me- they thought for sure I would be in emergency surgery.
A male nurse came by my room and said, "God's got a plan for you, honey." He walked out of the room and came right back in and said, "No, He just loves you."
I felt so much love and safety and comfort in the midst of such chaos and panic. This accident is the reason that I identify so strongly with the hymn "Come Thou Fount."
Come, thou Fount of every blessing, tune my heart to sing thy grace; streams of mercy, never ceasing, call for songs of loudest praise. Teach me some melodious sonnet, sung by flaming tongues above. Praise the mount! I'm fixed upon it, mount of thy redeeming love.
Here I raise mine Ebenezer; hither by thy help I'm come; and I hope, by thy good pleasure, safely to arrive at home. Jesus sought me when a stranger, wandering from the fold of God; he, to rescue me from danger, interposed his precious blood.
O to grace how great a debtor daily I'm constrained to be! Let thy goodness, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to thee. Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love; here's my heart, O take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above.
I was literally in danger and I was rescued. If you saw the car, you would see a bubble of safety around the driver's seat - everything else was destroyed. If I had a passenger, they probably would have died.
I think about how grateful I was to be alive when I jumped out of the car. The first time I heard "You Alone" by the David Crowder*Band, I wept when we got to the bridge:
"I'm alive, I'm alive, I'm alive" were the exact words I gasped.
I'd like to say that I have been on the straight and narrow path ever since then, but I'm human. We haven't been going to church regularly because our congregation is temporarily meeting at a strange time and it's inconvenient. See, I really haven't changed that much in 10 years - but I know that my life is His and I am so thankful for mercy and grace and a second chance.
March 1 will forever be a marker of an event that changed my life and my heart.
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I'm really excited to share today's favorite find with you! Emily is one of my dear friends and she did all the design for our wedding. She is amazingly talented and you can find her work at Every Little Thing Studio.
Emily's house is the most inspirational house I've ever been in. Every time I'm there, I soak in all of her great furniture, design, art, everything! I absolutely love her style. Below, she shares her favorite find!
What is your favorite find and where did you find it?
My Favorite Find is a vintage 50s-era Dental Cabinet that I use as a night-stand. I snagged it almost 10 years ago at an auction in my home town, where I ended up in a bidding war with an antique dealer. I'm sure he was disappointed that I kept going! I was just out of college and broke at the time, so the $50 winning bid seemed like a sacrifice to me at the time, but seems more like a steal today!
What were your first thoughts? Did you know right away that you wanted to repurpose it into a bedside table?
I think I actually had it in mind for a bathroom cabinet, but since I was living with my grandmother at the time, I had no clear vision on what my own place would look like. I think it ended up as a night-stand because my bathrooms have always been so small!
Did you have to do any repairs or modifications to make it use-able?
No, not really! It's in really fantastic condition. The only thing I've done is mount some left-over wallpaper inside the glass window on the main door... I keep my pajamas inside, which can look messy; this was a convenient way to hide the mess! Lately, I've considered painting the outside a light lemon color, but so far have yet to actually break out the paints.
Any other details we should know?
I love how the drawer swings out to the side! The drawer is actually a little enameled tray that pops out for easy cleaning. Also the shelves inside are made of a really pretty tempered glass. And if I can sneak in a second "favorite find"... I also adore the vintage bankers' stand lamp that sits beside the cabinet!
Why do you love buying vintage/secondhand?
When it comes to decorating and design, I tend to lean towards a very modern style. However, this style on its own can seem very cold and uninviting (see: unhappyhipsters.com!). Adding vintage pieces to a modern room adds warmth and interest, and dispels the clinical feel that modern design can so easily slide into. In addition, I think it is easier to establish your own unique decorating sense by using vintage pieces, rather than having your style dictated by the stores you shop in. And let's be honest... I love having pieces in my home that are different from what everyone else has!
And now for cute photos of cats! Emily rescued two kittens, Alice and Tonks.
Tonks does a really cute little dance:
Emily, thanks so much for being a great friend and for sharing your favorite find!
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Last week, Lucy got her last round of shots, which meant she could finally meet other dogs! I am so excited to socialize her with other pups. We took her up to Nashville Pet Products on Friday to break the ice and meet new people and pups and she did great! Everyone at the shop loved her - she is the belle of the ball wherever we go! She is really great with people and we were so eager to introduce her to dogs!
We took her to our friends Shannon and Grey's house, where they have 2 smaller adorable dogs - Hank and Lila who are both about 3 years old. Hank has an old soul, though, and was not interested in playing with energetic Lucy at all! We joked that he's the "Get off my lawn!" kinda guy.
Lila and Lucy play similarly, but Lila wasn't sure what to make of Lucy when Lucy would pounce or paw at her. It took them all some time to warm up and when Molly, who Shannon and Grey were dogsitting, came out to play - everything changed! She and Lucy chased and chased and chased each other and Lila got in on the action and the three of them had so much fun!
Lucy played non-stop for almost 3 hours which meant even the next day, she was still totally groggy! I got some hilarious photos mid-action (like the one above) which make Lucy look crazy, but really she was just having a blast! In the below photos, Lila is the all black pup and Molly is the pomeranian-ish one. (Not sure of her exact mix!)
Lucy has crazy eyes! She is so fun. I'll try to post videos from her playdate soon!
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I had some great luck at Goodwill last week - I found some really cute purses and suitcases! Last year, I saw a girl scarf up a red "Going to Grandma's" suitcase and ever since then, I've been on the hunt for one. I finally found one and it's in pretty great condition! I also found a blue/purple flowered suitcase (the handle is missing - anyone have suggestions on a replacement?) and a brown leather-ish granny-ish purse (love it), navy blue oversize clutch, and cute gold clutch. I also found a box of really old dominoes and a brown leather-ish camera case.
The owls are from various shops - my mom picked up the wooden candlesticks and the pair of owls in that first photo. I snagged the owl salt and pepper shakers at the flea market this weekend. I also got that little deer for free from a kind vendor. I asked how much (with 75 cents in hand) and he told me to just take it. I'm going to hold onto it to accent a terrarium or planter!
This beautiful suitcase was picked up by my mom back in Louisville and it's gorgeous! It's in great condition!
This week, I will try to put some new shelves in my booth because I just found out Saturday night that my white enamel table sold. This might be my best month ever - my 2 most expensive items (that table and a cute file cabinet) both sold in February! Here's hoping March follows this great trend!!
My mom is so talented and I'm so glad the world is taking notice! :) She was interviewed last week by a TV show on KSBI in Oklahoma and she did so well! Be sure to check out her blog, My Repurposed Life, and watch the interview here!
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