Treasured uncovered

I love my Pottery Barn and Ballard Designs catalogs. I don't actually buy anything from them, never have. I just flip through them about 25 times for inspiration. No really. While looking through them the other day I realized wow, I really do have alot of the items in these catalogs. Some coincidence and some I just straight up copy because I'm cheap like that. I would love to be able to purchase things out of these catalogs, but you know what I think it is more gratifying searching and waiting and laboring over something that is really a treasure once you finish it or find it.

Take this Ballard Designs bulletin board for instance, theirs is $299 for the largest one...

I have wanted one for a really long time until I finally scored the perfect frame at a garage sale for $10, went to Home Depot for a piece of quarter inch plywood, which happened to come in the size I needed so I didn't have to cut it. I purchased spray adhesive and a roll of cork from Michaels and whalla!

And then I spotted this wood caddy in the Ballard Designs catalog and said I have one like that!

Theirs is $49...

Mine was $4 at a garage sale and I use it for magazines in the [ahem] restroom.


And I bought a cookbook holder just like this one the other day at Marshalls, mine was $9.99 and theirs is $39.

And hey, the lamp base below looks alot like the ones I got at a garage sale a couple weeks ago for $2 each,

and this is $79 at Ballard Designs....

But the best one has got to be this one, remember our new kitchen set that a kind stranger gave to us!

Ballard's is $1907. without the end armchairs! HOLY TOLEDO!

The moral of the story is keep your eyes open, you never know what you might find!