Growing Lithops: Week 5

They seem to be doing alright. A few more seedlings died, but for the most part they seem to be growing pretty well. 

I was looking at the Lithops grow along on You Grow Girl, and some of them look so good! I am jealous of these, I think they are about 4 weeks old. Why don't mine look like that? : (

I think not enough light and the wrong soil mix. Bah. 

Oh Sorry

I guess Mom and Dad don't love you anymore, seeing as they are getting rid of this beautiful anniversary gift.

Also, please note that this item is being sold AS IS, so don't expect any refunds if it doesn't meet you expectations. Of being a ceramic marsupial. That you can plant things in.

Atomic Bomb

So far, these are my observations about New Jersey:
1) It fucking sucks to drive here, GPS does not know about jughandles.
2) The thrift stores are pretty cool, and they are simultaneously much more and less organized than thrift stores in TX.

This weekend I hit up a few of the thrift stores near our apartment. I went to two Goodwills, another Goodwill that turned out to just be a distribution office, and some one-off (I think) called Village Thrift.

The first Goodwill we went to on Saturday is less than a mile from our apartment. It featured middle aged women in line buying candles because they smoke in their house (based not on conjecture but on the conversation they were having), and also a beat Dansk Kobenstyle pan. I was very tempted to buy it, because I have been on the lookout for old Dansk stuff forever, but the enamel really was pretty badly chipped. In any case I was very encouraged to find it in the first NJ thrift store I walked into, because I'm hoping that means that I will just stumble upon pristine Scandinavian enamelware left and right from now on.
We got this creamer with little atomic starbursts on it, made by Mayer China in PA. I don't think that it's worth a whole lot, but I like the white starbursts on the pale pink background.

On Sunday I went to a different Goodwill. So far my observation is that Goodwills here are generally a little less organized, but they do bag sets of glasses, plates, etc together, so that makes things easy. Also, based on my limited sample size, they are much more poorly lit than the thrift stores I go to in Texas, which makes them look dingy and disorganized.
I picked up these two Corning coffee carafes which also feature an atomic starburst pattern, but these are gold. I think they're going to go on the Etsy store, once I get it set up.

After an unsuccessful attempt to go to another Goodwill that was not, in fact, a retail location, and having to turn around like 47 times, I went to Village Thrift in north Camden. This place is quite something. First of all, it is next to a gigantic English Pub that may or may not sort of be a club, judging by the size of their building. It was probably a bank or something in the 50s or 60s, and has some funny modern detailing, but they have all these old English crests stuck all over the building in an attempt to make it look oldy-tymey. I think the aesthetic they were going for might be renaissance faire meets British mod? Not successful.

At some point I need to go back and take pictures of the actual building, but I didn't really feel like getting out of my car to get a decent angle, and besides it was overcast. 

Then village thrift has quite a building in its own right. The whole awning is covered in rotting wood shingles, and I kind of wondered what I was getting myself into. The inside was the most organized of any thrift store I've ever been in. Like, I don't know who has the time and the OCD to organize 1 million toys into little bags and hang them from retail-style racks. I found myself getting annoyed by how organized it was.

They don't really have a furniture section, but they do have a pretty big kitchen/ home stuff section. 

Where I found....More Early American Pyrex!

Actually just the bowl. The divided serving dish was from the Goodwill. I have never seen any of this pattern in a thrift store, and I got two in one day! So exciting! The bowl is a little beat, but the covered dish is IMACULATE. Yay. 

I also almost bought a J. Crew corduroy pencil skirt, but then I remembered that I don't buy clothes from thrift stores because I am scared of bedbugs. 

Mid Century Motel Monday

Siesta Motel, San Antonio, TX

House Stalking

So yesterday I parked my car by the park in Oak Hills and walked around taking pictures of houses. When you are walking a dog, you can pretend that you are not a creeper who walks around taking pictures of other people's houses, and you are just doing a legitimate and wholesome activity. I feel like people might get bummed out, regardless of how innocuous and architecturally-admiring my intentions might be, so I try to not be completely obvious. 

I discovered part of this neighborhood right after we moved to San Antonio, when I accidentally took Eloise for a 3 mile walk because there was a giant country club where I thought there would be a road, so my loop ended up being much longer than I intended. I walked across Callaghan road through Oak Hills, but I never went into the main section of the neighborhood until this year, when I became intrigued by a house with a butterfly roof and decided to drive up Winnetka road and see what that was all about. What Oak Hills is all about, it turns out, is having a whole bunch of great mid-century houses. Some of them have had really bizarre additions or been updated, but the majority seem to relatively original. We have gone and driven around several times, and this is one of my favorite houses. Really, it had me at the teal door, but look at those windows! You can see through the house! I love it! 

Also please note the limestone exterior panelling? Trulia says it was built in 1959. 

The whole back of the house is floor-to-ceiling windows. And, oh, is that just a kidney pool in the back yard? Yup. Are those some teal butterfly chairs? Yup. Do I know this because I walked into the empty lot next to their house and took this picture through a crack in the fence? OBVIOUSLY. 

I was never really a big fan of butterfly chairs until the past year. I had one in my dorm room in college, and it was too big for the space and always in the way, and also always covered in crumbs, and I think it really soured me on the whole idea. However The Brick House and her lovely leather chair covers have changed my mind. 

                          Via The Brick House

Now all I need to do is find frames, and chair covers that are made from heavy duty vegan fake leather that gets nice wear marks, and are also very affordable. That exists in the world, right?

Speaking of The Brick House, today she posted on there about this:

It's basically a thing where you decorate a dollhouse before December 15 and post pictures of your progress. I'm thinking about doing it, and given my recent infatuation, I was thinking about using the Oak Hills house as a basis for my design. We shall see. 

Growing Lithops: Week 3

The Lithops seedlings seem to still be doing pretty well, they got a little bit bigger during the week that I was in South Carolina. Some of them toppled over and died, which I kind of expected. Next time I am definitely going to try planting in pumice, I think that the plants that are falling over are getting pushed over by the roots growing into the dirt. I moved some of the seedings around into new spots so that I could stand them up straighter and the roots won't grow together too much. The ones that I didn't move, I mounded up some dirt around the base to keep them upright until they are big enough to stand up better. I'm hoping that 's not a bad idea, I don't think it is.

Mid Century Monday

I like blogs that have themes for each day of the week, so I think I'm going to try out Mid Century Mondays.  

Art's Atlas Muffler Shop, San Antonio, TX

Vintage Pyrex

I love vintage Pyrex bowls. I am so tempted to buy even super beat-up ones that I see at thrift stores. I don't know what exactly is so appealing about them.
I have to really resist the urge to get into collecting this stuff... although I did have to pick up this turquoise Butterprint pattern mixing bowl at Goodwill today. It is so cute! I love this pattern! It is in pretty good shape!

My only other old Pryrex thing is a bigger Early American print gold on brown mixing bowl, but it is packed away right now. It is a mixing bowl with gold leaf bellows and eagles on it, how can you not love it? One day, one day I will have a collection of decorative mixing bowls....

For some reason I always think of the Kaj Franck enamelware bowl in this kitchen... a little bit of my dream house, I love it. Not everything about how they have it decorated, but I like the layout and the ceilings a lot.

                             Via D magazine

Also near the top of my list is a Hanova of Pasadena enamel bowl. I need to figure out a job that involves going on extended trips to California and only going to thrift stores and succulent nurseries several times a year. And the beach.

                                                                    Via Flickr

Growing Lithops: Week 1

The Lithops are sprouting! I came back from moving all our stuff to New Jersey and the dish of Lithops on my office windowsill is starting to sprout! I am so excited, I wasn't sure that they would germinate. There is definitely one section of the dish that has a lot more germination than the others, so either those seeds are healthier or they just come up faster.









So far I have still been keeping them covered with saran wrap and well misted. Next time I grow them from seed, I am going to try the recommended method of sowing them in straight pumice, because a couple of plants have already tipped over from the taproot pushing them out of my potting mix.

Meanwhile, my office has become a vacation home for some of my favorite plants. The rest are on the balcony in New Jersey hopefully not getting too much rain.