Weekend Finds: Flea Market Goodies (WWII Jacket, Wiggle Dress, Charm Bracelet)

Good morning!

How's your Wednesday going so far? I was true to my word this morning and managed to photograph my flea market finds, so without further ado, let's get to the goods!

This pink and gold embroidered wiggle dress was at my favorite clothing dealer's both in the antiques shed (not Andy Devine, but the tall skinny guy...I think his name is Bobby?). He had some clothes hung up this month, but the majority of the haul was in a huge pile on two tables. As a moth to the flame, I started to dig through the piles, not paying any attention to the top heaviness of several leather nineties' overcoats and jackets until...A-V-A-L-A-N-C-H-E. As if in front of an entire-school assembly, I turned around sheepishly and several shoppers made the obligatory, "Oooh, that was bound to happen" type remarks as I tried to de-dust and pile back the actual mountain of clothes I'd managed to knock off the table. Bobby and another shopper helped me pile things back up, and as I was scooping the coats to one side, I found this gem shimmering from the very bottom. Even though I was red-faced, at least the experience yielded this up from the murky depths!

Best part? Easily the label:

"Champagne Lady" indeed!

In the same mound of clothes was this button up blouse, which I'm pretty sure is too big in all the wrong places, but I couldn't resist the pattern, wait until you see it up close:

Besides being a beautiful inky color palette of blues and purples and pinks, the print features phonographs, candlestick telephones, alarm clocks, plate-view cameras...I AM DELIGHTED BY THIS.

And the third item from the pile, this silk smoking jacket with a weird wrap around cut, built in fringed sash, and embroidered anchors on two pockets (there's another on the left there where the red piping is to match the one on the right. Swank, swank, swank! Total expenditure: Fifteen dollars for the three pieces and a certain loss of self-pride from the throwing-everything-on-the-ground gaffe. Ah, well! It was worth it.

Honestly, I need another Ike jacket like I need a hole in my head, but I bought one anyway. I was in the Swine barn and one of the sellers next to the discount detergent and hand soap that's always set up dead center in that pavilion had boxes and boxes of old army and navy issue uniforms. You know how the flea market can be-- these clothes could either cost a buck a piece or a hunnert dollars a piece, it all depends on the dealer. A friendly middle aged guy came up to ask if I needed any help, and invited me to dig on through the boxes (y'ain't gotta tell me twice, mister). I pulled this out and looked it over, to find an inside label dating it to 1944. YES, YES. At twenty bucks, it wasn't a steal, but it's in perfect shape and priced at exactly the limit of what I would have paid for it. I like the good condition and the fact that there are no regimental labels or patches on it-- I have a really neat jacket just like this with insignia all over and I feel like wearing it would be too costume-y. I also love that I size things for Matthew on trips like this based on if it's just a smidge big on me (he has broad shoulders and I have bird shoulders) and too short...it fits him perfectly and he looks like a dashing sort of dude in it. SUCCESS.

I talked a lady in one of the exhibit stalls down to $12 from $15 on this Enid-Collins-like purse as she told me I reminded her of some eighties' pop star she couldn't remember the name of (that's a win-win situation, there). I LOOOVE the fact that it's a black-background purse (I have about five real Enids that I hardly ever carry because they're taupe on white, and all I ever wear is black) and the fiery reds and golds of the embellishment. It's missing maybe like ONE sequin there, but overall, isn't it a knockout?

This bracelet was in one of the stalls from the same lady I bought all those earrings from a month ago, AND I AM OBSESSED WITH IT. Six bucks. I'm pretty sure it's "silver tone" as opposed to any actual jewelry grade metal, but look at the charms. They're all crazy Southwestern American Indian creatures of varying weirdness! Each time I've worn it this week I find myself catching one of them out of the corner of my eye and being delighted by it all over again.

Last but not least, these African-mask inspired screwback earrings were in a booth I was positive everything was going to be at least $500 dollars in, but the lady let me have these for I think $3, and they were by far the best thing in it. I had to interrupt her trying to sell a woman some kind of semi-precious jewel necklace and earring set for literally two hundred dollars, so I guess these costume baubles didn't look like a big loss to her by comparison! I went home and promptly dropped one when I was trying to show Matthew (this is why I can't have nice things!), which popped out one of the little green jewels, but I'll super glue it back in and it should be good as new. Aren't they unusual!

I did better than I've done in months past in that I only bought things I actually couldn't leave without-- there was a weird Masonic poster I almost bought in one of the stalls, but as I haven't yet found a good place for the one I already have, I resisted temptation. And the Lisa of two years ago would have bought ALL the army surplus pieces, rather than just the one, standalone Ike jacket. I feel like I'm improving, however little by little, at not buying EVERYTHING that I'm interested in?

So! What did you find at the flea? What are some things you find yourself drawn to no matter how many you already have in your collection? What do you think I got the best deal on?  When's the last time you've embarrassed yourself good and proper in public? Let's talk!

That's all for today, but I'll catch you back here tomorrow (one day closer to the weekend)! Be good, enjoy the sunshine, and we'll talk then. Ciao!

Hollywood Life (Vintage Stars Houses, Late 1960's)

Good morning!

Oooh, Lord, I could have used another three hours of sleep this morning-- Matthew and I had a rare night where both of us were off, and we didn't remember until 9:30 that there was a new episode of Mad Men in our Amazon Instant queue. WHY IS EVERYONE BUT STERLING BETRAYING DON? #nospoilersbutdamn. That put bedtime at 10:30, and I was so high strung from hollering at the computer monitor for most of that TV hour that I tossed and turned until 11:30 or so, and had to get up at 6. People, this girl needs her beauty rest...and six and a half hours is one to three hours too little. BOO. All that to say, I don't have your flea market pictures for you, but will have to shutterbug my finds tomorrow.

In the meantime, how about a conciliatory gift of nine late sixties' celebrity homes? My eyes were bugging out of my head yesterday when I got Hollywood Life by Eliot Elisofon from Interlibrary Loan. Elisofon, a documentary photographer who worked for Life magazine for twenty years as a staff photographer, made formal portraits of stars at home in year of our Lord 1969. I might actually have to buy a copy of this book to put on my coffee table with my Tony Duquette book-- I could look at Hollywood Regency style houses ALL. DANG. DAY. DON'T. TRY ME. 

On with the show!

Edie Goetz's House (10 out of 10!):

Edie Goetz was honest-to-goodness Hollywood royalty-- one of two daughters born to MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer, Edie married producer Bill Goetz in 1930, sent off in one of the most expensive and lavish wedding ceremonies the movie colony had seen to that point.  Edie Goetz was the Hollywood hostess for thirty-five years...when her husband died in 1969, the sixty-four year old widow lost interest in entertaining, and quietly retired from the social scene. However! The dinners she used to give! Friends included a Who's Who of tinseltown celebrities, including Rosalind Russell and Merle Oberon (the latter no slouch in the entertaining department herself). No less than Oscar winning director Billy Wilder said of the couple: ""The highest accolade for someone coming into this town was to be invited to the Goetzes. The Goetzes had the best food, the best people and the best things on the walls."

The guest list from one 1946 party, to celebrate Bill Goetz's acquisition of Universal Studios, which he re-christened Universal-International? From this New York Social Diary article about the rivalry between Edie and her sister Irene (David O. Selznick's first wife):

 Among the 84 guests (including wives and husbands) were Greer Garson, Lana Turner, Joan Crawford, Loretta Young, Robert Young, Douglas Fairbanks, William Powell, Merle Oberon, Dick Powell and June Allyson, Robert Taylor and Barbara Stanwyck, Gary Cooper, Deborah Kerr, Judy Garland and Vincente Minnelli, Henry Fonda, Ava Gardner, Cary Grant, David Niven, Danny Kaye, Irving Berlin, Joan Bennett and Walter Wanger, Robert Montgomery, Charles Boyer, Sam Goldwyn and Johnny Green who sat and played for hours while Judy Garland sang to the guests

Can you imagine? Can you even wrap your head around it?

Bill and Edie bought this Holmby Hills house in 1949; it was decorated by La Crawford's friend Billy Haines, and didn't he do a fine job! I'm bananas over how this looks like an important person's house and everything is suited to having guests-- proportions are on a grand scale, and everywhere you look there's seating, seating, seating. The living room below may be my favorite photo out of the whole book-- something about the beige and white tones of the furniture (which I usually H-A-T-E hate) mixed with the black and white stripe of the awning and the robin's egg blue of the one wall, plus that magenta orchid on the table? It strikes just the right chord. Can you just see tall drink of water Gary Cooper, tuxedo'd, slouching over a martini, knees up to his ears, on one of these lowslung couches? Or Jack Lemmon, leaning over Frank Sinatra, the Chairman of the Board bursting into one of his famous éclats de rire over an inside joke? I can't bear the thought of it, it's too good!

And here's the grand dame herself in her home's library. You can see from the photographs there are a number of fine art pieces in the house, from Degas to Modigliani-- the Goetzes had one of the best collections of impressionist and post impressionist art in Hollywood. This collection was sold at Christie's 1988 when Edie passed away. One Picasso painting alone from his Blue Period netted almost $25 million. GOOD. NIGHT. One painting that wasn't included in the auction is the Van Gogh you see over the fireplace here-- two years after Bill Goetz bought the painting in 1945, its authenticity was questioned by art dealers and apparently the matter was never 100% settled. Drama!

I'm nuts about this house, and could spend most of today and tomorrow talking your ear off about how fabulous it is, but we have to keep moving! There's more houses to see!

James Coburn's (TONY DUQUETTE DESIGNED) house:

Our Man Flint star James Coburn commissioned Tony Duquette to do his house, and man. MAN. Did TD deliver on this one. They eventually recovered the in-your-face red and yellow side chairs with something more reasonable and less 1969, but look at this room from the other angle at a later date:

Is it not exactly like a fairy tale in the best way? Still so stunning!

 Kirk (and Anne Marie) Douglas's House:

Kirk Douglas's house with wife Anne seated in the chair had undergone some changes since his 1957 Person to Person interview with Edward R. Murrow (see the She Was a Bird post on that here). I love all the pre-Columbian statues and statuettes glaring down from their shelves, the marigold yellow rug, and the LEOPARD SKIN, IT IS FOR REAL, PEOPLE, in the center of the room. The Douglasses' game room is pretty quirky/cute, too. How do you like the huge fish on the wall, the jukebox, and the atomic-legged tv?

Edith Head's (Unexpected) House:

Edith Head put in forty years as a costume designer for Paramount, creating such iconic looks as Dorothy Lamour's sarong, Elizabeth Taylor's breathtaking strapless gown from A Place in the Sun, and Grace Kelly's butter-wouldn't-melt Hitchcock costumes, and how about her house! Based on her utilitarian personal appearance (which contrasts sharply with the Dream Machine clothes she would design for screen goddesses), I thought for sure her house would be a stark, sparsely decorated, serious type of a place, and wasn't I in for a surprise! Her folksy Spanish influenced hacienda, dubbed  Casa Ladera, was originally built by Robert Armstrong, around the time he would have been appearing in King Kong with Bruce Cabot and Fay Wray (nice work if you can get it!). Head moved here with husband Wiard "Bill" Inhen in the forties'.

See the bric à brac hanging as art from the ceiling on the left, the marionette towards the middle, and the cane seating around the central farm table? I love how WARM this room looks, how inviting.

 Cecil B De Mille's Desk (in his house):

Cecil B. DeMille's house, in general, is amazing-- I remember reading in a "restored Hollywood houses" book that it not only still stands (after temporarily being derelict and home to actual wolves, they had to de-wolf the place before they could even start rehabbing the property) but is restored to most of its former glory! This scene from his office is interesting because you get to see that even the mightiest of us (and Biblical-epic-picture-making DeMille was pretty mighty) are not inured to the charm of tchotchkes and mementos to litter a desk almost to the point of not being able to use it.

The framed rectangle there is a copy of the Ten Commandments-- fittingly enough, as DeMille was famous for both his silent (1926) and talkie (1952) dramatizations of the Moses story. I wish I knew what was in that legendary looking ledger in the center of the desk, but Google turned up nada.

Jennifer Jones and David O. Selznick's Bedroom (WHICH I LOVE):

I told you earlier Irene Mayer was David O. Selznick's first wife-- here's a bedroom from Selznick's house he shared with his second wife, actress Jennifer Jones. When mega producer Selznick took Jones under his wing as a new star, his first order of business was to break up her current marriage to fellow actor and high school sweetheart Robert Walker. Walker, father to two little boys with Jones, took the divorce about as badly as one could, thereafter deep sixing his promising career (if his pitch perfect performance in Strangers on a Train was any indicator) with the alcoholism that would eventually kill him. I still think that's one of the saddest things I've ever heard about Hollywood romances. I like Jones against my will in Carrie (not the DePalma prom-shocker, but an adaptation of Dreiser's Sister Carrie with Laurence Olivier and an ending that made be bawl well after the VHS started rewinding itself in high school) and Duel in the Sun (if you don't like that movie...I don't even know what to say to you), and while she was pretty in Portrait of Jennie, the movie itself was weeeeeeak.

One thing I can unequivocably admire about Jennifer Jones, though-- this lusciously jewel toned bedroom. Inky black/purple walls would usually hold no allure whatever for me (it makes the room look smaller, and I am so over how Pottery Barn a lot of rooms like that with white on black contrast are), but with the almost-glowing intense red of the bed spread and those piles of shimmering throws? Robes? Something at the end of the bed make me want to redo my bedroom like this stat. Do you see the OIL PAINTING of a fireplace on the wall? Tongue in cheek chic. You're talking my language!

Will Rodgers's (Amazing) Ranch

I don't need to tell you why I like Will Rodger's place here-- LOOK. AT ALL. HIS STUFF. I love the taxidermied calf (?!), wagon wheel candelabra, Aztec blanket on the couch, and everything else in this room. The aesthetic of "show the people what you like!" is riiiiight up my alley. When do we move in?

Gypsy Rose Lee's House (and Louis XVI bathroom)

"Burlycue" queen Gypsy Rose Lee's house is crazy over-the-top Hollywood, and I like all the green everywhere, but what you really need to see is her bathroom. Being the prudish sort, I usually wouldn't fixate like this on someone's powder room, but seriously:

Remember Liza as Sally Bowles's green nailed battle cry of "DI-VIIINE decadence"? This is that statement, only in room form. I remember seeing something like this in David Hicks on Bathrooms, but as I no longer have the book any more and the library doesn't have a copy, I can't verify that for sure...doesn't this just look like Napoleon's own bathroom? Crazy. CRAZY.

Natalie Wood's House (and Bedside Table!!)

Speaking of "Gypsy", here's the woman who played her in the movie version of the biographical musical of the striptease artist, the ALWAYS gorgeous Natalie Wood. Now, before you go, "Why is she draped lackadaisically across her own bed in a red halter gown", I want you know freakin' Charlton Heston appears in this book in the steam room of his house about as naked as God made him, with a scant towel to protect what little of his modesty remains, which I have spared you. Not that he's not attractive, and not that he's not just about as nude in 98% of Planet of the Apes, but have you no shame, Chuck? What is this, France?! (If your curiosity is killing you, you can see a scan here-- but once seen, you cannot unsee!) (Also, I may or may not have vented my outrage by sending this picture, captionless, to both my friend Kelsey and my husband).

I digress. Beautiful Natalie Wood has the most actually-looks-like-someone-lives-here house of the bunch, and I want to wear both that red dress and the yellow jumper-with-black-turtleneck thing going on here. She looks so cool!

Ever wonder what was on Natalie Wood's bedside table? Here you go:

• Kools
• Reading glasses
• Change tray
• Knickknacks

I LOVE how H'wood regency the chest is, btw.

And how about the books at the foot of her bed? Can you squint and almost make them out?

The only two I could make out were Bogie by Joe Hyams and ZELDA FITZGERALD'S AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SAVE ME THE WALTZ! Natalie Wood, please join my book club from the afterlife, as we obviously have similar taste in biographies. The one Gavin Lambert wrote about you is one of my favorites!

Sadly, almost all the houses in the book didn't make it to the twenty-first century. As recently as 2013, Ira Gershwin's famous house was demolished to make way for new Beverly Hills construction. Dominick Dunne wrote about what a shame it was in his book Mansions in Limbo (the title of which refers to the sad sorry state of ripping down a ten million dollar mansion to build a twenty million dollar mansion, and which directly references the demise of the Goetz house I so admired in the late eighties'). Still! I'm glad we have this book to show us the private lives of some of my favorite Hollywood icons. You can check out the book for even more houses I didn't put up on the blog today, including Mary Pickford's famous Pickfair as well as Rock Hudson, Steve McQueen, Henry Fonda, and George Cukor's residences (the last is one of my favorites, I don't know why I didn't snap a pic of it).

So! What do you think? I can't get enough of this book-- interior design and old Hollywood-- MY TWO MOST FAVORITE SUBJECTS. Which house are you ready to move into? Which designs do you find the most or least pleasing? Do you have a Hollywood celebrity whose house you'd like to move into, stat? WHY DOESN'T ANYONE DECORATE IN THIS OVER THE TOP WAY ANYMORE? Lament! Lament!

I have to go get some lunch, but I'll check back in tomorrow with hopefully pictures of my flea market kills (I know, I know, empty promises). Have a great Tuesday! We'll talk then. :)

House Huntin': First Cut is the Deepest Edition (1960's Time Capsule Split Level)

Good morning! 

How's tricks, kids? It's raining like crazy here in downtown Nashville, but I've braved the storm and made it to the library to kick off yet another week of clacketa-clacketa reportage for you from the vintage-loving mines. Today, I share with you a story of heartache if not heartbreak... the first house we looked at in person as possible home-buyers! Did you even know we're in the market? We weren't, but while daydreaming through MLS listings, I came across something that seemed like it might be a dream come true. 

Take a look at this hunk of burning love:

Seriously, when they talk about curb appeal on those trashy HGTV shows I compulsively watch in the waiting rooms of doctor's offices, this is what they're talking about. I actually can't stand how much I love the outside of this house, and when my dad and I rolled up on it Saturday morning a few weekends ago, it was just as knock-your-eye-out in person. We were on the way to estate sales and diverted our course to include me driving by "this house I saw last night on Zillow". One day on the market, and there was a couple with a toddler in the driveway trying to peer in the front window, and several other cars driving by as we sat in mine and eyeballed the place over. This is apparently what happens when houses under $200,000 and in the Nashville area pop up nowadays-- feeding frenzy!

"What about the inside, Lisa?" WHAT ABOUT THE INSIDE. IT WAS JUST AS PERFECT. I expected the Dick Van Dyke-ish ness of the outside to clash horrifically with misguided "updates" and ripped out appliances, but I was wrong, bub! So delightfully wrong. Here are photos from the listing:

Did you just die a little? After our initial father-daughter reconnaissance, I called Matthew and asked him to call the realtor, who showed us the house bright and early Sunday morning. Once again, the photos were spot on. The house smelled a little damp/moldy, which set my outsized olfactory organs into high dudgeon, but as you may recall from my years of estate sale training, mild weird smells have never kept me from the-things-I-want-in-life (which are usually old and musty smelling by definition). The open-ish living room floor plan led into the formal dining room which led into the kitchen, and oh, this? Just a fireplace begging to be hung with one of those starbust electric clocks from the time period. How badly did I want to oblige it!!

Can you just see the visions of all my kooky mid century stuff in this room dancing through my head? If I were a paper doll, this would be the setting on the back of the envelope where you could picture me in all my sixties' splendor. It was seriously wonderful. Remember how the split level was the worst card to get in the game of Life? THIS kind of a split level is beyond desirable to me. How chic would you look descending the stairs into your gracious living room to greet your dinner guests in a hostess gown and your best welcoming smile? I get butterflies like a teenager thinking about that scenario, bless my poor vain, superficial, vintage little heart. It can't be helped!

Up these three stairs was a skinny hallway with three bedrooms and a blue-tiled bathroom. One bedroom was good sized, another was medium, and a third would really have to be an office or a den, it was surprisingly small. The bathroom had a door that led into the bedroom, but as it was also the only bathroom for the first floor, it also had a door that led into the hallway. Strange? I would have rather had just a long wall there and the single entrance for a bathroom. But wait 'til you see the bathroom:

Amirite? Serving Donna Reed realness here, hunties. And the commode, which has been decorously left out of this photo, was also periwinkle blue. I would paint the taupe above the tile white and let this room shine, shine, shine, let it shine. Grab some matching towels with our monograms on them, to wipe away the tears of joy from my eyes, and this room is done!

Ready for the kicker? How much do we hate unfinished basements? THIS MUCH. Happily, this is the least unfinished basement of all:

Seriously, the linoleum makes it look like a king's own palace. And the support beams don't even bother me. AND ANOTHER BEAUTIFUL FIREPLACE. Heartwrenching. There's a laundry room and another bathroom off to the right of the photo there, the first of which looks like this:

Kind of strange, huh? I guess you could put a chest of drawers or some other storage over to the right there, but I'm puzzled at the half-bath being in an enormous, whole-bath sized room. That said, the more beautiful vintage tile, the better.

The back of the house had a full deck, and even ran on into a patio type thing over the concrete garage that was also accessible by a door in the master suite:

This doesn't look like much in the photo, but it was really neat, and as spring had just sprung in the first week of April, there were buzzing bumble bees and the fragrance of the hyacinth wafting towards us. Matthew was not into the bees, but I was so enchanted by the foliage I couldn't really mind them.

So! Why are you not talking to the proud new owner of an honest-to-goodness gem of a vintage house? Let's look at the facts:

Pro's

• In our price range, but right at the tippy-top of it.
• LOOKS LIKE A SET FROM SOME CBS SHOW IN THE KENNEDY ERA.
• Has been maintained in a way that keeps the 1960-details I like but also isn't in a falling-down state of disrepair (as you see in a lot of houses that "must have been something back in the day" but are so neglected you'd have to take everything out just to make it livable).
• I LOVE TO THINK OF LIVING IN THIS HOUSE OH MY DAMN WHERE DO WE SIGN.

Con's

• I am too tall for the basement.
• Right at the top of our price range.
• What is with the bathrooms (dual entrance on the first floor, Volkswagen's-worth of empty space in the basement)?
• Location is not good. Weird, transient area in between airport and downtown.
• Due to shark-like intensity of other buyers, would have to put in an offer the same day at full asking price to be in the running for the house.

Let's address the con's, as the pro's are blatantly obvious here:

Height:

This is me in the basement:

And this is Bub in the basement. Matthew is around 5'6'' 5'7'' and three-eighths and an inveterate sloucher. Notice how he has plenty of head clearance between ceiling/ceiling fan, and the top of his dear head, even with his out of control hair. I, on the other hand, at five foot eleven and three quarter inches... I felt like I was a little leery of the space when I was in the house, but looking at the photos afterwards, it is painfully obvious that I would probably feel like I was "ducking" the entire time in over half the house. Boo. And if I was in heels? Or a beehive? And if I have kids that are taller than me? Forget it. As lovely as this room is, it ain't made for us amazons, and a house should be a home for even the taller members of the family!

Location:

When I look at a map of Nashville and go "Where is that at, exactly?", you know it's in a weird part of town. Between my dad and I, we have a combined fifty years worth of driving experience in the Metro Nashville area, and we've spent the last 10 going to estate sales every. single. weekend. Do you have any idea how many neighborhoods we've been in? Off hand, I would say all of them. So when this location popped up off of Murfreesboro Pike, I had to do some head scratching. It's almost to the part of that long, long stretch of street where it goes residential, but in a strange pocket behind a vacant Church of Christ and a Pizza Hut. Nearest grocery? There was a Kroger's within walking distance, but it was downgraded a few years ago to a Dollar General Market. I hate to be a grocery snob-- obviously, I'm not, as the grocery store I'm pining for  is like the rock bottom of regular grocery stores, but I don't trust sub-Krogers standard grocers, and that's that. Seriously, if I can't get US Weekly and my low carb tortillas without driving all the way into town and over to the Berry Hill Kroger's, that's a problem. Also, the only thing on this part of Murfreesboro Pike are transient hotels (Rodeway Inn, et al), night clubs (this one appears to be in a former Captain D's...what?), and fast food joints...I'm not asking for this to be the Champs-Élysées, but worse than my beloved Gallatin Road and a little better than Dickerson Road is not gonna work for me. The place I am now, in between the two aforementioned streets, I feel comfortable even if it isn't my dream house. It didn't make good sense to move somewhere I would know nothing about and feel less comfortable in. Location was really the biggest thing. If this house was in a similar suburb in Madison, Donelson, Hermitage, Old Hickory, I would have pulled whatever strings I needed to get in the ring on this one, but it wasn't, and that was a hard pill to swallow.

Pressure

The agent called the agent selling the house, and even though the house had been on the market TWO DAYS, he'd already received a couple offers and showed the house fourteen times, not counting us. Talk about blood in the water, people. The agent showing us the house said to have a strong offer, we would have to put one in THAT AFTERNOON and right at asking price. What! If you all know me at all, you should be aware of the fact that I don't do practically anything "on the spot"....my little Depression-era brain needs time to formulate a convincing, unshakable argument that we're not getting "rooked" or in for something more than we bargained, and an hour was not enough time for me to make up my mind on something as big as a house payment that would stretch on into the next 15 years of my life. Now, if it had been in a better neighborhood or at least one I knew, that would have been different-- but the fear of the unknown was too much for me. Plus, we're gonna have grandbabies in the next year or two that need dropping off and visiting at their respective grandparents' houses in Madison, Hendersonville, and Gallatin...um, ain't driving halfway across the county to make that happen, and that's important to us. Mark this down as TIMES I HATE BEING A GROWN UP. Ugh, why couldn't I just throw caution to the wind! I am going to my miss my house.

After several Bay-of-Pigs like intensity level conversations with my mom, my dad, and Matthew, we decided to pass. Even though I did listing-stalk this house for the rest of the month, it looks to have gone off the market this last weekend, and I hope whoever ended up being the buyer makes a wonderful life for themselves in this house...it's so gosh darn gorgeous! I wish it could have been the right one for me, but I do hope something like this, except even better or even more convenient to what we need in a house, pops up again some day soon! Keep your fingers crossed for me; I'm gonna keep looking! :)

           

How about you? How did you find your first house? Or are you looking? What were some deal breakers or makers in your house hunt? What's the latest and greatest time-capsule like place you've seen? Advice for getting over house-heartbreak? Let's talk!

That's all for today...try not to get blown away in the storms, fellow Nashvillians, and I'll see you tomorrow with some of the goods I scored at the flea market! Have a great Monday, and we'll talk then. Take care!