Thrifty: Vintage Throw Pillows
If I had to sum up my home decor style in 3 words, they would be: eclectic, hodgepodge, vintage... jackhammer... merciless... insatiable (The Office, anyone?). I once told my best friend I was thinking of hiring an interior designer just to 'give me a few pointers' and she lovingly said, "they won't be able to help you. Your style is... not something they can help you with because it's... not really a style... anyone else does?" And she was right. I LOVE my home and everything in it, but I doubt anybody else would want to live in it. It's bright and mismatched and kind of all over the place and totally ME. It makes me happy, which in my mind is exactly what a person's home should do. If it makes you feel any better, I've dialed it way back in my mature years; someday I'll tell you about the infamous "rainbow house," as my husband lovingly dubbed it. God bless the realtor who sold it for us and did not bat an eye when she walked into the seafoam bathroom or the coral bedroom.
I mean... why did they even allow us to mix this color? This is on Lowe's. Allow me to draw your attention to the orange hallway and the 'glow' of the turquoise bathroom. If this isn't a #facepalm, I don't know what is.
What I have NOT dialed back, mind you, is my thrift shopping for household goods. I have furnished, just throwing out a number here, 80% of our home with items from thrift shops, vintage shops, Craigslist, or garage sales. There is absolutely a cost element to my strategy, but that's honestly just a bonus. The main thing for me is finding unique, fun, vintage pieces that kind of go together, but mostly don't go together, and collecting them lovingly over time.
Throw pillows are, I think, an incredibly underrated item at thrift stores. They are often very easy to wash, and the ratio of brand new price ($30+) to thrift price (~$2) is really high. Additionally, even if you hate the idea of using someone else's old throw pillow, I think they're worth the investment just for the insert alone. If you've ever priced those puppies out, you know that they are not cheap. You can buy a new pillow cover for a fairly reasonable price (or better yet, make one with very little money and even less skill) and save big time on the physical pillow you stuff inside.
I am a sucker for alllllll vintage items, but vintage pillows and cross-stitch or needlepoint are the cat's meow. Here are a few of my favorite pillow finds:
1. This little cutie is both vintage AND velvet, AKA my personal double rainbow. I don't know what it is about this combination, but I own 2 velvet couches and 6 velvet chairs. It's a problem.
2. I recently found these awesome babies at Goodwill:
3. This set I've had for about a year, and looks lovely on (you guessed it)... my mustard yellow velvet chair!
4. And finally, this lovely fellow makes an appearance each winter for a few months. Can you imagine how long it took someone to stitch all of that? Woof. I'm not sure where that message came from and I feel like the iambic pentameter is off tbh... but it's festive and vintage and tra-la-la, it's mine forever.
Toodles! TLO
