Kick Off My Junk Decor Tour

Meet Lanette Lorsung. Fellow JUNKMARKET Style contributor and creator of Cottage Elements. While visiting her home recently, I quickly realized this sweet junk sister not only has an amazing signature style complete with elegance, sophistication and junk, she is also the hostess with the mostess! Come see what I mean.

Lanette's home is filled with natural light...making it all the easier to ogle over her junk treasures. (Be sure to click the photos if you'd like to view them in detail.)


The perfect mix of vintage style with an industrial flair fills each room. Lanette is known for her creative approach with cloches.


Rust. Vintage pottery. Farm pieces.

One thing that immediately caught my eye was Lanette's usage of vintage fish tanks. This one is filled with a school of beautiful old door knobs, while the other is filled with wooden shoe forms in another part of the house. (Fish for it within this post...I bet you will like it.)


Seven is definitely Lanette's number...and I would have to say she IS one lucky lady! This fantastic numeric display was found in her office area. The perfect spot for crunching numbers.


Time to head into the kitchen and dining area. I should have told Lanette she could call me anytime to hang out at her place. (The trek from Ohio to Minnesota really wasn't that, ahem, bad.


Isn't the dining table amazing? It's clean, modern, industrial lines work perfectly in her home. The old street sign centerpiece was featured on JUNKMARKET Style recently. Make sure you check out the post and read more about it's origins. Such a brilliant find!


Beautiful! (I see shoe forms.)

Now that you've witnessed Lanette's gorgeous decorating style...let me show you her hostessing style! When Kathy, Sue, Gretchen and I arrived at her home, Lanette had the most wonderful salad luncheon waiting for us. Complete with tortellini, chicken and fruit salads including a grand finale of cheesecake! Loved the pink drink too! Yummm!! Doesn't she look just like a modern day June Cleaver?


We all left with full bellies and smiles on our faces. Her cat Indy even looked satisfied with the day's events...

...and decided to take a nap just as we were leaving.
Many thanks to Lanette for being so gracious for allowing me to photo her home. I was thrilled to be invited over during our stay in Minnesota.

Hmmm. I wonder who's next on my Junk Decor Tour? Stay tuned!

As always, take care and keep on junking!

No Loafing Around These Parts

After returning home from my trip last week, I was welcomed by a wonderful bounty of tomatoes from my garden. A tidbit of information about me...I loves me some SPICE! What better use of tomatoes than a hot and spicy salsa!

I loaded up my multi-functional military loaf pan with all the fresh fixings needed to make a good tortilla chip dipper, and headed out to the deck, toot sweet. Talk about a time saver! No running back and forth to and from the kitchen to haul all my different veggies outside. My preschooler could play in the yard then while I prepared. Let me tell you, the salsa turned out fabulous!


Unfortunately I trusted my photo-taking skills a little too much and ate all my salsa BEFORE I viewed the photos of the completed spicy goodness. They were all a blurry mess! Ggrrrr. Enlarge if you must. :(



As always, take care and keep on junking!

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, THRIFTday...

Happy Thriftday to you! Since thrift store shopping is one of my favorite pasttimes, I decided to jump on the bandwagon and highlight every Thursday, (or THRIFTday, if you will) some of my best thrift store finds from the past week. Each post will consist of only one or two finds and will include ways I've incorporated the pieces in my home. It will also showcase my best thrift store bargains and I will let you know which items were purchased strictly for resale too.

We all enjoy viewing other people's treasures and sharing our own, don't we? I know I do and am looking forward to all the THRIFTdays that lie ahead! Ready to take a look?

I spotted this vintage pottery lamp with its sad little lampshade this past Tuesday.

I took a closer peek at its glossy khaki paint color and beautifully crafted floral pattern and immediately fell in love.

I could see it was true vintage by checking the underside and wiring, while making sure there were no viewable chips or bad wires. Consider it sold! Best of all, the entire contents of the shop was 50% off that day!

I brought it home, replacing the lampshade with a more modern one purchased at a local department store. It now sits in our family room providing light to a previously dark corner. Love. Love. Love.

Do you have a thrift store find you'd like to share? Include your link in your comment so we can all oooo and ahhhh over it! (I'm currently working on adding a linky-loo to make it easier, but I appreciate your patience until it's completion.)

As always, take care and keep on junking!

Hunt & Gather

One of the biggest highlights of my trip to Minnesota, was visiting Hunt & Gather in Minneapolis. I was so happy Sue included it on our agenda all along! Even though I'm an Ohio girl, I have read multiple articles about this shop as well as its cool owner, Kristi Stratton. Boy, does she have a fun style! Take a looksie at my snapshots to get a small taste of this place. There's no doubt you'll add it to your "places to go before I die" list.



















We were finally able to get Sue off this thing once we hid her quarters.
Don't you just love seeing a "lower level" sign when you're in a shop you love?


Little did I know Renee from the beautiful blog Cottage Lifestyle lives just blocks away! During my visit, I remember making comments about how adorable all the houses were in the surrounding area so it didn't surprise me!

Have I introduced you to this "must see" shop or did you already know about this cool little gem? I definitely could have spent HOURS here, but unfortunately the clock was ticking. On to our next junk jaunt...

As always, take care and keep on junking!