Buying Art and Other Unnecessary (but Desired) Things

It all started when Nick and I set out antiquing to find suitcases I could spruce up for Ramona’s birthday. It ended with having to borrow my dad’s truck to haul our purchases home. Shocking right? No. It doesn’t surprise us either. The great thing about antique stores is you can find really amazing things typically at a reasonable price, but you have to be ready to purchase them immediately. This is how I justify these these things. Seriously it’s fact though.

Just to preface this text. Nick was in the store. I was in the car with a napping Ramona (she has a very low tolerance for shopping unless she gets to try on clothes). This is what we like to call text shopping. This is all screenshot from Nick’s phone, so he’s the blue speech bubbles.

First notice how little regard I had for the 2 suitcases – you know the whole purpose of the trip. Then admire my impeccable use of emoticons.

Obviously, we did not hesitate purchasing this dresser. Do we need a dresser? Not really. In fact it’s in our entry now. It’s a gorgeous campaign dresser. In really good condition. It is something that you don’t find often, but you see it on blogs looking all high style and what not. It was $425 originally which is a good deal, but probably not enough of a deal for us to pull the trigger (despite my bold text to “get it all”). They offered 20% at first ($390), but Nick wanted to get this unnecessary purchase cheaper which is how we ended up paying $375. Deal. Haggling plus writing a check (no merchant fees for the store – we would have used our debit card anyway) gave us bargaining power for the dresser and the Giant poster.

For the record, we never haggle. Sometimes we ask for the best price the seller will give (that’s happened like 4 times ever) and just go with that. It’s not because we want to needlessly spend money. Generally we don’t buy big ticket items. It seems ridiculous to haggle over a $20 item. Either you love it at $20 or you don’t need it. (Possibly you don’t even need it at $20, but I’m not going to judge.)

Here’s a close up of our pretty dresser. It’s in good enough condition that I don’t have to paint it. I might. I don’t know. I’m thinking maybe grays or blues or kelly green or white (or…) if I decide to paint it. Most likely won’t happen for a while since it’s in usable condition and the fact it’s not really being used right now anyway.

I am looking at this, this, this, and this for inspiration. One thing we can all agree on is you can’t go wrong with a campaign dresser.

This is literally a giant movie poster of the movie Giant. It’s 30 x 44. Huge. It was filmed in Marfa, TX (hence Nick’s reference in the text). We have been saying we are going to go there for over a year now, but it’s a loooong drive. We will go there eventually, and I promise to share all the awesomeness that Marfa has to offer with you.

It was originally $135, but we bought it for $100. It’s in pretty good condition. The frame can go, but we aren’t dealing with that now.

Besides Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean, Jaime (BFF) pointed out Chill Wills is in it! Nick says he is related somehow. Look how cool we are.

You know we have a special place in our heart for creepy art. I found this guy at a different stop (one in which we could actually shop together not via text). He was on sale for $7. Seriously why wouldn’t I take this creeper home? Who cares if I scream a little in fear when I glance his way. $7 is worth it. If I’m honest I was going to buy it at it’s original price $10, I didn’t know it was on sale until we checked out. Double win.

All the cool kids are hanging people on their wall now (here and here). So maybe they aren’t as creepy as our guy, but whatevs.

I loved this little guy when I saw him. It’s a 7 x 9 needlepoint. It was $18, so I didn’t buy it. (Sounds ridiculous when you think just hours later I unnecessarily dropped $475 for a dresser and a giant poster.) Then I went back a few days later because I couldn’t stop thinking about it. He’s so cute and small, so it gives me a different option when styling dressers and etc.

I’m starting to believe you can’t have enough landscape art (here and here). We stopped by an estate sale in the neighborhood we’ve already mentally moved into. Secretly we were hoping the house hadn’t been listed yet, and we could take a sneak peak. Sadly, it was already sold. I digress. The painting was $2. The frame is yuck, but that’s an easy change.