Bedrooms are sometimes the hardest to decorate because we so often get stuck in a rut with them. In and out of bed we go, over and over again. Day in and day out. Even though they truly should be the most relaxing spaces of the home for us to cozy up with and into at the end of a long day's work, they often become the place where simply put: bed is. All the attention goes to the living room because well, we live there. At least this is what I have heard from other people and I can completely relate as Dave and I still have a bedroom filled with artless walls and well, a bed. We have the furniture and we have a couple of pieces that we are attached to (like our antique blanket chest) and while the walls certainly bear a peaceful shade of minty blue that we adore + chose together, there is nothing else in there that really ties the space together. It is waiting for it and I know that one day when we are ready to tackle it, it will become the oasis that we need it to be. For now, here's to serving up some bedroom inspiration straight from Apartment Therapy with some Old New House sourcing! 

1. Large vintage rug with unique and neutral color tones. This rug in the photo, while it may not be vintage itself, immediately reminded of me of the vintage Josan Sarouk in our shop because the colors are so serene and lovely and rather unique. I feel like you wouldn't expect to see a rug of this color or size in a bedroom but wow, how inviting and spacious it makes the room feel. I just love it!  

2. Unique lamp! Even if you have recessed lighting like we do, a unique lamp is a must in any kind of space if you ask me. It is like an art piece that has function. My pick is more feminine than what they have but to each their own! 

3. Subdued, minimalistic, and small wall art. My pick is this amazing 1930s etching by the acclaimed artist Morris Henry Hobbs -- I just adore how tiny the work of art is and could so see it at the edge of a room leading into another space like in this room. 

4. Seating in corner for getting ready, decorating on, or putting clothes on top of. My ONH pick is of course our out of this world amazing antique leather pouf. I have never seen one quite like this and it would be a perfect piece next to the dresser or side table. 

5. Hanging botanical chart. Theirs is small which I quite like but if you have the space for a larger one like ours, I say go for it! Nothing like a large wall art piece that is minimalistic but bold at the same time. 

6. Color pop on a white bedspread. Whether you go with a lightweight blanket or a quilt like I've picked out, a little pop of color slung over the white bedspread can really stand out as a lovely visual piece of bedroom styling. 

1. Light colored botanical art. Okay, okay, you got me -- botanical art is a big favorite around here these days and I keep referencing it but I can't help myself! It can be such a natural and lovely piece of wall decor that blends serenity and curiosity and it is just so nice to bring the outside in. 

2. Wall art with birds. In the pictured home, the print or drawing is very small and I love that but no matter the size, wall art with birds compliments botanical wonderfully and can once again, nicely bring the outdoors inside. 

3. Colorful floral wall art. Flowers, more flowers please! Flowers are so vastly featured in art (rugs, wall, etc.) because they are beautiful in shape and color. Want to bring red, blue, and yellow into a subtly-colored room? Find an art-work with flowers in it! 

4. Unique landscape wall art. The one featured immediately reminded me of our industrial man + machine drawing with the lower third being land and the upper third being sky. The light minimal use of colors is also very similar and I feel like a one-of-a-kind wall art piece blended with the more commonly seen botanical is a really nice combination in a gallery wall like this one. 

5. Visual vintage dress hanging on wall. This is something you would not quickly think to do but boy, does it look neat. The gold dress shown hear becomes a part of the gallery wall and adds a streak of color to the blue backdrop without having to be permanent. You can switch out the dress every week, month or year and the idea is well, genius. As I have really become obsessed with vintage clothing and we have added a bunch to the shop, this seemed very fitting! I could totally see our 60s crochet dress hanging well next to all of the botanical art because it has a floral look to its design as well. 

That's all for today!

xoxo,

Melissa

Brand new to trade shows and expos of any kind, for those of you who don't know: we braved the sea of vintage this year at The Manhattan Vintage Show. It was quite the experience to say the least with our biggest expectations and hopes being to connect with a lot of new people outside of the world of the internet and to hopefully convert some of them to be ONH fans! We are a bit shy by nature so it was a big deal for us to go into the city, create a space from the ground up that represented our online shop, and to put ourselves out there: "here we are and hope you like it!". It was exciting and of course a bit scary but after the two days of working harder than we could have possibly imagined, we made it back to a rented apartment just in time to rock our baby to sleep and we thought to ourselves: wow, we did it, we actually pulled it off.

To say that the show went off without a hitch would be an outright lie. Getting down to the city from our humble abode in Westchester with an eleven month old baby who just doesn't do car-rides as well as a cargo van chock full of our most prized inventory was no easy task and came with some challenges (who knew you couldn't take a van on the highway? maybe you did?). Then of course we had to navigate parking for two vehicles. One that contained the baby and all of the stuff that comes with the baby when you do a weekend trip. Crazy amounts of stuff is all I can say! Next we had to shlep all of our belongings all while carrying our son and then the next morning (the day of the show) start the shlepping process all over again, to bring our inventory into the booth. Then came set up, then came fixing up, then came second guessing ourselves, then came food somewhere in there, and of course then came figuring out who would be with the baby since the babysitter was having trouble with city parking (who doesn't??), and then at some point after a lot a lot of coffee, came the beginning of the show. After that point, everything was just plain awesome. Our expectations of meeting and connecting with new people was absolutely exceeded by a million because the people we chatted with for lengthy amounts of time were just so amazing, it felt like a shame that we hadn't met them sooner.

The Vintage Show was mainly all about clothing but it was also about textiles (in come our rugs). We feared that perhaps we wouldn't fit in because our clothing collection was small (and not yet out there in the world, merely a hobby curated collection) but we had the opposite experience. While people were indeed interested in our small clothing selection, so many of them were interested in our rugs and home decor as well just as we had hoped! Not only did we connect with people about the rugs they needed for their homes, but we learned a lot too -- about clothing and about what everyone out there is looking for which was absolutely invaluable for us.

While it was a tremendous amount of hard labor and pushing ourselves beyond the depths past our pre-existing (baby-related) exhaustion, the show was overall such a great success and we enjoyed every minute of the experience! Until we do another one of these or have our first real pop-up shop (which we are getting serious about planning!), this was the last time we would see our customers + new contacts in person for awhile, so we were so thankful to have it!

**Such a huge thank you to Natalie Conn for the beautiful photographs, & Hilary and Lina for the tremendous amount of help throughout the show!

As the dust settles a bit from our very hard-work-filled past few weeks of the Manhattan Vintage Show, I want to write a little personal entry but know that there is so much to come all about the show with photos, our experience, and a big thank you to all of you who came out to see us!

It has not happened quite yet and we have for months been debating when to move our own hand-built Little Mod Sidecar into little D's room now that he is approaching 12 months old (wow!) and could probably use the crib next to the bed (opened up) as a better sleeping arrangement. The other day we caught him crawling into it over and over again laughing wildly to himself in his little avocado-riddled pajamas and then last night, I found him half in it (atop plush pillows) and half on the bed as I opened one eye to see if he was still sleeping after a couple hours of silence (woo hoo, 2 hours stretch of sleep!). I can't wait to transition it into another area of the house but I am having fun watching Little D amuse himself in it in the meantime!

As we approach his first birthday very swiftly, I am reminded that time with the little ones really goes by in a flash. This sleeper/sidecar will always serve as such a reminder of these wonderful first months of his life and my life with him in it.

Also in the world of co sleeping and sidecars, we recently we crafted our first 100% custom walnut version of the Little Mod by special request and it came out so beautiful when Dave was all finished with it. Walnut was an exciting wood to work with because we have always been admirers of it and it went to such an amazing family with such a strong little baby girl. Here is the listing for it, featuring the photos of the custom one before it went out -- http://oldnewhouse.com/collections/onh-furniture/products/little-mod-co-sleeping-made-to-order-walnut

We just love being able to build a custom piece of furniture for such a special reason --  for a baby's first months of life, keeping them nice and close to their mom!

And while we have lots of new vintage/antique arrivals hitting the site in the coming week (mainly - some awesome new rugs + art pieces), also be on the look out for some new originals on their way. We are working on some wall art pieces of our own as well as designing some other pieces of furniture with multi-funciton. Can't wait to share!

We could not be more excited to be a part of our first ever vintage show experience in a couple of weeks! January 17th + 18th -- we will be at booth #44 with a small never before seen vintage clothing collection as well as lots of our ONH shop vintage textiles (rugs) + other lovelies - with the specific collection availabile for pre-viewing here (there will be some new items, mainly rugs, as well!)

If you come to see us at the show + simply mention the website, we will have a little gift for you, will give you an instant 20% off of anything in the booth AND we will even credit your admission towards a purchase -- so buy your tickets here +  come on down! Can't wait to meet you! And although the beautiful model below will not be there (we don't think) some majorly awesome vintage fashion will be -- including one of our favorite pieces that indeed has black sequins galore. 

 & Just one of our beautiful antique rugs we will be bringing:

Also, we are taking special requests if there is anything from our shop that you would like us to bring down so that you will have an opportunity to view it in person before purchasing. Just e-mail us at md at oldnewhouse.com and let us know when you plan on attending + the item of interest. 

See you there!

When I started to work on my "gallery wall" or putting art on the wall or whatever it shall be called, I became very obsessed with the right way to frame everything. I have used cheap flimsy frames all my life and I felt like that was the wrong route to go with art I care about. I knew that A.I. Friedman had some good ready-made gallery style frames but what about big pieces? We decided to hit up a couple of thrift stores looking for hand-me-down big-time frames and sure enough we found a couple of good ones. We also had this one piece that we had been holding onto a while that had broken glass -- the framer down the road from us quoted a pretty reasonable amount for glass replacement and when I asked him about custom framing for similar pieces, I was surprised to learn that the custom job from start to finish with the metal frames would be around $150. I am not sure if our budget is ready to soar that high just yet but I actually think that is pretty reasonable when all is said and done. Having the used frames is great but it takes work to fit them and I could not find a ready-made large format frame for the life of me. So first came our selection of the pieces which was the easy part! Next came framing them, then the visualizing process of them on the wall, and of course before we hung anything, Dave had to find the studs so that we could properly do the job (or at least know what portion of the wall we were dealing with). This process of his required a magnet and lots of post-its -- I even kind of liked how the walls looked with all of the post-its (+ we shared some laughs about how in it he was) and I highly recommend doing this so that the pieces can securely be hung.

For the "gallery wall" we created, we wanted to leave space to add to it because we are wall art fanatics and need the room to grow our collection. We used 4 vintage lithographs (a couple which we have extras of in the shop), one antique etching of Mozart, a mid century circus poster, and original artwork from Etsy artisans.

I started questioning if the eclectic mix of art would work but in the end Dave and I both couldn't be happier with how it turned out! Naturally we love the mix of old and new and it feels vibrant, unique, and totally us.