Often when we go into someone's home, there are a few pieces that immediately catch our eye. We wonder where they got them. And, quite often, there's a story behind them that's as interesting as the pieces themselves, whether it's a foray into a strange deserted neighborhood in Los Angeles, a trip to a Bali or Morocco, a connection to one of our favorite French sculptors, a perilous drive with a piece of furniture strapped to the roof or something more.
Ask us where we got our couches and it's a long crazy tale that involves our cousin getting married, a fake wedding registry, multiple addresses, months of waiting for our "wedding date" to pass and passing off our Grandmother's engagement ring as our own. It's one of the many stories that our home contains. What about you? What are the stories in your home?
Find Your Style: 20 Classic to Contemporary Kitchens to Add to Your Inspiration Board
Beth's Romantic & Retro Residence
Good Food to Share 
The Big Book of Small, Cool Spaces 
Apartment Therapy Presents 
The Eight-Step Home Cure 
Shaw's Original Fir...
How to Make Easy 3-Ingredient Energy Bars at Home
How To Cook Tender, Chewy Wheat Berries on the Stovetop
It's not a huge elaborate story but when my husband was deployed to Iraq last year, on their way home his unit stopped in Kuwait where they've a large game center complete with billiards tables (of which my husband adores). Well, he played and won so many games against other soldiers while waiting for his flight home, that he was able to buy a huge silk Persian rug I had been jokingly asking for with the winnings.
the eight foot long, half a foot thick, 500lb table my husband and i bought in bali on our honeymoon. a romantic, novel, beautiful slice of the lengthwise center of a tree and keepsake of our first journey as a married couple. and a beast.
you try picking up this thing wrapped indiana jones style in wood crates at customs, have it forklifted into your dad's toyota tacoma, and then try to unload it with your husband at home! it was the first test of our marriage! once we managed to get it out of the bed of the truck, we unwrapped the top to find it COVERED in variegated shades of mold. there were tears. after much sanding, bleaching and sun-soaking, the table was safe to bring in-doors...mind you, it takes three grown men, at least, to move the table top for any work done on it.
she now resides happily in our kitchen dining nook. we're going to use the bench we had made to go with her as our bar top.
Two paintings my grandpa did before he died, one landscape and one portrait. These are just a few in his vast collection. The portrait was done in 1960 and is fun to tell about. Apparently a family in our hometown, just a farming couple who spent very little money on anything, commissioned it from him. They gave him a picture from a magazine, a very contemporary and chic lookin' gal outside of a skating rink. Neither my grandpa or grandma could believe that this couple had approached him with this request because they lived so frugally.
After he died, they gave the painting back to my grandmother. A lot of people who had commissioned his art did that, which sort of surprised all of us but is a really nice gesture.
I inadvertantly peed on an antique decoy duck of my mom's, so she gave it to me as a christmas gift (cleaned). it's now above my toilet, I had the shelf specially installed so it would fit.
Thanks ec05, I just accidentally peed laughing.
Since most of my treasures come from flea markets or Home Goods type places, all my stories are the illusions created that I actually have traveled as much as I wish I had! (I don't make them up, I let people wonder...)
I have a lovely desk built from butcher block and plumbing pipe. My husband and I built it together when we had no other furniture to speak of. It has a place of honor in our now fully furnished apartment.
I also have a beautifully carved, gilt mirror in my bedroom. It was a wedding present to my grandparents. My grandmother treasured it for as long as she lived. My mother displayed it for 15 years, and now it is in my bedroom. I love it.
kipling, you have a tree cookie table?!?! I am three shades of green with jealousy!
My best "stuff" story has to be for my enormous umbrella tree (named Chuck - and seriously enormous, about 7 feet tall and probably a branch-spread of ~16 square feet!), which I had to rescue from my highschool art class before my art instructor killed it. He was retiring and moving away, and the man who'd made the lovely pot the plant was growing in wanted his pottery back. ... but not the plant.
What interesting things you learn from eccentric art teachers... not only was Chuck the umbrella tree named after the potter who'd created the pot (whose first name is Charles), BUT when I'd been doing a sketch of Chuck in class and decided to re-frame the image, cutting off a good portion of the bottom (including most of the pot), the insight my art teacher provided was thus: "sometimes there is such a thing as too much pot!"
Oh c'mon. You cannot tell us that much and not give us the full story of the couches.
A stuff story.. I found a skeleton of a curvy antique wooden chair on craigslist for $25. I drove to the seller's house to pick it up. We ended up having tea and discussing her impending move back to Sweden. I was offered her 2 siamese cats, but had to decline due to the fact that I already possessed a cat. I transported the chair back to my apartment and re-upholstered it a few weeks later with a floral patterned black velvet. A few months later, I had to move and my cheapskate father insisted on "helping" me. A flatbed trailer stacked high with antique furniture. The very thought makes me nauseous. Somehow, one of my chair's back legs got broken!! I glued it back together. From this, I learned that I should always have a small emergency moving fund stashed away. Now the chair is with my husband and I in Fort Knox, Kentucky. Next year it will come with us to Georgia, and after that accompany us to Germany.
I had to laugh when I saw this blog.EVERYTHING in my home has a story. When people come over for the first time and want a tour, it takes awhile to get through the house because I feel the need to tell the stories. I wouldn't change a thing. It's the stories that make my house a home.
Above my desk I have a few things with stories that make me smile-- a big framed self-portrait by my (then) seven-year-old niece (she's the next Matisse! The picture is big and colorful and has that hilarious haunted look of staring too much in a mirror!), a "cirtifacate for Best tuterer of forever!" scrawled onto math scratch paper by one of my tutoring students before I moved overseas (which I also framed... I love how heartfelt and yet a little half-assed it is :) and one of those mall-photo-booth pictures of my sister and I with our niece. I also have a picture of me and my husband that has special meaning for us, and a painting of Biblical Esther that I got from a folk-artist in Tsfat, Israel, which inspires a novel I'm writing...
But that said, are those planter boxes inside the wire baskets in the desk/shelving unit up above? I think I'm in love! What a clever organizational idea!
We fell in love of a big Mobiloil sign, abandoned in the very high part of a covered parking area, where the car of my boyfriend's aunt stay.
When we asked to the owner he said "That's the old wall of a former gas station, if you want to climb so high, the sign is yours..."
Twenty minutes later we brought our treasure at home! :-D
I have a napping man in a huge sombrero,about 4" tall, that I bought my first time to TJ. And a beautiful green vase with a twisted neck and a brass plague with brass grapes on it, which I bought the first time I went to Ensenada. I have a few frogs, all in different poses,that I think are just too cute. I have owl coasters, and once had a huge multicolored ceramic owl that could be used as a door stop. And I had a huge "greened" vase that I got for $5. While these items do not have a "story", they remind me of where I've visited, or how frugal I am, and what a great bargain hunter I am! I also like colored bottles, but have to remind people that i just collect the bottles, I dont drink the alcohol that used to be in them.lol
ec05, speaking of pee.....I bought the cutest little table once, about 15" x 15" for $5 (the magic price for me to open my wallet). I stashed it in my car and continued my errands. When I got back to my car, I noticed this unusual smell. Well, I washed it, sprayed it, aired it out, painted it black, and made it beautiful with copper scrolls on the edges. However, during and after all that, I still could smell that horrible smell.But no one seemed to smell it but me. Some said maybe a dog peed on it. If that's the case, they could use that stuff as nerve gas. So, now, I check out my $5 bargains.