This Week Around the House

Okay, so I promised some photos of home improvement projects around the house, and these are not those.  I'm realizing that most of our home improvement projects, while thrilling to us, will be literally like watching paint dry to everyone else.  Here, though, are some random shots I took around the house this week.  Above are my vintage clay marbles.  Many of my New England friends will know the flea market where I bought these: the Montsweag Flea in Maine.  It's one of my favorite flea markets, ever, and these little guys came stored in this sweet milk bottle.  They live next to my desk.   

If you've been reading my blog for a few months, you are probably beginning to realize by now that I have just a bit of a collecting habit.  At the same time, and in direct conflict with my collecting tendencies, I hate clutter, so over the years I have developed a solution: many of my collections include items that can be used to store other items.  Brilliant.  Thus my memere's lovely Roseville vase is the home of my knitting needles.  And, as you might have seen in my post from Wednesday, I collect old suitcases and paintboxes.  They house CDs and, well, paints.

The desk above was my father's.  For years his parents rented out a small apartment in their home, and one of their lodgers left this desk behind.  It became my dad's, and when I was a kid I would sit at it writing and drawing and playing with the little drawers and compartments inside.  Now it is mine, and I treasure it.  Some of my favorite books rest on the shelves underneath.  On the top left side next to the lamp is a vintage radio tube that I bought for my husband because he researches and writes about, among other things, early radio at the BBC.  The chair in this photo is an old Haywood Wakefield that I bought for him, too, at one of my mother's antiques shows.  Oh, and I have to mention the pretty leaf lantern made by pachadesign.  

Above is a close-up of the desktop with the beautiful Buddha my mother gave me and and one of a pair of Art Deco lamps she gave us for our wedding anniversary.  We had admired (drooled over) them in her shop, and my thoughtful mum took notice.

Last but not least, it's those paperwhites again!  But I included this photo because it has the only piece of the renovation stuff that wasn't too boring to show.  We took down a godawful light fixture in our master bath and replaced it with something much nicer (I hope), but I was left with all these globe-shaped light bulbs.  I suddenly had the bright idea (forgive the pun) to put them under this cloche.  I actually love them when the sunlight streams through them in the morning.

So now I'm curious . . . What are you collecting these days?  Any favorites or wish list items?