Scoring BIG at the Cottage House

When I first found out about The Cottage House in Minneapolis, I knew it was right up my alley.  It is open once per month, on average (twice this month – score!), and is packed with amazingly priced thrift finds.  Mr. Converse Sneakers and I finally made it over this weekend to see what we could find.  We budgeted $30 in case we found any little treasures we wanted to take home.

Let’s just say we found some treasures, but one of them was not so little.

But, before I show them off, let me show of the things we didn’t buy but loved to look at:



If we had kids, I think the $5.00 whining charge would be such a funny piece of art for a playroom!




In high school, when I was going through my “punk” phase I swooned over a purse made out of license plates.  I had to laugh when I saw this license plate box.



There were various large cheese boxes with bold black numbers on them.  I loved them!



It’s hard to tell, but I was trying to take a photo of the mirror in the photo above, but the reflection kind of stole the show.  I wish I could have snagged the mirror before it got taken, but when we saw it, it had the “sold” sign already on it.  Bummer – would have been awesome left as is or made into a chalkboard or bulletin board.



Behind the house, they had a whole yard full of more goodies as well as another little building in the back.



This was one of the two huge piles of old windows.  Love them!



We don’t have room for any more kitchen items, but this sweet cookie jar sure was calling out to me.



I didn’t get a lot of photos of furniture because they were covered in stuff, but there were tons of tables, dressers, and buffets just begging to be taken home.



They had lots of different bird cages, which I thought were very sweet.

Here are the two things we came home with:



We both love vintage art, so this $3 baker art had to come home with us.  We’ve been trying to collect art for the kitchen, so this was perfect!

The other thing we bought was also a piece of art.  A very LARGE piece of art . . .



It may not look that big in the photo, but when you try to imagine the size of it, try to picture a piece of art about as wide as a queen size bed . . .

We actually didn’t buy this when we first saw it (it was hidden behind a huge mirrored buffet, so we could barely see it, but after much persuasion, I got Mr. CS on board.  We didn’t have a way of measuring it and knew it would be too huge for most places in our apartment, but I have been in love with art like this for a very long time, and when I saw the price tag I just couldn’t pass it up.  It was, wait for it, $22 with the frame!!!  We drove all the way back to buy it after thinking it might fit above our bed, but when we tried it out, it looked funny.  It fit but just barely, as in it was grazing both our headboard and the ceiling which looked pretty silly.  For now, it’s in our storage room, but I’m still investigating some other pieces.

Normally, we try not to buy things we don’t have a place for, but with such an amazing piece of art that we both love (which is hard enough since I am very picky and even harder to get my hubby on board) that was incredibly inexpensive, we thought we would break our rules.  The best part is that we still kept under our $30 budget!

Do you think we were crazy taking this huge piece home with us?  What crazy buy have you taken home because you just couldn’t pass it by?