second hand saturdays

welcome to a new feature here on the blog where i spotlight recent thrifted or free finds!

 usually these are small items...plates or candlesticks for cake stands, jewelry to be repurposed, a skirt or sweater. but today, for the inaugural post of second hand saturdays, here's my most recent & most beautiful acquisition!

this beautiful hutch showed up on freecycle a few weeks ago. i just happened to be sitting in front of the computer when the email arrived. usually the good items like this go before i have a chance to ask hubby if he wants to haul it back to our house and send an email. on this day i decided not to wait and just sent the email immediately.

 i was the first response!! never happens. never. i could be the first person on a bag of cat food or some used coloring books but never something as pretty as this hutch! i arranged for some heavy lifting help for hubby and this little beauty made it home! it is now sitting in the corner of our dining room filled with linens, china and cookbooks. can't wait to see where it will live in our new home!

why i love freecycle. reason #234

freecycle is a wonderful thing. for those of you who don't know, it's like craigslist. people have things they don't want anymore, but the beauty of freecycle is...everything is free! the whole point is to keep things out of landfills so people are recycling by giving things away..hence free-cycle! a lot of the stuff people post is pretty useless, like they've cleaned out their junk drawer and feel guilty throwing away one rubber glove or their kids' half used coloring book, but occasionally we get something awesome! recent big ticket items include: maddie's kennel, a poker table top, some skis (she said they were cross-country, ended up being downhill...we'll probably give them away), a giant bag of vintage embroidery supplies, quilting magazines, knitting patterns and my current favorite: 3 kitchen chairs!

when we moved into the house my mom bought us two nice crate & barrel kitchen chairs. they are wonderful when it's just us, but when we have people over- which i LOVE to do- we have a problem. there was a world market going out of business near us and i bought two wooden folding chairs and painted them green...but they have a weight limit. yes. a sticker on the bottom said "weight limit: 145 pounds"--that's not helpful for having company. so a woman on freecycle was giving away 3 wooden kitchen chairs that need a little love and i jumped on it. hooray! now we will be able to seat 5 people without asking how much they weigh! i'll post pictures of the before and after as soon as we get them out of the car (where they've been sitting for almost a week)