Fresh Find: Vintage Eyeball Arc Lamps (For Sale)

 As I have explained before, mid century lighting holds a special place in my heart. Interior and exterior lighting from the 1950s and 1960s has always fascinated me and I enjoy whenever I come across authentic pieces. Mid century lighting/accessories are great way to accent a modern home and they help create a certain ambiance through their style and luminescence.

Fresh Find: Vintage Eames Soft Pad Executive Chair

Did I mention it has been a good week? First I found and bought that magnificent, mustard colored mid century chair and then I was also fortunate enough to pick up this vintage Eames Soft Pad Executive Chair by Herman Miller!

Fresh Find: Golden Mid Century Chair

It's been a nice week here for us here at Oh My Mod. We recently wrapped up our living room project (photos of the finished product coming in the next couple of days), the sun has been shining and we've also been lucky enough to snag a few great pieces to add to our home. While some of those pieces will be made available to the rest of you Oklahomans/Tulsans with a passion for mid century furniture and decor, the piece above will be staying right here with us. For now anyway...

Wrap It Up: The Perpetual Paper Dilemma of an Obsessive Compulsive

Here's the thing. Each year as we embark upon the laborious process of deciding what to get everyone for Christmas, we're confronted with not just one stage of terrible decisions, but two. First, what can we get our relatives that they would actually want? And two, what kind of paper will we wrap their present in?

Mid Century Themed Greeting Cards

Ahh yes, the holidays are upon us. We all love the holidays, right? It's that special time of year where moms, dads, husbands and wives scurry through the streets and shops searching for the must-have gift of the year so they can express their appreciation to friends, family members and general acquaintances. Good times for all, right? Well, almost all. The holiday season is also the time for procrastinators such as myself drive to ourselves mad by putting these heartfelt decisions off until "tomorrow". This undoubtedly leads to excessive amounts of stress, indecision and in some cases loss of hair and/or appetite. As you might expect, I am once again tip-toeing the line of procrastination on another fairly common holiday task. What might that be you ask? Well I'm talking about greeting cards of course.

Deck the Halls

Remember when we said it would be another week before we'd do anything in the living room? Well, we totally lied. With Christmas quickly approaching, I decided the floors are dry enough to put up our wonderfully pre-lit and easy-to-assemble tree. No worries, we put down a dish towel under the tree stand to make sure no painted concrete was harmed in the process. Our little horned owl kept watch and made sure everything was done in a super-cautious manner. Also, we won't share picks quite yet, but we may or may not have laid down some of our carpet tiles to get a feel how they will look (and then promptly picked them back up to avoid damaging the not-quite-yet-cured concrete). Our thoughts? They're going to look awesome.

Color Story

We're officially terrible bloggers. In fact, we're so terrible, we're just now posting about something that happened almost two months ago. Remember long, long ago when we said we had plans for changing the living room color? Well, it's been done - in fact, it was my birthday present to myself. Literally. I woke up and said, "L, we're painting the living room today and it's happening because it's my birthday and we do what I say on my birthday." Mind you, it wasn't really a "today" type task - a 15x30 room with 11' ceilings does not make for a simple task. Achieving a cleaner, more modern living area with such a large space can be tough. But, as the pic illustrates, we decided a good place to start was by opting for a more stark palette to simplify things.

Fresh Find: Mid Century Tambour

Oh how I love when things seem to present themselves out of no where to me. This is especially true in the case of this mid century chest complete with a tambour front. I haven't been able to find any distinguishing marks on the chest to determine its maker, but have been searching online for chests with similar traits so I can get a better idea about its history. Until then, I am quite happy to sit back and enjoy the beauty of this chest in our living room.

Any of you MODerators have any insight on this piece?

Fresh Find: Basic-Witz High Boy

So it's been a bit of a highboy heavy month here at Oh My Mod. After finding and rejuvenating a Danish inspired chest of drawers, we came across a great deal on yet another highboy that was in pristine condition. I'm never one to shy away from a great deal so I loaded this one up too.

Fresh Find: Danish High Boy

We realize we have been absent for quite some time and for that we apologize. However, the break in communication doesn't mean that we haven't been up to anything. No sir, that is most certainly not the case.

Fresh Find: Herman Miller Shell Bases and Shell

We've mentioned in recent posts that things have been rather hectic for us lately. Between work and deciding on how to handle certain momentous house projects (not the fun kind), we haven't been able to spend as much time on the blog as we would like. The lack of time obviously limited our ability to work on existing projects and search for pieces that would benefit us or other mid century furniture and design lovers. The latter meaning that there has been no time for garage sales, estate sales or Craigslist. Until today.

Guest Post: Yes, but where are the kangaroos?

When we first started our blog an ingenious friend suggested that we ask people to write guest posts periodically. Since all of our friends are complete slackers, though, one of them has just now gotten around to actually taking us up on the offer. However, as I think you'll see, the wait may just have been worth it. L and I are psyched to present to you our friend Derek's thoughts on the perils of packing and the ridiculous amounts of things that we not only accumulate in the first place, but also insist upon dragging everywhere with us and keeping for forever and ever. L and I went through this when we moved to Edinburgh three years ago and again when we moved back to the states, so Derek's words are laughably similar to our own experiences. While we had managed to downsize our possessions significantly out of sheer necessity (stupid airlines and their baggage limitations), we've somehow managed to accumulate enough things over the past two years to make us think our 1,800 square feet house isn't quite big enough anymore. And this is from two people who had been living in less than 500 square feet with room for gymnastics. So, with that said, we hope you enjoy Derek's musings. He's planning on blogging throughout his year in Austria (or is it Australia?), so if he says anything noteworthy, we may see if we can pirate it as our own thoughts. Ha!

A Succulent Kind of Summer

As we work through our backlog of non-reported activities, we thought we'd share a quick post on Round One: Battle Heat and Drought.

Getting Back on Track

As I'm sure you can tell, we've been failing miserably at blogging lately. Between the resurgence of summer heat (which has finally broken again) and the effects of some crazy storms on our fence, trees, and roof, we've been swamped. Needless to say, these past few weeks have been full of unwanted surprises and projects, all of which drained our creative appetite (and budget). But, since fall is (maybe) finally here, we're trying to get back on the blogging track and on the path toward some other projects we've been pondering and planning.

Modern Meets Western

As we hinted in our earlier post, this weekend was particularly kind to us on the "finding awesome stuff for next to nothing" front. In fact, my most exciting take home was free! As a country girl at heart (a result of growing up in the middle of nowhere and, as my sisters and husband will tell you, playing in the mud), I have a soft spot for mixing modern touches with western items. So for the past two years I've been itching to find a cowhide rug and set of horns that we could mix in with our mid century decor. We almost sprung for a rug earlier this spring, but decided that we should wait until we can pull up the carpet and replace it with stained concrete or wood (the thought being that a cowhide rug wouldn't be nearly as exciting on top of our cheap carpet). We've also spotted a few sets of horns in junk shops throughout Tulsa, but with price tags of over $70 for a tiny set I just hadn't found anything that I felt was worth my money.

Fresh Find: Out of the Blue

Over the past two years, we've been lucky enough to furnish our home with a combination of new and used furniture that fits our style and budget. The countless hours spent combing through junk stores, garage sales, online ads and retailers have served us well. So well in fact that we rarely spend time looking for or at anything very large because we don't really have the need for those things any longer. But as we learned this weekend, not having a need for something doesn't mean you turn it away when it pops up out of the blue.

For the Birds

 

Literally. We've done shockingly little around the house lately, so we decided to take on a small project that we knew would be nearly impossible to not finish. Earlier this summer we happened upon a simple DIY project for modern glass globe bird feeders on The Art of Doing Stuff (via Curbly), which we both thought would be the perfect solution for our backyard bird menagerie. So when we spotted a white globe at our local thrift store for a mere 99 cents, we snatched it up, ran to Home Depot for a bit of rope, and headed home. 

Fresh Find: 1960s, Mid Century Lane Coffee Table

During a recent online hunt, I  came across a listing on Craigslist for a free coffee table. As you know, a listing with a title like this is nothing special in the world of online ads. They are a dime a dozen and generally are such a waste of time I almost never bother opening them. Notice I said almost.

Future Project: Modern Fencing

(Photo seen via Plastolux)

As I write this post, poor little Rylee is silently weeping at the fact that his most favorite element of our house -- the busted front fence and gate -- is on the hit list for DIY projects this summer/fall. As a perpetual jail breaker, Rylee has a sixth sense about when the gate hasn't been latched or when it could possibly have blown open. Seriously, if we happen to realize that the gate may be ajar, and we open the back door and shout, "Rylee!" he can tell by the tone of our voice that the gate is open and bolts furiously toward that side of the house. Needless to say, the sad state of our current front fence has led to countless darts down the street while yelling like a terrified parent. Because of this, we've been talking pretty much since we moved in about how we would love to rebuild the fence -- you know, because some lame pre-made panels just won't fit the bill at our residence.

Orb Lights: Coming Full Circle

As mentioned in my previous post about my Craiglist addiction, I have always loved the hanging, white orb light found in my Grandmother's home. When visiting her house, I always found the floating, glowing globe in her hallway to be a welcoming sight. I decided early on in my life that when the time came for me to purchase a house of my own, I would search out my own orb lights to remind me of the time spent with my Grandmother. 

I Love It When You Call Me Big Papa

Well, not really, because that would just be awkward. I will say, however, that L has some mean hip hop skills, with his talents especially excelling in the area of 90s rap. No lies. But in all seriousness -- since this blog is of upstanding intellectual quality -- I thought that I would continue this week's theme of "chairs" by talking a little bit about my absolute favorite of seating options: Hans Wegner's Papa Bear chair.

What Eames May Come.

Despite growing up in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere I've always had great appreciation for all things modern. Of course, I didn't even know what the term mid century modern even meant at the time, but I did know that I liked these things that were so different from my every day surroundings. In case you didn't know, Northwest Oklahoma isn't exactly a mid century modern mecca. Western decor, cowboy hats and trailer homes were plentiful in those parts. You'd have been hard pressed to come across something of the Eames variety very often, so when I did it always left an impression on me. Perhaps that is why I have always had such a fascination with the Eames lounge chair.

Inception: The Chairs that Started It All

While it may come as a surprise to some, and as I hinted at in our first post, L and I don't always share the same opinion when it comes to things like what to have for dinner, who should have to take out the trash, and, oh yeah, what type of house we should buy. As a short background, L and I were able to delay such momentous decisions as buying a house for a year by moving to Edinburgh, Scotland while I worked on my Masters degree (although I will say that flat hunting was equally painful). And when we finally made the move back to Oklahoma, there was a clear divide between our visions for our future home -- I was thinking something along the lines of a cute bungalow, and L, of course, was dying to live someplace like Tulsa's mid-century mecca, Lortondale. And as we began to search for houses, that divide continued to exist. That was, until we found the chairs.

Confessions of an Addict

For those of you who know me it should come as no surprise when I say that I have a little bit of an addiction. And try as I might, I just can't kick it. Hell, I'm not even sure I want to. It feels too good to give up. No, I'm not talking about your run of the mill drug addiction. I'm hooked on the hard stuff. Literally. I'm talking about furniture. More specifically mid century and danish inspired furniture. Eames, Herman Miller, Knoll, Heywood Wakefield, Bertoia, Saarinen and Pearsall all make me weak at the knees. And like most addicts, I'm constantly yearning for my next fix.

Stumped

This weekend was absorbed by a task that actually brings in money -- you know, rather than it just going out -- so house related activities were kept to a minimum. That is, however, except for a fairly exciting occurrence on Saturday. As you can see from the photo above, we were left with the remnants of the overgrown tree that blocked the front of the house after we tackled our big front yard re-do last summer (this photo was taken that day, so it's a little out-dated). While L managed to wield the chainsaw quite successfully to cut down the vast majority of the tree, we weren't able to get any closer due to the fact that the back flow system to our non-functioning sprinkler system was fairly close to the stumps. Adding to the stumpiness of our front yard was the remnants of a massive tree that apparently split and died several years before we moved in. We had contemplated tackling these projects last summer when our neighbor offered to go halvsies on a stump grinder, but we ended up never getting around to it.

Pipe Dreams

As homeowners for almost two years now, we've managed to slowly acquire those essential pieces of furniture that really help define a room -- whether it's our prized walnut dining chairs (more on those soon) picked up at a used furniture store and on Craigslist, or our $2 Burke tulip table found at an auction, we've managed to snag most of these pieces for ridiculously low to reasonable prices. What we haven't been successful at as of yet is shelving. We've planned and pondered, and even considered buying a set of mid century style book cases at Mod 50s one weekend, but we haven't been able to find a set that is both our style and in our price range (i.e. - free to $100). 

Cocktails and Crock Pots

If there's one thing that can be said for us Americans, it's that we love to find ways to make our lives easier. Case in point: the Crock Pot. What's better than a device that allows you to throw anything and everything in it, walk away, and then come back a few hours with a complete meal? Other than a Bloody Mary, not a whole lot. Since it's been approximately 120 degrees for a couple of weeks now, we've been looking for any excuse to pull out the old slow cooker, and the holiday weekend provided the perfect opportunity to try out a recipe for 40 Clove Garlic Chicken that we saw on Pinterest. Pair that with an ice cold cocktail and you can't go wrong.

Celebrate

The first of many photos commemorating the holiday weekend. Stay safe and cool my friends.

Hello, Hello

Welcome to the much pondered, much promised, and much prolonged blog of our only slightly interesting lives. For those of you who know us, the idea of a blog on our fabulously wonderful mid century house, insanely good taste, and general awesomeness has been batted around for quite some time. For those of you who don’t know us, “we” would be me, K, with the “he” in “we” being L.