More things I didn't buy, starting with wine bricks and ending with Teletubbies

I didn't buy these wine bricks for $3 apiece, but I totally would have if I could've come up with any reasonable place to put them on my ramshackle estate. I'd never heard of wine bricks, but I think it's a pretty brilliant idea. If you have someplace to put them. I saw this massive wine honeycomb at a very unusual midcentury house; the kind that always gets called "Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired" cuz they don't how else to explain it. In this case, the real estate jargon was actually kind of accurate.

I didn't buy any of this amateur art, made by a particularly prolific amateur artist, even though it made me sad to see it unwanted by the family (rule #37—that is never a good reason to buy anything!).

I did not buy this cute Swedish holiday wall hanging because it had an unpleasant brown stain on it, about the size of a quarter. In hindsight, I should've bought it and tried to actually implement the advice in one of my many Heloise books.

I didn't buy this terrifying Teletubbie head, and I'm pretty sure I don't have to explain why.

More things I didn't buy: George Bush edition

I didn't buy this cute owl needlepoint because it came too close on the heels of the Mother of All Owl Sales, where I didn't buy nearly as many owls as I probably should have. I'm owled out. No, I don't mean that. I love owls!

I didn't buy this fine example of amateur art: Portrait of the Young Rodent in his habitat. Is it a neutra? A groundhog? A prairie dog? Whatever he is, he's really swell. Why didn't I buy him?

I did not buy this George and Laura Bush calendar cuz, duh, it's from 2007!

Just another big-eyed Parisian street urchin

I bought this portrait of a big-eyed waif at one of those estate sales where I felt like I just had to get something or I'd be mired in regret. It was the estate of a former mayor of my number-one favorite thrifting neighborhood so it stood to reason that it would be jammed with treasure.

Well, it was good, but it wasn't that good. I succumbed to my twin weaknesses—paperbacks and board games—and then caved to yet another: amateur art. This portrait was one of a pair. The folks running the sale speculated that they were portraits of the mayor's children, painted by a street artist while they vacationed in Paris in the late ’60s. I don't know how accurate that tale is, but it's a good story so I'm sticking with it.

Some evidence supports it. You can't see very well from this cropped photo, but the artist incorporated strips of newspaper, Picasso/Braque-style, in the background, and the newspaper is a May 15, 1968 edition of Le Monde. The artist scrawled his illegible signature in black marker on the upper left corner and the word Paris on the right. The other portrait—the one I didn't buy after much hemming and hawing—was of a blonde boy depicted as a harlequin. As I type that sentence, I'm wondering why I didn't buy it. Doesn't that sound cool(ish)? Sigh. I hate to break up a set, but it just seemed like too much. I mean, the family didn't even want their own portraits, possibly the subjects themselves didn't want them and you'd think they had some pretty sweet memories of that trip (Paris in the ’60s? Le pant!). Why should I devote so much wall space to somebody else's kids?

But you gotta admit this one is pretty cute, in that Keane 1960s sad-eye way. Both my daughters claimed it for their respective rooms, and since they couldn't reach a compromise it ended up in the "formal" living room. By formal, I mean the living room without the TV so no one uses it (somehow the broken Telefunken isn't a big enough draw). Its days are definitely numbered, though—the spot is just too prominent. Maybe tomorrow will be the day that I score a more deserving piece of estate-sale art...

Things I didn't buy: Coke is not it

I did not buy this amateur painting, despite my soft spot for amateur art, because it's obviously too creepy, even for me. Also, this is just a detail of the work—the canvas covered an entire wall. That's a big commitment.

At this sale, an entire room was given over to Coke collectibles. I was there on day 2 so most of the bottles containing the original formula of Coke (not Coke Classic) and the short-lived New Coke were sold out, not that I would've bought any since my Coke-drinking is confined to the occasional Diet Coke on an airplane when the sad airplane coffee has left me with caffeine-withdrawal symptoms. Coke collectibles always depress me—it seems like the sort of collecting that's forced on someone rather than voluntarily pursued. Take, for example, that family member (i.e., your dad) who is impossible to buy gifts for. One day someone's like, Hey, Dad drinks Coke! Let's get him a deluxe limited edition Coca-Cola Uno set and a nine-foot-tall stuffed Coca-Cola-quaffing Polar bear and then there's no turning back. How many collections start out this way, I wonder.

I did not buy this rad Magnavox turntable/radio/record cabinet because Lindsay bought a similar Telefunken stereo cabinet eight years ago—a Telefunken that doesn't actually work but makes a fine surface area for displaying tchotchkes.

Thingummery reads

This week's (or maybe this month's—not sure how often I'll do this) random collection of links for fellow thrifters, bookworms and all-round clutter magnets:

The New York Times art critic likes random flea market paintings too

Taking typewriter nostalgia to the extreme

Are you a promiscuous reader?

An examination of the "rather dense and layered assemblages of ephemera" on the refrigerators of 21st century American families

Why didn't I road-trip to what must've been the best book auction ever?

(Un)happy Wednesday!

She looks like Wednesday from The Addams Family, right?

I bought this sterling example of Outsider Art—okay, we'll just call it amateur art unless I decide to sell it on ebay—at a revelatory sale tucked into a stuck-in-time enclave within one of my favorite midcentury hoods. I had no idea that a nondescript street off of a busy road would suddenly turn to dirt and wind up a vegetation-choked hill, with just a scattering of 1920s-era ramshackle houses, one of which even had the remains of a show-jumping ring in the front yard. Paradise! I love finding off-the-grid places like this still exist amid the strip malls, fast-food joints and KB Homes.

Not that I'm saying I'd want to live in this house, even though I dug its Chas Addams flavah, right down to the spectacular aviary—referred to as the "monkey cage"—in the middle of its multi-acre yard. Yikes—it was a total disaster. It didn't seem like the estate-sale company (a perfectly reputable one) even bothered trying to clean it up: it was jammed to the rafters and everything was coated with layers of dust/dirt/grime. Not for the squeamish estate saler. One of the former residents of the home was clearly a teacher (my favorite!) so I got piles of books and vintage teaching materials. (The cashier asked me the usual question: "Are you a teacher?" To which I gave my usual answer: "No, I'm just crazy.") On my way out, I found this painting teetering on a pile atop the piano. She's a cross between Wednesday and a Keene painting, though this is not a Keene painting—it's signed Robertson and dated 1963. Thinking I might sell it at my nonexistent antiques mall stall or etsy shoppe, I put it in the garage but then brought it out for Halloween display. Six months later, she still graces the picture rail in the dining room. Funny thing about those picture rails—the idea is that they give you the chance to rotate your art without putting holes in the wall. But I just end up finding new ways to squeeze another picture onto the rail without taking anything away. I'm certain that's a metaphor for something.