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Cottage

Lamp lament

November 7, 2012

I took a little heat from a family member last week (just a tiny little bit) when I said on the blog that I don’t do placeholders. It was in reference to the vintage botanical charts I recently hung in the kitchen, which I was so thrilled to have hanging there because that wall was empty for about three years while I searched for the perfect thing. I was more content to have it sit empty than to fill it with something I didn’t really love.

I did couch my opinion on placeholders a little by saying I didn’t like to buy placeholders, thereby giving myself a pass on placeholders that I already own.

There is one place in the house that has had a placeholder in use for 10 years. Yep, since the day we bought the house.

When we bought the house it was total chaos. The seller had decided she didn’t really want to sell and tried to get out of the contract (I think because we offered the full asking price the day it went on the market she realized that maybe this place, which she was using as a rarely visited second home, might be something special). We knew it was our dream house and played a bit tough with her, making it clear that we were going to fight to keep it. Anyway, she was heartbroken about it (which I understand) so she sort of dragged her feet on actually moving out). So on the day we closed at 9 a.m., our real estate agent called us at 10:30 a.m. to warn us not to even come out because her moving truck hadn’t even showed up yet. Um, what then? We waited around until 1 p.m. and then we HAD to start moving. It was a Monday and we had one day off of work to move, not to mention our family had taken time off of work as well. So we were moving our stuff in the basement door while she moved her stuff out the front door. It got confusing. And she ran out of room in the moving truck. So we inherited a lot of her stuff.

Hideously ugly lamp that’s been sitting there for 10 years.

One of those things was a table lamp that I remember thinking was one of the uglier lamps I’d ever seen. But since we had no table lamp, it worked fine next to the sofa until I could find something else. It was a spot we really needed a lamp in, so it would do.

I’ll just pause here to mention that I hate lamp shopping. I think most lamps are horribly overpriced and way too trendy. I think stylists must feel the same way, because if you look closely, the styled spaces you see in magazines or on Houzz.com rarely don’t have table lamps where you would expect to find them.

I was so excited when I saw the lamp that was included in Nate Berkus’ Target collection. It was close to what I was looking for, and at $40 for the lamp plus a shade, it was in my price range. And I actually stayed up to midnight so I could buy it online as soon as they offered it on the website. To be honest, I stayed up until 1:30 a.m., which is when I woke up on the couch and remembered to order it before stumbling to bed.

I guess I was so excited about it that I never really read the description. I thought the lamp was a light-to-medium toned wood. Turns out it was metal painted gold. Oh I know, gold is all the rage all of a sudden. Maybe I’m slow to embrace trends (or if you’re in the camp that believes gold is classic and never was out of style, maybe I’m just lame), but I’m having a hard time loving gold. Antique brass I can do, but gold, not so much. (Speaking of that, I think I might actually be hitting the trend at exactly the right time because we’re trying to replace all of our very heavy, well made solid SHINY brass doorknobs with antique knobs).

Nate Berkus lamp from Target … still not quite right. I think it’s safe to assume that no styling occurred prior to the taking of this photograph. Just keepin’ it real, folks!

Other than the gold, I liked the lamp. I’m also really, really sick of looking for lamps. I mean, it’s been a decade! So for a second there, I actually thought about breaking my placeholder rule and keep that Nate Berkus lamp. After all, it’s way better than what was there before. But I knew I’d still be looking for the right lamp and then I’d have to add the (albeit reasonable) cost of the Target lamp to the cost of the new lamp and I’d have spent more than I wanted to. So I packed it up and took it back.

And then I stuck that ugly old lamp back on the table. The search continues. What do you do when you can’t find the right thing for a room? Settle on something else and learn to love it, or wait until you find the perfect thing?

P.S.: Bonnie & Bell, which teamed up with me to give away the fabulous vintage botanical chart (you can still enter if you haven’t already), is offering 15% off everything in their Etsy shop TODAY ONLY with the code 15WIN. So if you had your eye on something over there snatch it up now while you can!

lamp living room
by Erin @ The Impatient Gardener 
4 Comments

About Erin @ The Impatient Gardener

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previous post: Vintage botanical chart giveaway
next post: Step away from the chair

Comments

  1. Michelle says: November 7, 2012 at 10:59 pm

    I wait until I find the right piece, but I do use placeholders I already own. I can wait years for just the right thing, plus I sell things if I decide to change them.

    Reply
    • Erin Schanen says: November 9, 2012 at 6:07 pm

      I always seem to forget about the selling option, although I will admit I have a pile of stuff in the basement that I've been meaning to put on Craigslist or eBay for at least two years.

      Reply
  2. Heather @ new house, new home, new life says: November 8, 2012 at 12:26 pm

    The placeholder couch in the family room bugs me every day – I hate the way the cushion/arms sag. It's inherited from my husband's ex-wife as she didn't want it when they split up. But sometimes a placeholder is better than an empty space – my husband would hate to have to sit on the floor to watch tv (lol).

    As for the Nate Berkus lamp – if you haven't returned it, why don't you spray paint it the oiled bronze look you wanted? For that price, it's a nice lamp. I agree with you about lamp shopping – expensive and tiresome.

    Reply
    • Erin Schanen says: November 9, 2012 at 6:07 pm

      You're right, Heather. Sometimes you have to have SOMETHING, even if it's not the right thing.

      Reply

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The Impatient Gardener

Do you love gardening? Me too! I'm Erin and I garden in Southeastern Wisconsin, zone 5. The Impatient Gardener is all about real-life gardening: the good parts, the bad bits and even the funny stuff. It's part information, part inspiration and a little bit commiseration. Thanks for visiting.

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Erin Schanen 🌿 The Impatient Gardener
I fell in love with gardening through container de I fell in love with gardening through container design and it’s probably still my favorite type of gardening. My trip to Philadelphia area gardens was full of so many excellent ideas. For several years I’ve been enamored with clustered pots, but in my opinion they work best when they are able to stand alone in a space. And you probably know me well enough by now to know that as far as I’m concerned, the bigger the pot, the better. Feast your eyes on these beauties and use your zooming fingers to really get into those nooks and crannies. 

Don’t forget to save your favorites because you know you’re going to be looking for them come next spring. 😀

Photos 1 & 2: Amazing container cluster at @longwoodgardens  that works particularly well because of the restraint used in the design. Also how many different ways is the universe going to tell me I need to grow agave before I actually listen?

Photo 3: This was probably favorite display I saw the whole time and of course it’s from the masters at @chanticleergarden This is a master class in texture. It’s also probably not attainable for the average home gardener because it relies heavily on tropicals that need proper overwintering in order to reach a good size. But there’s no reason why I (or you) couldn’t use this as inspiration to create a similar feel with other plants. 

Photo 4: Strappy foliage, bright orange and colorful pots create such a good doorway collection at @chanticleergarden 

Photo 5, 6 & 7: Similar colors were used at a patio doorway at Steve and Ann Hutton’s Owl Creek Farm home garden. A pot is perfectly framed by an arbor off a side patio. The front entrance has a pink theme (and an amazing feature pot that I couldn’t show here because all my shots are vertical). 

Photo 8: Back to @chanticleergarden where I could have studied this container planting for an hour just to soak up all the detail. 

Photo 9: And while I love a pot with a lot going on, never underestimate the power of a simply planted, gorgeous pot, like this one at @abunting64 garden Belvidere. 

#gbfling2023
I think every garden probably needs a little bit o I think every garden probably needs a little bit of water, even if it’s just a bird bath. All of the fabulous gardens I saw recently in the Philadelphia area incorporated water into them. Here are just a few examples of how lovely these water features were. 

@paxsonhillfarm @northviewgarden @brandywinecottage @longwoodgardens #gbfling2023
Gardens must have places to relax and enjoy the vi Gardens must have places to relax and enjoy the view even though we all know that most of us rarely take the opportunity to use them. The seating I saw in gardens in the Philadelphia area reflected their gardens and all were special. 

Make sure to share your favorite!

Photo 1:  I adored these perfectly lichen-covered chairs at @brandywinecottage

Photo 2: Great lichen game on this bench at Wayne Guymon’s mind-blowing garden WynEden. 

Photo 3: Perhaps my favorite seating moment of the whole trip was this chair in @jennyrosecarey @northviewgarden . Not only was it perfectly lichen covered (are you sensing a theme here?) but a volunteer cleome was growing right up through the middle of it. Unfortunately this photo of it isn’t grata because by this point in the trip my phone (I didn’t want to use my DSLR in the middle of the tropical storm so I switched to my phone) was getting very grumpy about the rain. 

Photo 4: I’d be happy to hang out on these chairs in @abunting64 ‘s gorgeous garden Belvidere. I loved this space. 

Photo 5: Color was the name of the game on this patio at Steve and Ann Hutton’s Owl Creek Farm. 

Photo 6: The most original table and benches I saw were at @abunting64 garden. This was a portion of the garden that was actually on the neighbors’ property adjacent to Andrew’s. It had been a vegetable garden but is getting a bit too shady so it will soon have a new life. 

Photo 7: We visited Barbara Tiffany’s Mill Fleurs in a deluge, which is a shame, and dotted throughout the property are examples of her husband Tiff’s amazing furniture. This was, called the Centipede was upholstered and quite different from the others. All were amazing works of art. 

Photos 8 and 9: The @scott_arboretum at @swarthmorecollege had some excellent seating, from brand new @deebenarc chairs to more lichen-covered charmers.

#gbfling2023
*** I can already see that some people do not unde *** I can already see that some people do not understand humor so let me just say this: 1. I was fully aware of the escaped convict situation (I’m an avid follower of the news, which is common for us journalists). 2. It’s ok to laugh about the fact that I’ve missed the Longwood meadow twice through weird circumstances while being a rational adult and realizing that I’m not making light of the situation that led to the meadow being mown. ***

I missed seeing @longwoodgardens beautiful meadow the first time I visited so I was excited to see it the second time. Not so fast! Turns out it had to be mown down during the search for an escaped convict who was hiding out there (at least that’s what I was told was the reason for the mowing). He’ll never see goldenrod the same way again! 😀

That whole situation was really unfortunate for @longwoodgardens (not to mention everyone who lives in the area), which had to be closed for about a week while the hunt was on!
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