Vintage Tea Cup Terrarium

As I promised last post, here's what I did with those dollar succulents I picked up from the Melrose Trading Post last week.

So it all goes back to the last time I was visiting my parents in New Jersey, I promised to clean out their basement for them. In an old, dusty box, I found the dinnerware set that I grew up eating off of as a little kid:

I remember many a plate of spaghetti bolognese served on these plates on a Sunday night after Chinese school. Turns out this china is Myott/Staffordshire's discontinued Finlandia line, manufactured in 1982 in England.

As you may remember, it's the little old lady in me that can't turn up an old tea cup that was made in England, Japan, or basically anywhere but America or China (unless it's like, old China china). Sadly, cleaning means getting rid of stuff, so I donated the whole set to Big Brothers Big Sisters, in hope that someone will need a beautiful set of dishes to eat off of. In the meantime, there's such nostalgia for me when I look at the print...it's just such a gorgeous hue of blue on white.

I stared many hours at that sugar bowl on our breakfast table, and though my parents rarely used cream in their coffee or tea, we used it on nice occasions. As a kid, I remember thinking that cluster pattern on top looked like weird grapes. And it looks like I'm also not the only person who has an appreciation for this pattern. Blogger Anne Marie, who runs the site Thriftyamos.com did a whole post on how lovely the Myott Finlandia is...

From Thriftyamos.com

 And check out what seller Botanicalgems made for sale on Etsy from an original Myott tea set:

From Botanicalgems on Etsy.com

A pretty awesome jewelry holder!

Had I found that image before I donated all our dishes, I would've kept them and made my own jewelry dishes with them. Or at least sold them on eBay...looks like I could've fetched a couple hundred bucks at the going rate. D'oh!

But alas, old dishes must go, and actors must fly to Los Angeles with carry-on luggage, which means...I saved four pieces from charity. Yes, four of these tea cups were wrapped in underwear and sweaters and stuffed in my suitcase and flown across the country.

Not pictured above is the sugar bowl. Just looking at these makes me happy, but I rarely drink from teacups like that. So I decided to repurpose them in a way that I know all too well...

Just grabbed some basic potting soil and added some perlite...

...and mixed these suckers up, topped with some pretty white rock and sand.

Here's a close up of one of them, sitting pretty on my cluttered kitchen window sill.

I'll give a couple away as gifts and keep the other two so that I can think of my childhood while I do the dishes.

Flea Circus

Made it out to the Melrose Trading Post last weekend with my pal Cynthia, who was on the lookout for some cheap succulents.

My friend Kai calls it "looking at junk," but I can't resist browsing through all the fun antiques and oddities at the flea markets that pop up all over California on the weekends. Where else can you find a bunch of old typewriters upon which to write the Great American novel...

"It was the best of times; it was the blurst of times."

...mirrors you can turn into trays for your vanity table, or as I did from my Rose Bowl find, a liquor tray for our dining nook...

Just stare into your empty-eyed reflection as you swig the last of that vodka, you sad animal.

...and that Snoopy goodies jar from the 1980s your mom used to keep all the lollipops in?

Yum!

Plus you'll never know when a saddle will come in handy (complete with rope to lasso)...

Yee-haw!

...or when you'll decide to dig out your old Nintendo from your parents' basement and defeat the entire Legend of Zelda game.

Up up down down left right left right B A select start.

Here's King Triton's chest of mermaid jewels...

I consider myself a reasonable merman.

Ah yes. And the succulents. It's easy to forget what you came in for, since there are so many diversions.

Only a dollar each! What a total steal. I picked up a few and decided to gift them by planting them into some little terrariums. More on that in my next post!

Succulent Bites

Here's the only pic I have of our finished succulent centerpieces, which we used to decorate our dessert tables and the tables at cocktail hour.

The succulent plants were found for less than a buck each at the Rose Bowl, and you might recall these silver Indian goblets that I found at the Jewish Women's Council Thift Store for $1 each (along with the vintage books, which were also used to decorate our gift table).

Voila! I can't take credit for these...I left for a few hours to buy some candy, and by the time I came back my mom had planted all of these.

A $1 Treasure Hunt

Let's bring the party back to the words "Tea Party," shall we? I've always loved the look of vintage teacups repurposed as planters, so in an effort to keep costs down for wedding decor, I've embarked on a quest for teacups to use in lieu of vases for our bar and guestbook table centerpieces. Wedding flower arrangements can cost around $75-100 each, so you can imagine how that really starts to add up for 18 tables. Throw in the bar, the guestbook table, and cocktail tables to dress and you're running into the tens of thousands for flowers that'll die in a day.

And that's why I heart succulents -- they're hardy, adorable, they thrive on neglect, and people can take them home as favors. Check out the magic you can do:

Sold! A trip to the Melrose Trading Post, the outdoor antiques market that pops up every Sunday on Fairfax and Melrose Avenue, yielded a few cool picks for potential succulent containers. Melrose Trading Post is usually pretty hit or miss, more often than not landing on the "miss" side. But if you get there early enough, you can find some good treasures. With my innate Chinese bargaining skills, I got these for roughly $1 each. All were made either in England, the U.S., or Japan.

Made in England

These blue and white cups are by Pennsbury Pottery, which I didn't know about when I bought them--I just thought the etched blue designs were very cute and Americana-y. Turns out it's a Pennsylvania (Amish)-based company that produced lots of art pottery from 1950 until 1970, when the factory burned down. On eBay, some of their single mugs go for as much as $20 each.

These pretty Japanese teacups with gold designs were bargained down from $3 to $1.50 each for a set of five. The seller was a very nice Japanese lady who seemed happy to part with her wares. Maybe they're haunted.

Can anyone read the Japanese brand?

Emma and Pilsen are both amazed by my finds

After exhausting the Melrose Trading Post, I decided to check in an unlikely place: The Jewish Women's Council Thrift Shop, set right in the heart of Little Ethiopia down the street on Fairfax. A little digging and I found these gorgeous British espresso cups, and a few vintage books to use as stacked centerpiece elevation. These were also $1 each.

That's a Howe grade school reader up top, dated 1917 and stamped with students' names from the era. On Etsy, these are going for about $10 a piece. The second book down is totes appropriate for me: The Village Bride of Beverly Hills (it's not vintage, but it's very wedding-esque, right?)

A sneak peek into the Howe Reader:

Bob and Ella gonna meet Obama!

 I also picked up a 1918 copy of The Magnificent Ambersons, the Pulitzer-winning novel by Booth Tarkington, which was later adapted into a movie in 1942 by Orson Welles (and, I feel, probably influential in some way or the other on Wes Anderson's similarly titled The Royal Tenenbaums). A quick online search shows that 1st edition copies of this are going from $100-$450. Not sure which edition I got, but it's dated the year of publication and I got it for $1!

 Lastly, James Boswell's London Journal. A little snoreworthy, but pretty.

 As I was paying, I spotted these silver Indian goblets behind the counter.

They reminded me of this picture I'd pinned on Polyvore a few weeks ago:

So I snatched up those suckas for $1 each. They can make cute decorative touches for our dessert table as well. (Did I mention we're having a dessert table?!)

Here's my attempt #1. I just used succulent cuttings from my garden, but I think if I get smaller, cuter, stubbier ones they'll work juuuuust fine.