Lovely Sunday with a cherry on top

Sunday was so nice - a friend suggested after church that we check out the Indie Craft Revolution, at the Mad Art Gallery in Soulard.  I was all for that, for a number of reasons, so we went, and had such a nice time.  With pretty piles of clouds in the sky and the smell of the brewery infusing everything, we got to check out the gorgeous 1930s police station that Mad Art is housed in:

The only pic I remembered to take - Melanie in Craft Jail.
I definitely have to go back to get pics of the building, for real!

We met a crafter who does gorgeous pottery who it just so happens goes to our church, saw all sorts of clever crafts, watched my friend Todd fall in love with and buy "for his wife" an adorable sleepy-eyed plushy creature and saw the completely lovely vintage-boutique-trailer that a local St. Louis vintage seller/blogger rolled out for the first time this weekend.  And I bought a rock. Actually, I pawed and inspected a bunch of rocks before buying one.  I can't help it.  I have a thing for rocks, as this shot of my kitchen windowsill suggests:

My bathroom sink houses even more of them :) 

So when I saw a table covered in fist to softball sized rocks cut in perfect slices with little rubbery feet added to each slice to make a natural, sculptural, puzzle-y set of stone coasters, I was entrigued.  Here's a shot of one, from his website,  http://www.stonesters.com:

Check out the website if you're at all interested.  I love them - each one a unique collaboration between the crafter and the creator.  Reminds me of a hero of mine, Andy Goldsworthy.  Here are a couple of his art/nature collaborations:

From:  http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/goldsworthy.html# 

From:  http://thinkorthwim.com/2010/02/17/andy-goldsworthy/ 

So I couldn't help myself.  I bought a rock for my Dad for his birthday.  And I think he even likes it.

When we'd finished perusing the craft show, we went looking for an estate sale I'd heard about in the same general neighborhood.  We found it (Yay!), but it had ended (rats!).  But wait, there were people lined up outside the door still (huh?).  So we went to check it out, and there was a sign on the door that said the sale had ended about 20 minutes before, but in 10 minutes they would be re-opening the doors, and anything that they gave the ok on, you could have it.  For free (my favorite price - YAY!).

If we had had a big truck or something, we'd have snatched up so much stuff!  But even without it, we scored pretty big!  Melanie got 4 nice old wooden chairs for her dining table and Todd and Beth got 8 or 10 awesome stack-able molded plastic-seated chairs in a range of mid-century colors that were filthy but nifty, and I got two vintage suitcases, a very cool sort of depression-era outsider-art looking mirror, and this thing:

A little chicken house?  Rabbit, maybe? Sorry about the slant, it was wedged in
between the legs of a chair.

It's amazing and rustic and clearly improvised.  Do you see the two totally different hinges on the little door?  And the metal roof?  If you look inside and up, you can see that it was once an old sign.  

And here's a slightly better shot of the chairs, with one of the old suitcases I picked up visible as well:

There were, I believe, 4 different colors of the chairs, all in this sort of robot-y stacking shape.

Do you see the tag laying there?  They were practically giving these chairs away to begin with at $5.00 apiece, but we're such accidental pros that they got them completely free!  But I feel like I made an even bigger steal, since the chicken house thingy (did I mention it has a handle on top?) was marked $75.00, and nobody stopped me from walking out with it for nothing!

Free stuff - the cherry on top of a nearly perfect Sunday!  How about you?  Any treasures lately?  

I'm sharing my treasures in these link-ups again this week:

Her Library Adventures Flea Market Finds, Me and My Shadow's Magpie Mondays, Cap Creations Thrifty Love Link Party, and Beez Rental Design's Frugal Treasures Tuesday and Apron Thrift Girl's Thrift Share Monday (welcome back!).  Go check them out!

And also, if you haven't yet, go Like http://www.facebook.com/2ndhandMoon, where I'll post regular updates and pics from the booth and where first news of deals, sales and events will go!

Free to a good home: a big idea!

Thrifty folks with database and coding skills, take note!  I finally came up with a really good idea that's probably worth money.  It may well already exist out there, but I haven't found it yet, and because I do not have the necessary skills, and am entirely too clueless and lazy to track down people who do and make it happen, I am offering this brilliant idea up to anybody who might be clever enough to implement it, free of charge!  How's that for a bargain?  All I ask is, if you make it happen, let me know?  I wanna see it So Bad!

 So here's the idea, somewhat inspired by sites like Pandora and Netflix and others that use algorithms to "learn" your tastes and recommend things that you would like.   But this one is for my favorite thing:  Road trips!

Essentially, you start with a map.  With sites like Netflix, the more items a user rates, the more the site learns about the user's tastes, and the better it gets at recommending content, but the actual items being rated are a part of a pre-existing database.  In this case my thought is that users create the content, to a large extent.  A basic database of obvious places would exist to start, like museums and hotels and restaurants and major tourist attractions, music venues, hiking trails, architectural marvels, amusement parks and the like.  Users would start with areas they know well and start tagging, rating and reviewing places in the various categories.  But they could also add places within categories that the system doesn't already know about, and add categories too, which would grow the database further if something they want to tag doesn't fit an existing category.  As users in various places tag their maps, the system learns about the sites they tag, growing it's knowledge base and learning what each individual user likes and why.  Then, when you're ready for a road trip, you can check your destination on the map and get suggestions not only for where you might like to stay and eat and what you might like to see and do there, but also what route would take you near other things you would enjoy along the way, complete with descriptions and reviews by people who have similar tastes to you.  And if you were feeling adventurous and didn't have a specific destination in mind, you could even ask the site to suggest, based on your tastes, a customized road trip just for you!  How brilliant is that??  Not to mention it could help you skip places that would not appeal to you, so you save some money!

I admit that I'm not sure I'd use the site, if it existed, because I like the surprise of the random road trip.  Stumbling across things I didn't know existed gives me such a rush of discovery; I'd hate to lose that.  But I could totally see myself tagging, rating and reviewing places.  It would be a fun way to commemorate your road trips and share your discoveries with other people.  And I could definitely see myself poring over far-away places that I may never get to visit, experiencing them vicariously through other people's reviews.  

Oh, and just for fun, I've got suggestions for what to name the site, because that's the only part I actually could do myself!  How about Meander?  Or Wanderlike?  Or, inspired by the late great Yogi Berra, something like this?:

Cute, right?  See a fork in da road?  Take it!

And now all I can think about is wandering off down the road to see what I can see!  Wanna go?

My good friend Hank HeadRoom (the Chevy HHR)  on my most recent wander.

Cheapskates' Paradise, part deux!

You might recall a few weeks ago I wrote about how Kiplinger's website named my own St. Louis #1 in their list of the 10 best cities for cheapskates.

At the time I waxed on about how awesome it was growing up in St Louis, where you don't have to have a lot of money to enjoy culture, science and the arts.  But due to my perhaps overzealous enthusiasm for the subject, I only managed to give details on the fabulous, free St Louis Zoo before my post got out of hand.  So I thought maybe it would be worth revisiting the issue to tell you all about other great things you can do in St. Louis on the cheap.  So since I started with the Zoo, there's no point going farther than right up the hill, still in Forest Park.  Folks, I give you the St. Louis Art Museum:

Picture courtesy of ArtKnowledgeNews.com

As you can read in the caption included in the above picture, we are once again in 1904 World's Fair territory with this building.  An altered photo, but a better view of the architecture, by Bill Haack at flickrhivemind.net:

See Saint Louis (Louis IX of France) on his trusty steed guarding the entrance there?  Good man!

A new addition to the museum, designed by David Chipperfield, is almost finished (on the outside.  Interior work is still to come), and is scheduled to open next year:

Artistic rendering courtesy of  e-architect.co.uk.

This new addition will allow the museum to keep more of its well over 30,000 works of art on display.  That figure includes everything from ancient Greek, Egyptian, and Byzantine pieces to  precolumbian Native American art to the Americana of George Caleb Bingham to the best collection of 20th century German artist Max Beckmann's work anywhere, to brilliant contemporary artists, photography, design and decorative arts.  I believe I shared with you here about one of my favorite pieces already, 17th century Spanish painter Francisco de Zurbarán's St Francis Contemplating a Skull:

A few other of my favorites on display at the St. Louis Art Museum:

Sadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion, John Martin, 1812

One of Degas' "Little Dancer" bronzes

Van Gogh's beautiful "Stairway at Auvers".

 I love Van Gogh.  Partially because of the color and texture and intense life of his work, partially because of the heartbreaking story of his life and art and death, partly because of his self portraits with his gentle, sad eyes and partly, I fully admit, because of Richard Curtis, Tony Curran and Bill Nighy and the beautifully touching job that Doctor Who did with him in "Vincent and the Doctor".  

The above painting dates to July, 1890.  His tragic, still debated death came that same month, which makes it extra poignant.

You can see all of this and so, so much more at the St. Louis Art Museum, and you can see it for free!  That's right, like the St. Louis Zoo, the Art Museum is part of the Metropolitan Zoological Park and Museum District, a tax district which provides subsidies to help keep certain cultural institutions available to all, regardless of their financial status.  In fact, above the entrance is the inscription "Dedicated to Art, and Free to All", a motto that was emblazoned on a t-shirt I got my senior year in high school when I got a museum membership as a gift.  I stopped wearing it in college after meeting a guy named Art I wasn't particularly fond of.  Not sure what happened to it after that!

Anyway, with the World's Fair-built building being nearly as beautiful as it's varied contents, the warren of galleries can be fun to wander without direction, allowing for a surprise around every corner.  That in and of itself can provide hours of completely free fun (donations accepted), but wait, there's more!  The museum is situated in Forest Park, atop what's known as "Art Hill", a fairly steep hill leading from the museum down to a reflecting pool with fountains, providing gorgeous views and plenty of lawn for your picnic.  If you feel like spending a little money, rowboats and paddle boats can be rented at the nearby Boat House, where there is also a lovely restaurant alternative to your picnic.  In the winter, bring your own sled and more hours of free entertainment can be had.  Sledding on Art Hill is as much an institution as the museum itself, and most of the population of the city can tell you stories of fun times had speeding down that hill.

Better than cheap

So last night I had high hopes of finally procuring the elusive Tall Skinny Shelf for a price even better than cheap.  It's Spring Cleaning time here in the 'Lou, and Big Trash Day (week) to boot, and I thought I had spotted the shelf in a garage that was getting cleaned out for what I assumed was the bulk trash pickup, but when I went back by there last night, it was only the dumpster stuffed to the gills.  Possibly with great stuff, but most certainly not with a Tall Skinny Shelf, so I moved on, and can I just say that I drove around for about an hour up and down various alleys in my fair city, and WOW are St. Louisans cleaning house.  I saw at least a dozen couches, chairs, ottomans (ottomen?), patio furniture, TVs, computer monitors, a Little Tykes playhouse and picnic table, doors, windows, various bits of lumber, a really lovely small buffet that I tried in vain to stuff in the back of Chester, and all sorts of short fat shelves, entertainment centers, etc.  Here's what ended up coming home with me:

A mysteriously home made not-quite-ladder, the chair I mentioned yesterday,
a long skinny shelf since I couldn't find a tall skinny one, and a child-sized chair, plus...

Don't forget the disco ball!

This child-sized chair is missing a spindle in the seat back, and the paint is chipping all over.

Can't you just imagine a backyard tea party, all scabby knee'd kids in grass-stained dressups with half-broken chairs and chippy tea cups and a patchworked tablecloth and probably a sheet-fort built under a big old tree.  Man childhood was cool, wasn't it?

Detail on the weird not-ladder.

Can you see how the 2x4 crosspieces were sort of carved into notches and stuck into matching holes on the side pieces?  And the whole thing is oddly painted silver.  I have no idea why I picked it up, but I am determined to figure out some way that it's totally useful in the booth eventually.

And another shot of the disco ball because, let's face it - that's just cool.

The long skinny white shelf in the first picture that is sadly not a Tall Skinny Shelf is coming with me to the booth tomorrow, along with lots of little tchotchkes to display upon it.

Can you believe I picked up all that for a whopping zero dollars?  

I love Big Trash Day!

Oh, and it's Monday night!  Don't forget to check out everyone's great finds at Apron Thrift Girl's Thrift Share Monday!  I'm going to try joining up here this week as well:

Me and my Shadow's Magpie Mondays