French Vintage Friday – Unexpected Vintage Decor Items

It’s no secret that I’m in love with vintage and antiques. The older the better so long as we aren’t talking about me!

You may have already seen some of my vintage style applia nces for my kitchen and of course I have all sorts of great vintage treasures that I love to display in my open cabinets and my new coffee nook.

Getting creative with some of the things I have and display in my kitchen is something I really like to do though. Like the knife block I made out of old books….. (please don’t message me about the possible issues of using books to put knives in. I did not use highly valuable old books….and yes, I wash my knives before I use them and no I don’t put them back in the books when they are at all wet or damp! I’ve heard it all before :-))

But what I really wanted to share with you today is something I put in my new coffee nook when I styled it for fall.

Do you see it?

Maybe you need to get a little bit closer.

How about now?

Not sure?

See that lovely old mustard colored cookbook up on the very top shelf there? I found that on a recent thrifting mission and was so charmed but it that I snapped it up. It isn’t all that old, no date inside but based on the colors and photos I believe it to be from the early 70’s. BUT inside was this handwritten recipe that had clearly seen a LOT of use and been well loved (yes, I framed it) and while flipping through the recipe book I found the cutest pages.

There were 3-4 pages of the cutest pictures of all sorts of cooking and baking items and what they are and then it went into an explanation of what you would use them for. It was all sorted according to Cooking, versus Baking, Utensils, Prep Items and so on. It was too cute to leave in the book and not ever enjoy so I carefully removed 2 of my favorite pages and framed them to display on these open shelves.

It goes into all sorts of details about what time you should start preparing a specific type of meal if you want to serve it at a specific time and what order to prepare everything for that meal too. I mean, doesn’t that take you back to the good old days?

I’m talking about before my time, of course!

Want another look?

Oh good! Me too.

The frames I have them in were actually purchased from Dollar Tree (gasp! Yes, you read that correctly) and were little mirrors. They were originally black but I liked the details so I used my trusty Rub ‘n’ Buff on them and I use them to frame neat vintage prints or old recipe book pages rather than as a mirror. I kept the mirror piece in them behind the print as a solid backing.

If you have open shelves or spaces in your kitchen to display some things try to think outside the box. Think of pages or prints or recipes you could frame. Maybe a really neat item you could frame or put in a shadow box. That always makes a very ordinary item look super special!

Until next time….