Lightening things up

I mentioned a little over a year ago that my parents were getting their house ready to sell and had been foisting their unwanted stuff generously giving of their bountiful surplus to my brother and me. Well, they have sold their house and are now getting settled into their new condo. They seriously downsized, and the purging of excess household goods continues. Shortly before they moved, James and I spent a weekend at their house helping to pack. James and my brother took a couple truckloads of stuff to Goodwill, and to further lighten the load of things my parents would have to move into their new house, they sent us home with a carload as well. The above picture shows most of the haul on my guest bedroom floor. I'm still working on integrating some of these items into our home and off the floor, but a number of them are already earning their keep. Although, not the ones below.

This picture shows my dollhouse (obviously) and my set of encyclopedias (in the box). Yeah, those are still sitting exactly as pictured, and they are the flagship items for the things still sitting around. Most of them are books or toys. I don't have any children, so the toys are not really going to be actively used at this time. I need to get those boxed up and stored. And our bookcases are full right now. I won't mention how many we have, but suffice it to say, more bookcases aren't really an option. So we need to do some weeding of our books, which James has scheduled for when school lets out.

In the meantime, one of the items we are really enjoying is the lampshade. You may remember it as one of the few items from the first picture not packed in a canvas tote bag. (I love canvas tote bags. I use them constantly. My mom had a million at least a score of these, so I nabbed several.) I'd been wanting a lamp for our living room for quite a while, so I stopped at my favorite thrift store shortly after I brought the lampshade home and picked up this lamp for $2.99. I love it, and it's much cozier than the overhead light. I've found that lampshades with warm earth tones really help warm up the light from those energy-saving compact florescent light bulbs. I'm pretty keen on the retro vibe of the wooden lamp, too.