Window Shopping At Pottery Barn Outlet: a house log

First things first, we did a little spring cleaning so we have a fresh little header and a lighter-and-brighter site background up in hurr. Hope you folks enjoy it as much as we do. Update: if it looks wonky on your computer, try refreshing and then clearing your browser’s cache/cookies/data :)

Speaking of apologies, it is been way too long since our last window shopping adventure. As most of you know, these are not paid or perked or anything – we simply walk through a store with a camera and take photos of whatever inspires us for you folks. This post is in fact long overdue (woops) but now that I have uploaded the pics and sat down to write this post I am all excited again. See, we got to stop at the Pottery Barn Outlet in Georgia back when we were visiting Katie Bower (and meeting Weston for the first time) and it was full of good stuff. So let us take a spin around, shall we?

As soon as we walked in we saw this cute little heart chandelier for $14.99 (I bet you could make something similar with an embroidery hoop, fishing wire, and red construction paper (or felt). Heck, even a giant hula hoop could be the base if you hoped to dramatically up the scale!

This was a little $19 kids chair in pink that I thought was cute. Cannot you see it in a subdued space like a kitchen or an office for a pop of lively color?

These were $35 kids chairs that were a little more traditional and cottage-ish. They were pleasant and solid and certainly could slip into any space thanks to their neutral color. Would not they be lively with dipped legs in a bold color like red or turquoise?

This little red play kitchen was intensely charming, and it was marked down to $124 since the dial was missing. At first I thought that was steep (Clara’s play kitchen was $74 to make) but even places like Ikea charge $99 for their versions, and this one is extra cute thanks to the bright hue. And you could simply pop a kitchen timer from Anthropologie into that missing-dial-spot in the middle and it would be all better.

These $4.99 alligators charmed me to no end. They are the I-wish-I-had-picked up-one item of the day.

These giant chunky floor lamps were pricey (do not remember how much, but I remember my mouth falling open) but I think if you have some loot sitting around they’d be such excellent statements in a room. Kinda reminds me of something that would be on the set of Something’s Gotta Give or The Holiday (they have such fairly homes in those two movies).

These gleaming glass lamps were $49 each (and truly big and gourdy and fabulous) so I totally would have snatched them both up if we had a spot for them. Miss you my pretties!

This $49 pendant was strong too. Cannot you see it over a breakfast table or even in a bedroom? That long drop-rod would not work in our house unless it was over a table or a bed (eight foot ceilings mean things that you walk under cannot be that low) but it is fairly excellent for a space where you do not have to worry about clearance (like an entryway with a high ceiling or a breakfast nook).

These babies were $267 per chair (steeep!) but if money grew on trees I’d totally have left with a few of them. They felt especially chic and luxe with the mix of leather, wood, and that antique-looking hardware on them. They were like something Restoration Hardware would charge $500 for.

As usual, there were some lively rugs – and this time I fell for this bold red guy with a crisp white stripe. I was telling someone the other day that I consistently thought of red as a traditional color (you know how traditional homes in the 90’s all had a red walled study or a red walled dining room?) but my eyes have been opened to how excellent and modern and lively red can be. Long story long, I am a red convert and I wish I had a spot for that rug.

This dry erase calendar was around $40 I think, and it seemed like it could be fairly functional (and you could likely Hands-on something similar with a stencil or even with letter stickers from a craft store – especially since they sell dry erase paint now).

I thought this egg tray was cute for Easter. Picture it full of a ton of colorful freshly-dyed eggs as a centerpiece on the table.

The wish-we-had-room-in-the-car-for-this-item award goes to this $49 train table (well, there are four of them stacked in this picture). We brainstormed a few ways to squash it into the car with us, but we simply did not have the room. It was likely cheaper than buying the wood to make a solid wood train table yourself and the ridge around the edge would come in handy for so much more than trains (Clara already has a train board, but I think this would have made an excellent coffee table in the sunroom and Clara could play games and color on it without worrying that all the crayons and markers would roll off the edge).

This picture of the $35 wine barrel tray that we found does it is size no justice. It is LARGE! In short the size of the bottom of a wine barrel. It would be excellent on a large dining table with a few family-style dishes (like a giant bowl of pasta and crusty bread – mmm) sitting on it. Heck, you could even screw a lazy susan under it to create a monster barrel-looking lazy susan. Man now I wish we picked up this too.

This $49 basket was also large, and the large weave and the chunky handles were fairly cool. We have $30 Target baskets throughout our house for Clara’s toys, so $20 more per basket might be a bit much for us, but they sure were fairly.

And this $499 cabinet was certainly in the “aspirational” category. Can you imagine how organized you could be with all those shallow drawers? I’d use it to hold all of my art supplies and miscellaneous prints/drawings that I want to eventually frame.

Hope you folks liked that little virtual window shopping spree. It is lively to duck into distinct places every once in a while (we typically traipse through places like Target, World Market, Ikea, thrift stores, and smaller independent shops). What stores have you been ogling lately? Are there any Hands-on versions of things that you’ve seen in stores that you are getting ready to attempt like dipped chair legs, paper mobiles, or dry erase calendars?