Chandelier

I love, love LOVE my chandelier. 

What I love most about it, besides how fabulous it is, is that I found it on the side of the road. 

Yep. This might just be the reason that I keep pulling over to piles of junk today. 

About seven years ago, I was preparing to open my photography studio. This happened to be about the same time that I really started to hone in on my love of all things shabby & beautiful. I decided I wanted just that kind of comfy, vintage feel for my studio. And the perfect chandelier was a must. 

I scoured craigslist, the internet, local shops but couldn't find what I was looking for at the price I was looking for (which was next to nothing). Then one day I was driving home and happened to see a pile of stuff on the opposite side of the road - in which there was a divider, therefore forcing me to continue driving for about a mile until I could turn around and go back to explore. 

What originally caught my eye was a snazzy little wooden table that was buried in cardboard boxes. I stopped and as cars whizzed by me I began to move the boxes off the table when I heard a tinkling and rattling from within the box in my hand. I opened it up to see what was inside and...

 THERE WAS MY CHANDELIER!

I almost had a heart attack.

Even though all the crystals were off and rolling about the box and it was covered in a horrible black tarnish, dirt and spider webs, I couldn't have been more thrilled!

I brought it home to the usual eye rolls and comments about how it couldn't possibly work, to which I paid no attention as I embarked on a three day job of bringing it back to life. I scrubbed, I tediously rehung each crystal, and finally packed it back into a box and brought it to my new studio. Where it sat in the box for a whole other month or two! I was dying. My vision was for it to be hanging in the window glinting and twinkling at everyone passing by. However my friend who was doing the electrical work also had no faith in my little roadside scavenge with which I was still beaming with pride. I really didn't care whether it worked or not. I LOVED it.  

Finally I convinced him to hang it regardless and voila! It worked!!! 

I can't tell you how many people have commented on it through the years, and whenever I tell them I found it on the side of the road I feel like one rock star of a scavenger.

And thankfully, because of that find my faith in other people's junk possibly being my treasure keeps me pulling over to peruse the roadside piles.