Awesomesauce, right? They were a wedding gift from my friend Daniella. (She's one of my college roommates, or as we say in Canada one of my "undergrad housemates".)

They came from an Etsy store in the States and I'm in LOVE with them. They're a perfect combination of my favourite things: birds, vintage, gold-tone and useful to boot! 

Want something similar? There are plenty of vintage ones of the same ilk available online. And I've heard tell of some in Toronto shops like Angus and Co. 

If you just like the look, but don't care about the usability, you could go for these babies from Dwell Studio, which I believe are currently available at The Bay:

I love love love these pheasants. (LOVE.)

So my point? No point! I just want to urge you to consider hunting down some vintage copper cookware. Mine comes from all over the world and most of it is marked. I have a piece of "Paul Revere-ware" from the States, a pot from Portugal, another from Chile and one from France. It's all slightly different, but you would never know it wasn't a real set. Plus, it's beautiful and fun, and great for cooking. Copper is super conductive and I find it very easy to use. Cooks meat perfectly, for example. Responds very quickly to temperature changes on the stove dial.

Yes, the tinning on the insides will wear out over time, but even though my new/old pans have been around for awhile, the tinning in them seems fine. And besides, copper cookware is WILDLY expensive new. (The Mauviel line, carried at Williams Sonoma, costs $2,800 for a 12 piece set. I already have many more pieces in my collection, in practically new condition, and I paid less than $10 per piece.) 

Think about that. You could buy a single pan from Williams Sonoma (or register for one as a wedding gift, putting the burden of purchasing an idiotic $300 piece of metal on your poor friends), or you could keep your eyes peeled at your local Goodwill and get something that will work wonderfully, look amazing, and cost less than $10. No one will know the difference!

Can you guess what it is?

It's a mobile. (Sorta.)

I made it by tying white threads to the stems of a bunch of fake, decorative pears, and then tying each one to a hook in the ceiling. (First, I painted the pears gold, which I wrote about in an old post.) My place is getting crowded, and while I loved the pears, I just couldn't find a place for them on a table top... so I went vertical.

Hanging things from the ceiling is one of my new favourite things. I love waking up to my pears every morning. They remind me of a country kitchen and of a story I read as a kid about a girl who dreamt of a crown of pears, which was supposed to be a mesage to "find her country." (I'm probably not remembering it correctly.)

Anyway. Consider hanging something meaningful to you from a hook in the ceiling. It's fun!

Mini projects like this are awesome. So satisfying, so little work.

Now the only problem is fitting the refurbed items into my decor. My place is packed. Maybe I should sell 'em? Would YOU buy these elephants?

Now onto today's business: rotary phones. I love them. I always have. Between 2007 and 2009, I event went back to using one (an old Bell Canada black classic). I liked that it worked as a design element -- almost a piece of furniture in and of itself. I liked that it stayed operational, even when the power went out. I liked that it had a real brass bell inside that rang in a delightfully sonorous (not annoyingly beepy) way. I liked the heft of the hand set and that it didn't get hot against my ear. (My cell phone gets hot against my ear, and I'm pretty sure it's giving me cancer.)

But Nate and I have VoIP now, and the rotary phone is in the basement. It would work, had we the right system, but we don't. And I really miss it.

So... what to do? It turns out, there are many ways to hack an old rotary phone to work on a contemporary system. A high school friend of mine -- Jason -- turned me on to this. (Hi Jason!) He gutted the inside of an old rotary handset, and installed a bluetooth wireless mic and speaker inside instead. Now, his old rotary phone handset works on his cell phone line! The wires are gone, but as long as his cell is in the house, he can talk through the handset of his old rotary, which has the bluetooth inside. Get it? Pretty neat hack, right?

So, I've been wanting to try this myself. Jason insisted it was easy, but I've done a lot of Googling, and it doesn't look as simple as advertised. (Nothing ever is, is it?)

Here's a round up of different attempts from the geek-friendly site Hack a Day. Some hackers say you need to learn to solder. And let's face it, that's not going to happen. Here's a great instructional guide that includes soldering. And here's one that doesn't.

My question for you is this: should I attempt it? My hesitations are as follows:

1. I'd lose some of the things I love most about the vintage rotary technology (such as the bell sound).
2. The vintage rotary phones still work as originally intended ... once I gut them, they won't. If this goes wrong, I'll have ruined them.
3. I'm not sure rotary phones are as great looking as I think they are. Have they become hipster kitch? Is it sort of silly to want to have one in my home?

If you know me, you know I'm bad about the telephone in general. Call my cell phone and I'm not likely to answer. Most likely, I don't even have the cell on me. Most likely, it's dead and lost in the dust bowl under the front seat of my car. Since letting go of my rotary, I've come to hate the telephone. And I'm thinking that I might be a better friend and contact if I brought the rotary phone back.So that's an argument in favour.

What do you guys think?