My Recent Windfall of Free Stuff!

1.  I received a mystery gift in the mail.  Four pairs of black tights, with no return address.  If whoever sent them is reading this, I want to offer a huge thank you!  They will definitely be put to good use this winter.

2. A friend has season tickets to the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, but won't be able to make it to two of the concerts.  He offered them to Tom (two tickets for each of the nights), so now we get to go!  One of the shows happens to be on his birthday too, so we hope to do dinner or something beforehand and make a night of it.  Tom is very excited, because he loves the PSO, and we haven't been in a few years.

3. We got THREE beautiful free chairs this weekend. 

cat not included

We went to a party on Friday at a house where a bunch of our bachelor friends live.  I spotted the middle chair across the room, and was quite taken with it (haha - this sounds like the beginning of a cheesy love story...).  I was going on about how beautiful if would look if it were refinished and re-covered.  The guys told me that it had just been picked from someone's trash, that they had plenty of other chairs, and that I was more than welcome to have it - awesome!

close-up of the details

It might take me awhile to get to it, but I will show an update once I refinish it.

The two chairs on the ends were offered to us by another friend.  His whole house is decked out in amazing antiques like this, and these two chairs were just taking up room sitting in his basement (which tells you something about how nice the rest of the house is).  He knows Tom and I also have a taste for "old stuff", so offered them to us.  The amazing part is, he was thanking us profusely for finally taking them off his hands.  Huh.  I think we're the ones who made out in the deal.

Hand-carved, of course.  Sly saw them the next morning, and said "church chairs!"

A re-upholstery job wouldn't hurt on these, since I'm not a huge fan of the pattern on the fabric, and the stuffing is a little lumpy.  But that will have to wait for the future (when we have a windfall of free money? Maybe? Ha.)