Things have been pretty chaotic around here recently, made especially so with the endless DIY wedding projects we’ve been working on.  I don’t know what crazy frame of mind we were in when we decided to take all of it on, but here we are finding, baking, printing, and constructing everything from our invites, to lighting, to our decorations (w/ the help of dear friends & family, of course!)

Since we’re paying for it ourselves, we are trying to stay on a very tight budget.. So when any possible creative freebies come along, we don’t hesitate.  We decided to pass on a professional florist and keep things simple with a mix of Georgia wild flowers and a couple of our personal favorites.  Instead of buying 100 + vases, we decided to take what Brooklyn itself was offering.. free glass bottles from the 1900-1950s!  Want to find out how?  Keep reading..

Dead Horse Bay was given its name sometime in the 1850s, when horse-rendering plants still surrounded the beach. From the 1850’s until the 1930’s, the carcasses of dead horses and other animals from New York City streets were used to manufacture glue, fertilizer and other products at the site.  The stinky side of sustainability.

It was around this time that the marsh of Dead Horse Bay’s began to be used as a landfill. Filled with trash by the 1930s, the trash heap was capped, only to have the cap burst in the 1950s and the trash spew forth onto the beach.

Thousands of bottles (many over 100 years old) still litter the shore.. along w/ old leather shoe soles, antique toys, as well as parts of the actual horse bones. Overall it’s a pretty creepy, isolated place, where when the wind blows across the bottles, you can actually hear that ghosty whistling sound.

bottles and shoes

This place is probably not for everyone, since you really don’t have to mind digging through what is essentially and old landfill.  But for what you can find– glass 1/2 in thick, old apothecary bottles, etc–  it’s a pretty amazing, one-of-a-kind place that I don’t think can be found anywhere else.   It’s a lot of work digging (and not to mention the hours afterwards spent rinsing, scrubbing and washing them out), but I’m really amazed at what we now have..  and for free!

Here are a few other things we found:

close up

other goodies

Share/Bookmark/Email

I couldn’t decide between my 2 favorite shows, so I decided to do a piece from both.  First up, David Lynch’s Twin Peaks..

Laura Palmer, cast Porcelain

The Black Lodge & Red Room, 

lacquered wood box, red velvet, under glass, w/ removable lid

Share/Bookmark/Email