I like old things. I can't bear to throw something away if it's old. I'm like that guy on the TV commercial who is out in the rain crying over a broken lamp in the trash. All it needs is a new lampshade! Have an imagination! Have a heart!

Even when I was a kid, I rescued things from the trash. I saved musty books with warped covers, cookie jars neighbors thought were out of style ("What do you want that for Debi? It's old-fashioned!"), and a saddle covered with cobwebs and green mold (requiring a pony to go with it, which every girl should have).

I was relieved when mosaics got popular. Now I could drop broken dishes into a bucket, guilt free. Then shabby chic was all the rage. Finally, all the tables and dressers with paint chipping off to reveal stories of past lives--chalky pink from when a daughter had it, green from when it was on the back porch, silver splatters and drips from when the father used it as a workbench down in the basement and fixed the cracked rungs of rocking chairs on top of it--were getting respect. This was getting good.

I don't know if there's any furniture in my house that is new. Except for some things that are handmade, everything is old and full of patina. I call my style "modern garage sale," but I acquire my things from many places and many eras. I have a Victorian sideboard, a 1940s Formica kitchen table with chrome legs, funky lamps with fiberglass shades, and a wagon wheel light that looks like it's right out of I Love Lucy's summer home. This is actually in the same room as a tole chandelier with white daisies. Somehow it goes well together, the rustic and the delicate. I mix it up because I like it all. And I want it all.

And you should have some too. So I opened up my shop, Mad Girl Retro, with things restored, refinished, painted, and some I didn't have to do a thing to because they are beautiful just the way they are. Just like you!