When you’re on a tight budget it sometimes feels impossible to decorate your place without spending a whole month’s rent.
Enter Brooklyn Flea.
Photo courtesy of Brooklyn Flea website
I’ve lurked around the aisles of my fave flea market and many a weekend found a handful of great prizes for under $20. A bit of sleuthing and strategy has populated my home with all sorts of signature pieces, from linens and dishware to odd trinkets and wooden picture frames. There are deals to be had.
The mission: Each team will get $25 cash to pick out a couple home decor or home use items to spruce up their home space. While many great things will be out of their budget range, I know my creative shoppers will find some treasures on the cheap. Yes, of course they get to keep their prizes.
The winner: Selected by readers based on whose loot is the sweetest!
Votes will be tallied immediately following the round-up post (going live Sunday May 8, ~3pm through Monday, May 9, midnight EST). Vote via posting a comment to the round-up post OR via Twitter using hashtag #bkfleaspree and the team number OR via the Hip Girl’s Guide to Homemaking Facebook page.
Without further ado…
Meet the blogger teams:
Team 1: Emily Cavalier - Mouth of the Border - Twitter @ECava
Emily Cavalier is the founder of Mouth of the Border, an online community for lovers of ethnic food and culture in New York City. She’s also the hostess, chef and founder of Midnight Brunch supper club and consults on social media/event projects with food and food media brands. As such, she does a lot of entertaining and wants to take her Brooklyn apt. from “meh” to a place that’s fun, warm and welcoming while still being a great place to host business contacts.
Team 2: Erica Reitman – Fucked in Park Slope - Twitter @effedparkslope & Amanda Waas – Design Blahg - Twitter @amandawaas
Erica writes a blog about the whiniest neighborhood in Brooklyn: Park Slope. She owns every issue of Domino ever published, and still pulls those mofos out ALL THE TIME! Erica is obsessed with white floors, anything “vintage” and weird needlepoints.
Amanda has written for various national publications about ridiculous topics such as how to keep your lunch safe from a lunchroom bandit, and what it feels like to have a paparazzo follow you around for an afternoon (short answer: weird). Her writing has appeared in Every Day With Rachael Ray, Time Out New York, Fucked in Park Slope, Design Blahg, AOL’s Shelterpop, and DIY Life. She recently launched a site called You’re Welcome: A gift guide for all of life’s awkward occasions. Amanda lives in Park Slope and loves the fact that she resides amongst million dollar brownstones that she couldn’t afford in a billion years.
Team 3: Faye Penn – Brokelyn - Twitter @brokelyn
Faye is the publisher of Brokelyn.com and she has a new idea for a fashion/design
/trend blog up her sleeve. She has written about home design for InStyle and Real Simple and edited design and real estate stories for New York Magazine and the New York Times Home Section, the latter as a freelancer. Her siblings are flea-market junkies with superior taste and scouting chops, so their castaways form the cornerstone of her home decor. Faye lives in a money pit in Ditmas Park (that drilling sound in the background is her husband rewiring the dining room) and her sensibility is old-school modern chaos.
Team 4: Kate Bussmann – Culture Shockd in New York City - Twitter @katebussmann
Kate is a Brooklyn-based British journalist, homesick for her things in storage back home (the antique Venetian mirror an ex gave her, Ikea footstools she hand-reupholstered in Neisha Crossland remnants, etc.). She is readjusting to white-walled rental life with portable pieces that tell a story, like the vases she “adopted” from a Met Opera gala she covered last year.
Team 5: Autumn Giles – Autumn Makes and Does - Twitter @autumnmakes 
Autumn is a poet and (gluten-free!) home cook. Her kitchen is always threatening to devour the rest of her apartment. You’re likely to find an ice cream maker in the bedroom and kimchi fermenting in the hallway.
Local BK and NYC friends: I’ll also be selling and signing books at the outside entrance of the Wiliamsburg Flea while the BK Flea Spree is going on. Bring your moms out (it’s Mothers’ Day) and come say, hey!