Homage To The Deer

The other day I found myself at the antique store, imagine that, scoping out all their major deals during the store’s ginormous 8 year anniversary sale.  Store wide sales are very rare at the downtown Bangor, Maine antique store so of course I was there with bells on (AND one of the first 50 shoppers earning me a free gift of jelly…mmmm…jelly).  And it just so happened that I scored a fabulous mirror for less than $10.

Have you ever bought something before and had no idea what you would do with it, where it would go, or if the thing was even useful to you?  But you absolutely loved it, couldn’t imagine yourself without out, and had to bring it home with you especially because it was such a great price?  Yeah….that was what this mirror was to me.  I was drooling…literally drooling with puddles pooling at my feet…over this mirror.  And the price…I couldn’t get over the price!  But what to do with it?  Confession, I’ve had the mirror for a few weeks and it finally dawned on me what to do with it.  You see, there’s this section in our living room that is completely bare and is begging for something.  Here is the bare corner…angle number one:

And angle number two, which looks even more barren:

My grand vision for this space (and referencing the picture above) is mirror on the left, just above the lamp, and maybe, eventually, some floating shelves and mismatched frames on the wall directly across from the camera, kind of behind the chair.  As I was prepping the living room for the mirror’s arrival, the scale of the mirror kept bothering me.  It was so small.  Cute…but small.  I felt like it needed something to flank it on either side.  Enter these guys:

Yup, you got it, those are real deer skulls.

And they really do live in my living room.  They belong to Colby.  He’s bagged two deer during his hunting career and ironically they were almost identical.  Both small, spike horn deer.  Colby’s cousin Matt is an amateur taxidermist…more like a taxidermist in training, or a TIT (ahahahaha…ok….Angie try to control yourself…you’re seriously a nine year old boy) and mounted them for him.  And now they are permanent fixtures in our house.  I almost hate to admit it, but I do love them.  Mostly because Colby loves them, but I’ve also become strangely attached to them.  So much that I’ve become worried about their perch on top of the media shelf.  They’re a bit unstable on that shelf and I’ve been fearful for their safety.  I sure don’t want to be the one responsible for breaking those precious deer skulls.  Okay, so you see where I’m going with this?  Do I need to explain?  Essentially, the deer heads were the perfect duo to flank the mirror.

And the living room wall is no longer naked.

See…they look identical don’t they?!  Crazy great white hunter sure is attracted to a certain type.

Pssst…anyone else come home with an item that they just had to have but didn’t know what to do with?  Do tell!  I can’t be the only one.  Or have a taxidermist in training (TIT) friend and find themselves rolling on the floor with laughter from the awesome moniker?  Just me?  Oh the immaturity!