Pottery Barn, Eat Your Heart Out!

Now, we all love Pottery Barn. Their stuff is gorgeous and makes us all wish we lived a cleaner, neater, prettier, PB style lives. The interwebs are FULL of PB knock offs and their catalog is like porn for women. What many of us don't like about PB are their prices. Honestly, they are ridiculous.
This past weekend was the AMAZING Heidelberg Holiday Bazaar, which is put on my by the HD Community Spouses Club (of which I am a member). The bazaar brings vendors from all over Europe and is just amazing. The prices have been jacked up a little, but it's cheaper than traveling to Turkey for rugs or scouring various antique markets throughout France or Sweden or Germany for the perfect buffet or china hutch. The vendors range from antiques to chocolates, to cheeses, to wines, to Scandinavian sweaters, to Italian pottery, to Russian china. Seriously, if you can imagine it, it's probably there. It happens over Columbus Day weekend every year and is a much anticipated event.
While wandering through the maze of vendors, I came across a few things I'd seen in the PB catalog that made my heart skip a beat, but at a price that made my debit card run for cover.

See these dough bowls?  Aren't they gorgeous?  If you buy them from PB, they range $199-$249.  Are you kidding me?   Look what I found at the Bazaar:

Isn't it gorgeous?  Want to know what I paid?  $47.  That's right, $47.  It's HUGE!  Those are real apples in there!

For over a year I've been obsessed with baguette boards.  They are harder to find in Germany and I've only seen a few, but didn't like them for one reason or another.  At the Bazaar, vendors had them by the barrel full (literally, they were displayed in open top wine barrels) and I had so many to choose from.  Here is the PB version for $129:

Pretty!  There were at least a hundred of these at the bazaar.  I picked them up, looked them over, weighed them in my hands (some were heavy, some were light depending on the wood used to carve them) and tried not to giggle over the price.  I chose one that wasn't as neat and smooth as the PB version.  I liked its roughness.

And I paid $35 for it!  Could you die from the pretty????  I can use it for so many different seasons or for serving breads at the holidays.  I love it!!!!

Of course, I don't get all my cool stuff from the Bazaar.  A lot of our vintage decor comes from flea markets.   I love old cameras.  I do NOT love PB's price for them though.  $149, each?  Check out my collection:

The most I paid for any of them was 10 Euro (about $13).

PB no longer has the found seltzer bottles on their site, but these found soda bottles (which I will be looking for at the next flea market) are close enough.  Would I pay $69?  Nope.  For my vintage seltzer bottle, I paid 12 Euro ($15).   I'm on the hunt for more!  I really liked this one because of the streaky glass.

$149 vintage sled? Meet my $25 version (decorated for Easter because I have no current pics):

I realize how very lucky I am to live in Europe where I can find all of these wonderful items for a fraction of what I would pay if I had to buy them in the States. I'm thinking of starting my own stockpile and opening up an online shop with much, much lower prices than PB. :)

I'm linking up with Amanda.