Decorating with Vintage Olive Buckets

The January 2013 issue of Country Living is packed with gorgeous spaces, including this beautiful den in the Massachusetts cabin of Bobby Houston and Eric Shamie. Among the many small details that I love about this space are the vintage olive bucket and handblown glass vase flanking the fireplace. 

{Country Living}

It's a much better look than what I've got going on with my own fireplace hearth that is decorated with a single woven lantern. However, in my many outings to flea markets, antique stores, and vintage shops I had yet to come across a vintage olive bucket. That is until a day after I read the newest Country Living when lo and behold....

Home Emporium had received a large shipment of vintage olive buckets!  There's just something about the style and patina of these olive buckets that I love and there are so many places in my home that I can see using them - most likely it will find its spot by my fireplace like in my inspiration picture but I've also found lots of other great ideas for how to use it. For the holidays, they make perfect decorative containers for filling with greenery, birch branches, and pinecones:

{Kansas Sunflower Girls}

{The Polohouse}

and they are a great size for holding a tabletop Christmas tree:

{Fern Creek Cottage}

Olive buckets can also be used to hold other types of plantings year round:

{ebay}

{Pinterest: Buckets of Burlap}

{Savvy Southern Style}

{Pearson & Company}

{Etsy: Eskiden}

You can use them as containers to hold everything from toilet paper in the bathroom, 

{Miss Mustard Seed}

fruits and vegetables in the kitchen,

original source unknown

dried grasses or flowers,

{Etsy: Eskiden}

to your home office trash.

{Miss Mustard Seed}

Some people have even taken these buckets and wired them to become rustic pendants:

Home Emporium's vintage olive buckets are reasonably priced at $39 but not everyone has a Home Emporium nearby (see this previous post on Home Emporium for more info on this store and its locations). Other sources of vintage olive buckets besides flea markets and antique stores include Williams-Sonoma, where they sell Found Olive Buckets for $99

and Pottery Barn which also has Found Greek Olive Buckets but they are $169 (yikes!).

A cheaper alternative is to find one on Etsy where they are sold in several shops such as Step Back Ink, which has them at the lowest online price that I found ($45 plus $15 shipping).  

{Step Back Ink}

Which of these decorating ideas for olive buckets is your favorite?