Christmas Home Tour

Well, it's time for my quartley post!  (has it really been that long?)   Had a little cookie exchange party this weekend, and since I clean my house fairly well (don't look upstairs) for parties, I thought I would snap a few pics of the old homestead decked out in holiday finery.   This is my family room

My mantle and  tree.  Found that semi truck at a garage sale this summer, painted it red and added a tree.  Just had to jump on that tree in a truck bandwagon. 

Side table and my built ins to the right of the fireplace.  This was a huge project this summer.  All the wood in this room was oak and I painted it all off white.  HUGE job but I love the results.

  I do not know how to add pics on this stupid blog to go in the right position so excuse the willy nilly look.

My front room has another tree as well as more built ins. 

Santas, die cuts, reindeer and boots

This shelf is mugs and various smalls

My talented sister made me this sign.   Original design found on ellaclaireinspired.com.  Hangs above my red couch and I LOVE it.  Thanks Mimi!

Moving on to my bathroom and entryway.  The bathroom holds my gurley candle collection. I would show you the whole bathroom but I am pretty sure you know what a toilet looks like.  This cabinet is above said toilet.  I have a suspicion that the Gurleys are up to no good when the lights are off and the door is shut.

The entryway was decorated by my dear mom.  She was staying at my house a few weeks ago while my husband and I frolicked in Mexico.  She got bored, one thing led to another and I came home to this

The table used to be the bottom part of my dining room hutch. It got some annie sloan paint (but not waxed or knobs yet.. even works in progress get decorated in this house) .  Well,

I will wrap this up (present style!)  with a small shot of my kitchen.  There is more but this post is long and most of you probably quit reading 5 min ago.



This shelf is in my kitchen near the garage door.  The middle shelf has my spun heads made by the fabuous Laurie of magpieethel.typepad.com.

Thanks for taking my Christmas home tour.  Have a Merry Christmas and I will talk to you again in the New Year!!

My sister drew this.  Just noticed the bah humbug and

face. That I'm sure was added by one of the many kids around here that are forever trying to annoy me :)

Linking to

linda-coastalcharm.blogspot.com

knickoftimeinteriors.blogspot.com



Thrift Share Sunday

Well, it was a glorious fall day here in Kansas, almost hot even!  My mom and I decided to check out the Maple Leaf Fesitival in Baldwin City, KS (about 45 min away).  It is a cute town with a college, lots of trees and brick streets.  The booths were ok but not really my thing, lots of jewelry, primitives, handmade baby items and yard art, and of course food (well, I did enjoy the food). But it was a pretty day and nice  to walk around outside.  Of course one of my fav things in the town is the antique store and you know we stopped.  Here are the treasures I found

Christmas items and more!



This mug will go with my santa mug collection.  I dont have very many Mrs Clause so I was happy to find her.

This guy is huge about 2 1/2 feet tall.  I have plans for him :

The reindeer are Dennison Die Cuts (6 of them) and the Santa is also cardboard with a fuzzy hat.  They will look good on my shelves this Christmas.

A Yellowstone Park tablecloth to add to my collection.  I really liked this because my Grandparents took us kids there a few times  so it has fond memories.

And last some vintage artists brushes, a yellow memo holder for my kitchen and the Playtime water colors.  I have a Playtime chalk box with the same graphics so I was happy to find this to go with it. 

So there you have my Sunday.  I will leave you with a question.  Does anyone else  notice that sometimes antiques stores are cheaper than estate sales or some peoples yard sales?  Don't get me wrong, some prices are CRAZY high, but a lot of times I find that the small stuff I tend to like is usually priced fairly cheap in an antique booth.  The water colors were 3 bucks, the brushes were 2 and the memo holder was 2.  Thats like garage sale cheap! YES!
 

Twining and Whining

First off, I cannot believe it has been 3 months since I posted!!  I seriously thought it was only last month.  Well, it's been a BUSY three months.  I moved into a new antique booth much closer to home. (Pics coming!)  My mom moved here to Kansas from Iowa and my sister and her family moved here also from Oregon!  It has been awesome having them all here but lots of moving and unpacking.  Plus, busy at work, selling on ebay, etsy and booth, thrifting, estate saleing, kids back to school, kids off to college (my middle son is now at Arkansas, go Razorbacks!) and just life. Whew!  I have more thrift finds than I can count to share with you all but that is for another day.  Today I wanted to share a little project I made.  A year ago a bought a big ole box of spools.  They looked like this

I bought them with the intention of adding some fun twine and selling them.  I saw them on etsy and they were cute. but bakers twine was a little expensive.  Then this great site called Pick Your Plum came into my life (if you don't know what it is go check it out right now!)  and they have a "daily deal".  One day the deal was bakers twine...YEAH!! So I bought this...

And faster than you can say " I stole this idea off of Etsy"  I made these

Cute but still seemed to be missing something.   So I pulled out my trusty scrapbook paper that hasn't been used for actual scrapbooking in 6 years and cut these out

 

If I was a cool kid I would have had a fancy machine or at the very least a paper punch to cut these suckers out, but since I am neither cool nor a kid I had to cut them out by hand.  It was worth it though when I slapped some glue on, stuck it on the end of the spool and walla..how cute are these???

 

 

Even cuter stacked in a pyramid or thrown in a yellow bowl! It may even be Pinterest cute! Well they are headed to the booth tomorrow so hopefully someone besides me thinks they are cute.

Next post, some new thrifty finds, I promise :)

 

 

Heeerrrrreee Comes Lucky!

Anyone ever been to the dog races?  If so you know where I got my title for this post.  Today was my LUCKY day.  I was on my way to the DMV.  Yuck.  It was my 3rd trip ( if you live in Kansas, you know what nightmare I am living, new computer system that crashed SEVERAL times, hence 3 trips to get my dang renewal).  Being it was my 3rd trip, I was in a somewhat foul mood.  As I'm driving  I spot a sign SALE MON-WED!  WTH?  It is Monday, YA!  I turn down the street, Estate Sale, Double YA!   I park the car and start walking closer to the house.  There is a line outside.  A sign on the lawn says it starts at  noon.  I quickly check my phone, it is 12:20.  Triple YA!!  I get in line (the stinkin' DMV can wait) and in no time I am in and snappin' up vintage treasures like  a frog snappin' flies.  Oh yeah, definetly my lucky day.  Check it...

Some good loot.  Okay, the large cloth santa was a wee bit of a dissapointment.  Thought it was a childs apron, turns out it was a toilet seat cover.  eew.    Moving on...

Got a big ol' pile of hand made doilys? doilies?  Also a great wool plaid blanket.  Because hey, it was only 96 degrees out and I was a bit chilly :)

I LOVE this childs play apron.  I should have taken a pic out of the package but it is a full apron in a cute plaid fabric with 3 pockets.  One pocket holds scissors, one has a coloring book and one has some Noahs Ark crayons.  Original box. Too (was totally thinking of you Renee!)  I also got the vintage paddle game.  Missing the ball but great graphic of boy and girl playing and .15 price printed on the handle.

Love grab bags and this one had 2 packages of spun heads (large and small) some cool gold sticker border things, an ADORBS felt bird with his original tag which reads "Welfare Handicrafts Made by China Refugee Development Organization Hong Kong.  Interesting. Plus a plastic egg, and some trim.  This lady was into crafting and had tons of craft stuff.

Slighty dented but still cute tin trash can, yellow with strawberrys.  A flag, to add to my tons of other flags.  Just reminded myself to go find the flags! 

Also found these JUMBO paper straws with killer stripes which did not have a price and the nice lady gave me for FREE (silly lady).  Package of hand towel napkins, some appetizer picks and a cute pin cushion made from a can.  The bday candles aren't old but they were mixed in.

Lasty a huge bag of transfers for crewel/embroidrey.  Some of them are great, Owls! Birds! Pretty Ladies! and I may even try to make a few.  I am working on one now that I ordered online so we will wait and see how that one goes first.

So, like I said, lucky day!  And when I went back to the DMV 3 hours later (yes they gave me a number and told me to come back in 3 hours) my number got called right when I walked in.  So if you ignore that 3 hour wait then that was lucky too!!  In other news I worked on a HUGE project all weekend which I cannot wait to share, but this post is long enough so I may just have to post two days in a row (gasp!) and post about it tomorrow.  See you then!

Red White and Boom!

Doing a little 4th O' July Decorating and thought I'd share

This is my front room and really, with the exception of Christmas, the only room I decorate for holidays. Why you ask? Well,  it is the first room you see when you enter the front door (and usually the cleanest) it is unused by the rest of the family (except the dog, who occasionally likes to puke in there) and most importantly I am too lazy to decorate anything else :)

Hit up my fav antique store yesterday and found these cool plastic flowers.  Already had the pitcher, red box and cast iron stars.

The MFA Insurance fan was a find yesterday as well.  The cutie patriotic gal was made by the awesome Laurie of Magpie Ethel. Already had the blue glass insulator and uncle sam hat.

Some shelf shots.  That is my grandparents wedding photo.  My grandpa was in WWII so I thought the flag next to it was appropriate.  The Uncle Sam in the last photo was my Magpie Ethel purchase from last year.  Soon I will have to do a whole post on all my spun heads made by Laurie. One of my many collections and quite possibly my favorite collection.

And lastly a few things on my beloved hoosier.  Someone made the firecracker from a tootsie roll tube, how clever!  So clever it got it's own glass cloche'. Well that concludes our tour and remember, if you haven't already, get your stars and stripes decorating on!! 

 

Gimme a J!

And a U~N~K,   What does that spell?  Great JUNK of course!  Those awesome letters are from my friends shop in Merriam, KS called Good Company.  If  you are ever in the area, you must HIT IT UP!  Floor to ceiling vintage finds and everything is priced right.  Found the old Sorry game and buttons at a garage sale.  Weird that the old Sorry games didnt come with a board.   I am going to have to read it and see how to play without the board.

Also hit a great sale and found this box of vintage Christmas and a cupid die cut.  Cuz really, can you have too much vintage Christmas?  Or die cuts for that matter?

Love the yellow Pyrex but it is going to my booth.  I am too clumsy to actually use pyrex (not to mention way too lazy to hand wash it) so I usually sell it. And the stickers.  I love them because a) They are Little Lulu! And Little Lulu reminds me of my childhood.  b) they are puffy stickers!  And puffy stickers remind me of the 80's!  And I LOVE the 80's! :)







Also found some vintage jewelry, a peter rabbit cup and this great Play Hats book by Whitman.  Didn't Whitman make the best stuff?  Lots of the hats have been poked out of the cardboard, but some very good mom saved them in the  book.  Much better Mom than me,  I would have thrown all that out when my kids were little.  I wasn't quite the hoarder collector that I am now :) Overall, a pretty fun pile of stuff.

Brownville Flea Market

There is a small town north of me called Brownville.  It is located in Nebraska and runs along the Missouri river.  It has a small population but twice a year holds a huge flea market and people flock from miles around to go.  I try to go every year over Memorial Day Weekend.  Great junk, great prices, great people.  Last year it was flooded so they couldn't have it, so you know I was jonesin' to hit it this year.  Besides being 94 degrees and looking like a run over dog, I was not dissapointed.  Heres what I got

4 galvanized buckets, some KILLER old wooden dumbells, and an old street sign (bought for my aunt).  I also bought an old half apron from a lumber company (to carry my little stuff) and a green tray for my kitchen.  On the way home I stopped at HobLob for some stencils so I could turn my buckets into this...

Kind of a industrial chic look right?  I have decorating ADD and can never settle on one style so my house has about 10 different styles going on at any one time.  You could call it vintage, retro, industrial, traditional or you could be one of my kids and call it GARAGE SALE CRAP.  Whatev. Now here is a close up of my todiefor barbells...

Told you they were cool :)

Oh, and I met a great gal named Kindra.  Her and her husband run the Weston Primitive Company and do shows all over the place. (25 this year!  that makes me tired thinking about).  She has great junk  and also sells on Facebook.  I got my cool street sign from her.  Check her out on Facebook at Weston Primitive Co!