Merry Christmas from our family to yours!

French basket/Early Christmas Gift to Me

I have been a big fan of Corey Amaro’s blog Tongue in Cheek for several years. Her take on French life, photos and stories just fascinate me. I have been living vicariously through her on her Brocante (French flea market) adventures and periodically check her online store to see if there is anything I simply can’t live without.

So, when a few weeks ago I spotted a sweet little French basket she found at the Brocante, I just knew that I had to have it.

I loved it’s simplicity, but what really sold me on it was this.

it was lined with the most lovely French roses ticking fabric.

When I received it in the mail yesterday, I was so tickled to have this sweet little item from France. I quickly remembered some vintage millinery flowers that I have been saving for just the right thing.

And voila! My sweet little French basket all prettied up. Here’s another shot.

Hope you are all having a lovely 12/12/12. Just did Pilates and am getting ready to go see Anna Karenina with Isabel. Good times! Will be back soon hopefully with pictures of our Holiday Home! TTFN!

Long time, no blog

Hello. Not sure anyone is still checking my blog as it has been so neglected lately. I have been periodically posting on my A Thing for Roses Facebook page, so if you haven’t already, and want to, go on over and like me.

We had a couple weeks of really rainy weather up here in the PNW. I don’t do much when that happens, with maybe the exception of catching up on all my tv shows and movies I’ve wanted to watch. I have done a little crafting.

Inspired by my good friend Mitzi, who made the most adorable vintage bling Christmas trees (two of which I had to buy, aren’t they so cute?)

here are a couple I made.

Also, after making several (I lost count how many) vintage bling button bracelets to sell, I finally made one to keep for me.

I used all my favorite buttons. Love that it is super blingy and am looking forward to wearing it during the holidays.

I also spent a little time putting together some new/vintage earrings. Love this super simple craft.

We had a lovely Thanksgiving with my girl home from college and I haven’t even begun to think much about decorating for Christmas yet, but I just couldn’t resist bringing this little cutie home from my last visit to Monticello.

So that’s about it. Heading over to Monticello tomorrow to help Mitzi move into the front window and fluff my space a bit. I’m super excited to see what she comes up with.

Vintage Halloween

I had been planning on doing a post about my good friend, Mitzi’s booth at Stars, but Stars beat me to it.

A few weeks ago I took some pictures of Mitzi’s booth all decorated in vintage Halloween. It is awesome. Here is one shot I got.

To see more of Mitzi’s goodies check out the Stars blog.

Mitzi has two great spaces at Stars and is getting ready to bring in her Vintage Christmas goodies soon! And let me tell you, Mitzi is one of the best Vintage Christmas gals I know. She will also be the featured guest vendor in the window at Monticello in December. So excited to see her magic!

Not a lot going on with me right now, which is why I haven’t blogged in awhile. Getting used to not having my #1 girl home, although we recently had a very brief visit from her. She seems to be adapting well to college life. A lot better than I am adapting to not having her around.  Will hopefully get back to posting about my vintage junk and projects again soon. Don’t give up on me yet!

TTFN!

What the Blog I’ve Been Up To

I think this just may be the longest blogging break I have taken since I started this thing called A Thing for Roses blog. Since the Barn House show, I have been a very busy girl. I have been posting more on Facebook and will probably continue to do so as it is so much simpler than putting together a blog post. So, if you want more frequent updates on my junking shenanigans, you can go to www.facebook.com/athingforroses and “like” me. Thanks so much for all the new “likes” I’ve gotten lately. It’s fun to see the numbers grow.

Since Barn House was my last show of the year, I’ve been taking it easy and haven’t been working on many projects. Don’t get me wrong, I still have two booths to keep stocked so I have been hunting and gathering some good stuff this summer. Speaking of booths, this is what my Monticello booth is looking like this week.

I took the big white table out and did a major rearrange in preparation for the Fall Premier Sale which is going on right now. If you haven’t been yet and are nearby, I highly recommend you stop by. Our dealers are amazing and have brought some awesome merchandise.

Don’t want to leave my Stars booth out so here’s a peak at it.

As you can see, both my booths are very well stocked right now. In fact, I probably have enough stuff in my garage/house to fill another booth, but managing two booths is as much as I can handle right now.

In August, the kids and I took a trip to Southern California to visit family. Let me tell you that it was hot. Upper 90’s the whole week. This Oregon gal is not used to those temps, but we had a great time anyway, visiting with family, going to the beach and taking my #1 girl to Soak City for a day of water park fun. My lovely step-sisters even took me to a couple vintage shops I had never been to before.

The first one was Magnolia and Willow. I had just seen them on facebook and liked them. They have a great eclectic mix of vintage. I bought a sweet antique petite point purse which I accidentally left in my sister’s car, so I can’t show it just yet.

The second place we went was Orange Ave. Estate, Salvage and Garden. Now this was a store meant for me. I found so many great things and if I had more time, I would have probably found more. Here is just a sampling.

Lovely roses painting.

Beautiful landscape painting. A little blurry, sorry, but the funny thing is that I had this exact print hanging right here and I swapped it out for this painting.

Vintage chippy wall clock and shabby, ornate drawer pulls.

Great vintage watch and rhinestone earrings.

I’m sad to say that I was all geared up to hit the Long Beach Flea Market in search of more goodies, but I just didn’t have it in me. It was simply just too hot. I guess I’m not the bad a** junker I thought I was.

Since we’ve been back from our trip, I have been busy getting my girl ready to head off to college and spending every possible minute I can with her. We took a family boat cruise on the Willamette in Portland last weekend.

It was a beautiful and much cooler day out. Snapped this picture of the Willamette Falls.

We also went on a hike last week to Triple Falls in the Columbia Gorge.

I love how the sun in this picture makes her glow.

The hike up to the falls was intense (for out of shape me), but we were rewarded with beautiful scenery and cooling off by wading in the pools at the top of the falls. The hike back down was much easier and in all, it was a great day spending quality time with my favorite girl.

Well, I think that brings you up to speed with just a bit of what I’ve been doing. In the next couple weeks we will be taking our first born to college, and I’ll be having a big clean out garage sale with my good friend Mitzi. Speaking of Mitzi, I wish I had taken some pictures of her Stars booth. She has it all decked out in Vintage Halloween. It’s super cool. I guess I know what I’ll be posting next.

Have a great day and I’ll hopefully be back here soon!

Barn House 2012

It has been over a week since I came home from the awesome Barn House Vintage Marketplace. Joe and Jermonne sure know how to throw a great party, I mean sale. Everything was perfect. The setting, the weather, the music, the food, the people. And wow, there were a lot of people. The line seemed to go on forever!

I only took a few pictures of my booth, but by now you probably have already seen dozens of amazing photos from the other vendors and shoppers who enjoyed the day.

I took these photos with my phone camera, so they are not the best, but you can get a general idea of my goodies. Looking at this picture, it’s fun to see how many things went to new homes.

Here’s an Instagram picture I took of the big pink cabinet and some other goodies. That love sign was one of the first things to sell. It went home with a lovely lady from my hometown!

And finally, here I am.

Sweet Florence, from Essences of the Past, took this photo of me. I always try to put together a fun/cute outfit when I do a show. This time I wore a french slip, antique pantaloons I bought from Isabel at Farm Chicks, and a vintage apron. What you can’t see are my favorite harness boots. I tried to stick with a neutrals and pink color scheme in my space this year and I’m really happy with how it all turned out.

Over the last week, I have been restocking my booths at Monticello and Stars, and basically taking it easy. I even went to a cute little antique show with my Mom and found some great treasures. Now that I’m done with selling at shows for the year, I can enjoy being a shopper!

Hope y’all have a great week! Don’t forget to “like” A Thing for Roses on Facebook as I am much better about posting pictures there than on this old blog. ha ha Happy Monday!

Getting Ready for Barn House

As usual, a few weeks before a show, I’m running around like a chicken with my head cut off. Okay, I’m exaggerating a bit, but I have been pretty busy.  Busy getting ready for my final show of the year. Barn House Vintage Marketplace which is being held in Battleground, WA in just 5 short days. I only have one picture to share with you today.  A little project that I just finished.

Here we have a cute smaller buffet which I gave the shabby chic treatment to. I needed something to accommodate the cool big pink cabinet I’ll be bringing and this fits the bill.

I’ll also be bringing some dressers, vintage lamps, plenty of vintage bling, pretty nighties and slips, lots of cool vintage mirrors and frames and lots more.

I have been posting some sneak peaks on my A Thing for Roses facebook page, so if you want, you can go over there and “like” me.

Well, I’d better get back to work. Looking forward to seeing some of you on Saturday!

For Sale~Vintage Bling Buckles

Happy Monday! Been planning for a long time now to get my Etsy store up and running. No excuses, just laziness, I guess. I decided that I'm going to list a few of my vintage bling buckles, but before I do, I thought I would offer them up to any of my blog readers that may be interested. So, here they are.

The price for these buckles is $50 each which includes domestic shipping. They will be more when/if I list them on etsy. So, if you are interested, please send an email to athingforroses@hotmail.com with your name and email address and indicate which one you are interested in and I will send you a paypal invoice. Super easy!

Hope you all have a fabulous week!

Find of the Week

Even though the week’s not quite over yet, I thought I would share my find of the week, so far.

If you’re my friend on Facebook, you probably already saw this, but I’m so loving it, I’m sharing it here too.

I found this funky chandelier, without the electrical, at Monticello. It was just sitting there waiting for me. Should be an easy fix to put the electrical in. It’s currently hanging from an old bird cage stand in the corner of my living room. My first thought was to remove the crystals and paint it white, but the more I looked at it the more I liked its gold/silver finish. Was thrilled with all the crystals too. Only had to add two from my own stash.

Only one more month til my next sale at Barn House. Better get back to work and stop playing around! Have a lovely weekend!

Last weeks vintage finds

As I mentioned in my last post, I had been very busy since getting back from Farm Chicks with my daughter’s graduation preparations and out of town visitors. Well, now that things are back to normal, I’ve been hitting the junking trail a bit and thought I would show you what I’ve found over the last week.

I found this cool reproduction French style bottle drying rack at the G-dub.

Vintage glass lamps and a pretty shade

A bit of bling

Three tier metal and glass stand

Metal trivets, acrylic box with rhinestones and a cute little vintage frame, also with rhinestones.

Trio of metal paint thingys. Great chippy paint on these and I’m thinking they would be awesome earring holders.

Two perty vintage gold mirrors

A little swivel mirror

Another cute mirror

Little table~great for display. Not the best picture, but I’m gonna give it a little paint and I’ll share a better one.

Lovely roses painting. My only purchase this week at the G-dub bins.

Adorable vintage aprons found at an estate sale yesterday.

Misc. linens and hankies

and finally, my largest purchase of the week

Not the best picture, but I fell in love with this vintage cabinet on craigslist. It has the best original crackle paint in pink, yellow and green.  All I had to do was give it a light sanding and it’s perfect. Great size for a small dining room, bathroom for towels and such. Even low enough for a tv stand and you could put the electronic components inside. So wish I had a space for this cutie, but I can’t keep it all, right?

Today is the first day of summer vacation for both of my kids and the sun is shining. I think we need to go out and play. Have a lovely, hopefully sunny, weekend wherever you may be!

Farm Chicks 2012

Well, my 5th year as a vendor at Farm Chicks has come and gone. This post is a bit overdue, life has been a bit crazy since I returned from Spokane. First, Farm Chicks. It was crazy good. So good in fact that I was too busy to leave my booth which is how I like it. Did I ever mention, I love to sell my cool junk? And that is just what I did. I did manage to snap a few photos of my spaces (yes, I had two), before the show started and after rearranging on Sunday. Here they are.

I apologize for this first picture. Not sure why it’s so blurry. I promise, they get better, but here you can see my original space. I changed things up a bit this year by leaving my tent frame at home, putting down carpet and putting up the umbrella. That umbrella got a lot of attention. I simply draped a vintage chenille spread over it. Easy as pie.

There was a last minute cancellation and I was able to get the booth across the isle from me which was awesome as I was able to spread out and felt like people could see my stuff so much better.

My new neighbors, Amy and Kris from Farm & Frills filled in with some smalls and had the booths next to and across from me. It was fun having my friends so close this year and we had a ton of fun hanging out with them during and after the show.

Last year I had “Big Pink,” and this year it was “Big Blue.” Not the best picture, but I love this cabinet. It’s really old and has great detail.

Another cool cabinet.

Lots of vintage clothing and jewelry found new homes.

Here’s a better picture. This was my Sunday set up. I think I moved every single thing in my two spaces.

By Sunday, things were looking a little empty, especially my mirror and frame cart. I can’t believe I didn’t get a better picture of the rolling bench/cabinet. You can see a peak of it in the back of the above picture. It was super cool, but it didn’t start out that way. It started out as an under bed storage cabinet. I added casters, painted and added a beadboard top to it. It went home with a very happy young lady who will be using it in her entry.

So, there you have it. I’m home, daughter graduated from High School, visiting family now gone, both booths restocked in Malls. Time to take a little break, but not for too long as I will soon be getting ready for Barn House, July 28th. Super excited about doing this fun show. Already have some new things I will be saving just for this special sale. I’ll be back to share soon. TTFN!