Car Troubles and Mitzi Lee

So yesterday while driving my daughter to Target so that she could spend her birthday money, I notice my engine light was on. Weird, I thought. We just took my car in for a lot of work barely a month ago. Total bill, over $1000, ouch! It's an older minivan, paid off, great for haulin stuff. So I thought, okay, at least it's running good now, but then the engine light comes on. So called my hubby who called the fix-it place and they said to bring it in in the morning (today). I get there thinking they will just look at it real quick like, maybe flip a switch to make the little light go off, right? Wrong. What number can we call you at? Uh, I guess my cell phone. Will it take long? I guess I could walk over to Fred Meyer and do a little shopping. So, that is what I do. I have talked about Fred Meyer in my blog before. It is truly one of my favorite stores on the planet because you can get just about anything there. From groceries to paint, to underwear to furniture, light fixtures, you name it. Even plants. So, I took my time wandering around. Found some shirts for me, my daughter and my son. Found some basketball shoes for my daughter, on sale, yeah! The fix-it place called me and said it would be $400 to fix the problem! I told them to call my husband to see if he wanted to go for it. Since I was stranded for awhile longer I decided to do some more shopping. Found the cutest sweater for me and headed over to the food stuff to find some cookie fixins for these cookies I want to make to take to Joy's tomorrow. I finished up with my shopping and still didn't hear back from the fixit place so I decided to walk right next door to get my hair cut. I'm not too picky about my hair. I don't have a regular person that cuts it or anything. I figure, if I don't like it, it will grow back. So, I get my hair cut and head back to the fixit place where I have to wait about 20 minutes before my car is done. Fun stuff right? On my way home I decided to drop by my old antique mall.

Didn't find much to buy, but my friend Mitzi's booth is just adorable. I snapped some pictures to show you which doesn't begin to do her space justice. Right now she has the cutest jars full of ornaments.














She also makes the most gorgeous mosaic pieces. Last spring Isabel and I did a sale with Mitzi at her house which was really fun. She is the sweetest person too. She did a broken china mosaic backspash in her kitchen that is to die for. She has great style too. The wall going up her stairs has all these cool old white window frames and her powder room is done in black and white with cool old mirrors, cabinets, etc. I really need to convince her to start a blog or let me take some pics of her house to show you.





Her presentation is just so sweet. I love all the vintage ornaments in bags.















Look how sweet her birdhouses are. And the mirrors she makes are just lovely!














Anyway, I bought a few things out of her booth that you can see here. The little jars are so sweet with vintage buttons and a little tree inside. I felt kind of bad about buying her little wood divider box thingy as it was holding a lot of her buttons. Not sure what I'm going to do with it yet or with the bag of vintage santas. The little silver baby cup with the duck was too cute to pass up.




I did go thrifting on Monday, but didn't really find anything too great. Sorry about the long, boring car story. Hope you are all having a great week. I need to get busy and finish up some projects that I have started so I can show you. It's raining today and I just feel like taking a nap when it's like this. Maybe I'll shut my eyes for a few minutes...zzz!

Oh wow, I feel so much better! Going to Joy's Open House tomorrow night and I get to sleep over and help her on Friday. I am embarrassed to say that I have nothing ready to take over with me. If I have time, maybe I will head over to Monticello to pick up a few items to take to Joy's. If you are in the Silverton area this weekend, we would love to see you! Seeing Joy's house decorated for the holidays is something you don't want to miss. I will try to snap some pictures to share with those of you who are too far away to visit.

So Good to Be Home

Home again after visiting my dear in-laws in Central Oregon. What a fun weekend. We left early Thurday morning and arrived to a warm and cozy fire and a lovely table set for Thanksgiving. So nice as temps. were in the low 20's when we got there. We enjoyed visiting with my hubbys folks and of course all the wonderful Thanksgiving food.



After dinner the boys set out to do a little exploring while the girls decided to go to the movies. We saw "Enchanted" which I thought was a very sweet film.


On Friday, my main squeeze and I decided to do a little shopping. Not the big box stores kind of shopping, but antique mall/thrift store kind of shopping. I didn't find much, just a few things which I will share in another post. It was a beautiful, cold but sunny day.

Saturday was a very special day as it was my daughter's 14th birthday. We celebrated with presents and cake and the grand finale, a hometown Christmas parade. Here are some of the pictures I took.







My lovely girl is having her "friend" birthday next weekend and I will be helping Joy out with her sale on Friday. She has kindly offered for me to sell some things at her sale so I need to get busy and figure out what I will make/take to sell. I am so unfocused these days it seems. Hard to get my crafting mojo going. Okay, I did make that advent calender recently, but that was for me. I have lots of good crafting ideas/supplies so that isn't the problem. Just need to sit down and do it.


Did I mention it is good to be home? I sure did miss you all and was able to spend some time this morning catching up with you. Hope you all had a fabulous Thanksgiving! I know I have a lot to be thankful for including all of you, my lovely blogging friends! Thanks also for all of your sweet comments on my last post. I had so much fun being part of Natasha's Virtual Vintage Prom. Thanks again Natasha!

Natasha's Prom

Hi Everyone! I know I'm late to the prom. But I have a good excuse. Really I do. See, just like Cinderella, I had to do all my chores before I could go to the ball, I mean, Prom. Here I am riding my bike home from my lunch lady job.


(Don't ya just love my pink cruiser? How could I have anything else?)







First off, I thought I would embarrass myself by showing you all my Senior Prom picture.




Ugh! I had my hair done specially. What was a thinking? I was one of the lucky few to wear a lovely experimental herbst appliance which is why my mouth looks so strange. My date was a very nice guy. Just a good friend actually as I wasn't dating anyone. The guy I really wanted to go with turned me down. Boo hoo! But I still had a good time. Not one of the greatest highlights of my life, but still fun.

I still have the dress. Here it is on my manni. I was pretty skinny back then. My manni is fairly small and I couldn't even get the zipper all the way up in the back.

And a close up. It was a tafetta Guinnee Saks cream with blue/grey roses. I actually forgot it had roses on it. This must have been the start of my love affair with roses. Don't you just love the puffy sleeves?










If I were going to the Prom today, I would wear something pink for sure and definitely vintage.


Maybe this dress.


















Or this one.


















Or maybe even this one.


Or maybe even something strapless. All three vintage pink dresses were borrowed from Isabel. This is one collection I haven't started, yet.

I have enjoyed peaking at everyone at the Prom today. Thanks so much Natasha for hosting this fun event!

If you want to check out all the other prom goers, go here!

How much fun can one girl have?

Friday night found me driving in the rain with Isabel to our friend Diane's Molly Mo's Holiday Sale. The plan was we were going to go to the sale, meet Joy there and then take Joy out for a birthday dinner. We got to Diane's about 1/2 hour after she opened her doors and lots of stuff had already sold. That was totally fine as I have been shopping quite a bit lately and need to slow down.
I did manage to get two cute old baskets and a small rose painting for me, early Christmas present to myself if you will.

















Isabel restrained herself too and only bought a couple of items. But, the best part was how lovely the shop was decorated. Very twinkly and festive. Here are some pictures of the sale.

Here are Joy and Diane, mugging for the camera, aren't they cute.

Lots of my favorite, Christmas pink.















Martha from Vintage Trifles was there too selling some of her whimsical creations.

If you have read my blog from the beginning, you may remember that Molly Mo's is where Isabel and I had done a summer sale. If you want to see the pics. you can do so here.

After the sale we went out for dinner and lots of laughs with Joy. Diane joined us later. She said she sold so much that she was going to have to dig out some more stuff for the sale on Saturday . Yeah, Diane!







On Friday, my friend Bobby called to tell me that she would be having a garage sale on Saturday morning and I could come early if I wanted. Bobby used to be an antiques dealer at the mall that Isabel and I used to be at in our little town. She has a cool eclectic style and has had several garage sales since then to get rid of her stuff. She says she is so over the whole antique thing. What? How can that be? I love old junk and can't imagine ever tiring of it. Anyway, I went to her place and found a couple things to buy. She was selling a cool old shopping cart, one that I had admired in her garage before, and a cute vintage shopping basket. The rest of the stuff she had for sale was either too new, too expensive or too big. I was happy with what I got.






On my way home from Bobby's I remembered that there was going to be a Christmas Bazaar at the Senior Center. Normally I don't bother with these as they usually specialized in crocheted dish clothes, which I really do like btw, and baked goods. But, I thought it would be fun to see what they had. Lots of tables with sweet older ladies selling just what I expected. Lots of not so older ladies selling jewelry. I was delighted to find a couple items to take home.


Here is my haul from the bazaar. The metal rocking chair pin cushion and yes, the pink dish cloth were my first purchases. I then found the cute embroidered baby pillow and the blue thing with the pink roses is a neck warmer. I bought it for the fabric. I was getting ready to leave when I spotted the cute/strange sock dogs. Something about them just spoke to me and at $2.50 each I was happy to bring them home.

My daughter spotted the sock dogs, and decided the one with the ring around it's eye was hers. Now, she usually doesn't like the stuff I bring home but sometimes, she will "steal" some great find I get. I told her she couldn't have it, that I loved it and it was mine. She put up a good fight, but ultimately I won. I bet you all think I should have just given it to her. But let me tell you why I didn't. She is going to be 14 this week and is in full on teenage "the whole world revolves around me" mode. Had she asked me nicely instead of just telling me that it was hers, I might have given it to her. Anyway, I will probably wrap it up and give it to her for her birthday. I'm such a sucker!

Today I am going to try and head over to Monticello to do a little clean up and drop off. I really am running out of money and don't need to be shopping more right now, but of course, I can't just go there and not look around. Hopefully I won't find anything to bring home. Yeah, right!

Busy week coming up. I am working at the Middle School on Monday and the High School on Tuesday. Wednesday the kids will be going to school a 1/2 day and on Thursday we leave for Thanksgiving at my In-Laws over in Central Oregon. It has been awhile so it will be fun to see them. Will try to post before we go, but if for some reason I don't, please everyone, have a wonderful and safe Thanksgiving!

My Christmas Project and Some Other Stuff

Well, I finally finished my Advent Calender. I had so much fun putting this together. I highly recommend this as a project. One of the best parts was finding all the little goodies to put on it. Once I had everything, it went together pretty quickly. Without further ado, here it is.

Wow, this isn't a very good picture. I think if you click on it, you will be able to see the detail much better. It looks way better in person.

For this project I used an old screen I found at an antique sale last year. I wasn't sure what I would use it for, but it was cute and cheap and I thought maybe it would make a good display piece. The garland around the frame was from One Hundred Wishes. I think it is just perfect as it is kind of tarnished looking and vintagey. The tags I used are the ones I tea dyed awhile back. Thanks so much to Joy for sharing some of her trinkets and ideas on this project. We had so much fun stamping and embossing the numbers on the tags.

What do you think? Pretty cool, huh?

I wanted to show you some more pictures of Randy's shop, Madison Park. Isabel and I went to his grand opening last week. He has amazing taste. Of course I didn't take pictures of my favorite things he had for sale, antique doll beds. I guess I will have to go back. Love the little cabinet in the big cabinet pictured here on the left.

I love this mantle display with the jars of twigs and stuff. How cool is that. Of course I love the mirrors too. This picture is kind of dark, but if you click on it, you get a better detailed view.

Here is another corner of the shop. Lots of cool cabinets hold lots of interesting little bits and pieces. He also sells a lot of antique clothing items too.

Isabel and I were very good and didn't buy much at Randy's. She got a cute pink corset for her collection and I bought two vintage doll outfits. Here are a couple pictures of scary bear from the flea market modeling them. I think they are a little tight. Scary bear had to hold her breath while I did the buttons, but I think she likes her new outfits. I especially like the aged lace collar on the green dress.

Before I go, I just wanted to show you the goodies I got at Joy's the other day. I just love the vintage style ornaments. The little wire manequin was naked and I just threw on some lace, a little pearl chain and some vintage flowers. Not a permanent outfit, but I couldn't just photograph her naked now could I. I'm going to have fun playing with this new toy. The tole candle holder is kind of camoflaged with the floral drapes in the background, but it is so cute and I just love it. Right now it is hanging on a hook under my sewing room cabinet. I need to find a little candle to put in there.

close up of the ornaments

Well, I hope you enjoyed my pics. today. Got lots more projects in the works and in my head, better get busy. Have a fabulous weekend!

A Thing for Craftin 'n Thriftin

Wow, what a fun couple of days I have had. Yesterday I headed over to Joy's to work on that Christmas project I mentioned earlier. It was so much fun playing with all of Joys supplies. We were stamping and embossing and taping and wiring and organizing to get it all just right. Unfortunately I ran out of time and didn't get to finish my project while I was there, but I only have a few more things to do on it before it's good enough to show you.




In the meantime, I'll show you the one Joy made last year. It's an advent calender. Mine is similar, but different and I am just loving how it's turning out. Finally I am making something for myself which I never do. I always seem to make things for other people or to sell, but never for me. This one is all mine! Joy's making another one with some cool rubber stamps she just got. Can't wait to see how that one will turn out.

Joy is getting her shop ready for her Christmas open house. It already looks pretty cute as she recently had a sale there. I'm going to help her on one of the days of the open house. While looking through her shop, I found a few things I just had to bring home. (For some reason blogger is not letting me post any more pictures. I guess they think I have enough for one post.)

Of course since I was road trippin it over to Joy's, I had to stop at a couple thrift stores. First stop, Goodwill where I found two cute glass jars. Next stop was at a little thrift/antique shop where all I found was a cute little jar with a pink lid which cost more than the other jars put together, but I just loved the lid. I was running late, but there was another Goodwill on the way to Joy's house so I just stopped in for a quick sec and boy, am I glad I did. I found these two cute crinolines, which I just love. I can't seem to stop buying them if I can find them for a good price. I also found a denim jacket, and a chenille bedspread. The bedspread was $10.00 which is not bad, but I have a lot of chenille, did I need more and at $10? I opened it up with one of the sales people and discovered a few holes and some stains. She said, "how about $4.99?" I said, for $4.99 I'll take it. There is a lot of fabric to work with and it is a nice thick all white chenille. Right now it is soaking in the machine. I also got a bag of vintage linen scraps for $8.00. I have some projects in mind for these.

Today after dropping the kidlets off at school, I decided that I hadn't had enough thrifting so I headed out to the Goodwill that is closest to me. I also hit the Value Village which is just down the road too. Here is what I got at those two fun places.

• cute little vintage cabinet(I'm in love with this!)
• carved santa
• towel holder with roses on base
• vintage metal napkin holder
• about a million red striped cello bags
• winter scene tin
  green crepe paper
• three tier hanging wicker baskets
• punched tin Christmas tree
• valentine heart box
• metal frame
• cross stiched sampler

I had to run a few errands on my way home, but I stopped at a local bazaar that is going on not expecting to find anything I like, because this one usually has mostly new Christmas stuff, but surprisingly I found a little corner of vintage items. Here is what I picked up there. I really shouldn't be buying any more linens as I have a ton, but I couldn't resist these two cute little cottage towels. I also got these sweet vintage reflector thingys. I saw that Joy made some really adorable Christmas ornaments out of some she had. And the vintage garland will come in handy for some project I hope to have time to do.

And finally, if you are still with me, I made a quick stop into an antique shop in my town that I hadn't visited in awhile. The owner and I started chatting about starting up a summer antique faire next year. I said I would be on board for that and would be happy to help with anything to get it going. While chatting, I found these cute items.

*cute antique metal frame
*six old keys
*pair of porcelain rose earrings


Wow, all that shopping can really tire a girl out. I'll be back soon with pictures of my completed project. But now I need some rest! C ya!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO JOY!

Joy, ain't she cute?!

Today is my good friend Joy's birthday. Please stop by her blog and wish her a happy day. I know she would just love that. She and I started our blogs around the same time, okay, she started hers first which then motivated me to start mine. She is one of the sweetest, funnest, most real people I know. I can always count on having a great time when we get together. In fact, I will be heading over to her place tomorrow to work on a Christmas project, to see her recent auction finds, and to just have some good laughs and conversation. So, in celebration of Joy today, here are a few photos that I'm sure she will love me sharing.

Isabel and Joy at the quilt tourIsabel and Joy sewing queens

Joy at the Portland Antique Expo July 07

Me and Joy at the Polk County Flea Market

Joy at Coburg Antique Faire

So, in honor of your birthday, I made you this beautiful cake. What do you think? Isn't it wonderful? And guess what? No calories too.

Hope you are having an awesome day! See you tomorrow! Love you!