My Crafty Afternoon

I actually meant to do this project a couple of weeks ago, but I'm just now getting around to it. During the summer, we have this anchor thing that hangs on the wall by the door and it has pegs across the bottom and we use it to hang our keys on. Well, since summer is over, I wanted to take it down and replace it with something else. Only I couldn't really find anything I liked that would fit in such a small space. So, I made something! It's cute, it was cheap to make and I can do a new one for Christmas too!

Here are 3 wooden letters I bought at Jo-Ann's a few weeks ago. These are our initials, the "W" and one "L" are smaller than our last name initial.



I picked out a couple of pieces of scrapbook paper I liked that had an Autumn feeling to them and then chose the paint color. I only painted the edges of the letters because that is all that shows and I am lazy. See my post from earlier today. L-A-Z-Y. I picked a nice pumpkin color to paint the edges.







After the paint had dried, I turned the scrapbook paper right side down, turned the letters over so the right side was down, and I traced around them. The "W" was a pain to try and trace out!! As you can see from the paper, I guess some of the paint wasn't dry after all! Oh well.



After cutting out the letters, I used Mod-Podge to glue the paper onto the wood. I used a very thin coat for the smaller two letters since those were primed white when I bought them but the unfinished large "L" soaked up quite a bit of the glue so I had to use more on that one.



After the glue had set up a bit and the paper was firmly attached, I used an Xacto knife blade to trim any little pieces of paper that wasn't aligned perfectly. Then I used a small emery board to sand down any snags along the edges. I then flipped the letters over and attached small sawtooth picture hangers on the back. I forgot to take a picture of that step!

Next I added some bronze cup hooks onto the front of the large "L". I should've measured first and pre-drilled the holes but I was lazy. lol I just eyeballed it and hoped for the best.



Ta-Da...the finished product. I may have the husband rehang these later. I couldn't really reach the wall to hang these where I wanted them but I think they look okay for now. And we can hang our keys up again and stop throwing them onto my very old Louis Vuitton trunk!

I *heart* Value Village

So, I *did* make it over to the Value Village yesterday morning and spent 2 (yes, TWO) hours in there picking up all sorts of goodies! I'm proud to say that I spent $12 and some change and came home with a bag full of stuff. Plus something that wouldn't fit it a bag, which may be my new favorite item ever found thrifting!

And, I remembered to get my battery charger outta my husband's truck so I could charge the batteries for my camera and I'm proud to say that I have new pictures to share. It's been a very long time since I've shared any, so I'm happy that I can do that today!

First up, some of my fabulous finds from the other week.

These are the cute little Exxon/Esso Tiger napkins and coasters. Aren't they cute?



And here's the box of vintage Christmas Ornaments I scored at the Goodwill a couple of weeks back. Sorry for the blurry picture. I'm too lazy to retake it.



And the fabulous punch bowl, with 12 cups and hooks and ladle. For $2.50! Did I mention this thing weighs like 15 pounds? Yeah, it's heavy!



And the vintage chopper thingamajig and a vintage juice pitcher. Look! That apron in the background is the one I won over at Confessions of an Apron Queen. Be sure to check out her blog!!



And finally, here are my purchases from yesterday.

Here's a cute box of hot pink ornaments. I'm guessing they are vintage because the graphics on the box don't really look like anything currently on the market but who knows. I just like the color of the ornaments so into my shopping cart they went!



And a bag full of vintage Shiny Brite ornaments. I especially like the ones that are see-thru. A bag of Shiny Brites only set me back 45 cents. Score!



Look at this cute little paper Santa. I have no idea what his original purpose was. He was it a little plastic bag with other misc. stuff like those paper bell things. Only they weren't bell shaped so I have no idea what they are supposed to be either. But Santa was inside with that and for a quarter, I figured he could come home with me too.



Here is one of two aprons I picked up yesterday. This one needs a good soaking to remove some spots but otherwise, it's in good condition. You can't see it in the picture, but the top of the apron says "Portugal" on it.



And here is the second apron. A cute, pink gingham apron. I just love gingham aprons. I think they are my favorite! It needs a good soak too but it's in good condition otherwise!



And last but not least, my favorite find in quite a while. Check out this vintage, chrome canister set. It has holes on the back for it to be mounted on a wall. And it's in pretty good condition too! It needs a good cleaning and I'm sure the chrome will shine right up. I love it!



I also picked up two more souvenir plates to add to my collection but the pictures turned out blurry. Maybe when Will finally gets my plates put up on the wall, I can take a picture to share. That's something else I can add to the honey-do list for this weekend!!

Thanks for checking out my newest finds!

Saturday. It Sucked!!

I remember when Will and I used to spend rainy, stormy weekends cuddled up in bed, listening to the thunder and dozing in and out of slumber. Ah, fond memories those are. Because we cannot do that any longer. Oh, sure, we still *want* to do that, but our lovely house has some issues. Like the basement which leaks in about 50 different spots. I wish I were exaggerating.

Saturday morning we were up at 7:00 to check on the basement. Earlier this summer, we noticed a major leak during a storm. As in, a pencil sized hole in the wall and water pouring in like a waterfall. So, we knew the basement leaked, we just didn't realize to what extent. Uh, yeah, we have some major issues down there, which we discovered as we spent the entire freaking day moving stuff out of the basement, and sucking up water with the shop vac.

The man we bought the house from only owned the place for 2.5 months. He bought it in January, fixed it up and then sold it to us in April. Evidently the people he bought the house from failed to disclose the fact that the basement had major leaks and I doubt the man we bought it from knew because it doesn't rain a lot during the winter so there's no way he could've known. Also, the people he bought it from had started to finish out the basement and there are 2 walls with studs and drywall. Guess where the majority of the water was coming from? Uh huh. I told Will to break the drywall so we could see behind it and sure enough, water was pouring in through several areas.

Our area easily saw 5+ inches of rain on Saturday alone. That's not counting the rain on Thursday afternoon/night and then most of the day on Friday. The ground was just so saturated that water was even seeping up through the cracks in the basement floor.

Needless to say, Will and I were both in extremely pissy moods Saturday. It was such a mess down there. I mean we probably sucked up several hundred gallons of water. Just as soon as we'd empty the 16 gallon shop vac, we'd fill it right back up. And the stairs going down into the basement are kind of shoddy, the treads aren't very wide and I just knew I was going to fall and break something as I tried to walk up/down the tiny stairs carrying a ton of crap and wearing wet sneakers.

Thank the GOOD Lord that the rain stopped yesterday though because I.was.done! I could barely walk yesterday. My legs were so sore from walking up and down stairs and carrying all that stuff. My back hurt from being all hunched over vacuuming the basement for like 8 hours. And mentally, I was just exhausted. I suppose if any good came out of this whole fiasco, the basement is finally empty and now Will can get to work on plugging any holes and then start finishing it off the way he wants.

So, in other news, today is 25% off day at the Value Village thrift. I skipped last Monday because I just didn't feel like dealing with the crowds but I'm going to go today. It's been over a week since I did any thrifting so I need to go get my fix. I also need to make some stops in the craft store, the grocery store and TJ Maxx or Marshall's. I also need to remember to get my battery charger for my camera out of the husbands truck so I can recharge the batteries and finally take some pictures of all of my new goodies.

Those are my plans for today. Well, that and trying to catch up on the 400+ items I need to read on Google Reader. Yeah, I'm a little behind on that!

Busy, busy!

You know, I had every intention of coming back last Friday and posting pictures of all of my thrift store goodies. Really I did. I took the pictures and everything. Then the husband got home from his trip to Tennessee and we had to start packing our bags for our one-nighter trip over to WV the next day and before I knew it, I just ran out of time.

Saturday we drove over to Will's hometown. It's about an hour and a half from where we're living now so it's nice that we're closer to his side of the family. As we were getting into his town, I saw TONS of yardsales. UUUGH! I knew we weren't going to stop at any of them though so that was slightly disappointing! We spent the day with his family and came home Sunday afternoon.

I had planned to get up Monday morning and be at the VV thrift store when it opened at 10:00 but I just wasn't feeling it that day. Instead, I went to Trader Joe's and did some grocery shopping and came home. I think I'm getting sick because I have had oh, like, ZERO energy for the last 3 days. The weather has been fantastic and I should be outside enjoying it but I just want to crawl into bed and sleep for about 30 hours!!

Tomorrow is the husband's birthday! He's turning 32 and I have still got to go to town and pick up a card, a cake, and his present. He has been nagging (yes, men nag too!) me about going to Medieval Times for the last 5 years so I told him earlier this year that we'd go for his birthday. I bought tickets to that yesterday so we'll be having dinner at the castle tomorrow night. That's not the gift I need to go buy, by the way. No, I need to go to Lowe's and try to decide which big tool chest/rolling cart thingamajig he wants. And then I get to try and load that sucker up into the back of my SUV. This is going to be FUN!!

I just looked at the pictures I took of all of my thrift store finds last week and they look horrible so I need to retake those before I can post them. I will try to get to that later today but for now I need to attempt to get dressed and go run errands before I lose my motivation and end up taking a nap!!

I can feel Autumn in the air...

..and I freaking LOVE IT! It was definitely crisp outside this morning when I let the dogs out. Now, I will admit, crisp to me probably means something different than it does to you. Well, if you have lived in a place with 4 seasons your entire life anyhow. See, I spent 26 years of my life in SC where we only had 2 real seasons. Summer and almost summer. Haha! There were numerous times where it would be Christmas and still be warm enough to wear shorts. So, having moved to Maryland two years ago, I am thoroughly enjoying having 4 distinct seasons. I wish winter was a little more, well, winter-y with snow and whatnot, but it's still a very pleasant change from SC. I swear I can see some leaves starting to change color too. It's very slight but I can see it!

Fall is my absolute favorite time of the year. I wish I could just live in a place that was fall all the time. I have started putting out some of our Fall accessories around the house and I hope to get some mums planted soon. I think I need to call Merry Maids to give the house a good once-over because I am just not motivated at all to clean my house lately. I need to give it a good deep cleaning though so I can finish putting out all of the fall decorations.

Lately, I have been OBSESSING about a house Will and I put an offer in on last spring that we didn't get. I think about this house at least several times a day and I am feeling kind of heartbroken. I do like our current house but I really feel like we just settled because we were getting down to the wire as far as our lease was concerned and we'd already put offers on a couple of houses and didn't get them in the end. So, when we saw this house, we kind of jumped on it because we were just so burned out with looking and this place would work. The house I keep thinking about needed a lot of cosmetic work, but it was so huge and was on a couple of acres and I am just sad that we didn't end up moving in there. I do like the conveniences in the town where our current house is located. We're very close to a lot of things, including downtown Baltimore, so that's a nice perk. But the other house was out in the country and had so much room and I think that's the part I'm missing the most. I still feel like this house we're in now is just too small for us.

Now that I'm done having a pity party, I'll let you know about my fabulous time at the thrift stores yesterday. I was planning on going to the Ghetto Thrift on Tuesday but I forgot that we had to take the dogs to the vet for their yearly check-up that day. So, after the vet appointment, Will and I had to drive around and try to find matting for some prints we needed framed. The first AC Moore told us that if they had to order us any matting it would be over $100! They are obviously outta their freaking minds, especially considering I can buy it at Hobby Lobby for a couple of dollars. Never mind that we don't actually *have* any Hobby Lobby stores around here but I would rather wait until I'm back down in SC to pick some up at the HL in my parents town than to pay over $100 for some cardboard!

Anyhow, we drove to another AC Moore which is up above Baltimore and as we were leaving the first AC Moore, I found a new (to me anyhow!) thrift store. YAY!! It's a Value Village which is the name of the thrift store across from the base that I used to go to every week but is now too far away to justify driving to. Well, imagine my delight in seeing one that is only a couple of miles from my house!! Unfortunately, we were in a hurry and I didn't have time to stop but I knew I'd be back before the week was over.

And that's exactly what I did yesterday morning. I got up at a reasonable time and headed out to the Value Village. I should start using VV instead of having to type the whole name out. Man, how's that for lazy? Anyhow, this store is huge and so organized but the prices are kind of ridiculous on some items. I found a fabulous little wooden sewing box for $5 and saw a ton of milk glass stuff that I passed on. I think they have a sale on Monday's where everything is 25% off so that's going to be my regular day there!

Then yesterday afternoon after the husband got home from work, we had to run a couple of errands and I asked if he'd ride with me to the Ghetto Thrift (hereafter known as GT!) and bribed him into saying yes by offering to buy him a snowcone along the way! He agreed and even came inside with me! I get 25% off everyday at this thrift store so which day I go on doesn't really matter. I managed to spend 23$ and came home with two huge bags of stuff. I picked up 5 or 6 Blue's Clues VHS tapes for my niece. She's 19 months old and obsessed with Blue's Clues and it's impossible to find anything related to Blue's Clues in regular stores anymore. So, I bought those for her and they were only 75 cents each. Much cheaper than the ones my sister found on Ebay that had shipping costs of $40!! I also picked up the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown VHS for myself and I'm going to have Will burn it onto a DVD for me and then I'll send the tape down to my sister.

I also bought a cute little juice pitcher, one of those little chopper jars, a package of vintage napkins/coasters that have the Esso/Exxon Tiger on them but that tiger looks a lot like the Clemson tiger so I'll probably send the napkins to my sister since she's a huge Clemson fan. How come I never find any vintage Florida Gators items anywhere?!?

Well, the husband is gone for the day. He flew down to Tennessee for a couple of hours and I've been staying busy around the house. I'm currently sipping on some apple cider and trying to decide if I want to go back to the GT or not because as I was leaving yesterday afternoon, I noticed quite a few books that needed to come home with me but I could tell Will was beyond ready to leave so I didn't get them.
I'm thinking I need to go back, what do you think??

An update...

I am finally home again here in Maryland. Techincally, I've been home since last Wednesday but I have been busy/tired/relaxing since I got back. Will flew back on Wednesday too and we had an extremely laid back weekend. If any of you watched the news over the last week and a half, you probably heard that Dick Cheney was visiting Georgia, Italy and a couple of other spots. Well, that's where Will was too. He flies with the Vice President. Exciting, huh?

Anyhow, since we've been back, we've unpacked all of our luggage, done tons of laundry, went grocery shopping, stopped into Home Depot, started putting away summer stuff and pulling out our fall accessories, spent countless hours on the sofa watching tv, taken a couple of naps and caught up on about 30lbs worth of mail!

I managed to sneak away for a few hours today since Will was at work and I went to the Goodwill a couple of miles from my house. I found one box of vintage ornaments for a dollar so that was nice. I also stopped into Jo-Ann's and Target and I have to confess -- it's nice being back home and having so many shopping options. Jackson was nice, it was beautiful but there was no Target, no craft stores, none of the places I love to shop at. So, while I enjoyed my time in Wyoming, I'm very happy to be back here where I know I have tons of shopping options!

I spent a good hour or so earlier trying to clean and organize my craft room again. It became the dumping ground this weekend and I could barely even walk in here. I have a ton of things on my to-do list that I want to start on this week so I had to try to clean it up a bit before I could do anything else. It's definitely a constant work-in-progress though as I'm still trying to get things organized and into some sort of usable system. Right now it's just not working that well but I hope that I can figure something out soon.

Tomorrow, I'm going to try to make it over to the ghetto thrift. It's been about 7 weeks since I've gone and that's much too long. I'm hoping I can find lots of goodies because I certainly haven't had much luck at the other thrift stores I've been to recently!

Greetings from Arkansas

Do y'all have any idea how glad I am to be back in the South? Probably not, but let me assure you that I am dang happy! I had fried okra with my dinner tonight. It's probably my favorite vegetable ever! Oh, and sweet tea, thank the good Lord. I normally don't drink sweet tea (I mean I grew up drinking it but stopped because of the calories!) but there was NO WHERE in Jackson, WY that served sweet tea so I definitely ordered some with dinner tonight. Just because I could! It was fabulous.

Anyhow, no thrifting today, though I was tempted to try and locate thrift stores in the big cities like Amarillo and Oklahoma City, but my desire to get to eastern TN outweighed my desire to do any thrifting in those places. Shocking, isn't it? I can make up for it tomorrow, Wednesday and Thursday morning though because I'm pretty familiar with the area in P.F. and Gatlinburg and know where lots of good antique stores and flea markets are. YAY!

Well, that's all. I am exhausted and I should've been sleeping like 3 hours ago but I'm addicted to the internet and had to catch up on everything!