My Extremely Productive Day!

Despite sleeping in until 8:30 this morning, I have already accomplished so much today! I'm quite proud of myself because even though it's raining and gloomy and I'd love to take a nap, I'm pushing through! I ran to Wal-Mart first thing this morning, where I spent a good 20 minutes standing in one of the 3 open lanes trying to check out my shipping supplies. I hate that place. If the prices weren't so good and it wasn't so convenient (less than 1 mile from home), I swear I'd never go in that place. I hate how they have like 500 lanes and only 3 open. Even when it's ridiculously busy! ::vent over:: When I got home from Hell Wal-Mart, I packaged up some orders and ran to the Post Office, where I once again had to stand in a very long line. Boo!

But, the rest of my day has been fabulous! I came home and started ironing tons of linens I've purchased recently so I could then take pictures. I ironed for a couple of hours and I didn't even mind! Now, as domesticated as I am, there are some tasks/chores which I just despise doing. Like dishes. Or vacuuming. And normally, ironing. But a few weeks ago while I was shopping in Homegoods I picked up a bottle of Lavender scented linen spray and now I love to iron! Well, I'm not sure if it's the smell of the lavender or the smell of the money I'll hopefully make upon selling said linens, but something is making ironing a lot less dreadful than it used to be! LOL

Speaking of linens, I went to three thrift stores yesterday and I scored big at all of them. I shopped until I almost dropped. My joints were killing me by the time I got home last night! Part of my haul is pictured below. I haven't taken pictures of the "keep" pile yet, but it's equally huge. All of this is stuff I'm going to sell, despite my deep desires to hoard it all! lol











The husband is gone again until late tonight so I'm going to try to get the rest of my "sell" pile done and then start on the "keep" pile. I have so many things I want to show you guys! Maybe I'll get caught up soon!! Hope you all have a fabulous weekend!

Don't You Just Love...

when you buy something at a thrift store and it turns out to be even more fabulous than you originally thought? I'm not talking about money, per se, but just in general!

I bought these great little bird prints at a thrift store on Monday of last week. It was during the President's Day Sale so everything was 50% off. I scored both of these for a mere $2.90! I love old pictures like these. Normally I find pictures of flowers which I love but I think I like the birds more! And I especially love(d) the chippy green paint on the frames!





When I buy these little gems, I almost always take the backs off of the frames so I can check out what kind of paper it is. It's interesting to me to see if the picture was once part of a calendar or maybe it was torn from a magazine. I love that someone once re-used what was available to them to help decorate their home. That's thriftiness right there, don't you think? So, having done this a time or two in the past, I fully expected to pull the back of the frame off and find an old page from a magazine. Imagine my surprise when I found this:



That's right. It's a dinner menu from a cruise ship! It's dated 1956. How great is that?!



Certainly better dining options than the all-you-can-eat pizza and chicken fingers they serve these days!



I can't wait to get these hung up in our guest room. They are just so charming and will look great in there! Have you ever bought something at a thrift or antique store that you later realized was even better than you thought? I know I can't be the only one that has this sort of thing happen!!

A New Layout!

Just a quick post because I'm heading out to do a little thrifting!

After spending the last hour attempting to tweak this layout to fit all of my stuff, I think I'm done. Sure, there are some things that are annoying the crap out of me, but I can live with it. Besides, now I have a raging headache and I need to stop "previewing" the blog before I get really mad and end up deleting the whole thing! lol What do you think? Do you like the new layout? Is it hard to read? Is it too busy? I'm still on the fence! I mean I like the colors but I haven't decided if it's too hard to read. Hmm

Yesterday I went to the VV near my house and I found so many goodies! It's been a long time since I filled up my cart with stuff. I'm guessing the big sale on Monday helped clear out some space so they could fill up the shelves again. Yay! I need to go get all of the stuff I bought out of my car and take some pictures and do some Etsy-ing! I bought stuff for my shop on Etsy and some stuff for my office too. I can't wait to share the pictures with you all.

Okay, I promise I'll be back soon (maybe even this afternoon!) with pictures of all of the goodies! Have a fabulous Friday!

My Fabulous Weekend!!

Hello all of my vintage-y peeps. I hope you had a Happy Valentine's Day & enjoyed the holiday yesterday too! I had a fantastic weekend. Will was off from Thursday through yesterday and we spent tons of time together which was really nice. Thursday we had to do a little retail therapy, not the type I enjoy though. I need tires for my SUV so we spent several hours that morning trying to located a store here in MD that actually had my tires in stock. No one has tires for my car. I had to go online and order them and have them shipped here. That was $500 that I'd really rather have spent on anything else! Hey, at least I got 4 tires for that price. Will had to get two new tires in October and those ran him $500! For two tires!! Good grief!

Friday morning I decided I wanted to go over to Harper's Ferry, WV and to some of the other surrounding towns for the day. We saw the most adorable house for sale and now I'm dying to buy this place, make it super cute & rent it out. It's really affordable so we'll see if my dream of owning a vacation property finally comes true! After we drove through the countryside and all of the little towns in MD and WV, I persuaded Will to take me to the Outlets over in Hagerstown, MD. There's an LL Bean outlet there and I love that place! I don't really shop for clothing there, but I was hoping they'd have bedroom slippers on sale and I lucked out! I found a pair of cute pink slippers on clearance, plus an additional 30% off for the President's Day Sale they were having. Score! Of course, this was after I paid almost $35.00 for the same pair (in green!) a few weeks ago. I'd much rather pay $13.00 for slippers!

Saturday I woke up to breakfast in bed!! Will slipped out of bed without me hearing him, got dressed and ran down to pick up flowers, fruit & donuts. He came back, put everything on a little tray and brought it upstairs to me. He woke me up with a kiss and we sat in bed and ate breakfast together. Check out the pictures:

My delicious breakfast- cantaloupe, a glazed donut, a cherry flavored heart donut, coffee in a vintage pyrex mug, flowers & a card!



Close up of my cherry flavored heart shaped donut. Check out that classy paper plate!!


I stayed in bed most of the day Saturday which is very unlike me! I wasn't feeling well and figured I should just rest for the day! It was a very relaxing day & exactly what I needed.

Sunday found Will and I doing some more shopping, this time for a new tv. Now, keep in mind we didn't/don't need a new tv. We had 3 tv's that were functioning just fine. But Will has been wanting a flat screen tv for years now, so he went out and bought one on Sunday. He kept asking my opinion on different models, etc but I couldn't really offer an opinion. I don't watch much tv, usually HGTV or Food TV. And I'd never, ever buy a new tv just buy one. Especially when I already had 3 that worked perfectly fine.

Yesterday Will had to go into work for a few minutes so I rode with him. I was definitely making a stop at the Value Village down there. Well, that was a huge mistake! I had no idea that the VV was having a huge sale for President's Day. The entire store was 50% off and that place was packed! I can't deal with crowds like that so I made my way back out the car where Will was waiting. That place was insane! I did stop at another thrift on the way home and while crowded, it was nothing like the VV. I picked up some goodies for my house & for the Etsy shop.

Will had to fly out to Colorado today so I made my way over to the Value Village closer to my home. I thought I might find some good stuff since I kind of figured they had a huge sale yesterday and they might have restocked last night. Yeah, no so. The racks were all empty but I managed to find a couple of things I wanted but when I went to pay, all of the credit card machines were down. I'll try going again on Thursday.

I've been busy all afternoon taking pictures and listing goodies in my Etsy shop. I have been so lazy lately so I really need a swift kick in the you-know-where to get back in gear and list on a regular basis. I had my first non-paying buyer last week and that was kind of disappointing. Why do people do that? I mean if you have no intentions of following through and actually paying for the item, why even put it in your cart & check out? Ugh! I guess I should be glad it's only happened once!

Okay, I'm off to put on my pj's & check out some of my favorite blogs while I wait for Will to get home! Hope you all are having a great week so far!

Spring is in the Air!

Well, for today anyhow! We're supposed to get some rain/snow mix on Saturday, but today the weather is lovely!! I'm starting to get in the mood for Spring Cleaning, which is a great thing, because my craft room is still a disaster and the rest of the house is just kind of blah. I'm ready for the days when I can pull back the drapes & open the windows and get some fresh air circulating through this place!

In an attempt to get my never ending craft room re-do finished up, I've spent the better part of today doing some much needed organizing and I've worked on a couple of projects too. I'm changing out the window treatments in here. You guys remember back in November I bought those oh-so-cute striped valences, right? Well, Target is having a huge clearance and the matching full length curtains are on sale. So, I bought those and I'm hanging them up today. The valences will go in our guest room upstairs.

I'm hoping that the husband will be around this weekend so he can hang some shelves in here too. I have some really cute pink corner shelves I bought at a thrift store last summer that I want to hang up in here. I had bought them to go in the guest room but I need them in here more than I do in there!

So, are you guys doing anything for Valentine's Day? Will and I went to dinner at Outback last night and I told him during dinner that I didn't want to go out again this weekend. I think I'll make us a nice dinner here at home and we can just hang out and relax! Last weekend while Will was in Germany with VP Biden, Andrea and I drove up to Hershey, Pa and went to the Chocolate Buffet! It was $35 and worth every single penny. The buffet started at 7:00 and there was such a huge spread on the table. It was almost ridiculous! I ate so much chocolate I thought I was going to be sick! I think we'll make this an annual event although next year I definitely want to get a room and spend the night. Driving home after eating all of those desserts was not fun! Needless to say, I do not want any chocolate from Will for Valentine's Day. Unless of course he's going into the District to the Leonida's store. I can't turn down Leonida's chocolate since those are my all-time favorites!

I'm hoping to get around to some of your blogs this afternoon & tonight so I can catch up on what you all have been doing. I seriously need to get back into some sort of regular blogging/reading schedule! I'm such a slacker lately.

Did I Say I Liked Winter?!?

I am a big fat LIAR! We had snow on Tuesday during the day. Several inches. Then that night it sleeted another couple of inches. Then early, early yesterday morning (like 0300 early) everything iced over. Complete mess!! And then yesterday during the day it warmed up to almost 40 degrees. But last night it dropped down to 22. So, everything refroze. Into a huge sheet of ice.

So, anyhow, I get dressed this morning thinking I'll go to the VV for 25% off day (for the cardholders, which I am!) and I spent a good hour taking my time, doing my hair and make up, since after the VV I had to drive the 40 miles down to Will's work and get my ID card renewed and I didn't want to look like poo, which is how I am still feeling, but I digress. So, I spend an hour getting dressed and I look good and I'm feeling better and I gather all of my crap to walk outside and I almost broke my neck! The "path" from the door to my car is like an ice skating rink. I have absolutely no traction, despite my wearing ugly snow boots, and I almost broke my neck!! I mean I realize SNOW boots are meant for SNOW but come on. I thought I was being smart by wearing something made for winter weather. Hell, if I'm going to be slipping and sliding all over the place I might as well wear cute shoes.

I managed to get to my car and throw all of my stuff in the passenger side seat and then I had to trek all the way back across the front yard to drop off a package at the mail box. And then walk back over to my car. I wasn't feeling very optimistic by this point because if I couldn't even walk across the yard, how was my car going to get out of the drive way. Well, simply put, it didn't. Which is why I'm home now, on blogger, in quite the bitchy mood. See, our little drive way is basically a mud pit and it has been since the beginning of December. The snow and rain have just turned our gravel parking spots into muck and it's nasty. Will's truck was able to leave Tuesday, yesterday and today. My car has been parked since Monday and there is ice all around it. I don't think I'm going anywhere anytime soon & I'm starting to go stir crazy sitting in this house!

I was so mad a few minutes ago that I ventured outside to our back yard (another big ol sheet of ice) and I went into our shed and found a spade/hoe thingamajig and I started hacking up the back yard. You know, a path from the shed to the back door. Not the *whole* yard. I'm sure I looked like a giant idiot doing that but hey, it worked and I had traction while walking!! So, I may try to go out and do that to the front yard too and maybe around my car and maybe I'll get to leave this place this afternoon. Our driveway is in the shade though so I doubt much melting will take place and trying to hack away at ice is quite tiring!

I guess I could make good use of this time by doing Etsy related things or cleaning the house but I'd much rather be at the Value Village and Target (which, btw, is having another huge clearance sale!). Thanks for listening to my rants. I'm feeling a bit better!!

Whew!

Hey guys! I thought I'd get back into posting regularly after my visit to SC a few weeks ago but as luck would have it I came down with a horrible cold! My germ infested relatives were nice enough to share with me and now both Will and I are hacking and sneezing all over the place. I was pretty much out of commission all of last week, moving between the bed and the sofa and back to bed again. It was horrible. I'm still not 100% better although I'm not quite as sick as I was last week. Now I'm in that itchy throat, cough-until-you-gag phase and it's almost impossible to go anywhere because I never know when I'm going to have one of those coughing attacks and well, gagging in public is a bit embarrassing!

Our visit to SC was pleasant. We exchanged Christmas gifts with my side of the family, went to my nieces 2nd Birthday party, visited with relatives and came home in a timely manner! I didn't get to do any thrifting while I was down there, so that was a bit disappointing but I kind of expected that. It seems like there's never enough time to get it all done when I go back home! There's always friends I didn't get to see, places I didn't get to shop and food I didn't get to eat. lol

In other news, it looks as if we're planning a little family vacation in March and we're heading to Florida. Will, as you all know, is in the Air Force and this year (like in 2003) Disney is doing a special promotion for military families. The active duty member receives a 5-day Park Hopper pass for free and up to 5 of his dependents or friends can get 5-day Hopper passes for $99!! So, it appears as if we'll be heading to Florida in March and we're taking my parents, sister and niece with us. Oh, and our two doggies. We're looking to rent a house (hopefully with a pool!) and we'll be there for at least a week. I'm going to try to persuade Will to take me down to Sanibel Island while we're in Florida too but I'm not sure if he'll go for that. And my mom and sister have both already talked to me about their desire to spend at least one day while we're down there at thrift stores! Wooot! Thank goodness we're driving because I plan on loading up on tons of fabulous goodies should we happen to find decent thrifting spots!

So, that's about it from here in snow & ice-covered Maryland. I need to venture out today and pick up a few things for my Etsy business and maybe do some thrifting. I hope you all are doing well. And I hope I can get around and visit everyone soon. I miss my blogging friends!!