My Someday House, Finally!!

Guess who is living in a nearly 100-year old farmhouse? That's right -- this girl right here. Hi!! I have been MIA for nearly 18 months after my move to SC and lack of anything of interest to write about but I am back. And I am living in a new-to-me farmhouse and I am in love. Both with the house and with a really nice man. I'm also in a new state, living in the mountains of NC, which I have always wanted to do and life is going amazingly well. 

Soooo, long story short, I met the nice man in March, while we were both still in SC. We fell head over heels, madly in love and when July rolled around, he was offered a job here in the mountains of NC so of course, we both up and moved, quite unexpectedly I might add. One thing led to another and we ended up borrowing my parents 34' RV camper and spending the summer in an awesome little campground, ran by the sweetest ladies, while we got acquainted with the area and looked for a house to rent. 

Finally, after nearly 3 months of living in the camper, we found a suitable house and put in our application and waited anxiously to hear if we were accepted. Thankfully, we were, and within 2 weeks, we were signing the lease and preparing to move in. That happened this past weekend. The man had to work Friday so I drove down to SC, helped my parents load up the trailer with all of my worldly goods that have been sitting in their garage for the last 18 months and then Saturday morning, we made the 3.5 hour trip back up here. Spent a couple hours that afternoon unloading and finished up Sunday morning. 

Needless to say, I am in the middle of unpacking hell but it's all coming together nicely and much quicker than I thought. I have a huge (to me, anyway) office and I am sooo ready to get everything put away and get my business back up and running. 

So, our 100 year old farm house sits on a hill, on 2 acres of land and has an amazing view of the surrounding hills and mountains and we have cows for neighbors. It is so quiet and peaceful here and even though the house is only 1500 sq ft or so, it's got plenty of storage and feels much larger, especially after sharing 300sqft with the man all summer long! 

I have to get back to unpacking but I leave you with some photos of the new place. It is so me -- from the wooden walls to the built in china hutch to the painted floors. It's truly my 'dream house' even with its quirks! I hope to get back into blogging on a regular basis once I've unpacked and organized. I'll need to warn everyone that there will be lots of cow pictures. I'm completely in love with our bovine neighbors!! 

Vintage Gurley Candles

I found a large glittery Gurley tree this week!!! My first Christmas Gurley of the season. I was so excited to get my paws on that little baggie of vintage goodness. 

It goes great with my other Gurley Christmas candles: 

And a few weeks ago, I had the extreme pleasure of finding an entire baggie of Gurley Thanksgiving candles. I have never ever found even one Thanksgiving Gurley's in all my years of thrifting so this thrilled me -- 3 turkeys and a pilgrim  boy & girl! So excited to add them to my collection. 

And last but not least, the giant jack o lantern I found the other year. I ::heart:: it so much! 

I still haven't decorated for Christmas -- probably won't. Don't feel like digging through my bff's garage for all of the stuff. 

And, I think after the first of the year, I'm moving home to SC. I haven't decided if it will be in January or in April when our lease is up. I am incredibly homesick and so tired of living up here away from  my parents and sister and niece. I will miss the thrifting opportunities here but it's so much more affordable to live there. I never in a billion years thought I'd *want* to move home but the fact is that I want to live somewhere that I can afford to maybe one day own a house, somewhere that's affordable enough that I can go on vacation a couple of times a year, somewhere that doesn't cost $1500/mo just for a stupid apartment with no yard and a lease that allows the landlord and maintenance 24/7 access to your house with no warning and no courteous call beforehand. 

I am praying that the honey can find a job there and will consider moving but if he chooses to stay in MD, I will understand. I just feel like I've given up so much over the years by being a military wife and having lived so far from my family and it's time to think about what will make ME happy. So much weighing on my mind but I think this is what I need to do. It doesn't have to be permanent but I've lived away from my hometown for over 8 years now, five of which I've been stuck here alone in MD so it's time to go home. 

VTT - Vintage Bath Towels

Hola, vintage peeps. Today, I'm going to participate in Vintage Thingies Thursday, hosted by the lovely Colorado Lady. Please stop in and visit!! 

Today, I'm showcasing my love affair with vintage towels. The patterns are so fab! 

The colors are (mostly) delicious! 

The quality is unlike anything you'll find today, as evidenced by the fact that these babies are still in great condition some 40 years later. 

Towels I bought 3 years ago are not in this same condition. It's true when they say "they just don't make 'em like they used to". Sad, isn't it? 

Thanks so much for stopping by to check out my vintage towel collection. Find towels like this in my Etsy shop!

VTT - Games

Good Morning my favorite vintage peeps!! I'm actually going to participate in VTT today. Woohoo! I've been slacking for the last few weeks even though I have tons of ideas of things to share on VTT. Anyhow, I'm here today & I'm sharing with you all some of my favorite vintage boards games. I mostly buy these for the awesome graphics but on occasion, we do play them too!

First up, this Educational Play Set. Counting, phonics, telling time - it's all included! Yay!

Here are some of the game pieces - love the graphics!

A couple of years ago I found this plastic puzzle of America. I think I'll repurpose it & use the states in my scrapbook. You know, the scrapbook I'm going to eventually make of my cross-country drive in 2008. lol Yeah, one day!!

I always check the game section at the thrift stores for vintage games and usually I don't find anything worth purchasing but the other week, I totally scored!! I bought all three of these games for less than $5 (total, not each!!) but I found stickers on the sides of the boxes with prices ranging for $4 - $10 which leads me to believe someone either had these in some sort of overpriced yard sale or maybe in a booth. Either way, they were cheap at the thrift & they came home with me!!

There was a game-ish type thing to teach Bridge. I looked in the box when I got home and realized I'm never going to play bridge, even with this very helpful tool. It looks so confusing. And boring. The only time I can foresee myself wanting to play bridge will be when I'm 75 and sitting in my retirement village on the coast of Florida. So, yeah, I have a few years to worry about learning!

Maybe I'll sell this since I'm not planning on using it! Any takers?

And I bought this game in case my mother-in-law comes to visit. Shes' a self-confessed Bingo freak! lol I'm kidding about the buying it for her part but not about the bingo addiction! I bought this because it was a good price. And it has wooden numbers! None of that crappy plastic junk they have out today!

And finally, my absolute favorite vintage game I've ever found - this amazing 1960s version of Go To The Head Of The Class! I almost squealed right there in the game aisle of the thrift store. I cut through the tape holding the box shut, made sure all of the pieces were accounted for & almost had to throw an elbow up in the face of the person getting ready to take it out of my hands! What is it with people in thrift stores? RUDE!!

This boy cracks me up. He looks terrified...like he's about to get his azz whooped for saying a dirty word or something. Wait, is he shooting the bird?!

And how about Dad over here with his smirky little smile. Yeah, you know what's on his mind! And then there's Sister, pointing and taunting. Get these kids some therapy, for real!

Anyhow, back to the actual game! The very same day I bought this, I tortured Will for 3 hours one night by making him play this with me! It was hard!! The question book was, obviously, from the 1960s and some of those questions were so irrelevant to today. I'll have to go through the  booklet again and post some of the questions sometime. lol They were hilarious and I eventually won, which you know I just had to brag about for the following 48 hours. He's used to me bragging because I do it every night when we watch Jeopardy! lol

Aren't the graphics adorable? There is no way I'm ever parting with this game. In fact, I think I'm going to make Will suffer through another 3 hours tonight!!

I mean this game is perfect for us - see, there is even a Cowboy Joe and sometimes Will thinks he's a cowboy! And I always envision myself looking exactly like Mommy, pearls and all. hahaha Not!

Thanks for joining me for VTT!

I'm back. (I think!!)

Wow, blogging peeps! I've been gone almost a whole month and I'm hoping I've finally found enough motivation to get back on track. This last month has been insanely busy though so I've had good excuses for not writing. Between my doctor appointments and the appointments at the vet for my boy dog, I've seen enough doctors and offices to last for a while! My uh, issues, from last month were never really diagnosed and I've been referred to a rheumatologist so maybe I'll have answers one day!

In other news, my friend moved in with Will and myself a few weeks ago. She's waiting for the condo she's going to be renting to get new carpet & paint before she moves in. It's been a lot of fun having her here and I'm sure Will is enjoying having 2 "wives" lol! And our girl doggy is loving having the other doggy here to play with, so all in all, it's working out well.

I've been trying to get some Etsy related stuff accomplished this week too. May is proving to be a very slow month! And my thrift store visits today were mighty slim. Pretty disappointing but there's always next Monday!

Will left today for a little jaunt to California for 2 days. And he'll be overseas all of next week. Boohoohoo. I'm trying not to be sad about it because my Mommy is coming up to visit. ALONE!! WOOHOO!!! We haven't really spent any time alone in 3 years so I'm really, really looking forward to her visit.

I've been trying to get my momma, who is a fabulous seamstress btw, to join Etsy and start making some cute stuff to sell. Hopefully we'll be able to work on that while she's up here visiting and hopefully she'll do really well and be able to sew full time again soon. I started a blog this morning for her so when she does get her shop up & running, she'll have a place to post pictures and whatnot.

I have so much reading I need to catch up on too. So many blogs I haven't had time to visit lately - I'm going to try very hard to get by those tonight and see what you all have been up to.

Well, I need to unload my purchases from today and start taking some pictures. I hope I'll be back again soon with lots of fun stuff to share! I certainly don't want to wait another month to update so I'm going to force myself to come back here tomorrow & post something, even if I don't really have anything worth talking about!!

My Latest Acquisitons

The last couple of weeks have been very good on the thrift store front. Along with tons of goodies for my Etsy shop, I've also found quite a few things for my house!!

Like this adorable lemon yellow chenille bedspread:



I think it's a great addition to my small collection of other chenille spreads. Like this one:



And my favorite so far:



I can't decide if the peacock spread is beautiful or tacky. Or somewhere in between. I love it though!

I also picked up this Morgan Jones bedspread:



And this Bates bedspread:



And this great quilt, which besides having too many brown petals for my liking, is still really cute.



I went thrifting again today hoping to find more goodies for the shop but that was a no-go. I think I've bought every cute thing the thrift stores around here had out on the floor! I'm either going to have to wait a few days for them to restock or I'm going to have to expand my thrift store radius and find some new places!! Probably the latter of the two! Will is gone again for a couple of days so I have plenty of time to shop! My friend is supposed to come over for a slumber party tonight so I may finally initiate her into the whole fabulous world of thrifting tomorrow!

Hope you all have a great 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 Sneak Peek...

Here's my work-in-progress retro/vintage Christmas tree! What do you think?

It's Beginning to Look a Little Like Christmas...

But I still have a way to go before I get everything exactly how I want it. The tree in our foyer is up and half decorated. It looks great so far but I need to finish it tomorrow. And *MY* tree, the one in my scraproom/office is up and mostly decorated and I am totally in love. I went out and bought a 6.5' tall, white, pre-lit tree and it's decorated with all of my old Shiny Brite's and other vintage ornaments. I cannot wait to get it done so I can take pictures and share with y'all!

I cannot believe it's already 7 December either. This month is already flying by!! Of course I had a fashion crisis last week which had me at the various malls in the area shopping for 11 hours one day and another 5 the next. I was in desperate need of finding something to wear to the Holiday Reception we had to attend tonight at Vice President and Mrs. Cheney's house. Do you have any idea how much I hate to shop for clothing? Uh, I was so frustrated after spending 11 hours in the stores that I literally started crying. I was tired and ill and nothing fit right and I couldn't find anything I thought would be appropriate for this little shin-dig. Ugh. I didn't even make it to the Value Village on Thursday to try out my new card which gives me 25% off on Thursdays!

The aforementioned party was this afternoon and it was pretty swanky! Granted, it was held in a huge white tent but damn, that's the nicest tent I'd ever been in! The Air Force band (orchestra?) was playing the entire time, there was an open bar(!!) and the food was decent, although kind of weird for a cocktail party! I didn't expect to see mini cheeseburgers and grilled cheese sandwiches, hot dogs cut in half, bowls of popcorn and macaroni and cheese, but whatever. lol There were quite a few kids there so I'm sure the food choices pleased them but I think it was, I dunno, not tacky but weird. Even the port-o-potty trailers were all swanked out. Heck, those toilets in trailers were nicer than the bathroom of the first house we rented here in Maryland! We were shuttled in to the actual residence and then we had a photo with the VP and the Mrs and then went into the tent and socialized. I just assumed that the VP and his wife would come into the tent at some point but they never showed! Of course our party was their second of the day and at that point they'd shook hands with roughly 1000 people so they probably just wanted to go sanitize their hands, take some Airborne and get some sleep! All in all it was a nice time and I've figured out that NW DC is way nicer than the ghetto parts over near the Base!

I am still debating if I'm going to fly out to Jackson for Christmas. I've found an even better price for a flight than I found last week (and much less than the 2,200.00 one!) and I really really want to go back out. While at the party today, there were all of these pictures of Mr. Cheney out in Jackson during the winter, and just pictures of the scenery itself with tons of snow and I tell ya, I felt a tug in my heart because I really do want to be there. I told Will the other day that if I had known in August that I probably wasn't going back out for Christmas that leaving would've been much, much harder. If I had known when I drove away that that was the last time I'd see that area I would've been so sad. And I've been kind of in a funk lately because I thought I'd be here alone and my husband would be there seeing all of the beautiful snow and winter wonderland and maybe I was feeling jealous.

So, do y'all think I should go? If I have to stay home, I'll be sad but I'll make the most of it too. I can thrift as much as I want, I can hit up all of my favorite antique stores, I can go to DC and go ice skating or up to PA and go snowtubing. On the other hand, out in Jackson I can see so many fabulous things I just can't see/do here in Maryland. I can't drive down the road and see herds of buffalo or elk. I can't drive down the road and see the amazing Grand Tetons. And snow. I don't see much of that here, although it did snow (and stick!) yesterday. Ugh, I am just so cheap that I hate spending that much money on a flight. Not to mention the total pain in the ass that flying has become. If I do fly out, I'm sending all of my bags with Will on Air Force 2 just so I don't have to check any luggage or deal with any of that crap.

Anyhoo, tomorrow is of course Monday and we all know by now that the VV does 25% off on Monday which means I need to get to bed early so I can be up/dressed early. I also have to stop by the post office and mail off another package. Someone bought that totally cool Halo Tree Topper I posted last week on my Etsy page. I had almost decided to keep it and put it on my tree but I'm happy to have made another sale too!

I hope to get things somewhat organized tomorrow so I'll have time to visit all of my bloggy friends. I'm starting to go through withdrawals since I haven't had time to visit lately. Hope you're all doing fabulous!

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!