Recent Finds and Treasures

I love going to garage sales and thrift stores, but who doesn't? I'm out at least once a week, usually visiting my favorites and occasionally checking out a new one if I happen to stumble upon one. I've been on the search lately for certain items though. Sometimes I find them, sometimes I don't, but I almost always find something else I MUST have!

 Kitchen Cart........half price........only $20!

 Spring Wreath $1! Oval Rug $15!

 Blue glass jars 50 cents each! And I made that entire tier for $1.60!

 Shelf 25 cents holding books gifted to me from a friend (thank you Nita)

Basket 50 cents........cute right? Now what to do with it.........

Hutch top $9.99........I've added pieces from a freebie end table to this and I'm in the process of painting it, wait till you see it!

 "Old Bags" holder 50 cents!

 Bird Cage $2!

 Breakfast in Bed Tray $3 (you can see it on the guest room bed above)

Column free........planter bottom.........free...........voila! bird feeder or plant stand, I haven't decided yet :)

Now, I'm in the process of getting ready for my own garage sale. The entire city is participating this weekend, should be fun!

Linky Party I joined:

And the Yard tour continues

Can you see it over there? Let me take you a little closer

This is my favorite seating area. You can see the fencing we put up behind it (we're practically pros now). I can't wait to get the fencing painted white because I think it would make a lovely background for this area. Another must have will be something growing and climbing (and hiding the ugliness) on the fence line. The wicker is only temporary though. Not inviting to yard care, yanno? I have visions of lovely iron furniture here and the wicker will be moved to the gazebo when it's completed.

 This rocker was one we picked up for free. I haven't found the right material to cover it with yet, so it's temporarily covered with an old tshirt I was going to throw out anyway. The little gazebo is one I had that I just glued to a candlestick we had recently picked up for $1.

 This is one of the free windows we picked up. The sconce was in the house when we moved in and was horrid brass. Have I mentioned I hate brass? Anyway, it's a lovely color now and I've painted the light covers with glow in the dark paint. No, it doesn't glow for long. *sigh*  I think I'll use candles in them for any REAL outdoor lighting needs.

 This beat up rusty serving tray was something we picked up from a garage sale for $1. It's cute! But extremely rusty. It's also black (did ya notice?) and I'm not sure that all fits in with the area. I might paint it, I might not, jury is still out.

My favorite new piece is this chandelier! I have been looking for one for a project like this but unable to find one at a reasonable price (aka cheap!). We were out at a garage sale (with a pushy little woman) who was pointing out her lighting for sale. This was marked $15. I explained to her that I wanted one for outdoors and didn't want to pay much. She says "How much did you want to pay?" I say "$5" SOLD!

I hope the birds eat the bird food out of the globes evenly so it doesn't tip :)

Meanwhile, the wheelbarrow is looking pretty this year.


I guess I should also say something nice about the pushy woman (karma and all yanno). She must have seen my interest in old and vintage while I was eyeballing an adorable apron and mentioned she had some vintage tablecloths she put up. She got them out and was showing them off when I spied the perfect one for my sun room.

Isn't it gorgeous? She also threw in some handy tips for the care of them. Did you know that soaking them in either lemon juice or oxy clean and laying on a sheet on the lawn in the sun will remove almost everything? Hmmm, well I didn't, but I do now.

I joined this linky party:

The Fence and The Roses

I have seen so many beautiful pictures (as I'm sure we all have) of white picket fences with roses peeking through them I thought I MUST have that look for my house. Since we didn't have ANY landscaping whatsoever going on, I could start with a clean slate. We scored 350 feet of fencing with posts for $350 on craigslist. The original plan was to fence around the house from front to just around the back. After some critical thinking on my part, I decided that might look snooty for one (not inviting for neighbors to stop and visit) and it would cover all the landscaping I had done. So the fence now starts midway on the house and goes back about 100 feet (or was that 150?). As you can see it is not white (yet) but after more thinking, we decided to paint it after it's up by one of us (me) standing on one side with a piece of plywood, and the other one of us (him) using the sprayer. It could work, right? We'll see.

We found a very good deal on roses and ended up buying 31 of them! Yeah, we won't be doing that all at once again. Too many holes to dig!

Here are two we planted, as you can see I carefully marked them all so I would know which one was where. These were supposed to be temporary markers, but as they started to grow, I found out why they were cheap.........they were all marked WRONG. Well, all but ONE so far, and two have still yet to show their colors.

This is the one correct one so far, it's a Peace rose, isn't it beautiful? Well, they are all beautiful, but I was so tired of all of them turning out PINK when I bought mostly RED, I was very excited about this one. It smells divine!

 Along the front of the house, there is a Don Juan planted, he is one that has yet to show.

 The frog band.

I like to call this my great wall of china.

Continuing the red mulch around the house.......I used newspaper to cover up the grass and weeds where I created borders and it's proven to be very effective.

 Just outside the sun room. The climbers on either side were supposed to be red, neither one is red, neither one is a climber *sigh*

Just beyond the swing you can see fence progress going on.

 Not Joseph's Coat, we think it might be Darlow's Enigma.....still beautiful though, right?

 This one is Love......since we don't remember and can't find what it was supposed to look like, we are just pretending this is it.

 Daylillies on the fence line.

 

 Rose Moss

 

Between house and shed before

 Between house and shed after.......well, it's not complete yet, but it's a start :)

This is a preview of what color the shed is going to be........I think it looks nice with my yellow house, don't you? I have more to show you, so much more, but I don't want to bore you all in one day so I'll be back tomorrow to show you my new seating area and bird feeder I made that I am SO excited about!

Kitchen Confessions

The other day I went to the store for groceries. One of those items was a bottle of canola oil. The cabinet where it goes was so stuffed with other things it wouldn't fit. It sat on my counter for a week. I got tired of looking at it and before I knew it, I had rearranged the entire kitchen just to fit a bottle of oil in it. My husband states it's things like this is why he can never find anything. Hmm, maybe.

This is not the first time this has happened though. I haven't even lived here a year and I can't even begin to count the changes. For instance...

I think this was the first table to make it into the kitchen. It fit very nicely on that odd wall.

 Then I decided this table was too big for the laundry/dining room so I moved it to the kitchen.

I then moved the little table to the laundry/dining room. Looks cute, right?

Then I decided that I didn't like my desk in view of the front door since I umm "work" a lot in my jammies. So when I rearranged the sun room, I had a space to fill.

Hmm, well that looks nice too. But I was so tired of living with that blue floor so I had to paint it.

So out with the table again and it went back to the laundry/dining room aka back porch. Until one day we were out garage saleing and I found a couple of lovely pantries.

Ugly right? They were using them for garage storage. I had something much better in mind.

One fits very nicely on that odd wall in the kitchen, and the other "finishes" the back porch. And by turning the big table a different way, it fit much better in the space too. Although, I do miss having a table in the kitchen...................hmmmm

Linky Party I Joined: