61 miles of yard sales

Dave and I made our annual trip to the 61 mile yard sale yesterday. Some years this thing is amazing - chandeliers! quilts! feedsacks! and some years dreadful. Last year I bought ONE item.

This year? Hotter than hell and what I am going to give a B. Things to buy for me, things to buy for the kids, but nothing that makes you clutch it and run to the car screaming.

A pair of mint green tablecloths with felt flowers and pink trim.

The flowers are in a basket on the second one.

Lord knows why blogger made this huge. 1980s paper dolls.

I never, ever used to party supplies in advance, but I have started to. I bought a bunch of cinderella party stuff (disney branded) and these plastic glass slippers and carriages. Sammi is all about the princesses this week. Let's hope it lasts awhile.

I thought this tablecloth with the pockets and boys would be fun for a tea party or princess party too.

Some fabric. I actually bought the left one for someone else.

A stack of bird prints someone had removed from a book. These were in someone's free pile.

They are actually really nice prints. But I am not going out in 100+ degrees to get a better picture. LOL

A wire display thingy. I liked it. I have no clue what to do with it. It was 50 cents. Sold.

A free vintage airplane with a broken propeller. I thought it might be fun in Grant's room when he gets an upgrade to a toddler room.

I actually needed one of these AND it is FULL of clothespins. All of mine are long gone. Maybe the squirrels steal them? I have to hang princess dresses on the line and that takes a lot of darn pins.

The guy laughed at me for buying a huge box of these for a dollar. They are old scrap crafts for scouts magazines. They are a damn good laugh and well worth the dollar. No sense of humor in these people I swear. :-) (Although some of them are useful, the Christmas one has paper house patterns. I am pretty sure we do not need meat tray purses though.)

Old roses on plaster bookends.

Feedsacks.

Medicine bottles for Halloween.

"Cocoaine." Ha.

And a rough log cabin quilt. This was a lucky find since there were no other quilts this year. It was in a pile of blankets at  a really small sale.

It's a little rough but sweet.

As far as the rest of the weekend - my kids are sick still. Grant has double ear infections, Sammi is coughing again, Dave has been sick all week and it's hot. I am hoping to spend some time this weekend making things for Grant's first birthday! 

I will post the sign ups for the Halloween swap tomorrow both here and on facebook.

Happy end of the summer weekend to you!

A long shot

Does anyone have the cricut sugar and spice cartridge they would be willing to loan me for a week? It has the best elephant and I am doing an elephant party for Grant's first birthday. But I am unwilling to pay $50+ for  a "rare" cartridge. (Can there be such a thing? LOL).  I will pay shipping both ways. Email please?

Grant 11 months

My Dearest Ginty! 11 months old today.

At 11 months old, you:
*Have some crazy hair
*Want to grab the camera
*Are into everything - the trash, the drawers, the toilet paper
*Kneeling up to grab things. Yesterday you tried standing on your feet.
*Still do a weird dragging army crawl.
*Seriously crabby if you are tried or hungry
*Sometimes sleeping through the night
*A belly sleeper
*A sort of thumb sucker
*A belly laugher
*Toting around the cylinder blocks
*Digging in toy bins
*Babbling mama dada hi wats dat?
*Mimicking! Meow.
*Putting every thing in your mouth. Eat paper much?
*Still huge - in a 2T (24 lbs, maybe more and 32+ inches)
*Self feeding for nearly every meal
*REALLY wanting to grab the spoon if we dare to try and feed you
*Discovering gravity by throwing everything out of the high chair - uh oh!
*A dancing fool
*Enjoying rocking to sleep
*Working on tooth number 4!
*My crazy, funny, curious, intense, wild littlest dude.

Only one more month until one!

Love you,
Mama

For fun:

Sammi month 11

Jack month 11

Dresden plate flowers on the shower curtain

This silly little project has taken me months to finish.

Sigh.

I was digging around in my cabinet and found a stack of vintage quilt pieces I bought at an estate sale and had the brilliant idea to make them into smiley flowers for a shower curtain.

Except it meant piecing the plates together, embroidering the faces, sewing the plates on, sewing the stems on.

Loooooooooooong time.

Also, sewing them onto the microfiber shower curtain fabric? HARD!

But they are cute.

And smiley.

I bought 24 yards (!) of jumbo ric rac for the stems.

Cha-ching.

At least now I can enjoy those fabrics instead of them sitting in a box.

Happy Sunday to you!

P.S. Next weekend is labor day weekend. Time to sign up for the Halloween swap? I think I will open it up next Sunday. Just in case you want to get in. :-)

A decorating emergency

I am not going to lie. This week has sucked.

I have been crabby as hell.

The kids (all of them) are sick again.

Sammi puked in the car again today.

We went to an important doctor appointment on Thursday and waited an hour only to be told we were there on the wrong day.

My house is complete chaos.

I haven't slept through the night in months. (Grant coughed all night last night and I cannot sleep when he is coughing.)

Grant is into everything. Everything. Unrolling all the toilet paper, digging in the trash cans, you know, toddler type stuff already.

I had the kid's consignment sale this week. Loads of work pricing and sorting and then shopping for three hours on hard cement. Great for the arthritis.

There has been ZERO time for anything creative in at least a month. And I haven't had a baby sitter here for anything other childcare while I have obligations in at least three weeks.

Oh yea, and yesterday Sammi climbed out of her crib and fell to the floor. Now, she had never done that before and I didn't even know she was contemplating it. So the crib came immediately out.

I don't have any toddler beds so I dug around in the basement and found this bed I bought way back in 2007 in "the bed hoard." (WHAT? You don't have a bed hoard in your basement? I have five beds down there. Do not ask me why. I love them. And see? They come in handy.)

We had to COMPLETELY redo her darn room to fit a twin sized bed in there.

Plus we had to make it more childproof since she can obviously wander around in there now.

And there is the small issue of her having opinions. Imagine that. (Gone is some of the cutesy vintage stuff in favor of her hoard of stuffed animals and books and tinkerbell dresses.)

I painted the bed "gumdrop" aka purple. She is into purple. And it's what I had in the basement.

Like how I left the step stool we were using to hang things up there for you? LOL I am not in love with how short the top curtain is but she has to have short curtains to keep her out of trouble.

I even stuck some butterfly wall stickers things on the wall for her.

I am totally not a wall sticker person.

They were 97 cents at walmart. Tinkerbell was $9.97.

 

But here is the most important part of this story.

 

Yesterday I damn near cried because really I was not ready for her to be out of that crib. This transition was a bloody nightmare with Jack. It took months and months. He screamed. He cried. We tried like four different beds. We had to keep going from bed to bed to crib to bed. So yesterday I was sure we would never sleep again. (Grant already does not sleep through the night.) But what do you know? We put her in the bed said goodnight and she went to sleep. And today at naptime? She got in her bed and went to sleep.

 

Gobsmacked.

 

I am really, really hoping it's not a fluke.

 

I could do with something being easy. :-)

 

 

Finally! Vintage purples

I have finally acquired enough vintage purple fabric to make the purple quilt I want to make.

I wish I had been able to take the photo outside, but it's kid consignment sale week here and that means this mama has spend her free time washing, hanging and pricing the kid's clothes.

There are so.many. different shades of purples!

And they are darn hard to find.

Let's not even discuss the cost.

I am REALLY hoping I have the courage to chop into them when the time comes.

Until then they are stacked up in my sewing area.

Waiting.

And taunting me just a little. :-)