Finally Finished - vintage jewelry statement necklace

It took me so long to get this thing made that now I am pretty sure they are SO 2008, LOL.  I started collecting stuff for two years ago near Mother's Day, but it took me a long while to figure out the best approach.

In the end I put felt behind it all.

Not a great solution, but it works.

And hey, it's done, right?

I went to a ton of garage sales this morning and only bought this frog. 

He's an awesome frog though and now he is gracing the blog header. :)

Let's play dress up

Last week I saw that Sue posted THE CUTEST little snail dress she found while cleaning out her attic.  I wasted not a single second in letting her know I MUST have that for Sammi girl.  She gave that one a few others to me and they arrived today, so of course, we immediately played dress up.

The parasol on this is so sweet.

This one still has it's matching bloomers, but I need to fix the elastic so they will stay on her skinny little bottom better.

(This one needs a little tee shirt under it, but I didn't have anything that worked on hand.)

Thank you so much Sue!  A sweet piece of your own childhood.  They are a great fit and I am struck by how innocent they are compared to the things on the shelves today.  We are sure to enjoy them this summer. (Perfect timing!)

Man, this used to be a really great antique show

The St Louis symphony  holds a fundraiser every memorial day they call the "gypsy caravan".  Many years ago it was a really great, huge antique sale in various places around the city. I could never afford to buy anything but I loved looking at all the stuff you didn't usually see around here. 

Today Sammi woke me up at o'dark thirty saying she "her mouth was puking" (oh yes, fun!), so I decided to fork over the crazy $20 entry fee to get in first at 7 am.  This thing is usually so crowded and SO huge that you can't even begin to see everything. (Too hot, too crowded, too much walking, etc).

Not so this year.  I was done in an hour and fifteen minutes. I saw everything. Some of it twice.  It was a lot of vendors I already know from other flea markets. It was a lot of "as seen on pinterest" crap, err stuff. (I don't want to buy that stuff! I could make that stuff!) It was a lot of rusty stuff straight out of mexico. It was less than 50% antiques. 25% of the spots were empty.

To be honest, I would have been mad  about the $20 entry fee, but at least it supports the symphony. I guess. That $20 would have bought another quilt at a much better flea market, but whatever. (I guess. LOL)

I did manage to shove a few things in my backpack before I came back here to crazy town.

Knobs are always useful.

This photographed WAY better than it was. Those beads are metal and someone strung them on some tee shirt yarn.  I walked away from it twice and then I realized that for $1 I was STUPID. Those crystals are jadeite green and will be great on one of the chandeliers.

This is a pretty big egg.

I couldn't resist making Ginty hold it....

he thought it was funny...

because it reminded me of a little Jack holding another big egg! (How much do they look alike?)

This happens to be our house number.

And a chandelier. Man, I debated about this. Walked away from it. Thought if it was gone it wasn't meant to be. Went back and it was still there so I bought it.  This is where I REALLY missed having Dave with me. He is my mr fix it and I needed his input about whether or not this is useable. 

I have an Ikea chandelier in the laundry room that is NOT working for us at all. Hangs too low, not bright enough, blah blah.

If this beauty will work I am selling that bugger. :-)

Big storm rolling in, so I am outta here. Happy long weekend to you.

100 miles of yard sales

The weather for the 100 mile sale was pretty darn good this year. Not too hot, not raining, not freezing. We have been to this thing for many years now and its not often that the weather is bearable.  We only do about 60 miles. It takes at least 6 hours to do 60 miles and there is a LOT Of looking at wal-mart clothes. In fact, there have been years when I bought NOTHING.  This year?  Not too bad. I wasn't empty handed at least. :-)

We call this the jeepers creepers barn. The basement is FULL of either birds or bats.  It started to fall down this year.  It was a long, hard winter.

I bought a box of these dishes which are totally not my usual thing.  Four plates, four bowls, three salad plates, two teacups. They were wrapped in a newspaper from 1988.  They are marked made in mexico with some name I cannot remember and had never heard of before. Eating off them already.

There is 4 yards of this fabric. I kept one yard for me since I like it but have no clue what I might use for it. The rest is on Etsy.

A super fun vintage patchwork duvet cover.

These are likely all feedsacks.

Different on the back.

I use these all the time on our beds.

Dave spotted this quilt top and held it up with a nod.  Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. It's so good. (Never mind this photo, it was windy yesterday and I was trying to snap it in between wind gusts.)

Good right?  I LOVE these as curtains and I am trying to decide where to use this one. I really want to repaint the pink bathroom white anyway and it would be super fab in there.  (Need to get a quote from a painter I guess since my bathroom painting days are over thanks to the arthritis.)

There is one house that always has "cutter" quilts.  They are not that cheap really but I always find something reasonably priced that I like. I am totally not an embroidered quilt person but these horse! They charmed me.

As soon as I saw Seabiscuit I was sold.

I have tried and tried googling these horse names with zero success.  (And is this one a spelling error? Hmmm).  Not Derby winners. Seabiscuit won no titles that I recognized. Tried searching the years that Seabiscuit was running and no luck there either. Maybe they were their horses. Maybe they were famous. I would need a horse historian to sort that out I think! LOL

A chipped piece of pottery. My roses in the garden are going like mad this year and all my pottery is packed away, so I snagged a cheap pretty color pot to stick them in.

I spent yesterday cleaning up that damn storage area.  It was a total mess again. As in you can't even get in the door. And then with the basement leaks things were getting ruined and moved around and it just got worse and worse. Dave has been slowly building me those shelves you see on pinterest to hold plastic bins so all the stuff is organized and off the floor. AND I listed more crap on craigslist and took more stuff to Goodwill. I have definitely decided this is the year of less stuff to manage for me. The kids are enough to handle for me. 

Anyway. The point of that is I was MUCH more selective about what I bought this year. :-)

It was nice to have a morning of no children screaming and crying at least.

With that I am off to reprimand another child. LOL

Getting to know Bernadette

 I decided that I needed a super easy quilt as my first quilt on the new Bernina.  You know the routine - plenty of time to practice threading and rethreading, winding bobbins, etc. When I cleaned out my fabric before my in laws came I found a layer cake I bought a few years ago, so I sliced it up and made this.

Unlike how I usually make a quilt I did this with pretty much ZERO planning. No planned block layout, no square layout planning, etc.

It turned out okay for just being a wing it quilt. My OCD self wants to be annoyed with the red block placement. But whatever, it served the purpose.

 Of course I still need to baste it and quilt it.

 I bought this fabric on Ebay this week and it has me STUMPED.  It was billed as "vintage". It's cute, but vintage? I don't know honestly. I cannot seem to imagine what era this is from. Maybe it's not an American fabric and that's what is throwing me off? Surely a guru out there has some thoughts on it.

Since I am avoiding basting the other quilt I started a coin quilt last night.

I am making a concerted effort to sew every single day again, whether I have a plan or not.

Tomorrow is the 100 mile yard sale and Dave and I are off without the children. I CANNOT WAIT FOR A MOMENT OF QUIET. Sam is adorable and all but right now she cannot shut her lips for even 12 seconds. Ever. LOL

And it's memorial day weekend already! Welcome summer. :-)

Sammi Parent's Day Out Art

It's a bedhead Sammi's turn to show off her masterpieces.

Snowy Day.

Little Cloud.

Mystery.

Mystery.

Dottie Dress.

Falling Leaves.

Candles for Christmas.

Her classroom incubated and hatched chicken eggs. This is her chicken book - complete with eggs and sleeping chicks.

Grant felt left out.

Handprint flowers for Mother's Day.

More handprints for some function I did not attend. :/

And her biggest achievement this year - learning the pledge of allegiance.  I would rotate the video but frankly the children are being ridiculous this morning with the fighting and crying and at 9 am I am ready to take up drinking already.  Also, I have been trying to write this blog post for almost 2 hours. Oy.