Well, it has been along time since I started this blog! Since I have been so tardy with posting I am setting myself the goal of at least 1 post per month, I think that is an attainable goal. Weather anyone reads this or not is it enjoyable to post my thoughts and about my life. My desk is in front of a window so sitting at my computer with a cup of tea looking out at the trees and birds is can be quite nice.
Things have been very hectic since I started this blog back in September. Time goes so fast, we are now nearing the end of April! Eeks! And still so much to do. I still have to make my wedding invitations. My self imposed deadline was the end of March which has now become the end of April so I can send them out in May. I could have done it the easy way and either ordered them premade or bought the kits they sell at craft stores but I decided to make my own completely from scratch. Now that sounds like a lovely idea in theory but in practice it is extremely time consuming! Oh well, I will think it was a great idea again once I have them all done and can see my accomplishment.
On a positive note I have completed a major home project, I have finished redecorating the spare bedroom finally! I stripped wallpaper, patched plaster that has millions of hairline cracks and some very large cracks too and then I had to strip and sand the floor. That was the worst part. Some one painted the floor all around the edges of the room and there was a piece of vinyl in the middle (thankfully not attached to the floor as in my mothers house!). There was 2 coats and first I tried sand which just gummed up the sand belts so then I poly stripped it which worked much better. I used polymerized tung oil on the pine floor and it turned out lovely. Our house is old and I love vintage so that was the feeling I was going for. I kept the old vintage light fixture but replaced the switch and outlet. We have temporarily moved our bedroom into the finished spare bedroom now so I can work on our bedroom.
You can see two of my little helpers on the bed, Sylvester and Smokey, can you guess which one Smokey is?
You can also see another of my completed projects in the pictures. I made the curtains, it was my first time ever attempting them so I am very happy with how they turned out. I have only had my sewing machine since January. It's just an old used one but it gets the job done. The fiancee doesn't particularly care for the green in the room but he refuses to help pick paint colours and he really only likes blue. There was one thing that I wasn't happy about, there is a 12" diameter hole in the floor where I believe a stove pipe came through.
As you can see in the picture I have tried to cover it with a dresser as a temporary solution to keep someone (likely clumsy me) from stepping in the hole. I want to find one of those old pretty metal square floor grates to put over it.
Yesterday I went yardsaling with my mom and my two sisters. My sisters are much younger than me, I am 27 and they are 13 and 15. It was so fun. Patrolia is around an hour away but a lady at work told me they have great yardsales and it is the first townwide yardsale for me this year. It turned out that it was well worth the drive for me, I found such great stuff at great prices! I couldn't believe it. Now I need to make it clear that I NEVER find amazing things when I go yardsaling or to thrift shops. I mean I do sometimes find some nice things but never do I find a ton of great things that are exactly what I was hoping to find. So I think I am excusably excited over my finds yesterday! At one of the first yardsales we stopped at I found a lovely old dresser for only $10! It was in quite rough shape, the finish has been almost totally worn of the top, it was missing the mirror and the bottoms of the drawers were warped, likely from being stored in a shed or a basement. Though I didn't think there was anything I could do about replacing the mirror, I don't mind refinishing furniture and I could replace the bottoms of the drawers, it's not really difficult, just time consuming. We wander down the street and guess what we found?! We found a mirror that is supposed to go on a dresser similar to the one I just bought! Can you believe that! I was so excited, I never find such great things! The lady was asking $20 but I got it for $10. I will also have to refinish the mirror, someone painted it a horrible shade of blue! But for $20 for the dresser and the mirror it's well worth the effort to make it beautiful again. As we carried on I found some old books for $1 each, I ended up with 6, I just love books of all types! I found a set of old dishes for $5! They are lovely old English ones with a floral print, so pretty! I also found two adorable old bone china tea cups for $0.25 each! Wow! Usually they are $5-10. One was a cute pink and the other had a cute little bee on it. I found a cute set of 4 glasses with cows on them, now I'm not sure how old they are but since we live on a dairy farm I just had to buy them, it was only $1 for the set. I found some lovely vintage lace/trimming at another yardsale and my mom got a record player there, the poor lady, her mother had passed away and she was having the yardsale to get rid of a bunch of things she didn't want after cleaning out her mothers belongings. There were 3 large ziploc freezer bags of the lace and trimming, two of the bags were $1 each and the other was $0.50. Then across the street I got a whole box of lace and ribbon scraps for $1, since I love crafting it's great to have that kind of stuff around. I also found a cute sign I got for my father, it said "a bad day hunting is better than a bad day working". At the very last yardsale we stopped at you will never guess what I found! It was so great, I found another dresser with mirror that was almost the same as the first one I purchased! The lady was asking $50, but she let me have it for $30, probably because it was after 12pm, starting to rain and she likely didn't want to have to drag it back in the house. Someone had painted this one pink at some point and replaced the handles with ugly ones but it was in excellent shape. I can have it back down to the lovely wood under the paint with a bit of elbow grease, I love the look of wood furniture! As for the handles, I'm sure that if I hunt around the Re-Stores and Antique stores I can find something, and if not, I'm sure I can find something new that will look pretty. My mom told me that I looked like the cat that got the cream I was so happy. I thought I would be lucky to find one dresser in my budget, I never dreamed I would find two plus all the other stuff I got. I only brought $80 dollars with me and I spent around $70. I will have to thank the lady at work for letting me know about those yardsales! Now I should be off to continue stripping of the pink paint from that dresser!
