Thrifted Courting Creamer

Good Morning! I am having a very productive morning with my lovely cup of earl gray tea before I start work for the day. I hope your week has gotten off to a good start. I am in a very good mood as I am taking some holidays around this coming labour day weekend and hubby and I are going up north to the cabin. So I am in a very good mood!

Last week as I was doing some errands I wandered over to the local thrift stores, I am sure that is a big surprise to you. I live near a small town so there are only two thrift stores. I did not find a whole lot capture my interest, a few books, I really like getting the hardcovers for $2 each. Then I made my way over to the Salvation Army thrift store, that really isn't much of a hike as the two are side by side. Here I found a cute little courting couples creamer container.

I thought it was very cute and would go with the decorating scheme I am planning for our bedroom. I know a creamer container is not usual bedroom decor, but I thought it may look nice on a bedside table with some flowers in it. I have not decided yet what use to put it to in there but it was only $2 and goes with the lamp and vase I have already purchased.

Last weekend at the farmers market where we were getting vegetables for our home canning I saw a vendor that had some flowers, so I told, or "requested" of my wonderful husband to buy me some. Now, I haven't said alot about hubby on here so I will tell you he is a very practical man who loves me dearly, but he never buys me flowers because in his view they are a waste of money as the are already dead when you buy them. That is is very practical side coming out. But there were bunches of 5 roses and they were only $4.50 so I did not feel it was an unreasonable demand, I mean request. They are a lovely creamy dusky purple colour.

I have decided to dry them as I think they will look lovely in a vase. You may notice the door behind them has been . . . decorated in an interesting way. I have not yet gotten to redecorating the kitchen. This is our basement door that someone has wallpapered the 4 panels. I am told this was popular in the '70s and judging by our living with the orange carpet and panelling and the dining room's green carpet I would say that the '70s are the last time anyone did any major redecorating. My mother in law swears by wallpaper and does not understand why I hate it so! But after scraping layer upon layer, some of which had been PAINTED wallpaper off the walls of the 3 bedrooms I can not stand the stuff! The kitchen is actually next on my list to tackle, I will not be doing a complete remodel, just tiling, painting, new hardware, that sort of thing.

Have a good day!

The Unexpected In Redecorating Old Homes!

As mentioned in previous posts I have been working away at redecorating our bedroom. It has been a very long time since any updating has been done so I was busy with stripping wallpaper and patching the plaster. I finally painted the walls and ceiling and pulled up the carpet, which is when I found a rather unpleasant surprise. You see, under MOST of the carpet is lovely old pine floors, however under this carpet I found this!

A great ginormous hole in the floor! Ack! So, this was a bit of a set back. The hole is somewhere around 3 feet by 4 feet! Here is another photo with a chair in it to give some perspective of the size.

As you can see there are some shiny new boards filling the hole now. I browbeat, I mean asked my husband sweetly, to patch it. Before it was patched with pressure treated lumber! Not something you are supposed to use indoors. Now, this lumber isn't perfect, while it is toung and grove the edges are beveled so it will still be slightly different from the existing pine, but it's as close as we could get. I am going to have to stain it to match the existing pine as the existing is aged and the patch is new and so will not come up the same colour if I just use tung oil on the whole thing as I have done in the other rooms. You may also notice that there is a board missing, that is because it is only a partial board so my kind husband, whom I have not nagged at all about this, nope noooo nagging, has to take to a friends to use a table saw to cut it. Thankfully this year we have decided to get a table saw for our 1st wedding anniversary so that will make my projects around here much easier. The edges of the patch are taped as my sister was nice enough to strip the floor for me as I should not be using paint stripper while pregnant. It is very inconvenient not being able to to things myself!

So, once the patch is complete I have to sand the whole floor, stain the patch once I match it to the existing using some scrap pieces, paint the trim and door, so some touch ups to the edges and install the new outlets and light. Hmmm, when I list it out like this it sounds like a lot more left than when I think about it. But compared to what I had to do to start with I feel like I am getting close to completion.

Have a good day!



Thrifting & Antiquing: Bedroom decor and fixes

Well last week I made my way over to the local thrift stores for a peek around. Now lately I have found the pickings to be slim but this time I found several items that I really liked, at prices I was willing to pay. I found another piece for my Avon glassware collection, though with this new piece I am up to two so I don't know that is deserves the term collection yet. They did have other Avon pieces, but they were $3.99 for one glass which I was unwilling to pay. But I did find one at $0.99 which I was willing to pay. I really like the deep red of the Avon glassware and the design.

Ialso found the following print that I thought would be quite pretty if I put it in a nicer frame, so at only $0.49 I thought it was well worth it. I am thinking of hanging this in the bedroom once it is finished.

I am painting the bedroom purple and want to decorate it in a somewhat romantic fashion. So to that end I found the below vase with a courting couple image, this was $2.99, one of my more expensive thrift store finds this trip!

I also found two mugs I rather liked, though at different thrift stores. The one on the left was only $0.25 and I thought the image was so cute! Latter that day I saw another at the antique store with a similar image on it for $6 so I was quite happy with the price I paid. The mug on the left was more pricey at $1, it is a Normen Rockwell image and I thought my grandmother might like is as she has some of the others.

After my thrift I made my way over to Stratford to the Antique Warehouse. And there I found a lovely courting couple lamp for the bedroom that will go nicely with my vase, this lamp was $16, but it works. I did have to buy a lamp shade for it, I am considering adding some fringe to it, what do you think?



Then I found an old iron floor grate and I was so excited! It was perfect as it did not have a lip on it and it is big enough to cover the old stove pipe hole in the floor of what will be the babys room! I did not want to patch the hole as I will never match the old aged pine boards but all the grates I have found that are large enough to cover the 12" diameter hole had a lip, and I did not want to ruin an antique grate. I have been waiting for months and months to come across something that would work so I am one very happy girl! The grate is the perfect width, but it is twice as long as I needed, but that's okay, I will be screwing it to the floor.

The bedroom I am working on is almost done, though I have run across one very large issue, to be covered in a future post, so it has set me back a little. But my hubby has come up with a solution!

Have a good Friday!

Bedroom Redecorating and the Trunk

As excited as I am to get started on that trunk I have not yet started on it as I must finish working on the bedroom. This is the 3rd and final bedroom and it has been a lot of work, stripping many layers of wallpaper, some of which were painted! Then patching the cracks in the old plaster walls. In the bedroom I am working on now we also had to box in the pipe for the woodstove that we had installed last year. It was recommended that we wall it in to it would not get bumped, also it will look a lot nicer. So, while I have completed teh 3 coats of mudding on the rest of the room, it just needs to be sanded before I can paint, I only have one coat done on the newly drywalled area as my husband only just finished it last weekend. I do not enjoy the action of painting, but I love seeing how the colour looks once I get it up on the wall. I actually chose and buy my paint at the begining of the project as it keeps me motivated as I want to see the final product. I am hoping to have all of the mudding complete by the weekend so I can start painting!

Even though I have been busy with working on the bedroom, I have not forgotten about my trunk. My poor husband, he just thinks I bring junk home until I get it finished, then he has to admit that maybe I did not waste my money! I bought some sandpaper to sand down the wood, and I found and ordered some replacement leather handles on e-bay. The one handle is completely gone and the other is ripped and rotted so if I want handles on it I have to replace them. I am thinking about painting the canvas parts creame and giving it an antique look. I got an antiquing kit at at a yardsale for $3. I am still debating what to do with the inside. So far I am leaning towards ripping out the dirty, smelly fabric and cleaning and sanding the wood, I will have to see what kind of shape the wood is in. But I am looking forward to getting started on it!

Yardsale Glass Treasures and Other Finds

On Saturday I went to the Welburn villlage yardsale with my MIL. It was alot of fun and didn't really take much time as it is only a few minutes away and is a very small village. I purchased the following dish:

I believe it is jadeite, I thought is was very cute! It does have some flaws, around the top wavey part it appears that over the years some cracks have formed, and in the bottom of the dish it looks as if there is a manufactures flaw. But for on $1 I thought it was well worth bringing home with me. I also love the cute little feet on it!

I found another bowl that I thought was lovely and it is the same pattern as a bowl I already have.

This is a Waltherglas bowl, made in Germany. My MIL pointed it out to me as she gave me the other bowl I have when she was doing some cleaning and thought I might like this one to go with it. This find was $2.  I love the detail on these bowls, the lovely pink roses! I also find them useful for serving dinner rolls and things like that in when company is over for dinner.

The third item I purchased is actually my favourite!

I have been looking for an old trunk like this for quite a while but usually they are fairly pricey. For $10 this one was too good a deal for me to pass up! It is in kind of rough shape, the leather handles are missing and the leather pieces on top are broke, but that is fine as over all it is still sturdy. I am planning to sand down the wood and paint the rest black so it will go no matter what colour I decide to paint our living room (right now I am thinking a blue gray). I want to use this as our living room table. I think it will work great and with a baby on the way it can double as a toybox.

I was very excited with these items as lately it seems that anything I might be interested in is fairly expensive. When I was in at one of the local thrift stores this week they had a cute little needle point stool and I could not believe how much they were asking for it. They had it prices at $75! All I could think was that this is a thrift store and this item was donated, and it seemed as it they were asking antique store price for it! 

Well I should be off. I have been working on family histories for both sides of my family and have borrowed some more photos from my grandmother that I need to scan so I can return them to her.

I hope you have had a good weekend!



Fishing . . . Sort Of

You may be wondering why, under a post titled "Fishing" I have posted butterfly photos. Well the truth is when we go fishing at the river my husband will wade in to fish while I prefer to sit in a lawn chair and cast from shore. I tend to get distracted by things, such as this lovely monarch butterfly, and the fish steel my worm before I notice them! My husband only caught 2 fish which were very small so he would not let me get a picture of them. However I was very proud of these beautiful butterfly photos I got (while the fish was busy steeling my worm!) so I thought I would post them. We just stayed out for the morning as it got extremely hot! It was nice to spend some relaxing time together and to get to the fishing spot we had to walk a short trail which I also enjoyed.

Local Tractor Pull

This past weekend was the civic holiday weekend and I took the friday off work as well to make it a 4 day weekend. We live on a small dairy farm and therefore we do not go on many trips. However this weekend we found some fun things to do locally. A nearby town had a tractor pull which we went to on Friday night. My husband wanted to go the Friday rather than the Saturday as that was when the regular tractors were there. On the saturday they had horse pulls and vintage (pre 1961) tractors and later in the day the modifed tractors. I really would have liked to see the horses and vintage tractors but there was hay to cut so hubby was not able to take me. But it was fun seeing the regular tractors on the Friday and it was fun to just go out together for the evening. They started with the smaller tractors and worked their way up through different weight classes all the way up to the really big tractors.

It's great finding local activites to attend. The only thing is if we go again next year we are bringing lawn chairs so we do not have to sit on those hard bleechers!



Local Raspberrys

I just love the warm weather when we have a variety of local produce available! This weekend was the last weekend that our neighbour (term used losely in the country, they live about 5 minutes away) was offering raspberries for sale. I had purchased one flat earlier, I froze most of it and ate a couple of pints. I also purchased a flat this weekend, though I found the late ones spoil quickly as they are extremely ripe, but that is okay, I made some jam with them and boiled the rest and froze them. The first flat I froze simply by tossing the berries into a freezer bag. In the winter I just love being able to go to my freezer and pull out locally grown produce. We particularly like to use the berries for pies in my household! My husband just loves pies, and I must confess that I love them too!

We set aside some of the boiled raspberries and added sugar to use on top of scones, this was very good. I am very glad my husband did not buy scones as I discovered that they are extremely easy to make. They are similar to pie dough in that you do not want to work the dough any more than absolutely necessary. However, the dough is much more moist than pie dough. But I must say after making them for the first time this weekend I will not be buying them from the grocery store again!