Lots and Lots of Canning

Oh, I just love this time of year! My vegetables in the garden are all ripening, though this year with all the wedding preparations I have neglected the garden and it is in a sorry state! But the veggies are still growing. We enjoyed the earlier things like radishes, carrots, beans, lettus and spinach and now the latter things are ready, squash, turnip, bell peppers and hot peppers. Also all the locally grown produce is ready and in the farmers market. That's where I go to get most of the veggies for my canning, though I do use some of the ones from my garden too. So I have been very busy canning away, and ignoring wedding things I probably should be doing!

This pictures just show a few things I left out to give away, I have already put everything else away. I have made jam, relish, peach salsa, vegetable salsa and sweet dill pickles. The pickles are from my Smelly Man's grandma's recipe and they are the best pickles I have ever had! I still have much more canning to do but it may have to wait until after the wedding which is a week from this Saturday. I think there is nothing better than having food that is homemade and it taste better! For example, I always hated relish, I only made it because my Stinky Man likes it, but when I actually tried the homemade stuff I thought it was great! It tastes nothing like the store bought stuff. People always tell me that they love home canned goods but they just don't have the time to do that sort of thing. Well, I may not have kids but I do work full time and we have a farm and I find time to do it. I think a big difference is that around here the TV almost never gets turned on before 7pm on a week night, and I will take my Saturday or Sunday and spend a good portion of the day canning. Sometimes if I am pressed for time I spread it out over a couple days, I will prepare all the fruits or veggies one day and do the cooking and canning the next so it cuts the amount of time I am spending on it in one day in half.

The other day when I was canning I ran out of onions, sugar and vinegar so I ran into town to pick these things up and I was not happy to see that the red onions were imported! The yellow onions were Ontario, but we grow red onions here too! I am always really upset at the grocery store by the lack of Ontario, or at least Canadian produce. I realize there are plenty of things we can't grow here like sugar, coffee, and all that, but I think that if you can get it locally, where every you happen to live, you should. I have started stopping at an orchard on my way home from work to get apples because at the grocery store they too are about 95% imported! The only apples I could find at the local grocery store that were not imported were empire which personally I think are only good pie apples, not good eating apples. And I will admit that some grocery stores are better than other for selling local but I live on a farm near a small town so if I only need a few items my choice of grocery store is limited as I am not driving half an hour for 4 items. I suppose that means I need to plan my shopping trips. I think that is part of the reason I like canning so much, because I know that the fruits or berries or vegetables used were all grown right here.

Thrift Store Bakeware Finds

I just love wandering around the local thrift stores and see what treasures I can find, my smelly man likes to tell me that I am filling our house with junk, obviously there is no appreciation for vintage things. But that's okay, we are all different! Anyhow I digress, back to my finds. There are two thrift stores in the town I live near and one is very much geared toward vintage and so is a bit more expensive than the other. I think vintage has grown in popularity here. The other thrift store in town only very seldom has any treasures to be found. But when I visit my mom, she lives about a half hour away and I go to the thrift stores in that town I can always find something there.

So here are a couple of photos of the bakeware treasures I have found. The small blue dish is my most recent find. But my favourite is the yellow dish with the big yellow flower on the lid. I use that to serve nacho dip so I can do a hot and mild one because it is separated into two sections. In one of the mixing bowls you can see the vintage cookie cutters I found, I got those at a yardsale for $0.25! I find it very useful to have these things around, because when you have company you always need extra bowls and such.

My Yardsale Dresser is Finished!

In the spring I wrote about a yardsale I had gone to where I found many wonderful buys. One of these buys was this dresser, except is was painted pink! Also, someone had replaced the brass handles with ugly ones. Well, I have finally completed refinishing it. I love it, I think it is beautiful. I didn't stain it, I just used polymerize tung oil. I also went out and bought some nice brass handles for it. I knew that was what it was supposed to have because once I got the paint off the keyholes were brass. I know it didn't turn out perfect but I just love it! You can see that the carving on the mirror is darker, that's because I couldn't sand it to get the old stain off properly but I think it looks good like that, it makes the carving stand out. My fiancee, the smelly man, was not please when I brought this home, he thought it was junk! He now agrees it was definitely worth the $30 I spent on it. Though I did spend a lot more on materials to refinish it, it is still cheaper than buying a new maple dresser.

Working on The Next Bedroom

So I repotted some plants this weekend as some of my house plants were getting way to big for their little pots. I had one tree in this basket which is now in a much larger pot and apparently the Smokey cat thought the newly emptied basket looked like a nice place to have a nap. My little sister, the Stinker Weasel has been visiting and she brought him upstairs to where I was working on the bedroom to show me, and he didn't move at all! He obviously doesn't realize he does not fit very well!

I have been working away at the third and final bedroom! I have finally managed to get all the horrid painted wall paper off and am now starting to patch the plaster! It is most definitely a lot of work. But we only bought the farm a couple years ago and are not ready to spend a lot of money on it right now so I am trying to improve the look without getting into having to drywall.

You can't really tell in the pictures but the plaster walls are all full of hairline cracks, as well as some larger cracks so I am using fiberglass tape and joint compound and patching even the tiniest cracks I find. You can see the one wall I started with is covered in joint compound. You can also see another of my little helpers, this is my black and white kitten Tess. She curled up to have a nap beside me while I was busy working.

I Love Old Books

I just love old books! I always pick one or two up at yardsales or thrift stores. They work very good for decorating and they provide insight into how people thought at that point in time, even a turn of phrase and can tell you a lot about the time with the book was written. I really love old history books, I think it is fascinating to see how things change. I have one book about the British Commonwealth and Empire, and another one called "Standard Canadian Speaker and Reader" which I think was meant to teach but it's not like the other old schoolbooks I have come across.

This picture is a shelf where I used a few of my old books to decorate in my home office. Don't mind the mess! This is the shelf Rob bought me for my birthday last year because I wanted something to hold all of our old textbooks from college. The shelves get narrower at it goes up so the top shelf was only really good to hold a variety of knick-nacs and some of my vintage finds. You can see a couple pieces of my milk glass, and there is an old singer sewing machine tin my grandma gave me and the little rocker used to be my Oma's (great grandma). The vintage books used here are mainly Shakepeare and some philosophy which I thought appropriate for an office.

The two red books in this picture are the ones I mentioned earlier. I got them at a yardsale, they were more than I usually pay for old books at about $5 each but I thought they were worth it because I found them so interesting, and really to buy a new softcover book you are looking at at least $10. The white one called "The Cornflower and Other Poems" Was the first ever vintage book I bought, I did have a few others my grandma gave me but this was my first step into vintage. I got it at a small antique shop in the town where I grew up, It's from 1906. The shop is no longer there and neither am I but I still have the book, I would have been around 16. The bottom book is called "In the Time of Roses", the cover is very damaged, I got it for $2 at the local thrift store, but I still think it is a very pretty book which I would like to use in decorating my living room when I get to redecorating that room. After flipping through it I would also like to read.

These are my two most recent thrift store finds. One is to add to my vintage history collection, it's from the 1960's. The other gold coloured one is from the 1940's but I didn't realize that when I first picked it up. I was reading the forward thinking it sounded like an interesting and amusing book then I noticed that it was from the 1940's. The other picture I was trying to get a picture of the bookmark I got for $2, someone made it using vintage jewelry and it looks so pretty with the gold book. But ever since I brought it home the cats think it's a new toy for them, as you can see in the picture Sally Cat is playing with it.

Here is a better picture of the book mark, it has really pretty sparkly red stones. The disappointed cat was removed to the floor. I just love this idea though, it's a great used for bits of old jewelry that might just get tossed out otherwise. I love reusing things, much better for the environment than just throwing things out.

New Shoes!

So on Friday I was out shopping with my mom and sisters for wedding stuff, we needed to get shoes for my sisters for their bridesmaids dresses. We went to Sears which was having a sale, and my youngest sister (age 13) whom I have dubbed Stinker Weasel, came up to me with a box of shoes to show me. The reason she was showing them to me was because she wanted to show me how ugly she thought they were. Well once I laid eyes upon them I thought they were super cute and must come home with me! She was horrified! To me they have a vintage feel, don't you think so?

These flats with their lovely contrasting pink border on white and the cute pink circles, oh I just love them. And I wore them to work yesterday and all the ladies kept telling how cute these shoes are so the poor Stinker Weasel will have to be informed that perhaps the styles which appeal to a 13 year old will not appeal to some one as "old" as myself! And even better they were marked down to $14.99, and were 40% off the sale price!

Busy Busy Busy

Well it seems since my good intentions I have let my blog fall to the wayside again! But wow, is it ever busy. My wedding is only around 6 weeks away now and I can not believe how busy that is keeping me. There are so many details. That is not to say that I don't enjoy it, I think planning my wedding has been great fun but it is extremely time consuming! It is coming together though. We have most of the big things done, we still have to buy the booze for the reception, add wine glasses to our dishes rental (was going to get a free rental with the wine order but found out the glasses are awful!), pick our vows, buy decorations, oh the list goes on! Lol, however, I happen to love making lists (yes, I am a geek!). This is the long weekend and I am hoping to accomplish alot!
Also, those dressers from my yardsale blog? Well I have stripped and sanded the pink one and have started applying the finish! YAY! I am not using any stain and am using polymerize tung oil, I used it on the floor shown in one of my other posts and really like the finish. So I am managing to sneak in some of my other projects despite the all consuming wedding!

Patrolia Yardsaling

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!

Tardy

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.

Blogging

I have never had a blog before and I have decided to start a one because I have found it interesting reading ones which other people have posted. I will be posting things related to my occasional trips, my crafts/hobbies, my pets and my life in general. I hope you enjoy,thank you for taking the time to read my post!