 |
| Our family, me with my sack of potatoes ;) |
 |
| My little baby girl in her bumbo on the beach. |
 |
| Family shot! |
 |
| My handsome little 4 year old. |
 |
| And cute little bro - 2 years old |
 |
| This is how you rest and relax, folks! She is in a thrin! |
 |
| Topped each night off with ice-cream - had to try each ice cream joint out! |
 |
| Daddy and son exploring the waters. |
 |
| My little sister and I with our baby girls |
 |
| Beautiful, curious children |
 |
| BEFORE - I ripped off that outer layer or veneer |
 |
| AFTER - gave it a good sanding, painted it white and black. I painted the original drawer pulls on the bottom, but found some round wood ones for the top that I thought suited the new style better. |
 |
| Tobin carefully pulls a name from the John Deere cap and the winner is........ |
 |
| Cilla Buck!! |
 | |
| And the winner for the long time followers drawing is... EM!! Congratulations Cilla and Em! Em, please contact me with your mailing information so you can receive your greeting cards. Thanks for being Followers!!! |
 |
| This dude's in a thrin! Comment if you think you know who this is! |
 |
| BEFORE (pictured without mirror) |
 |
| AFTER :) |
 |
| BEFORE |
Now on to the cool shelf Grandpa Scott made, so high I'll never be able to reach it! Mommy put it on the "to do" list on one of Grandpa's visits from Iowa (and she wonders why he doesn't come to visit very often!). See, she had these brackets she bought a long time ago at IKEA and told him to go dig around in the corncrib for some boards. He wasn't satisfied with what he found. Grandpa can be picky sometimes. So Mommy pulled out this tall bookcase that was hiding in Tobin's closet and he took it all apart and turned it into my shelf! Then we found some chair rail from the barn to complete the look on the other side. There was just enough! As for the flowers that decorate the top, mom plopped them in little clay pots which she bought at JoAnn's and spruced up with a stripe of teal paint around each one and finished it off by tying a strip of brown polka dot fabric around the middle. My mommy has this really cool friend named Laura who likes to spoil me. She came over one day and painted those white flowers on the wall, just for me! If you look closely, you'll see the "hippo" bank on my dresser and not pictured is a very rad light switch plate cover. Laura painted those too. The little rocking chair, that hopefully I'll be big enough to use soon, was stashed away in the Jackson Antique mall. It was kind of scary looking, but mommy painted it white with a cool brown flower. My vanity dresser and the music stand that holds all my burp clothes and other baby necessities are from my daddy's grandpa's house. Mommy painted them white and I think they're pretty neat! One last thing, the rocking chair mommy sometimes feeds me in was a freebie from a friend, who was too nice to tell great aunt Maggie Lou it wasn't wanted. Everyone seems to have mommy's number on speed dial when they have stuff they don't want!
It sat in the barn, ready for a "free sign" to be stuck on it, when Grandma Kim convinced mommy that despite it's "not so stylin'" looks, it was pretty comfy! I'm glad she saved it. I love to snuggle with her in it! 
 |
| pictured: music stand on the left, freebie rocker, shelf on top from a dismantled bookcase, and white vanity dresser |
The Homer Hogstravaganza was a first and probably not the last for me! Homer is a small town of about 1,800 people in southwest Michigan. I first heard about it while glancing through the Salesman - a free weekly "newspaper" of sorts - and the words "craft show" caught my eye. Now I had been to Homer once, back in the day before kids and we lived in Jackson. Our weekend fun activity usually involved hopping on our bikes with a picnic lunch and riding to some small out-of-the-way town. Homer happened to be our destination on one such weekend. All I remember about it was the nice cement basketball court I took a nap on. Anyways, I'd been accumulating quite a few crafty things in the barn without an outlet and also making baby headbands, which seem to be all the rage these days. So I bought a bunch of supplies, paid my $5 booth fee, that's right - $5 - and got to work. Originally the fee was $10, but the craft show commander and chief had to be fair since the farmer's market was only charging $5. Laura came out to help and good thing too, since I quickly started to lose my voice! Our little headband model, Tori, arrived around noon and then sales skyrocketed. Well, she helped anyway. But then there was a lull in sales, since baby model fell fast asleep under the table. When the outhouse races, hog calling contests, mini tractor pulls,watermelon tosses, parade, and Stand Strength Team show were over, it seemed our business was as well. We began to pack up. But my partner in crime, or crafts, did my dirty work and walked up and down the main street hawking our wares. In a matter of 10 minutes she sold a whole load of headbands. People who didn't even know they needed one, were buying them. For instance, the woman who said she thought huge flowers on babies were obnoxious got talked into a headband with a dainty little flower. After she forked over the money she exclaimed, "I don't even know anyone who would wear this!" Laura was born for sales. We need to come up with a better set up system though as any little gust of wind sent us into a tizzy trying to hold everything in place. One of my poor windows succumbed to the wind and now sits cracked and waiting for it's life sentence in the dump. See you next year, Homer!
I had orange paint for my living room mixed and then there it sat. Longing to be worn by that one wall in my living room. My good pal Laura was at my house and convinced me at 11:00 one night that it was a good time to do some orange'n up in that room. It didn't take much so I've come up with some ways to use some more of that paint, and some leftover salmon color from the porch. Great background for my latest canvas paintings! Note: Canvases are "upcycled" from a friend who was tired of looking at the scene on them! Score! :)
 |
 |
I saw these out-of date heart shelves all the time while garage saling and just kept walking. Then.... I got a few brainstorms for how to update them for a girl's room. I just don't know who's "girly room" to put them in! So for now, they are stashed away out in my barn, waiting for a home. 
