Flea Market Treasures!

Let's see...this past Saturday was going to be a fun morning for us - at least that was the plan. Alan knew he was going to have to work part of the day, but he had plans in the morning to take in a load of scrap metal in a town that is 45 minutes away from us. Then, we were going to hit a flea market just down the road from the metal recyclers and be home in time for him to get to the job he needed to go to.

Well, I think that when people speak of "Murphy's Law", they should realize that Murphy must be a pretty close relative of mine and I must have been on his mind heavily on Saturday. 

It started out that Alan's truck was having some problems staying running while on the way to the metal place. He thought he fixed the problem, but obviously that was NOT it. We made it there, only to find out that Alan required some special paperwork in order to turn in his scrap - even though he is a plumbing contractor and showed them his license. So, as not to be making a totally wasted trip, we limped the truck to another recycling place in the next town and they were totally fine with everything. We totally understand why these places want to try to be sure we're not turning in stolen stuff, but the one was just totally crazy. 

Even though my hubby should have been heading back home so he could go to his job, we limped the truck BACK to the other town again to go to the flea market. I mean, that was the ONLY reason I got our 8 yr. old daughter out of bed at 6:30 a.m. on a Sat.! We sure weren't excited about just waiting in a truck waiting for a load of dirty metal to get unloaded, that's for sure. LOL! The payment was nice, but we weren't spending it that day anyway.

We tried to whip through the place as quick as we could without 
missing too much, but that was impossible.  

After all that, I started feeling under the weather after we got home and part of Sunday morning too. Kind of flu-like, just like Alan had been just a few days earlier. Ick.

But I was happy to get what I got and hope to go back very soon and get a few more things that I spotted. I took pictures of the things I wanted with my phone, just so I don't forget what they were. 

Look at this darling little teal blue fan I found! It's kind of grungy and maybe with some degreaser, it will come clean. I love the color of it & the rust on it though. I thought $9 was a fair price. I've seen a larger one at the local Habitat store for $75!! Ouch! I realize it's for a good cause, but really? I think they've forgotten that they're not antique dealers.

I'm sorry that picture isn't the best, but it was still pretty gloomy this morning when I was trying to get the picture and I'm just too lazy to go back and get a better one.

Then I found these bread pans for 50 cents a piece. Now I need to find the idea I seen that used them.

And the best part was that I found these vintage grain sacks for $5 each (well, one was $6)! I like that they're not burlap. Don't get me wrong. I love burlap ones, but I can find those easy enough and at reasonable prices. But these I tell ya, they are like fabric gold! There were more available, but I was limited on funds and didn't want to go too crazy. I hope these clean up good, but they're not in bad shape at all and they have great colors! I thought it was cool that the red/blue one has my home state on it!

So in the end, it was a pretty good day, we made some killer money at the scrap yard and we was able to make it home with very little problems with the truck! go figure... :^/









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At My Garden Gate

I know the weather has been in a crazy role reversal around the country for the most part. It's hard to imagine that it's warmer here in northern Indiana than in California or Arizona! At one point yesterday, my thermometer read 90F (32C) degrees!! I'm just glad I didn't pay for a vacation to someplace "warm" when I don't have to leave my own back yard. We just can't swim yet. We aren't about to get the pool ready this early either. We're supposed to get back down to normal next week though, but we've have record breaking temps for 8 days and today could be too.

It's been so warm here that my flowers are not able to take the heat and they're withering quickly. I try to keep them watered, but I can't keep up with my sandy soil. And I'm not usually putting out my yard decor this early in the season, but I thought I needed to start doing something so I dug out my metal flowers and butterflies. The wagon wheel stays out all year long.

At least this is doable for starters and I think it looks pretty with the daffodils & Hyacinths blooming together. Some of the dafs and one Hyacinth are drooping from the heat already. I just planted them last year.

I acquired this spare bottom half of a barn door from a multiple door purchase a few years ago. I was buying the door to the front of my garden shed and a full set of barn doors for the side of the shed as well from a place that was changing ownership to the son, who was changing the business format, when the guy told me that I would HAVE to take this one too for free. OK OK mister, if you're gonna twist my arm like that. hee hee!

Can you see the Home Interior butterfly resting on the large flower? Isn't it sweet? And he just fits on one of the petals perfectly. The other butterfly on the turquoise flower is a laser cut iron butterfly that I've let get all rusty. My husband thinks I'm weird & nuts for letting it go rusty. He acts like it's going to rust away in just a couple of years, but it's already been 5 years and it's still doing just fine because it is pretty thick.

I changed out the photo on here from the one that was on here earlier today. I wanted to add my vintage Radiator coolant filler can (aka watering can) in the shot and the rusty metal sphere that I got at a flea market last fall for $1!! I tell ya, I can sniff that stuff out sometimes. LOL!

I noticed also that my Hyacinths are trying to droop from the near 90 degree weather we've been having, so I did a flower friendly way of propping them back up - at least if you have daffodils growing behind them, this works. 

I took 2 leaves from the daffodil that's growing behind the Hyacinth and carefully tied it around the bloom stem of the flower. It works like a charm unless you get a good rain or strong enough winds. I've heard that you can run a coat hanger wire directly in the middle of the flower stem all the way into the ground and it won't hurt them, but this is less work and I wouldn't be so lucky for them not to get damaged from the wire. ;^)

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Chalkboard Water Can

I bought this galvanized watering can from a garage sale, I think. It might have even been free from one of my hubby's trash "reclaiming" missions. I just don't recall for sure.

 

Cute enough. I like the shape of it, but not the flower decal or brass handles so much. The decal was on both sides of the can and the other side was chipping off and they resembled a thicker rub-on. I just used some old nail polish remover that was made with Acetone and it took it all off. I don't think nail polish remover is made with Acetone anymore, but I do know you can purchase acetone at Walmart in the paint dept. I don't know if nail polish remover that is made today without acetone would get it off, sometimes I can't even get it to take off nail polish without using half the bottle. :^(  just sayin'....


After getting the decals off, I wanted to add a decorative chalkboard vinyl label, so I used my Cricut Expression and some chalkboard vinyl that I won in a drawing from Smart Buy Gal's Shop and Forum, which came from CraftVinyl.com. I discovered, after the fact, that this particular vinyl was significantly thicker than the standard vinyl I'm used to using. It didn't cut through at all with the usual 3-3-3 blade settings. I was able to get it to tear cleanly along the cut line though. Whew!

I used the Storybook cartridge for this shape. It's clearly obvious that I can't stencil words on straight, can I? Good thing it's only chalk.

Speaking of the stenciling, I used a vinyl stencil that I cut from the Botanicals Lite Cartridge for the word FLEURS. I'm not very good at keeping the chalk from smudging, but I think if I would have used chalk-markers, it would turn out better (note to self...need to get these markers)


I still need to see what I can do with the brass-like finish on the handles and the sprinkler head, but I like how the chalkboard vinyl turned out.

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Some of my favorite "old" projects

This project was Featured at Northern Cottage & Saved by Suzy!

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So, I wanted to show you something that my hubby and I made back in 2009. I seen the general idea on Garden Web, but wanted something different that wasn't intended to be sat on, but used for potted flowers instead. Something I didn't have to dig up or repot every year. I wanted something that I could sit the potted plants in and let them do their thing for the season and just removed them when I was done with that look. There's heavy duty metal screening in the bottom for drainage & keeping it lightweight.

Of course, I know you've all seen the benches made from beds, and you've all seen the dresser drawers used as planters. Well, I used both ideas (in a sense), but I'd like to think I was first to combine the 2 concepts. ;^)
 
I bought the Queen sized bed at a garage sale for $2. I didn't realize that it was pieces of boards just glued together. After the season, I noticed the boards starting to separate. My handy hubby attached the boards to a strip of wood on the back to keep them together. He also had to screw the decorative balls & feet together because they were separating too. 

I had some turned posts that I got from my dad and he just cut one down the middle and we added each half as accents on the bench. They're also above the windows on my garden shed below.

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Spring Fever?

Has it been crazy warm in your area lately? It sure has been here. We've been in the 80's this week, which has been breaking temperature records from 1995 that had us in the mid 70's then.

I have quite a few flowers in bloom here this week. That's highly unusual for my northern Indiana location.

 

 This is my Hellebore flower and I noticed that it has reseeded!

 I forgot the name of this cute little flower, but it's a woodland wildflower that I discovered.

 This is some kind of Iris, but it's not Siberian (I don't think) I can't find the tag to them for some reason.

These are something called Pink Giant. I just planted them last fall.

 This is one of my favorites! I think it's called Scilla or Squill? It's not open just yet, but it might be at the time of this writing. They're so pretty planted in front of yellow Daffodils.

One of the few basic yellow Daffodils I have. Everything else is pretty much a special variety. Dafs are one of my favorite flowers and I can't seem to have enough of them. They smell wonderful when you get a whole big bouquet of them in a vase.

So, enough of my early spring show for now...

Now, let's get on with a super easy project I conjured up on a cold day, just waiting for the springtime. I only needed a pair of needle nose pliers!

We'll start with a somewhat old crackled glass vase I purchase back when I was married to my first husband (we've been divorced since 1996). It used to have a bunch of teal blue colored glass flat marbles in it. I don't recall how I managed to break it. Luckily, I was able to glue it back together, since it's crackled already, you couldn't see the break lines very well. Over the years, the glue has yellowed and I've grown bored with the piece. I've saved the teal blue marbles for some project later on down the road and this just sat in my craft room, waiting for it's own repurposing event to happen.

Then, last year I came across this box of acrylic pendants at a little shop I like to check out once in a while for unique and inexpensive items. I know these pendants were quite a bit cloudy, but I didn't care because I knew they'd be used for something outside and that would happen anyway. I didn't want glass ones either. My glass stuff outside always seems to get broken. I couldn't believe I could get 6 of them for less than $2? Hello!! I bought 2 boxes of them, but I only need ONE for this little project.

Next we move onto some crackled glass ornaments that are a tad on the larger-than-normal size. I had other intentions for them for  Christmas decor outside, but they were so heavy that I was afraid to use them for fear of them hitting the brickwork on the side of the house and breaking. I bought them half off way back when (before gas prices went nuts...) I have nothing that comes to mind to compare the size of these to, but they are larger than a softball & the tag says it's 5 inches. Even at full price, they were reasonable in price compared to today's standards!

I had a hard time getting a decent photo of this, so you may have to stare at it to notice the dangling pendant below the ball. It's hanging from the ring on the ornament. The ring needed to be a little smaller and so did the rings on the pendant. I took the small round piece off from the teardrop shape so I could put it inside the ornament ring. This made it shorter, otherwise, the pendant sits inside that round part of the brass base and you don't see it. They still don't fit quite right, but nobody's gonna be up close enough to probably even notice them hanging from it in the first place. Just me. All I needed the needle nose pliers for was to get the metal hanger off of the pendant because it was pretty durable!

So now I have this pretty & petite gazing ball that I didn't really have to do anything to in order to make it. My favorite kind of projects!



In case anyone is wondering, the variegated green crocheted doily that you see is out for St. Patty's Day and it was made by my husband's late grandmother from Germany. It wasn't my first choice from her collection, but I DID mention to my husband's aunt that I liked the color green, but I was referring to the "emerald" green stemmed goblets she had. That'll learn me! I just need to find a more suitable vignette to display it.
...BTW, I did get the goblets too.

  
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