Gone Junkin'

It's no secret that I'm self employed, work from home and that I love junk.

Working from home is quite (I hardly ever turn on the tv - I can't stand that racket) and I missed the conversation with coworkers and friends, so occasionally we would eat lunch and catch up. Then we started doing the shows with Angea and the occasional lunch become "business meetings" or "board meetings", discussing our ideas and booth set up visions. Last spring, we started meeting early on Thursday mornings to go Junkin' and we've only missed a few weeks, due to time sensitive work, Angea's vacation, or medical situations. Our peeps have learned that Thursday morning is our early morning and don't make plans to conflict with our junk!

We have our normal starting place, where we meet, we shop there and then hit any garage sales in town. We might venture to a nearby town, run some random errands, go get supplies at Hobby Lobby, etc., but we almost always end with lunch. Since we started out booth in Mineola, we venture that way at least twice a month to restock our booth and see what we can collect along our way. 

In the winter, there hasn't been many garage or estate sales and we've been going through some junk withdrawals and we've been anxiously awaiting people starting their spring cleaning and garage sale season! With the weather being so nice, we were hopeful for today's adventures. 

It did start out a little frosty early this morning, but it quickly turned into a gorgeous day! 

Our second stop turned into a Junkers high! I've never see Angea snatch up something so quick - she grabbed up several stacks of buckets like it was a Black Friday Christmas sale! I got the big tub and rooster, and she got the others, but we combined them to haul across the highway. 

My initials in stamps... Didn't get them though. 

Angea, the Junkin' Queen! She passed on the crown as well, but I had to get her picture. 

We made it to Uniques and Antiques and added some items to our booth and rearranged things to give it a fresh look. 

Here's a few new items that I have been working on lately. You might remember my struggle with the church boards - well here's two of them, from my "Another Sunday in the South" series and a rustic, shabby photo holder. 

Roosters! Between the two of us, we've got several rooster items in our booth. 

After lunch, we headed back towards home. We go one way and come back a different direction, so we will have a greater chance of finding sales along the way. We take turns driving and this week Angea drove her car. Now do not let her little fuel efficient car fool ya, she can pack some stuff in there! That's an awesome table she grabbed up.  We laugh and have so much fun together! Angea is such a happy, upbeat friend to be with and I love our Junkin trips!  

We got back to town, I got my truck and we both went back to a sale were we found the buckets. We each found a few more things and I decided the bike must come home with me. I haven't came home with this much good junk in a while! We have visions of transforming and decorating with lots of it at the Backwood's Marketplace next month. Seriously, you don't want to miss it, because we are going to have some awesome stuff. 

I nearly bought knobs at a big name store last week, but I held out, because I thought I might could find some old ones, instead of the imitations. So glad I did and I've got plans for these babies! 

It was just too pretty of an afternoon, when I got home, that I just couldn't go indoors to work, so I didn't! I worked outside, "For the Birds". (Did you see my new cutter tool and completed birds on Facebook or Instagram?)

Today ended with a pretty sunset and tomorrow I'll be back inside working on wedding orders, but for today, we had to enjoy the junk and bask in the sunshine. 

Crazy Ideas...

So a couple weeks ago, I was driving through town and this chippy peely arch thingy ma gig caught my eye. I went on with my flower deliveries and then came back and looked at it. In passing by, I didn't see those rectangular pieces (legs) in the back and kept thinking about how the top crown piece would look as part of our set up for the Backwood's Marketplace. 

Ah, well it was a complete arch, minus one broken piece and cost a little more (double) what I really wanted to pay for a prop piece. And really, anything over a $100 is a "big" purchase to me and I like to think it over and decide if I really need it. 

Well, I couldn't stop thinking about it and decided I wanted it, I could use it in displays, rent for weddings, and / or put in my yard.  I had my sketches on how we were going to rework our display to incorporate it, but on my next trip to town, two days later, it was gone. Sadness, I tell ya. I was bummed out. I should have bought it when I saw it first... 

But then, I got to brainstorming and came up with something involving tin from my Granddaddy's barn! 

It took a bit of work to get Jeff on the same page as me and we were able to do a test run today! 

Here's a sneak peek...We set up Friday at the market and I can't wait to pull it all together. Come see us Saturday to see it all arranged together or stay tuned for pics to come! 

Oh, and total cost for this project??? $0.00 - it's all repurposed from reclaimed materials! Unless you count the apple pie I bought this afternoon, because I really owed my builder a treat for putting up with all my crazy ideas! 

Here's the details for the market. The trailers are loaded down and we are almost ready to leave out tomorrow! I keep finding more junk to load...

Fall in Love

Fall - its one of my favorite times of year! Pretty colors and slightly cooler weather is always welcome. Add my love for pumpkins, mums, scarecrows, and county fairs and its makes for a happy season. It also means it was time for a yard and gazebo makeover! I moved around some of my junk and added a few bronze and burgundy mums and went with white pumpkins this year. 

My little red rusty wagon has a load of pretty fall goodies. The creeping jenny, coleus and dianthus were already in the wagon, they just got moved around and some new companions. 

We got this old, folding wooden chair from an estate sale a couple weeks ago and it was begging to show off some fall favorites!

Mr. Scarecrow has been helping with some modeling jobs! Here he is sporting a turquoise burlap boutonniere. 

Here's a step back to see all the gazebo. For any of you new visitors, almost everything you see is rescued and repurposed, including the gazebo! We pulled it from a trash ditch several years ago. Of course, all my metal buckets, containers, the wagon, doors, bicycle and chair are second hand as well. Its true what they say: One mans trash is another mans treasure! 

This little scarecrows greets us with a Howdy! 

I've made a couple pumpkin wreaths and Mr Scarecrow helped display them as well . 

The pumpkin wreath above has sold, although the one below will be available at our Yamboree booth in just a couple weeks. 

I think autumn weddings have the prettiest wedding colors! I love the burnt orange, golden yellows, and shades of brown and the decorating ideas are so plentiful this time of year. 

A customer recently ordered the fall bridesmaid bouquet and boutonnieres to match her bridal bouquet she had ordered previously.

So, what are your favorite things about fall? The only thing I don't like about fall, is that winter follows it. If we could only skip the cold winter and go right back to spring...

Garage Sale Finds

I got up this morning and something just said I must go garage saling. I've only happened upon a random sale or two in recent months, but saw several ads in the newspaper for sales on my side of town. 

The mister wasn't ready nor shared my urgency to hit the sales this morning. 

So, I put on my favorite thrifted, vintage sweater and turquoise scarf, loaded up my sweet dog and we headed out. 

We enjoyed the fall beauty on the back roads and then we started texting back our list of finds and a few pictures along the way. 

This is the reason I must drive ol' trucks with a long bed! ;) I rescued a desk, chair, coffee table/bench, frames, wooden tote, counter top, a lace pillow, vintage cheese grader, scored a few shirts, a vest, and  Christmas garland. 

So now I have several projects to work on and fix up. Now to figure out what color to paint the desk and chair! What's your favorite color of furniture? 

The Birds Approve of the Junk!

We've had baby birds this week! It has been exciting to watch as mama bird made her nest in my junky, rusty flower bucket on the gazebo. Its made for easy and convenient bird watching. We discovered yesterday that we had babies and tonight as I watered outside, I notice mama wren was out hunting for food. I grabbed my camera and stood on the front porch and watched them.

 These birds are lovers of all things rustic and junky! Makes me like them that much more!

This was mama bird sitting her nest a few days ago.

As I watched the wren, I suddenly realized there was two wrens working on feeding the babies. This is a family affair! They both landed on this set of old bed springs before moving up to the gazebo rail, then into the bucket.

I shot this picture with my phone, so forgive the blurriness. Here's a glimpse of the babies! Sadly mama bird has taken two pieces of plastic into her nest.

 

 

 

I love being able to watch mother nature and photograph the life of these babies!

What I Love about Spring

It has been a long time since I joined the Brenda Photo Challenge, but I decided to participate this week with What I Love about Spring! All pictures were taken this week. Spring is my favorite time of year, although the last few mornings we are have had winter like weather and upper 30's at night.

 

 

 

An International square hay baler and Indian Paintbrushes on our property.

 

Wildflowers along the highway.

 

 

Lizards and plants in my yard and spending time sitting in my gazebo and enjoying working in my flower beds.

 

These are just a few of my favorite spring things!

 

 

Put a Shade On It!

Earlier in the fall, I was dividing plants and moved this Lamb's Ear to a new flower pot. It was droopy and needed some support.

Well I had this rusty ol' lamp shade that just wondered around the yard, with no real purpose. So these two got together and have made a great pair!

The lamp shade started as a temporary fix, but I think I like the combination and will leave the shade on the Lamb's Ear. What do you think?

 

A Rusty Bucket of Kale

Someone was describing their son to me today and said "he was a winter time person..."

 

These words will NEVER describe me. I, for one do not like cold weather or the dreary days of winter and forget about snow. So this week I am happy. Our air conditioners are running in East Texas and its mid 70's. Most are complaining that it "doesn't feel like December", while I'm happy it feels like spring.

 

Over the weekend, I got to work in the yard for a while and I planted some kale in the rusty, bottomless bucket.

 Now you may be thinking I said the pansies and dusty miller would make it till spring, but I left out a small little detail. You MUST remember to water the flowers for them to survive! Life got crazy for a few weeks and since time changed (have I mentioned I hate DST), I get home after dark and didn't water. Oooops!

 Some of you might remember the original planting in the bottomless bucket last spring.

 I had been wanting to plant some kale for a while, but hadn't seen any in the garden center. Well last week that changed, so I grabbed three of the ornamental cabbages and decided they would be great for the bucket and should survive the winter with a little water along the way.

 I brought most of my plants out of the greenhouse to enjoy the mild week, but it sounds like the cold weather will return by next week. :( I've heard rumors of the twenties in the forecast.

 

 Now what was I suppose to do? Oh yeah, go water the plants!