September Flea Market!

It was a beautiful day to be at the flea market!

The Nashville Flea Market is huge. And the September, October and November markets are the biggest. Five covered sheds four or five buildings and vendors lined up everywhere there is space for a booth. I could  have easily spent thousands.

Sorry I did not get some up close shots of the booths, some vendors give you strange looks if you whip out a camera and start photographing their stock.

I have put myself on a thrift diet because I have not found homes for a lot of my recent buys so this months flea market was all about finishing up some sets. My number one goal was to find the cups that match the rose lunch set plates I found at Goodwill yesterday...no luck there. But I did find my second mug in the Fire King flower set. I found the violet cup at my favorite indoor flea market this summer, and I was excited to find the tulip mug yesterday, now I am hunting for the Rose and Daisy.

I found this Green Kimberly bowl and even know it was not on my list, for two bucks, I had to grab it. And as it happens in the same booth I found the tulip mug, I found a green Kimberly to match the bowl, it was meant to be I am sure.

Grabbed some mint condition Normandy Rose Melmac dinner plates to finish the set I use for my picnic set. And some odds and ends silverware to hammer for the booth...ok one or two may be going to my "orphan silverware" crock.

Even after two and a half hours at the Flea Market, I was still in thrift mode so I hit a couple of my favorite Goodwill stores and found more silverware to hammer out and three fire king chili bowls.

As I was getting everything cleaned up I realized I had ended up making a couple completed sets without even meaning to. Completing sets was the goal of the day, I say I succeeded even if I did not find the rose cups.

So I still am thinking I may have to break down and ebay the rose cups, I am lazy that way sometimes.

 I have another little project inspired by my wanderings and the flea market yesterday to add to painting my chairs, so I will work on getting that all photographed together this week.  

Happy Saturday!

A little progress

Ok, so the chairs that I had planned to have finished last week are still not complete, but I do have paint and wax purchased and got the chairs sanded and ready to go. The plan is to finish them up Saturday, hopefully~lol. I went with a Spanish brick red, I hope they turn out the way I imagine them!

One more thing I picked up last week on my Goodwill run was this globe. Globes are all the rage the last few years, and yes I like them too but cannot claim to be obsessed, surprisingly, my husband is a bit obsessed and was thrilled when I sent him a picture of my find. I did not need to really do anything but clean it up and it now stands proudly by my beat up trunk next to the fireplace. I love how they look together.

My flea market brass deer are trying to get into the picture here.

Nashville Flea Market weekend starts tomorrow, finally! I am excited to get out there in the morning and see what treasures I will find! Hopefully next post I will have not only some cool treasures to show you, but my finished chairs as well!

Have a great evening!

Hammering it out

My husband has nagged me forever to sell some of my crafts, but honestly I never though anyone would possibly be interested in spending money on one of my little whim hobbies.

When my friends started making our local Farmisan market a reality, they encouraged me to consider becoming a vendor...still I balked, but finally I decided, what the heck just give it a try. And really considering the size of our venue I would consider my little booth a pretty big success, not only have I managed to cover my costs, I have walked away with a decent profit every month except this month. I try to make sure I keep my product price as low as possible so people feel like it is not that much of a splurge, and am always looking for low priced interesting and beautiful vintage flatware to use. Some new spoons to hammer out will be high on my shopping list at the flea market this weekend!

The spoon herb markers are my biggest seller. 

And a lot of people love these sentiment spoons. Needless to say Pinterest is my number one spot for finding inspirational quotes.

October will be our last Farmisan market for the year, but I have already started working on my new stock for the Christmas Craft Market at our local community center this November. And as I look at my stock list I can see that I better get serious about all the hammering,  I have a lot to get done!

With all the hammering I do you can sure bet that I make a fair amount of mistakes. Because of this I have quite a little pile of "oops" spoons. Where would I be without Pinterest? Looking around for ideas to use my "oops" spoons I found adorable key chains made with spoon handles! Next task, learning how to cut the handles off the darn spoons.  I am excited to give it a try and see how they turn out!

Ouch...

I was really hoping for some decent foot traffic and sales for this months Farmisan Market, ouch, slowest market since we opened, I did not even recover my booth fee. All of the fall festivals for the local Churches must have been this weekend. Market was a total bust.

 

I did not even get any decent shots to post. So, next month I will make sure to get some decent shots, it will be the last one of the season, hopefully, this one will be more successful. So instead of any fun market shots, I will leave you with one of my flower shots I took this morning. I burned probably a good hour outside wandering around the backyard taking shots of my flowers, I know it will not be long before we get a hard frost and they are all gone.

 

I have grown these heirloom Dahlia's the last couple years, I just love them. Next year I plan to do more flowers, I think I will double my Dahlia order. They are just breathtaking. I thought I loved the yellow best, but this pale pink is so sweet.

These California Giant Zinnias are as always, just stunning.

 

Hope everyone had a great weekend!

He likes strong coffee.....

I take full responsibility for getting my husband addicted to Cafe Du Monde coffee and for encouraging his habit. Hey, the coffee is fantastic, but the cans it comes in? Too die for!

I keep the decorations in my  booth at the Farmisan Market pretty simple, and in the fall I cannot resist putting some beautiful mums into these cool coffee cans. 

Almost ready for the Market tomorrow, it is going to be a beautiful evening so I am hoping we get a good turn out. I know these coffee can mums will look sweet in my booth, but I look forward to having them out on my patio so I can enjoy them when I sit out on my pallet couch under my willow tree. 

Will try to get some decent pictures of the market tomorrow, until then, have a great weekend!

The unexpected best seller

When my son started playing football I wanted to do what I could to help. Aside from dragging him to football practice and making sure he was eating properly, I looked into what I could do for all these new bumps, bruises and aching muscles. Sometimes the answer is so simple, you just have to laugh. Epsom salt, is this not "the" cure for everything lately? It was the "go to" for so many things from body to garden for our grandparents, now it seems it is again getting the respect it deserves.

As for my son, when I suggested he start taking baths with Epsom salts, being a water lover anyway he agreed. And he loved how he felt afterwards. Magnesium is best absorbed through your skin so after a nice long bath not only are your bumps and bruises feeling better, your going to feel relaxed and sleep better. After doing some research I read that about 80% of the US population is deficient in magnesium. And for a kid doing six three and four hour long workouts a day? Its a real life saver.

So, it started out just with Epsom salt in his bath, then reading about detox baths I started mixing in some baking soda...and surprise surprise, his heat rashes and "teenage" pimples disappeared. Come winter time, he is not only hooked on his Epsom salt/Baking Soda baths...he had the start of a cold...well why not mix some essential oils in there as well. A few drops of Lavender, Rosemary and Eucalyptus oil later. The kid is happy and I have a new product on my hands.

For the booth I form the baking soda/Epsom salt/Essential oil mix into "pucks" with the help of some distilled water rose hip oil. I have been selling out of them every market. 

And the smell? Heaven.

I am making twice the number that I made last month for the market on Saturday. Last month they were a sell out, I hope they are this month as well. I laugh, because I had to really be talked into making these for the market, I could not imagine that people would buy them. Well, how wrong I was everyone seems to love them.

I also make some in vintage tart tins, they turn out so beautifully, I will post a picture once I have those ready.

And..I made a quick Goodwill run today and ran across at least half the Federal Glass lunch set I have been wanting for awhile now. I almost squeeled when I saw them...not that that is out of the ordinary for me when I am out treasure hunting. Six plates, five in perfect condition, one has a couple chips but is still useable.

The little matching cups were nowhere to be found, But I have the Nashville Flea market coming up next week, I bet I can find a few there...I love a good treasure hunt!

Happy Wednesday everyone!

Getting ready for market

Never fails, I always put getting ready for our monthly Farmisan maket off until the last minute. This month is no exception. I am scrambling!

 

This month I am adding a couple more products to my booth. First is the silverware. This month I decided to use some of the many  knives I have found mixed in with some of the lots I have purchased over the last year and make them cheese knives.

They are so cute, I hope visitors to my booth agree.

 

 

UG this picture is hard to see. None of my silverware is new, everything I do is old/vintage so the mix of patterns is pretty random. But I for one, love that.

 

This past April on a whim I made a last minute swing through the Goodwill here in my little town and had amazing good luck, someones grandama must have been purging her kitchen, the dishware was amazing! I found this adorable cheese plate, I do not recognize the maker, it is a German mark, but I just love this plate, it is very large and the graphics are adorable, but of course the fact that I am both a cheese, and vintage dinnerware freak may make me a bit biased.

 

 

a close up of the graphics.

 

 

turns out, photographing silverware is a real pain in the rear end. I will have to play around and figure out some tricks to work around that.

 

I will post some of the other products I sell in my booth this week. For the first time I am actually selling some of my photography, I love flowers and have dozens and dozens of shots. I love them all, now I guess we will see if other people do as well!

 

Sunday Morning

It is a gorgeous early fall day here in Tennessee with a beautiful cool breeze and lots of warm sunshine. Perfect morning to take my breakfast and coffee outside to my pallet couch and eat under my favorite willow tree.

I found this lunch set at an antique store in WI the last time I visited home. It kills me that so many of the things I collect are easier to find and often time less expensive up North. But it does give me something fun to do during my visits. I am probably due for another visit soon, and you can bet I will hit all my favorite thrifting spots.

Nope sorry, not into vintage Christmas...well, except for...

Vintage Ceramic Christmas trees....why do I love them? I have no idea.

 

I have never been a big Christmas person, I have kids so of course I decorate, but nothing extreme. vintage Christmas items typically just do not interest me, knee hugger elfs and the old santa's tend to creep me out, although I will grab a cute reindeer without question. One day a couple years ago I was wandering through an antique store in my husbands home town and spotted one of these ceramic Christmas trees and I never forgot about it. Maybe it was the ambience of the store, it was the week before Christmas and they had old Christmas carols playing, holiday snacks laid out for the shoppers and the tree itself was lit up, it was so sweet and nostalgic it touched me I guess, but, I just smiled and passed it by. Months later, I was chatting with another thrifter buddy about how I had decided I needed one and sure enough, not long after, she ran across one at a garage sale and grabbed it for me for a whopping .75 cents. And that was it...it was all over for me. I am up to 9 trees in less a year. And I make no apologies.

 

The same sweet friends awesome garage saleing mom found this one for me last week. at a whopping 32" tall it cost me a tad more than the .75 cents I paid for the first one, but like any addict...I say it was worth every dime. Other than a minor chip inside and a few missing bulbs (easily replaced out of my stash) it is in near perfect condition and has me longing to scurry up into the attic and bring out all the others.

 

Sorry for the crappy pic, as you may guess, I was a tad excited!

 

In the mean time, my chairs still sit untouched. I swear I will have them done before the end of next week. But today has been the first cool fall day we have seen here in TN and my attention was inside baking bread and cookies, chairs will still be there tomorrow.

 

Have a great weekend!

A couple of projects to tackle

I am a bit ashamed to admit I picked up these two chairs at Goodwill in July...they have sat collecting dust in the garage when I really should have tackled them right away. But, now that the weather is cooling off, it is time to roll up my sleeves and start working on them.

 

What attracted me to the chairs to begin with is that I think they will look fantastic with the pallet table that I hope to construct, well,  as soon as I can find a suitable pallet. But in the mean time, I am just going to go ahead and jump in. They are surprisingly comfortable chairs and I think they will look great painted a barn red then distressed and maybe some furniture wax. I am excited to give it a try.

 

Another project for this week it to work on stamping out some of the butter/cheese knives that I have picked up over the last several months for the monthly local craft market I have been participating in this summer, as well as the big craft market in November. I really need to get cranking on my new stock for the November show. Hopefully I will have some finished this week to show you.

 

Have a great week and happy treasure hunting!

 

Garden Zinnias and a Goodwill find

 

Strolling through Goodwill the other day I spotted a "package" of vintage tins that included a small bowl. I was after the tins and did not give the bowl much thought, until I walked outside into into my tiny garden Saturday morning and thought~perfect.

 

I am already looking forward to the September flea market here in Nashville, I have skipped the last couple of months, too hot for a wimp like me. But I will be ready to go this month!

 

Happy Monday everyone, hope you have a great week.

Cherokee Purple Tomato and English Pyrex

       I love growing tomatoes. My favorites being the heirloom varieties like Cherokee Purple.

 

Not only are they beautiful, but they taste amazing.

 

I made a quick run into one of my favorite Goodwill stores and saw bowls! I was shocked just to actually find bowls there, imagine my surprise when I flipped them over to see that they were not only Pyrex, but English Pyrex.

 

 

Two bowls, this is the smaller of the two. The bowls are beautiful, but even more so full of Cherokee purples.

 

Enjoying them while they last, before we know it they will be gone with the frost.

Vintage pillowcase love

I remember as a kid my mother had a stray embroidered pillowcase in her linen closet that I just loved. I am betting it was probably one she did herself and long ago sent it to the Goodwill, but I never really forgot about it, how sweet the tiny flowers were and thinking about who did the embroidery on in. I guess that is what draws me to vintage anything, the history of the pieces satisfies the romantic in me. So, when I spotted a darling set of vintage embroidered pillowcases at a local thrift shop about a year ago, I snatched them up, little did I realize that they would be the beginning of another one of my collection's.

 

I found this set at my favorite indoor flea market and knew they had to come home with me. I just fell in love with the center rose, and the colors? Made for my bedroom, perfect match.

 

 

 

 

A thought...

I have been thinking about starting a blog for more than a year now, and now that I have it set up, I have no idea what to do. I was trying to figure out why I am not totally enthusiastic about posting. I mean, I LOVE reading blogs and seeing the pictures of everyone's finds and projects, but I really am not enjoying taking the pictures of each find like I did in the last post.

After giving it some thought, I decided that instead of showing picture after picture of my flea market and thrift store finds, I would instead post pictures of how I use them around the house. This would cover three of my hobbies at once, thrifting, decorating and photography.

So here we go, lets give this a try!

One of "My hobbies" is hammering out vintage silverware and stamping it for plant markers. Although I love them and have them in my own garden, I also sell them at our local craft market each month. I find a lot of my flatware at Goodwill and the monthly Flea Market, I also sometimes score a mixed lot on ebay. It never fails though, that I find some pieces that I just love too much to hammer out and the most recent lot I won last week is no exception. As I sorted through I found nine collector spoons from the 1933 Chicago Worlds fair and one from the 1937 New York world fair, they are so cool, no way I could hammer them out.

Just happens that last week at my favorite indoor Flea Market I found this darling embroidered dish towel. How fitting.

They have now joined the rest of my flatware "orphans" in the vintage marmalade jar that I keep in my kitchen, I just love my little "hoard"

Such a sweet collection, but I suspect I may outgrow the marmalade jar pretty quickly!

Happy Labor Day!