Busy, busy!

Before I retired from my "big girl job" 3 years ago, I marveled when I heard others say they wondered how they had time to work. Silly people, I thought!Oh my gosh, I am so busy. My little booth business keeps me hopping as well as volunteer efforts in my small town. Granted, these are all areas I choose to be involved with , but still! I just redid the table for spring in the tea booth, can you see I'm using that same tray chalkboard to "announce" the new items I have in for spring. Have you made you a custom chalkboard yet? Easy, peasy to make . They are so fun to have around.Just ask me!

Diamonds ARE a girl's best friend!

I love diamonds whether on my hand or on a wall! lol I recently repainted the wall in one of my booth spaces. This is a tiny spot, 4'x8' and I wanted to grab people's attention, so.... what do you think? Did I accomplish my goal? I love the way it turned out. We'll see if sales pick up, huh? This booth space carries my hand painted glassware and vintage barware.This area did well during the recent holidays. You can see right now I have some Valentine champagne flutes I did on the table. I'll keep you posted on sales!!

Winter blooms

Don't you just love a plant that blooms in the winter such as my ruby red amaryllis? It adds so much to our homes when we have living plants inside. This one has done so well, usually by this time, the plant needs staking but this one is very straight. Such a pretty sight on a cold, dreary day outside......

Picnik?

Do you play with http://www.picnik.com/ ? I just found this site and thought I'd play alittle. I took a picture of my spring-like table in the den and "touched it up " alittle. Pretty fun! Give it a try, it's free!

Yard sale find

Can you believe this glass top table was only $25 at a recent yard sale?This is one of my best finds...ever! Isn't it cute? The glass on it is so thick and it is in perfect condition. I love it! Tell me about your "best find".

Black and white....always right!

My friend, Tracey,at http://acottageindustry.com/

mentioned the wonderful color combo of black and cream on her blog. That reminded me of a party we helped host last spring for a bride...all in black and white. It turned out marvelous and I found some photos we made, so I thought I'd share some.

We copied the bride/groom photos in black and white and put them in assorted frames for the evening. Didn't it turn out great?

We thought the simple white calla lilies were the perfect simple flowers for this party.

Even our food was black and white, weren't the "tuxedo strawberries" precious?

Junkin'

I love to go junkin'! Finding treasures either for myself or the shop gets me so fired up. I was up early this morning to hit a local yard sale by 8am! You have to get there early to get the best deals, and I scored several times this morning. Got some great stuff.Don't you just love the green jelly cupboard, it is an old piece that only needed alittle more "distressing" and cobweb cleaning underneath. I've already taken it to the shop. I paid $12.00 for it! I'm going to charge just a tad more for it at the shop!! lol

This old green washstand on the other hand needs some help, in my eyes. I plan to paint it black as well as a nice beveled mirror I bought and then distress them both before placing them at the store so... more work!I paid $10 for the wash stand.Both pieces very cool and perfect for the store. Now if the weather will cooperate next week and warm up a little here in GA I can get back to painting! It was 13 degrees here this week, a little nippy for painting !! There are plenty of bargains out there still to be had but you gota get up and get out there!

Organizing!

Does the New Year make you want to organize, throw away, recycle? It should! When we start a new year, it is a good time to "start over" by that I mean throw away clutter, clean out, give away, etc. We are pretty good about recycling books we read to a used book store, giving old clothes to a local thrift store but my paper clutter can get away from me! You see the magazine on the top of my"to read" stack? It has so many good ideas, but it is from winter 2006!!! Good grief, I haven't even made it through it and here it is 2 years later. I'm pitiful!! Hope you are better at taking care of papers and clutter than I am! Away I go.... to clean out a closet or two!

Happy New Year!

We are so lucky to have so many wonderful friends to celebrate with, hope you had a good New Years Eve however you decided to spend it!

The past few years we have a little New Years celebration at our house, last nite was no exception. Found this cute hanger 1/2 price after Christmas, so I just put a plain wreath in it and it made the door look so festive. I used lots of silver,mercury glass, stars and glitz last nite so this looked so appropriate for the front door. What do you think?

We had some friends with us last nite that do not "partake" of alcohol so I wanted to make sure everyone knew the punch had a little"punch" to it! This old silver tray was a flea market find I turned into a chalkboard, are you surprised? I've been using it at the shop to advertise sales etc. I thought it looked cute on the sideboard last nite.

Isn't this begonia beautiful? I got it at the grocery store! It was so pretty, I didn't even get cut flowers for the table as usual, I just used this begonia, the blooms look like red roses! I was so pleased. I didn't buy my invites this year, just found an image I liked, downloaded that sucker and made my own!