September 21, 2001 White Wednesday #2

Here is a quick White Wednesday post about the shabby cast iron candle holder I found at the flea market last weekend. I had blogged about this find and others earlier in the week but I also wanted to highlight it for White Wednesday. I chose to top it off with a mini-ghost pumpkin from our own patch. Love this dollar deal!

  

Weekend Finds September 18, 2011

Well I must say I had a great time getting back into the junking mode this weekend and I probably won't miss anymore if I can help it from now until the cold weather keeps the vendors away. I will admit that I had to stop going to the flea market and rummage sales over the past month or so for the simple fact that we were running out of room for all of the things we were storing either to keep, sell, or repurpose. It had gotten so cluttered with bargains that we were losing track of what we'd bought. Due to working as a music director for several summer camps from June-August, I didn't have time during the week to sort and decorate with the things we'd found each weekend. Now that school has started back I actually have more free time than I had during the summer. I am a college instructor working a Tuesday/Thursday schedule this semester which gives me some time during the weeks to devote to my favorite hobbies. Luckily now everything is starting to get back to normal.

I found one more little ghost pumpkin in our yard today hiding under the vines

 To be honest, I am a neat freak and as much as I wanted to get the Halloween decorating started, I just couldn't do it until the house was "ready." Now all the housework is caught up and the vintage Christmas decorations we bought this summer are organized and waiting for their time to shine once Thanksgiving is over (our laundry room was beginning to look like some sort of Christmas overstock warehouse). The house was getting far too disheveled for me, so I had to fight the overwhelming urge to go picking and use some discipline to do the right thing...so I disciplined myself right into organizing everything into enough room to justify another fun-filled weekend of treasure hunting. I am very glad I went, as I found some real goodies! I have some older pictures of previous finds too, so I think I'll just post them here as well since they are also "weekend finds."

We really needed a new dresser and although I was looking for
something to redo with a more antique look, I couldn't pass up this brand  new
all wood dresser  and matching night stand at the flea market for
 $100 (still had the new manufacturer's sticker from Feb. 2011 and plastic on knobs).
 I normally wouldn't spend that amount but these pieces are in
 near perfect condition and were quite a bargain, probably worth at least four times as much.

This nightstand is the exact match
for the dresser, the lighting is just different in the photo

I love this shelf made from a piece of antique tin crown molding which
was salvaged from an old hotel ($5, flea market).
 I paid $1 each for the antique door handles. The vintage cast iron
candle stand was $1, and the mini pumpkin was free (picked off our own vine).

Gorgeous detailing on these handles

One of the finer family-owned nurseries in our area had
some interesting succulents on clearance for $1 this weekend. My son was wanting
a few more plants for his college dorm room so I bought several and divided them out.
I planted this bit along with one of my Great-Grandmother's Hen and Chicks plant in
a pretty little pot my mother found for me at a rummage sale. And by the way, this pot is "the real McCoy."

I have the perfect spot waiting for this shabby shelf ($4.50, Flea Market)  in our basement family
room which is currently still undergoing renovations (hopefully it will
be finished by Halloween).

A great old table ($20 rummage sale)

Set of 6 1930's Ducal china  dematisse cups $1 for all at
an estate sale

I had found two of these 1940's garden chairs for $2 at a yard sale a while back.
 The intent was to paint them but I just couldn't bring myself to
destroy their shabby charm.

The pumpkin wreath was a $1 yard sale find. It is cute and primitive how it is, but I have something else in mind for it for Halloween---you'll have to check back in a week or so to see what it is. Until then, happy junking!

September 14, 2011 "White Wednesday"

Happy "White Wednesday!" Now that I'm blogging I think I will be anticipating Wednesdays almost as much as the weekends! I have tons of shabby-white vintage items to blog about. I didn't really get a chance to put something special together this week, but I was just getting ready to add these pictures of some of my ironstone pieces to my Fabulous Fall post anyway so I thought I would just go ahead and use them for White Wednesday instead. 

Part of my vintage Adams ironstone collection, another one of my junkaholic addictions

You have to just love the simple elegance of white dishes. They are suitable for everyday use but are also unparalleled when it comes to formality in dining and can take on so many different looks depending on how you dress up or down your table.

What a find! Vintage Adams Ironstone including
the creamer and sugar bowl which
are valued around $90 alone. I grabbed 41 pieces of this
collection for only $7.

I have been collecting ironstone for a while and I'm a sucker for white dishes or pottery of any kind (or any white/ivory vintage items for that matter) so when I found 41 pieces of a highly collectible vintage Adams ironstone set at a consignment shop for $7.00, I was a just a wee bit ecstatic! 

ADAMS POTTERY

The Adams family have been operating potteries in Staffordshire, England, since the 1650s and possibly earlier. Although now owned by the famous Wedgwood group the factories still exist and are still being run by members of the Adams family. Now the twelfth and thirteenth generations traceable back in a direct line to the seventeenth century pottery of Robert and John Adams.

Family records show that there were 'Adams' classed as master potters in the area as far back as 1448.

This stamp on the bottom
of my dishes dates my collection from the mid 1960's.
(Love my retro-kitchen finds)! Adams ironstone has been around
since 1657 and there are tons of different
identification markings.  

Part of my love of collecting junk is the nostalgia and history of the junk itself. The first thing I do when I find treasures is research what I have actually found. I purchase a lot of flea-market and second-hand items purely on instinct and take my chances. Oftentimes I don't know for sure that what I have found is "worth" something (its always worth something to me if I love it regardless of the monetary value), but I still somehow seem to know I have found something special and it usually turns out my instincts have been correct.

I chose to display this collection on a sleek black table (a handmade 

Christmas gift from my husband in 2006) to keep a clean, classic look. 

The colors of the fall leaves seem even more brilliant

 against the black and white.  

The chalkboard hanging above was salvaged out of a Red Lobster restaurant when they were updating their decor. My husband and I purchased two of them from a flea market vendor for $25... our "Fresh Catch!" We kept this one and sold the other chalkboard 

on consignment for $50 (not a bad deal for us).

I happened to also find these three unmarked ironstone
canisters at a flea-market for $3
 and they fit in nicely with the Adams set

I enjoyed finding out a bit about the Adams Pottery and now I am on the lookout for more pieces.  I am sure you will see much more of my ironstone collection appearing all through my posts and in future White Wednesday displays. Now I have an excuse to buy more since I need them for my blog!

September 12, 2011 Fading Summer Gardens

What was going to be a simple sweeping of the porch ended up as a full-out lawn and garden clean-up. I decided to go ahead and get everything prepared for pumpkins and gourds, which should be coming into season very soon. As a matter of fact, we picked 5 mini-ghost pumpkins today from last year's toss pile (we were pleasantly surprised when we found the vines growing and blooming in July). We have been having some really crazy weather, from 100 degrees last weekend, dropping to 60 with torrential rain and then back up into the 80's, but I suppose that's about the normal, "unpredictable," Kentucky September. When we had our first autumn cool spell at the end of August I had decided to go ahead and change out my window box from bright summer flowers to an early fall arrangement, but the rainstorms destroyed my creation and I had to restart from scratch. 

I woke up one morning last week to find
one lone fern and some spanish moss remaining in the window box,
and the rest of my two hour creation strewn about
my flower bed. Wet spanish moss is not easy to clean up!

As much as I despise using silk flowers outside, I have found that they are a much better choice for the large box under our front window. I was spending quite a bit of money on flowers and they were just dying out within a couple of weeks each time, no matter what varieties I bought. No amount of watering or Miracle Grow could keep the soil moist or nutrient rich. I finally realized that the heat coming off the glass was going to make it nearly impossible to keep a vibrant show, so I began using high quality faux flowers and have been much happier and saved a lot of money. 

I wanted something a little different from typical fall sunflowers and raffia.
I chose oranges, reds, purples and browns so I could
use them through Thanksgiving with some minor changes.
 Real Autumn Ferns and English ivy grow directly beneath the planter which
ties in the landscaping with the window box.

Our little Luminas (just picked) add a bright pop to the warmer hues. I will
probably use them elsewhere later in the season, but for now they are sitting pretty.

Walking around the yard and picking up sticks and debris from the storm, I realized I hadn't taken any pictures of my flowers and gardens this summer. I directed two musicals from June-August and I didn't get to spend as much time enjoying my flowers as I normally do.

"Hen and Chicks" are planted in an antique child's toy
wagon (estate sale, $5).  The "chicks" were given to me
by my grandmother from her plants
(still growing in her yard) which were "chicks"
from her own mother's original Hen and Chicks plants
that she grew over fifty years ago.

 This spring I had found some really cute vintage enamelware pots and bowls at the flea-market and I used them for my mixed annual plantings, but as of last week it was time to clean them out to be repurposed for decorating inside the house. Most of the rest of my large, showy annual mixed planters were spent for the summer and I had already cleaned them out of their pots and tucked some autumn kale in their places signaling the arrival of fall. Nevertheless, the rest of my herbs, summer-blooming perennials, and shade annuals are giving it all they've got to hold out for several more weeks. I finished up the yard work in enough time to snap some pictures of their remaining beauty.

The oregano and parsley are still going strong. Perfect for
use in my Halloween witch potions as "Skin of Toad,"  "Lizard Scales," or
just in homemade tomato sauce).

Three varieties of basil are mixed with chives, sage and oregano. The
little garden hoe is antique child's toy from an estate sale ($1). The fleur de
lis tile was a yard sale beauty ($1). All urns, planters and pots
are yard sale and estate sale finds, ($1-$5). A single pink impatien stands
center stage in the small urn to the left,
and an antique lucky horseshoe (flea market, $1) helps
keep my garden growing green (mid upper-right).

My first mum of 2011 is placed near
 an autumn fern as a companion plant. The mum's red brillance
will help bring out the red striations that will appear on the
fern as the season progresses.
The plant stand to the left is part of a trio purchased at the flea-market this
past weekend for $8.

In a garden that is predominantly green due to large amounts of shade, texture is of
upmost importance.I choose my plants based on their textures and foliage shapes in
addition to their colors, and layer
as many different textures as possible for visual interest.

Our "well-established-looking" garden is actually only beginning its third year. When our home was purchased in the winter of 2008, three overgrown boxwoods were the only landscaping on nearly an acre of property. At over sixty years-old, they were enormous and encroached the porch landing and stairs. We removed them in the early spring of 2009 and managed to save two of them which were transplanted as privacy specimens elsewhere. The removal process took over eight hours. We were then left with a completely blank canvas where even grass had failed to thrive due to heavy shade. Shade-loving azaleas were an obvious choice, and several now form the backbone of our landscape. English ivy is allowed to sprawl across our yard "invasively" in place of grass as the primary groundcover. My husband and I wanted to invoke storybook charm to our landscaping by planting large amounts of ivy, reminiscent of the gardens and cottage homes we had admired on our trip to England in 2004.  Luckily, my grandmother had plenty to spare growing behind her garage. I dug up enough to fill a medium-sized cardboard box, and that was all it took to get it started. 

The old saying regarding English Ivy has proven true: "The first year it sleeps, the second year it creeps, the third it leaps." We prefer to let ours be "invasive" and sprawl as our replacement for grass.

A giant "Sum and Substance" hosta (my Mother's Day gift 2011)
is doing well in its first season. This portion of the landscaping
was just completed this summer. The ivy in the background
will one day cover the mulch and connect the new landscaping with
the older portion.

Liriope, Coral Bells, and several Hosta varieties are
top performers in our shade landscape

The Hostas on the opposite side of the
house are beginning to fade for the season.

 The fairy statue tucked into the rhodedendron is a "twin" to
 my younger sister's statue,
  (gifts from our father). Each of our fairies ended
 up having a broken wing on the
opposite side for unknown reasons. We chose not to fix them but instead use
the fairies to remind us that "we can lend 
a helping wing" to each other whenever we
may need one.

A simple planting of impatiens in a primitive wood
planter is still thriving under a shady tree

The front yard and porch landing as it appears in early September is now cleaned up and ready for its transformation
by some fall and Halloween magic. 

September 9, 2011 Halloween Fever and Friendship

Well, not really...

Halloween Fever

This morning I went junking and  found a few things for fall decorating that I can't wait to work with, but the rain shut down vendors and all the scheduled yard sales were also rained-out so I decided to go check out Hobby Lobby and the dollar store to get some ideas. 

 I didn't stay long however, because after I saw all the beautiful oranges, purples, and black spooky-pretties, I was itching to get into my Halloween decorations--- but I debated with myself the whole drive home:

Amber A:  "Its so tacky to get out Halloween decorations this early. I mean, Labor Day was Monday! Its one thing to have harvest decor on the mantel, but witches and skulls???Its like putting out Christmas decorations the day after Halloween and skipping Thanksgiving altogether!" Tacky, tacky, tacky!

Amber B: "Man, time just seems to fly by anymore. The next thing I know, it'll be Christmas. The weather apparently thinks its already Halloween, since its been 60 degrees and dreary for the entire week. And the reality of the fact is I feel half-way decent today and with the unpredictability of Lupus/Fibromyalgia I may be completely unable to fool with it when it  really is a little closer to time. Better get started or I may never get it done! 

Amber A: You'll be sick of looking at it by the time Halloween gets here. It'll lose its magic!

You know how tacky it is. Its the beginning of SEPTEMBER. Just use, apples, sunflowers, scarecrows, mums, indian corn and some pumpkins when they arrive.

Amber B: "All the other bloggers are doing it, so why can't I?

Amber C: It IS tacky, so how about just getting all the decorations out and sorting them and experimenting with the mantel a bit? Then you can organize them and put them neatly away until you're ready. That way if you don't feel well next month, you'll already have everything planned out and you'll still get your Halloween fix for the day.

So in the end, Amber C won the debate and began sorting and setting up various displays to decide exactly what look she wanted for 2011. 

Husband: (upon arriving home from work)"Isn't it a bit early for Halloween?"

Amber A, B, C,: (grumbles...then sighs).

Today the  entire living room was covered and divided into sections
This is a very small part of the vintage 1960's blow-mold section (blow-molds
once went "out of style" but now they are hot items in antiques stores and ebay. They can
sell for well up into the $100's.)

Well, it turns out its a good thing I got into organizing everything. I bought more Halloween junk this summer at flea-markets and yard sales than I had remembered. The new junk mixed in with the stuff we already have is a bit overwhelming to work with to be honest, but I love the challenge! 

More of the "vintage section."
The large trunk is stuffed to the brim
with Halloween decorations. Some of the junk lying about is for
fall craft projects.

I MIGHT have to (MIGHT, MIGHT, MIGHT, MAYBE) have to get rid of some things, to make room for more new, old things. The more vintage, the better. And I have been getting into altered art and handmade folk-art Halloween stuff too, so I sense a new style emerging. 

Altered art Halloween hangtag by vintagedragonfly, (see my
favorite blogs)

What am I saying? I'll find somewhere to put the rest of it! Anyway, I took some pictures of some of my older decorations and handmade projects today as I was sorting them. At least I can decorate my blog without shame!

                                                               

Below is a box that I made a couple of years ago to store old Halloween cards from friends and family. I bought one of those plain craft boxes from the craft store for $2, and some scrapbooking papers and ribbon. I painted the box with acrylic paint and decoupaged computer-generated vintage images to the lid. I used glitter glue to give it more spunk and lined the lid with ribbon. I sealed the entire box by brushing on a light Minwax stain. I already had the stain, so altogether it was about a $6 project. 

Here is another one. This time I wanted a primitive look. First I painted the box with black acrylic paint, then I decopauged vintage postcard images and accented the box with prim pumpkins and ribbon. I sealed it with a light brushing of Minwax stain.

My little boy wanted  me to make a him a mummy, so when I made "Skeleton Jack" (see Fabulous Fall blog) I made him a small, primitive-looking mummy. I had some fabric left over so I also made him a stuffed ghostie and tombstone decoration. He was so excited to see these when I got them out today! He asked if he could go ahead and put them in his room, and of course I let him. After all, what are mummy's for???

A "Mommy-made-mummy," out of
tea-stained material and cheesecloth, cut into a
human/monster type shape, then stuffed and hand-stitched.

Rest in pieces of cotton cut in shapes of a ghost and
tombstone, then tea-stained and painted with acrylic.
Ghostie is stitched to the tombstone
and tied with cheesecloth.
Dried moss is hot-glued to the bottom to represent the
moldy graveyard ground.

Halloween Friendship

The boxes, mummy, ghost and Skeleton Jack were some of my first attempts at making my own Halloween crafts (besides the usual blow-pop tissue ghosts and kiddie crafts). When I decided to make these I had been inspired by my sweet friend, Beth Hodson. Now this is a lady who can decorate, and make ANYTHING! Matter of fact, I am going to dedicate an entire blog to her vintage Christmas decorations during the holidays, its truly something to see!

I also handmade these candy corns after seeing similar
ones at Beth's house. I display them in my antique Griswold
cast iron corn muffin pans (flea market, large $5, small $8)

I have always had a thing for cast iron corn muffin pans but I
became even more intrigued with the smaller ones after
reading an article in Martha Stewart Living magazine. The small ones
can be expensive, so I didn't hesitate on this Griswold for only $8.

 Three of my favorite homespun Halloween decorations were bought from a rummage sale Beth had about nine years ago. I found out she had handmade them and I thought they were adorable. (At the time, neither of us knew how our lives would become forever entwined by a very special bond). I knew she was a talented folk-artist who loved primitive decorating because that  same year I had her daughter, Kaitlin, in my kindergarten music class (I was also her piano teacher) and she always brought me the cutest handmade gifts and candy on holidays and special occasions.

Prim-Country Halloween
Birdhouse by Beth ($1 yard sale)

 My First Halloween gift
from Beth and Kaitlin, handmade
by Beth

This little witch is another one of Beth's cuties from her rummage sale ($1). I purchased the witch hat this spring
at a consignment shop for $7 and they make a nice little grouping.

When Kaitlin was little, Beth was a stay-at-home mom who epitomized everything a good mother should be. So when I became pregnant with our son, Liam, in the late summer of 2004, I called her right away. She had never really been a babysitter before, but something in my heart told me that she was the one. She accepted the job offer on the phone that day almost a full eight months ahead of time, and we knew our prayers to find the perfect babysitter had been answered. She lived near the school and I was able to visit Liam on lunch breaks. She and I grew closer each day, and as time passed we made many memories and laughed and cried with each other in good times and bad.  And every time I visited her house I was in awe of her interior decorating and crafts,  AND also by the wonderful person she was (is). We developed a deep and lifelong friendship that includes Liam, Kaitlin AND VINTAGE JUNK!!!!! I am almost as excited to see her vintage/primitive Christmas house as I am to finish my own Halloween decorating!

Sweet Pea and "B" on his first Halloween

Halloween memories with Beth and Kaitlin at the world -renown Griffith's Pumpkin House
in Kenova, West Virginia. (2007). The 115 year-old Victorian home is decorated with over  3000
Jack-o-Lanterns every year.  Ric Griffith (owner) has carved over 28,000 pumpkins since 1978.

A special handmade gift from Beth

I bought this little scarecrow for $1 at Beth's rummage sale so many years ago. He is one of the first decorations I put out each August and he stays out until Thanksgiving (as long as he avoids the vintage box of matches!) The first couple of years that I decorated with him he was just another one of my yard sale treasures; now he is a sentimental decoration reminding me of Beth and Katilin, and one day I will give him to Liam for his own home.

Beth and I at Liam's 5th birthday party

And speaking of Halloween friends named Beth, I HAVE to mention my dear friend Beth Stanford, who just recently remarried and moved to Colorado. Beth is another one of my friends who has a strange love affair with Halloween. She is drawn to the spookier-side of the season and likes to tour cemeteries and go on ghost hunts. A few of our fall memories include taking a train ride through through Maryland in October (some of the most gorgeous fall scenery I have ever witnessed), spending the night in the "haunted" Scottish Castle Bed and Breakfast in Mount Savage, Maryland (replica of Craig Castle in Scotland), visiting the Kentucky Bourbon festival in historic Bardstown, Kentucky and taking a late night ghost tour there, and also going on several of our own ghost-hunting adventures in old graveyards in our hometown. Beth is also a phenomenal interior decorator and she and I share the love of decorating with eclectic items.

My best ghost-hunting pal, Beth...summoning other-worldy
energy in the gardens of the Castle bed and breakfast.

A night of ghost hunting.  Beth and I (celebrating the season with
a Starbuck's hot caramel apple cider)

Surely this dead person is honored by us posing outside his
mausoleum

I think a ghost just pinched my bottom, see the
orb to the left?

The ghost tour we took in Bardstown

Patti Starr, (the author)
was our tour guide

The haunted tavern where we had dinner

Part of the tour took us upstairs in the tavern where we experineced
some odd happenings...

Riding the Wild Turkey at the KY Bourbon Festival

The Castle Bed and Breakfast in 1897...

 ...and in 2006. The only thing that really creeped us out in this castle was the owner's Victorian doll collection

Castle walls

The castle gardens

My husband and I slept in the Robert Burns room,
reportedly the most haunted in the castle

Outside the castle

The train we rode through the mountains

Newlyweds, Beth and Tom

The view from Beth's porch

Even though Beth has moved, I know we still have more fabulous fall memories to make in the future (she loves Colorado but is missing the fall foliage of the Sugar Maples in Kentucky). Looking forward to a trip to Colorado to visit her lodge-like home.