Vintage Goodness

A few weeks ago Rt 127 held the longest garage sale. I was so excited to attend a few in the Celina, Ohio area with my mother in law. So much fun! I did not purchase much, mainly because so many people seemed to use Antique Roadshow as a price guide, but I did make a few scores.
I found a nice little tea set with a tray. I had no intention of purchasing it, but the owner shouted a deal at me.

Can you believe this was only two dollars?

I have no idea what this is made out of...it says Keystoneware. According to what minor research I have done, they manufactured both silver plate and stamped aluminum. I am thinking this is silver plate, the tray just throws me. It may be aluminum. It is probably from the late 1940s.
It was quite yucky when I bought it. But I cleaned it up with some baking soda and white vinegar, which did an excellent job of taking care of some of that...patina?. I could tell somebody once tried using a store bought silver/metal polish that ends with X as some of the silver plate is chipped off. But, as I do not plan to do anything more than set it on my dresser to corral little bits in, I do not mind. Two dollars people!
I do plan to purchase some more realistic fake flowers to put in it! These are from my daughter's collection.

Update!

It has been many many months since I have been on here. To update you, I did finish my goals for February. I just never  blogged it! I made three photo books. One for the first year of life for each of my kids. I used shutterfly. Which I lurve! I use them to make personalized calendars for Christmas gifts every year, which results in my receiving coupons for other items. I finally took advantage of them! I also took advantage of some 50% off sales on books. So nothing was full price! Yeah!

I also made school scrapbook binders for the older two kids. Now keep in mind that I am not a scrapbooker. So these will work for me. Maybe. ;)

I have many other projects that I worked on after my month of attempting to catch up (in some small way) on archiving my family history. Will try to update you all on some of the more interesting ones. As well as begin documenting the ongoing projects. See you soon!

My Heart's at Home

I got this much loved and beaten up book from my local library. I have known of this author for some time through emails about her organization  Hearts at Home. But I am so glad that I picked up this book! Real inspiration for Moms! Whether you stay at home or work outside it, Jill Savage provides lots of encouragement for building the home life every Christian mom wants! Not only encouragement, but useful ideas as well!

Here is a rather shady peek at the table of contents. She covers many areas. One of my favorite is the chapter on hospitality. I sorely lack in this area! Growing up, people were not welcome in my family's home. Despite how I despised that, I seem to constantly struggle with making our home open to friends or family. Truthfully, it is not just my home, I personally do not have very many close friends. Maybe I need to learn not just to have a hospitable home for my kids' friends, but a hospitable face for making new friends. Perhaps that is a whole other post?
Some of my notes from this chapter are: remembering that it is not about me! It is about others. So even if I am not a natural extrovert, I need to work it out for our kids' sake and/or that of our family/friends. Also, I wrote that if I am worried about what my kids are exposed to, I need to make our home the hangout space. And doing that, how to set up guidelines for visitors. Such as a time of day that is off limits due to homework, piano practice, or family only time.
This book was helpful in making me think of what I want my home to be like for my children and spouse. It is very definitely not the home I grew up in, so I have some work to do on changing our family tree so to speak.


In other news...I have been hard at work on organizing keepsakes so will post about that at the end of the month! When I am giving myself a nice long break from that! I also have been working on a new recipe binder. But it has stalled out, due to that dang Dave Ramsey. Life was so much easier when I could just run to the store whenever I thought of something I needed! So my need of page protectors will have to wait a few days more. But I will post some pics when I am done, or rather: done for right now!

Happy Valentines Day!

I made this wreath about a month ago. Ignore the imperfections- they are not visible from the street. It is just a simple project. Straw wreath not even unwrapped, go around and around with yarn. Glue on felt heart buttons. Hang.
 Easy Peasy. My kids actually made smaller ones to give away to relatives for Christmas. They enjoyed doing the first one, but after that in became monotonous to them. All that yarn. They used smaller form so we could not just pass the skein through the middle. We then used smaller strings and pinned them on with pearl headed pins for a more decorative polka dotted look. No pics unfortunately. This is the second year I have forgotten to take pictures of the crafts we make for people at Christmas. Must remember this year! My valentine and I are going out on the town tonight. Hope you all get to spend some special time with your loves this weekend.

February Goals!

My goal this year was to achieve balance. Part of that was tackling some things that I have needed to do, but really dislike and so have not done. Major one was Memory keeping or Keepsakes! I have not printed out pictures since the advent of digital cameras. Yep. I am terrible. I would so much rather keep playing under the table with the kids.

I have set some goals to get a handle on this area for the month of February.

1. Buy a flash drive to back up photos.
2. Look into digital picture frames.
3. Order an 8x10 photo of Sophie at 3mos for a scrapbook.
4. Buy 2 new Albums. (I put the kids professionally taken photos in an Album, or will)
5. Buy a variety of scrapbook papers cheaply.
6. Make a first year photo book for all 3 kids.
7. Make a binder for kids special artwork and school papers.

Some ways I intend to accomplish this is to work 10 minutes a day on it. I have found in other areas of my life if I set a time line/limit, that I can handle anything for x number of minutes. I have to say that this has helped me tremendously. It is only the fourth and I have ordered one photobook, the other is waiting for a good deal to come on shutterfly before I order it. So really just need to do the most recent child! And then the other stuff. Sigh. But with only 10 minutes per day, I can see the end. Of course the rest of the last ten years will have to wait for another month! LOL!

Credit where credit is due!

It was honestly killing me that I could not link up to where I first saw this idea for the mobile command center! So after a lot of clicking...I found it! It is was here! Also, I found her through a 21 day organizational challenge on a bowl full of lemons. Toni has the same contact paper as me! And thousands of other Target shoppers I know...don't rain on my parade people!

I heart contact paper!

Ok maybe it is February...but happy 2011 anyways. I am going to give blogging a try again, mainly as a personal exercise. So if you get bored and go away...that is okay. I will still read your blog. Anyhoo...on to what I have been up to. January was my organizing month. No, I am not really that disorganized but life with 3 small kids being what it is...well you understand. It is an ongoing process.

I recently came across some delicious contact paper from Target and have used it every where. Take a look. On top is my junk drawer. It doesn't look it in the photo, but it is a very small width drawer. Finding organizers that would fit it was impossible, so I just added some small vanity sized organizers that will have to do, along with some of the contact paper.

 Obviously, this is the kitchen. Not original, but it makes me so much more relaxed to look inside and see this instead of a jumble!

 My desk drawers got lined also. So purty! Maybe I will not have such a mess in 3 months!

This is a sort of mobile command center that I can not take credit for, as I am pretty sure that I saw this same thing on someone else's blog in January. Unfortunately, I read so many blogs and click through onto other blogs that I can not credit that thrifty mama that came up with this. Not adorable. BUT, it did save me from going to purchase an inbox for all the numerous papers people keep bringing into this home! Everyone has their own file folder for school papers, etc. And I have my bills to be paid file, Grocery coupons, a Sign & Return file for stuff I need to return at some point.

I also used this paper in Mei's dresser drawers, and under my bathroom sink in the Master Bath. So random...but hey it is pretty, it makes me smile, and it was cheap. What more can you ask for?