Can I get $1?

Funny how life gets in the way of everything else.

I write blog posts in my head pretty much everyday. Even more than I write Facebook status in my head, which is saying a lot.

I have a lot of projects and updates I need to be post, but they’ll have to wait for another day.

Today, I’d like to talk about auction sales. The last auction sale I went to was for my great-grandma. I think I was 5 or 6. I don’t remember much. It was hot. Mom wasn’t there so I got to eat and drink whatever I wanted.

My second auction sale was Saturday, July 14th. And it was a very different experience.

But, let’s start at the beginning. 18 months ago, my wonderful FIL passed away unexpectedly. He was in a horrible accident and left us way to soon. I loved him. He was a great man. Kind and funny. I was very lucky to have met him and know him for 13+ years. When I met my husband, my FIL was a contractor. He had a construction company, doing remodels, managing rental houses, finding great deals wherever he could. Before that he was a shop teacher. And I swear he knew everyone from South Dakota to Canada, Montana to Wisconsin. You might think that’s an exaggeration, but I’m not kidding. He never knew a stranger. And everyone he met immediately loved him.

He did have faults, though, and one was a big one. He liked junk. And he had a lot of it.

So, while I loved him, I also cursed him. He had so.much.stuff. Too much stuff. At least to someone going through it all, it seemed that way. Buildings on the farm, buildings in town, lots here, lots there…all of them full of stuff. All full of crap treasures. But it wasn’t just his stuff. He also had his parent's stuff, his in-law’s stuff and his uncle’s stuff. Add that all up and you have a lot of stuff. Stuff to sort, stuff to throw, stuff to keep and stuff to sell.  Stuff, stuff and more stuff. Hours, days and weekends worth of stuff.

Sparky, his mom, his sisters, BIL, nephews and I have spent quite a few days moving, sorting and throwing away all this stuff. And for what? To get ready for an auction sale. And this was no ordinary auction sale. Vehicles, tools, antiques, appliances, cabinets, paint, shovels, rubber boots. You name it, we had it. A junk lovers dream. Obviously, family gets first shot on stuff. The good stuff. The stuff my FIL pulled out of old barns, rental houses and anywhere else he found something he thought could be reused. The stuff he built, the stuff he treasured, the stuff he thought was good enough to bring home. The stuff he wanted to fill up his bins and buildings and yard with.

This is my some of my good stuff:






It's great stuff. Stuff that makes me happy. Stuff that I know will go great in our house. Stuff that means something. Stuff that Sparky agreed could come home with us.

And this is what the a stuff at the auction looked like:

North Dakota in July can go a couple of ways. Hot and humid and no wind. Or hot and kinda humid and 50 mph wind. (Awesome either way.) We ended up with hot and humid and no wind. And still ended up with a great turnout.

We had people in the yard (Sparky’s mom and dad had about 7 acres) at 9am. The auction didn’t start until 11am. (And that's with folks checking out the yard all week.)

The church ladies served a great lunch with homemade fried donuts. (Seriously, if you’ve never had them, come to ND, ask someone to make them for you…you won’t regret it. Bring sugar.)
Like I said, it was a great, sweltering hot, miserable, day.

This is what it looked like when we left on Sunday.

And, while it may look a little sad. All of us were so freaking happy. Almost all of the stuff was gone. My MIL said she wanted to hug every person walking to their pickup or car with a box of stuff. Many, many pickup loads left the yard that day. Many people found treasures to torture pass on to future generations. (Including my dear dad, sigh.)

After this experience, I know I could easily become an auction sale junky. Waiting to get my next fix. My only caveat is, to get the good stuff I just show up and show the auctioneer my number.

April Fools?

This isn’t an April Fools prank. This IS an actual blog post. Amazing, I know. Just doesn’t seem like I’ve had enough time to sit down and write one. But hopefully, spring will put a little spring in my step and inspire me to get going on all the projects I said I was going to get done. Like, the front room. Not much has changed there since my last post. Lots of ideas, no execution. Bah.

We have been doing some work in the craft room. We’ve got the treadmill and the XBox+Kinect in there along with my crafting/decorating stuff, so it’s getting used more by the whole family than it used to be. But I’m saving that for another post. Hopefully in the not too distant future.  It involves paint, sticky tiles, free furniture and fabric.  (I was going to post a picture of it from when we first moved in, but I can’t find it on this computer. GRRR.)

But, I did get a couple of little projects done this weekend. I was able to get out the spray paint! Yay! It was 70 degrees. In North Dakota. In March. That just doesn’t happen. 

I have a bajillion picture frames. I think it’s an addiction. Frames on clearance? Buy ‘em. Frames at the thrift store? Buy ‘em. It’s a sickness. But, as a result, I had some picture frames that I wanted to change up.

I’ve seen a “He is Risen” printables out on quite a few blogs and decided to do my own. I really like the way it turned out.

I’ve also always wanted an Irish blessing hanging in our house somewhere. Lo and behold, I get an email from The Irish Jewelry Company and there it was!


I like how it adds a little something by the front to door to welcome people when then come in and also let them know we are thinking of them when they leave.


It feels good to create stuff again. Hope you were able to pull a good prank on someone today! By the sounds of it on Facebook, a couple of people on know pulled some good ones.
(Geez, that plant is looking a little sad. Maybe I should go water it and prune it a bit.)
Linking up with:

Drum Shade Makeover

You know, when you have an idea and then it comes out even better than you thought it would? Yeah, that totally happened with this project.  I'm so freaking excited about it!

I've been trying to figure out what to do with the lamps in the living room. They have black bases and red drum shades. We got them at Pier One a few years ago, so they weren't cheap. I didn't want to buy new lamps, but the red shades just weren't working any more. I did look around to see if I could find reasonably priced cream drum shades, but no such luck. I think the cheapest I found was $40. No thanks!

(I was so excited to get started, that I didn't take any close-ups of them before I started. Ooops.)

  

What to do, what to do. I thought about spray painting them. I thought about wrapping them with ribbon. Then, I saw this from Heather at At The Picket Fence and a lightbulb went off (har de har har...I couldn't help myself).

Source: atthepicketfence.com via Jill on Pinterest

Not exactly the same thing, but close enough!  And, I just happened to have some fabric that I needed to figure out what to do with. (Remember the fabric I bought to recover the thrift store chair?) Perfect for this!

I followed Heather's tutorial pretty much to the letter. I cut the fabric, then used a hot glue gun to attach it to the shades. Holy transformation Batman!

I needed to do a little trimming to clean up on the inside of each shade.

I trimmed up the excess fabric, then glued some cream grosgrain ribbon around the cut edge.

And here they are back on the lamps. LOVE!

Sigh. I'm so happy. It's the little things.

One more thing off the list! 

• Paint and reupholster chair (which I've never done before)
• Three new (or new to us) side tables
• New lamp shades or redo the current ones
• New lamp
• Hang curtains
• Update hardware on the buffet (there is a reason there's no close up of it yet)
• Hang artwork/mirror/pictures above couch/buffet/bookshelf
• New lamp for buffet?
• New pillows for couch

Linking up with:

Frugalicious Friday at Finding Fabulous

A little progress...

I've got a little progress to share on our family room that I first showed you here.

In that original post, I showed the floorplan we were going for and it involved a couple of occasional chairs.  Since I'm already planning on tackling one DIY chair, we decided to buy the other two. And we LOVE them.

We got this faux leather one at our local Furniture Mart.  I wasn't sure I'd like a chair with no arms, but it's really comfortable.

And this little lovely came from Target. Yep, Target.

During the chair shopping process, I realized that while I love the look of high contrast, bright, patterned furniture, actually buying it and having it in my house scares the crap out of me.  "Hi, my name is Jill and I'm scared of bold patterned furniture."

A little side story, Sparky and I were talking about the chairs we bought and the colors that we are going for in this room. I pulled out the fabric for the chair I plan to redo to see how it would go with everything else. When I asked him what he thought, his response was "it's nice."  And then said, "Is nice really what you are going for? I thought this was going to be a fun room. So far, there is no fun Jill in this room." And that folks, is why I married this wonderful man. He gets me.  And he pushes me to do things I'm scared to do. But,now I have to find new fabric for the chair. And I'm not having any luck. It's out there somewhere, I know it is.

Ok, back to the rest of the progress. Sparky got the curtain rod and curtain hung for me. (I hate hanging curtain rods. I've only done two. He's done a bajillion. He could do that bajillion in the time it takes me to do two.)

The window is eight feet long. And low. And not centered on the wall.  Awesome! Anywho, I had gotten the striped curtains at, you guessed it, Target, a looonnng time ago for a different room in the house and they didn't work. And I never took them back. I suck at taking stuff back to the store if it doesn't work. This time though, it paid off.  It's hard to tell in this picture, but the stripes are actually a couple of different shades of green.

The sheers are also from Target and I love the medallion design. (Side note, it's VERY hard to take a picture of sheers when there is bright, white snow on the ground and the sun is shining).

We also got a little something hung up on one of the bare walls. Oh, how I love stained glass windows!

This lovely hung in the house Sparky grew up in. My MIL gave it to us when we were cleaning out his dad's shop.  Sigh. It just makes me smile looking at it. And yes, this is the "back" side of the window. We liked it better than the front.

And here are a couple of shots of the whole room.

Even though not a whole lot has changed, it's amazing the difference these few things have made. This is slowly, but surely becoming one of my favorite rooms. I'm sitting in it writing this post as a matter of fact. And, it's where I hosted wine club last week too.

You might notice an extra lamp on the far end of the couch. We needed a little more light in that corner, so I grabbed one of those cheapy three legged tables and an extra lamp. It really makes a big difference!

We've still got a ways to go, but at least it's progress!

• Paint and reupholster chair (which I've never done before)
• Three new (or new to us) side tables
• New lamp shades or redo the current ones
• New lamp
• Hang curtains
• Update hardware on the buffet (there is a reason there's no close up of it yet)
• Hang artwork/mirror/pictures above couch/buffet/bookshelf
• New lamp for buffet?
• New pillows for couch

I've got an unrelated project I'm working on too. Here's a little sneak peak:

It's looking awesome! I can't wait to show it to you when it's done!

Picture Perfect Room?

I don't know that I'll ever have a picture perfect room, but Donna over at Funky Junk Interiors put out a challenge that I think is just the push I need to get moving on our living room. I'd already been thinking about tackling it once the Christmas tree came down. So, I guess now is as good a time as ever!

This room has a lot of great potential and I want it to set the tone for the rest of our house. It faces south, but we have an overhang so it gets a nice soft light that comes in. It's a nice quiet spot to read and drink a cup of tea or to have wine club.

When we first moved in, I wanted to create the feeling of a foyer or hallway since you walk into this room from our front door. So, I had the couch placed so the back faced the door. I thought at one point that I wanted to put a sofa table behind it.

But, it really didn't do what I was hoping it would do.  We had to move the couch to make room for the Christmas tree and after the Christmas tree was gone, we really liked the couch where it was.

It opened up the room and made it feel more welcoming. We've defnitely used it more with it arranged this way than we did before.

But, it definitely needs some help. No curtains, the walls are bare and it's just kinda blah. Uninspiring. Boring. Blech.

See that chair back there? Yeah, I've had it for a year. I've got the fabric bought and it is definitely the inspiration for the rest of the room. (Hint: it doesn't have any red.)

And yes, that is a Thomas basketball hoop stuck to the window. That's what happens when there are no curtains.  And my camera bag on the buffet.  Classy. 



But now we've got a big empty space where the couch was and not much seating. We knew we wanted to leave the couch as is. It was new when we moved in and SUPER comfy (great for naps!).  I've got the chair I'm going to refinish, but that's it. 

I started playing around with my kitchen chairs to come up with an arrangement I thought would work, but wanted to see an overall floor plan. So, I went out to bhg.com and used their Arrange a Room tool (which is very cool, btw). I played around and finally settled on a final arrangement.

Lots of seating that promotes cozy conversation, but still leaves it open and inviting. Yay!

I can't wait! We've got one new chair already and the other should be here this week.  I've also got curtains that I thought of using in another room that are going to work really well in here.

But, there's a bunch of other stuff to do:

• Paint and reupholster chair (which I've never done before)
• Three new (or new to us) side tables
• New lamp shades or redo the current ones
• New lamp
• Hang curtains
• Update hardware on the buffet (there is a reason there's no close up of it yet)
• Hang artwork/mirror/pictures above couch/buffet/bookshelf
• New lamp for buffet?
• New pillows for couch

And that's just the short list. I have some other things I want to do in there as well, but need to work them out in my head first.

Wish me us luck!