Yard sales!

Yard sale season is one of my favorite seasons. Not that you can tell, of course. :)

It goes hand-in-hand with auction season, which is also upon us.

This weekend was the Georgetown Yard Sales. I took Carrotcake cupcakes (baked from scratch, with Orange Cream Cheese Icing--yum) up to the church yard sale this morning and decided to drive around the block or so to go to a couple of yard sales before I went back home. I also had to get gas for the lawn mower too, and I wanted to get all my errands done at once.

Well, the first yard sale I stopped at (I passed a couple with only clothes and stuff I wasn't interested in) filled my car.

For $10.

I now have a new bathroom sink (or will, once we install it.)

I am not usually a fan of doing this to poor, defenseless sewing machines. Especially treadle machines, which are maligned anyway. However, I did also buy the sewing machine itself, for someone who is looking for one to put into a treadle machine he recently refinished and repaired.

I couldn't pass it up. Seriously. If I had been broker than broke, I still couldn't have passed it up. Do you want to know why?

I said I filled up my car for $10. There was a $1.00 price tag on this. :)

And I beat the dealers, who came up right behind me to look at it, too. I beat the dealers! Hahaha!

So the sink built into a sewing machine base (and all the pieces and plumbing thingys are there as far as I can tell) cost me $1.00. I bought the actual sewing machine for $5, two rugs for $1 each, and two tins for $1 each.

This will replace the current setup (don't mind the mess, please), which looks like this:


Don't you agree that it will be an improvement?

Oh, and the nice thing is that it's oak (at least I think it's oak--I'm not very good at this, but my house has all oak floors, so I tend to know oak, at least) so it will match the nice oak cabinet over the toilet.

And then I can work on replacing the fugly medicine cabinet, the toilet, and eventually, the tub/shower. Which are also pink. *shudder*

Other than those things, I bought a very deep bundt pan (I think that's what they are called) for $.50, and eight old bottles for $1/each. Six of the bottles are cobalt blue, so they will go in my windowsills. :)

(This makes me feel better for not buying the $30 antique sink at Burlington last weekend. I drooled over that sink. It had cool, original knobs. It even had one marked 'WASTE'. But it also weighed about 300 lbs, and as Dad said, even for $30, there was no way we'd ever get it into his car.)

Gardening

I grew up with my family's huge garden. We never bought vegetables from the store. I didn't even know canned lima beans existed until I moved away and saw them on a shelf.

(I can always filch from Mom and Dad, but ya know, I want my own garden too!)

Last year, I removed sod from the middle of two flowerbeds to make a 'garden.' In truth, my 10 tomato plants gave me over 3 gallons of juice, plus enough tomatoes to make me happy for the season. I had zucchini and cucumbers and gourds that went nutso. For a small space, it packed a big punch.

But there is this spot in the front yard between the spruce tree, the forsynthia, and the lilacs, that is nice and flat and just begging to be a garden.

However, it's probably 20' x 40' , so there's no way in hell I'm going to dig up the sod myself, unless I really want to die, because it was hard enough to do that last year.

So tonight, after talking it over with Dad and getting his experienced opinion (I already have rave reviews from a coworker of mine), I ordered a Mantis Tiller/Cultivator. Edible landscaping, here I come!

Decisions, Decisions

So I snuck out to the store yesterday, got a can of paint, and painted the wall in my hallway this color:



The floor is still dusty, and I had to move all the bookcases again. But I really like this color! Doesn't it look nice?!?!!! :)




Yes, yes, I'm lame. Note the date. :)