Recently, I met a new friend.
She invited some of us over to her home for lunch and to see her collections.
And oh my, what collections she has!
Her home left me speechless. Which is good, because I am still having glitches with my blog hosting site. So I will just stop talking and show you photos of her lovelies.
Enjoy!
WOO HOO!!!!
A PHOTO LOADED!
It has been a very, very long time since I could work on a blog post. For the last couple weeks, I have been checking in daily, trying to add a picture and getting a wide variety of nothings, error messages and even a splash of gobbilty gook.
It feels good to have the hosting site up and running again.
Over the last 16 years, my blog has become a part of my life. Not just a habit, or a business tool, much more than that.
I rarely look back through it, unless I amending to see a specific project, or figure out a date about when we went somewhere, or redid a room.
But when I do, I tend to get sucked down the rabbit hole, and find all sorts of tidbits about my life that I’d forgotten. I see things I do not ever remember seeing, let alone creating.
Sweet faces of babies that are now teens, and such fun things we did together.
Writing in my blog has been worth it for the family memories alone. But seeing my creations, friends, vacations, pups, and decor over the years can be a nice surprise.
When I began writing this journal, I had zilch of an inkling that I’d still be doing it this long, or that it would be more than just a business tool.
At this point, I don’t know how many people even read blogs, I no longer read my stats (which certainly aren’t in the thousands a day any longer). And it has become harder to respond to comments, because of some odd change that the hosting site made. But I still love reading the messages.
And I like knowing there is someone out there who cares.
So thank you to those of you who are still with me and have checked back during this outage.
I am quite pleased to have it back again!
This week is First Fridays at the West Bottoms and Good Juju will be open for business.
I’m afraid I will be missing it!
But my stuff won’t. It is all set up for action, I took care of that before I flew off on my multi legged adventure.
First leg is North Carolina to see my grown up, baby boy.
Second is South Carolina to participate in Jenn Hayslip’s fabulous Bridgerton event.
And the third leg (because it’s spooky season and time for three legged monster type critters, and this is a monster of a trip) I’ll be jetting down to Siesta Key to be with my sissies for part of the annual Sister Trip. They have two weeks, which I just couldn’t do, but I managed to squeeze in a few days at the end of my journey.
When I get back to Kansas, it will be time to pack up my Halloween leftovers and start setting up the November show. Which I look forward to being a part of, it’s always such a fun time there.
Who is watching the store while I am away? Well, I’ll have my buds, Beth and Angie there for most of the time, but Beth has some obligations. While she is out, I have an all star replacement lined up.
Rich!
Yep, my husband is being extra supportive and covering my shift for me. He might be a bit overwhelmed and in over his head, but he is willing to go for it.
If you are around, please check on him for me.
He will be feeling like a fish out of water. But I have faith in his skills. If he could run dozens of golf courses in his past life, I’m sure he can sell some beat up, old junk and crappy crafts.
I will miss being there myself, but it will be in good hands.
My garage sale days have provided soooo many redos lately. These mini pumpkins and gourds got a coat of glitter and paint.
They started out gray. And free. I’ll take free, ugly gourds any day. The jewelry stand was $1 and also on the ugly side.
Or just tacky?
Ta dah! A quick makeover, because paint is just plain magic, isn’t it?
I thought of adding a layer of decopauged lace onto the torso, but then worried that it could snag any jewelry hung on the piece. So, I’ll leave it as is and am happy with the look.
For the first autumn of my adult life, I’ve been drawn to fall colors. It kind of coincides with my attraction to the mix of warm woods that I’ve now blended in my house along with the existing whites and creams.
For decades if was just the whites. But I sure am enjoying the wood textures we have added. Also the dark leather chairs by the stone hearth.
Did it start with this dining table? Maybe. I’ve added quite a few touches of wood around our house since.
The hutch is painted white, but has a natural top. This has been my new, go to move. There are a few pieces with this paint on the bottom, wood stain on the top look in the last few years.
But orange? That is brand new for me. And I like the pops of brightness that color brings to the season.
For a while now, I have loved red accents on a white background at Christmas. Having a neutral background means that I can switch things up lot lot with just a few changes of color splashed around the room.
This over blown monstrosity was at a garage sale for one dollar, and typically, I’d have walked right by it. Or paused to wonder how the basket would look spray painted white (probably very nice, filled with roses).
It is actually a very nice shape and looked good with a pot of mums as is.
Instead, I decided to accept the orange and see what I could do with it.
It had a lot of big, velvet pumpkins inside, two I added to the urns in the top pic. The rest I set aside along with about 50% of the crazy, over the top amount amount of leaves and berries and bows.
The abundance was pared down to a more reasonable amount in the basket, and I still have a lifetime supply of leaf and berry picks to use for something else.
So that makes three more palatable arrangements and a leftover bag of supplies for $1, plus the 50 cents each I paid for the urns at the same garage sale. 
Plus, plenty of stems leftover to fill this caldron (also from a garage sale).
All filled with my new enjoyment of autumn tones. I won’t be changing over my entire decor to pumpkin colors, but I am liking the hints and peeks of them I have scattered around.
For Halloween, I went all out on the theming for my booth at Good Juju. Including some necklaces I made.
Lots of them!
Most are just kinda themed for the spooky season, but would be fine all year, but some are full on ghostly or witchy.
See what I mean? Very nice as a moody piece to wear with a black dress in October, but still pretty for the rest of the calendar.
A nice accent to wear for for Halloween.
For this season, I planned to have enough of this type of merchandise for the September and October sales weekends.
Oh, and if you need the perfect dress to wear with this jewelry, I have that too.
I’d never have had the audacity to paint blood splatters onto a Victorian silk dress in such beautiful condition myself. But I was thrilled to see that someone else did and I snapped it up to add some atmosphere to my space. It’s pretty cool, I kinda want to wear it to the annual zombie walk here in Lawrence.
In my last post I mentioned that I got my booth set up at Good Juju before my trip to Indy. I have more to add, and hopefully will get it there before the sale this Friday and Saturday.
My Halloween theme is in full force, with pumpkins and witches everywhere.
I especially love these old sign letters that I found on a junking morning with the Guncles. I’ve made BAT, EEK, BOO, and CROW with them.
And of course, more mushies in fall and Halloween colors. Thank you to everyone who bought my tutorial to make their own. Please send pics when you do!
If you’d like to make one, you can find them here.
There are handmade witchy hats too.
Plus vintage things, of course.
With a spooky turn to them.
As you can tell, I have embraced fall colors. Over the years, I’ve come to appreciate their beauty and have e corporates them into my style.
I hope you’ll be in to visit for the show! Please drop by my booth to say hello if you do.
There are still all sorts of things I need to tag and bring in yet, so this isn’t all of it.
This Friday and Saturday are the Good Juju sales date for August, and I am enjoying having a bit more space this go around.
Rich added the shelf up above for me. It is higher than the one on my other wall. I’d say it’s more decorative than shoppable, although the things on it are priced. Still, it’s more for atmosphere than selling.
But isn’t atmosphere part of selling? It is for me.
Here is the upper shelf on my opposite wall.
I have painted some pumpkins to add this month. It’s 100 degrees and humid here, a typical KS day in August, but not too soon to start daydreaming about cooler, autumn days, right?
Some of the pumpkins are done on pour painted canvasses.
And some have flowers.
I’ve also packed in my mushroom colony and have lots of jewelry too.
I hope it goes well, I love having a reason to make things!
Well, it didn’t take me long to become infatuated with the antiquing world after a few years off. I haven’t had booth space since 2009, or so, besides a few pop up Birdsong shops in my garage, and when I quit, it took me years to get over the itch to buy junk to redo and repurpose. I very much loved the business.
Over time, I got out of the habit of getting up early every weekend for garage sales and stopped yearning for ugly little tables to transform into cuties and even started clearing my house and storage out. Goodwill, friends, and family got all of my back stock when I cleaned out.
My friends still had spaces and sometimes I’d get my redo fix by helping them paint something or redecorate a booth. Finally, I gave in and joined them full time by taking on a wall at Good Juju at the Old West Bottoms. I was very, very worried about finding enough to fill it, since I’d gotten myself down to bare bones and had nothing to bring in. But a couple months of very hard work and hunting built my stash up enough that now, I’m taking on a second wall.
It is also thanks to Beth, as my first wall was. She had a bit more space than she needed, and offered to share. We’ve been partners in the past, and mesh well together, plus have lots of giggle fits and fun while doing it.
When I painted my original wall, I also painted a couple for her, and this is one of them. Here is how it looked when I took it over this week.
I like the color I’d chosen for it, so that worked out well for me. But I wanted it completed, without spending any money, so had my dear, helpful husband come in with me to add a shutter over the vertical missing plywood, and I covered poster board in heavy vintage wallpaper to cover the horizontal hole. It wasn’t quite enough, so we patched with a piece of ceiling tin and then a strip of leftover trim to finish it off.
Did I mention that my husband has been soooooooo supportive and sweet?
He also hung 3 chandeliers, put in a French door, hung a vintage window over my wall, and then made a shelf from hinged shutters.
The shutter shelf looked so good, I texted Beth to see if she wanted one on her wall too. So he put one up from a pile of shutters she had, and it immediately split and all the slats spilled out.
oops
But, I mentioned she had quite a few, right? So he pulled out heavier duty ones and switched them out. I’m glad it all worked, because they add so much to the space. For one thing, it extends our real estate, and we are making the best use of the area. For another, it just plain old looks good, and hopefully will bring people in.
With having this area to fill too, we are making the most of these tall walls and grabbing more spots to sell from.
Juju is such a cool place, people always come in, and there are so many dealers very talented with styling and design, so it’ll be nice if we can grab a little more attention. Beth has amazing finds and a great eye, so already has her regulars, but I could use a few of my own.
I know that poster board isn’t a very durable way to build a wall, unless maybe you are the 4th little pig and were left out of the story because it is even dumber than straw. But it was efficient and looks fine. I can change it any time I want, pretty quickly. But, so little of it shows, I probably won’t bother.
The French doors were some I used in the studio at home, and I also had the wallpaper (of course) but struggled to figure out a quick, cheap way to get it up over the hole in the wall. Then, I noticed that I had pieces of poster board on my table at my work space, and thought I’d try using that, by glueing the paper to it and stapling it to the boards.
It seems fine. We will see if it holds up.
Now that I have committed to more space, I am slightly freaked out. Honestly, I love the venue, hanging with my pals, and decorating the space, but I do worry about the time and commitment of keeping the space filled throughout the winter when there are no garage sales. I hope to be able to make jewelry and some other creations, not just hunt and gather.
Please wish me luck. I think I could use a bit of my own good juju.
It was a festive weekend at Good Juju, and every month I am enjoying the venue more and more. I even got into the spirit of the holiday and put together a mini, red, white, and blue display to fit in with all of the other patriotic arrangements around the mall.
My itsy bitsy wagon with a couple red and blue doodads in it wasn’t much compared to the rest of the mall’s July tones. There were varieties of these colors used throughout the mall.
And Uncle Sam on stilts even came by to say hello to us.
I’ll leave you with a few pictures of the place, and then I’ll be headed outside to watch the colors in the sky.
We live right by the I70 overpass and every year, I walk up to the bridge to watch all of the neighbor’s fireworks being set off.
It’s a pretty low key way to celebrate, but it’s a tradition I look forward to. Sugarwings and I have been doing this since she was tiny.
As I get older, holiday traditions mean more and more to me.
I hope you are enjoying yours this weekend too.