A few more posts on Etsy

So my intention is not to turn my blog into an advertisement for my Etsy shop., but as I'm adding stuff I will continue to post here. If you see anything you like, shop around.

Yellow Metal Flower Candle Holder

Country Chain Link Metal Woven Basket

1960's TV Trays

Sunflower Pattern Milk Glass

And this one too...

"Kitschy Kitchen Goods" is born

So I decided to move into the world of "selling crap on the internet". Well, not crap to me but you know what I mean. So to weed out of some of my vintage wares, I started an Etsy site called, Kitschy Kitchen Goods. Here are my first items for sale...

Vintage Green Pear Canister

Rustic Rooster Basket

Vintage 1970's Orange Ice Bucket

1 Quart Pyrex Casserole Dish with Gold Leaves

Asian Inspired Metal Napkin Holder

Share with friends!

Our Bedroom, Kitten Approved

So if you remember (or even if you don't) we began a little "facelift" to our bedroom back in March, and it's been nearly finished for a long time, but we finally completed it! I think it looks great!

We painted all the trim white, removed the rug (it was gross), made it so we could each have an alarm clock on our side of the bed, put in reading lights on both sides of the bed, put in a new ceiling fan, and painted and trimmed out the ceiling. Take a look! "Befores" on the left, "Afters" on the right...

        

One more "After"...

Don't be fooled by the crop of the above pictures, the room looks bigger than ever, and is cleaner that it's been in a long time. I know the projects were a complete success because the room has been kitten approved!

Camping @ Kettle Moraine South Unit

This camping trip started slow, since we started getting ready Friday morning, but thankfully Kettle Moraine is not far at about an hour and half away. Our camping reservation was at the Whitewater Lake East Loop (which if you have similar reservation, you must check in at the "Contact Station" before going to you campsite--it doesn't say that anywhere, but that's what you have to do.) Below is what the sites looked like, or ours anyways, some were a little bigger, but most were about this size.

After setting up camp a little we went to Whitewater Lake to swim. The swimming area is small but nice providing sun and shade. We swam a little, and then laid out and read a little. When we headed back to camp we continued to set everything up...without a cloud insight we (and with my insistence) decided not to put the rainfly on to sleep with the breeze blowing through the tent. We started the campfire, and began cooking.

Hot ham and cheese
Sweet tomato rice

Some time after making dinner it started to sprinkle, so we scrambled to put the rainfly up...the rain actually stopped by the time we had everything up...I guess we should've just put it up from the beginning. Then we played Bananagrams. We also made several attempts at dessert, finally perfecting it. We used the pie iron to make tarts: raspberry cream cheese and peanut butter, chocolate, marshmallow. The tarts are made with crescent roll dough on each side, and need to watched while cooking to not over cook or under cook. No camp fire is the same so there is no real consistency, so just keep checking if you are making these yourself.

Sometime in the early morning hours it began to rain much harder, so I am so glad we had in fact gotten that rainfly up and on the tent.. No water in the tent so we just continued to sleep and sleep, finally waking up quite late in the morning, which felt great. We ate a little breakfast and walked down the street from our campsite to a scenic overlook.

After our short hike we decided to climb in the car and get a lay of the land, and took a drive along the Kettle Moraine Scenic Drive heading north. The Kettle Moraine area is absolutely beautiful!

When we got back, we got ready to go canoeing on Rice Lake (next to Whitewater Lake, and right down the road from our campsite). Rice Lake is great place to canoe, and may be a great place to swim too, but we didn't find the best area. We got out in a mucky area were I stepped on a fish (so gross!) and when we swam out there was tons of weeds. The water felt nice, but swimming was short lived. Here's a few pics of the lake...

That night for dinner we cooked in the pie iron again making "calzones" with bread, tomato paste, roast peppers, turkey pepperoni, and cheese. It was DE-licious!

After dinner, we played more Bananagrams, and Hubby read aloud to me by the fire.

This morning, we woke up and broke camp to head home. It was a great trip in a close but beautiful area. Great memories!

This birdie has a new lease on life!

A couple of summers ago my mom got me pretty ceramic mushrooms, the biggest with a little birdie sitting on top. Well after a few year in the ground, the largest garden ornament lost it's stake and the bottom of the mushrooms broke too. I kept them because I thought they were pretty and didn't want to get rid of them, but I didn't exactly know what to do with them either. Well, Hubby found a cool piece of wood in our backyard, and an idea was born!

I had Hubby drill some large holes in the cool looking log, and I dripped some epoxy in the drilled holes and around the base of the mushrooms, and ta-DA!! I'm really liking the way it all turned out and that these gifts got a new life on my garden table.

Fence Flower

So back in the spring my husband picked me up a magazine called "Flea Market Gardens" which I loved. I wish I could link to it, but I can't seem to find a website to go along with it; but if you too came across it you may have seen the article "Glass Act". In the article they made "flowers" by stacking plates, which I thought looked really cool, so I set out to find plates. I instead found a metal placemat, a white plate with gold trim, and bundt pan at Goodwill and said perfect! While at home I also found a rusty little bell that fell off some wind chimes. One by one I glued them together using epoxy, and made a tiny twine hanger.  

A screw was sunk into our fence post, along with a dark green metal stake that we used to use for Christmas decorations but have since abandoned for a better solution. I think the finished product looks really cute, and just makes me want to make more flowers for my fence!

And an extra pic of the side yard with coneflowers, queen ann's lace and metal javelina I bought with my little brother in Arizona. These coneflowers are looking much healthier than they have in years past!

Backyard Wooden Windchimes

Easy as drill, knot, hang!

I found the wooden kitchen utensils and metal colander at a thrifts stores all for about $2. I used twine from home and knotted through the utensil holes that I drilled and then knotted the other end of the twine through the colander. Of course fishing line, or any host of products could be used instead, but I liked the more rustic look of the twine. I drilled a hole and the top and bottom of one of the spoons to attach an additional spoon for the middle "chime".

I made the hanger for the wind chime in a similar fashion, tying knots to the holes in the bottom (now top) of the colander, and viola!

When the wooden/bamboo utensils hit together it gives a really nice earthty mellow thud--very zen.

My one tip is to the leave the string long enough so that all the utensils can clang together easily. Mine are long enough, but if I were to do it again, I might make them a tad longer.

Here are a few more pictures...