Yard Sale - Purchases from an artist

My friend and I decided to spent last Saturday checking out local yard sales and estate sales. While driving to one, we drove past what looked like a sidewalk sale. There were some huge pieces of art as well as a couple of tables with books and antiques. We stopped and looked at what we saw and then over heard the owner of the home invite someone to take a look inside. We were intrigued and asked if we could check what was inside as well. "Everything is for sale" he told us, and we headed inside. What we saw when we walked in the house was nothing short of amazing to anyone who appreciates art. Every room was literally overflowing with original art and art supplies. We didn't know where to begin! It is difficult for me to describe how simply awesome this home/art studio was! We could have spent days just looking through one level of the house! Who was this guy! His name is Joe Reno, a well known local artist. He said he needed to sell things to make room and everything was negotiable. It was a little overwhelming so we will have to go back again, not only to see what other treasures we can find but also to take him up on his offer for painting and block printing classes. I love Seattle! :)

Here were my finds from that day:

Original egg tempera painting by Pablo Silva circa 1940's

Vintage Mother Goose storybook.

Antique Croquet Set

Cherub Birdbath

Upcycled Printer Drawers

Last time I went home to Minnesota was for the birth of my niece Luciana, and while taking a break from hanging out at the hospital in Downtown St. Paul I decided to check out all the antique stores around. If you have a free day, I recommend you go antiquing on West 7th in St. Paul and have lunch at Cossettas while you're in the area. Anyway, first I went to Seventh Heaven Antiques and Collectibles. I got a few things here then worked my way down 7th and ended at Wescott's Station Antiques.

At Wescott's Station antiques, I found all sorts of neat things, including an antique printers drawer. At the time they had a couple of them and looking back I wish I would have bought them all. When I googled them, the photo of the front of the shop has a bunch of printers drawers out front so maybe this is something they get frequently...I don't know but it's worth a look. If you are not in St. Paul, you can always check craigslist or ebay.

Printer drawers come in all shapes and sizes, and there is so much you can do with them. You can put it on the wall or use it as a table top with a piece of glass over it. Make a photo collage or display collectibles or jewelry. It would also be great for storage of small things. I knew when I saw it that I was going to turn it into a jewelry display.

Here is how I made mine into a jewelry organizer and display.

You will need:

a drill with a small drill bit

eyelet screws, small one's for earrings and one's alittle bit bigger for necklaces.

I purchased a few packs of small eyelet screws and a small drill bit to to drill starter holes for the eyelet screws. The wood of mine was too hard with out a starter hole.

Depending on how you use it or want it to look you can paint or stain it. I liked the way mine looked old and natural so I just left it. If I change my mind later it would be no problem to paint it.

I decided where I wanted my hooks to be a drilled a tiny hole. Be careful not to drill too far that the eyelet screw is too small! I did this and just had to make a new hole a tiny bit behind the original hole.

Next I twisted the little eyelet screws in each hole. This part is time consuming because of the small spaces and your fingers will probably hurt a little when you're done.

I put bigger eyelets along the bottom for necklaces and two on top for hanging and voila! A cute and unique way to display your jewelry!

Cleaning up our outdoor spaces

We moved into our new place in July, and the couple who lived here before us NEVER used the outdoor spaces. Crazy right? There is a nice sized back yard and a cute front patio area. At some point someone planted stuff but after 3 years of zero upkeep everything was overgrown and out of control. My landlord, who lives out of the country, was here for 2 months and was at the house often cleaning up the outdoors and making repairs. He basically took everything out and left us with a dirt yard and a clean slate. He told us we can do whatever we wanted to the back yard. I have never really done much gardening before except for herbs and carrots, so I have no idea what I am really doing, but my husband and I love having our friends over and hanging out outside so we really wanted to make an effort to make our back yard usable and to look nice. I forgot to take before pictures so what I have are photos from one of our summer barbecues that just happened to capture parts of the backyard. Here's what we did.

Our cute little sea foam green house. Inside the fence is our front patio area.

The back yard. There was ivy all over and and lots of beautiful green.

The walkway was non existent due to the over grown plants and flowers. Notice the pine tree branches? We had to duck under them as we came up the stairs. Our landlord trimmed a bunch of the branches to give us more light and to let us have more yard since the shade from the tree basically killed all the grass under it.

If that girl wasn't in the way you would be able to get a better look at the over grown plants and flowers along the fence. :) Note the over grown pine tree branch. No more!

This is how our landlord left the yard. No more green. :(  Didn't expect him to take out ALL the life in our yard!

We have to do some leveling and in the spring we are going to plant grass.

He left piles of old bricks and broken slabs of various stone surfaces for us to do what we want with. At some point we will move whats left.

We wanted a walkway so these pieces were perfect for that. We would have probably spent a lot more time on this and rented the proper equipment but hey, we don't own the house.

The finished walkway and garden.

We planted some zebra grass and daisies. Just need to get some more mulch to make it look even better. Also going to get something to fill in the walkway, maybe more mulch or small pebbles.

Here is a before shot of our front patio area. Talk about a lot of weed pulling!

This garden was FULL of rocks, so that was quite time consuming going through and sifting through all the dirt with my hands. But it's always fun to get a little dirty! :) I found a lot of large ones that were perfect for putting around the edge of the garden.

Cool design! Looks a thousand times better with out all the weeds!

Next project will be cleaning up around the corner tree the little plant bed with the rose bush. Then I am going to fill with the same mulch I got for the back yard.

Here is the patio now! I bought the table and chairs from Goodwill and used some Rust-o-leum outdoor white spray paint to give them a fresh new look! I planted a mint and lilac bush, some Walla Walla onions and whole lot of tulips and other spring blooming bulbs. I cant wait to see how this garden will look in the spring!

We still have a lot of work to do but I am so happy with our progress so far and have really enjoyed working on our outdoor spaces! :)