swamped today

we were so busy today~~~~ lots of new people coming or going to the huge blueberry festival up the road.......

one customer got his truck trapped in the loading dock by other cars.. and had to stay an extra hour....

lots of good old customers came with friends and family..

..i bought a really neat load of stuff this week and they seemed to enjoy it.....mannikens, gold cherubs, funny nightstands, different tv tables, the best big potting bench of the year...plus lots of new fun fall decorations....so the store was full...

the cutest comment of the day was a goood customers husband...i was apoligizing for how chaotic it was....and he said, its always that way isnt it?

well maybe hes right.... a lot was going on thats for sure......and we hadnt quite got it all put away ...

road trip

cC

i love the guy in the boat..i am the master of my fate , i am the captian of my soul.....

displays like this outside are so fun but i have to restrain myself... dh would have a fit...

roadtrip!! we went t o michigan ....and enjoyed someone elses stuff...this was the neatest junk shop...lots and lots displayed outside.... and fun big stuff ......i love michigan, they let their trees grow so much more than we do down here in indiana.... plus theyve got the lake.....

dh got gps so that was fun too...it makes going out in the boondocks a little easier....

...recycled and repurposed and altered...

THE TRASH TO TREASURE WORLD IS SOO RICH.....HERE ARE SOME MORE PLACES

http://collagemojogallery.blogspot.com/

http://www.craftjournal.wordpress.com/ this one has a nice door idea....

http://www.robomargo.com/ this one has a bit of everything

we use old parts in our furniture a lot....it is so popular.......but i like the little altered art too, paper, jewelry, collages etc etc

the field is endless...either historic, like the tramp art frame, it was wood from an cigar box.... or sentimental like the memory jug....or a fun new craft like my friend donnas christmas ornaments. ..

one of my family..

ijulie, my daughter, got to go to denver ..and hear the big speech....i think she had a ball....and it made us both think of my mom, who was a hard working democrat and would have been so proud of obama...

imho....we need him so badly..... what a crowd!! what a speech....i loved kennedy too and carter and clintons speeches too.... ...

dh and i watched on the couch....

INCOMING FALL

we got a lot of fall in this week... ...nice big full grapevine trees ...made by a guy here in indiana...they are so hard to make...he kind of camps out in the woods for a week to work....we have 3 ft 4 ft 5 ft and 6 ft..... they can sit outside for a couple of seasons in a sheltered place.... we usually decorate a few for fall and later for christmas.....but mainly we just sell them au natural...
.. we also got in the big twiggy wreaths , made in indiana.....

road trip....

i went to 3 old country cemetaries on a geneology hunt with an old school friend and while she looked for her great grandparents i found these beautiful stones.... they are from my favorite style period....1860 to 1880...

i love the hands together.... so romantic....and also isnt the finger pointing up to heaven very nice?....we took my little grandson noah, and he ran around with his butterfly net.... hes into catch and release...

our tallest trash to treasure creation..

here is our tallest trash to treasure creation.... our 14 ft tin guy....he came out of an idea plus a willing furnace man...who put him together out of old parts....

we have such great trash to treasure raw materials....just waiting for the right person with a big idea......and so many cheap things that could be fabulous with a little work!!!!

...

i never get to all my ideas but some i would love to see...

.a manniken covered with junk jewelry, a big cement planter covered with embedded shells and rocks

signs made of old buttons.....

a turret with found materials embedded in one wall....

maybe in january!!!

tuesdays

i love tuesdays.. the first hour is chaos...but that works....

..the carpenters come....and i get to make my order for the coming week....today they are bringing matching porchpost cabinets for the foo foo room...,my buddy/customer , see linda below,, had a great idea for in there, and the guys should have it done today...they make about 8 cabinets a week..my system is;;; i look around and figure out what we need..... i really cant handle any more structure than that...

.and jon comes with his load from napanee...which means he brings what ever he has had the amish make for us ...today i think its a couple of harvest tables and the neat bed benches for the tables....

..plus what he got at the weekly auction at borkholders.... usually not much good at that auction...but it is where the 40,000$$$$$!!! guitar turned up..which he missed at 100$

!!!!.. and he has lots of friends there, and contacts..

.he has to pick up from the amish, since they only have horses....but wow can they rehab the furniture for us....they are really great....

i try to get him to buy more smalls at the auction...but he usually just gets big stuff....he gets out buying a lot more than me..

so i get to see 3 piles of stuff on tuesdays.... ..its kind of like christmas.....

perfect for the foo foo room

the foo foo room is full of roses....sometimes i go in there just enjoy them...

........in there i have rose plates, rose teacups, rose pictures,sachets, notepads, signs ....,,

and in old we have, cheapies ,made in japan to our big georgous set of french haviland...,,and hankies, pictures, and lots of misc ...

ive tried them at home in my garden but roses have lots of problems, mostly bugs.....somehow my favorite , betty prior, turned into a gangly rambler....im too negligent/time starved to deal with tea roses...i love my garden but only the toughest survive out there...i just cant really take care of it all....but its still a huge entertainment.....the super big and hardy, baffin rose, works well for me...

what ive learned about occupied japan....

i dont even buy it...hardly any collectors around here.....
it might have been kind of neat when there were lots of folks remembering ww2.....but really it was mainly just dimestore trinkets...nothing special...
my advice, dont bother , unless you just like the piece...

what ive learned about roseville....

if you are interested better get a book....the best patterns dont say roseville.....
the later common patterns are marked.....cracks and chips matter a lot!!!!
rrp co roseville ohio, isnt the good roseville...
.it was a great wedding present in the 40s.....
its still collected quite a bit....im buying it when possible...
like almost anything you can google roseville images and learn a lot....
in general, its better than hull, hall, weller, and mc coy..
again the books are so off....on the majority of patterns you would be lucky to sell for over half of the book value......on the rare patterns the values might be fantastic...

what ive learned about milkglass....

most of it isnt worth much at all....in the 50s and 60s the thousands of vases came with the flowers from the florist..... the older milkglass might have some book value....but i hardly ever get asked for it......westmoreland is supposed to be good, but again its not selling very well here.......
.......i see it in the mags sometimes, but i dont see that it has caught on...here in the midwest people could get it sooo cheap if they wanted it...
i would buy it to go in a white setting...but not for much money...and for home i love the victorian milkglass...i have several hands and some dresser pieces....

friends

carol and i at work.... plus timmy

today seemed to be about friends....so many women coming in together and enjoying everything.
..the winner this week had to be our painters 91 yr old mother and her 96 yr old buddy....they have been friends for 70 yrs....and still like to go shopping together....
another dear pair have been coming in for about 20 yrs...
another customer had wade and dh and i to dinner, and like a lot of people his house was full of things he just loves and they came from us years ago...a folk painting, a big goat head and lots of furniture.....

the customers are really the best part of the business..... i get to hear some very fun stories, histories and on going dramas.....
the economy is really not doing well around here , and it makes me feel good when customers tell me how glad they are that we are still open and doing ok........ everybody seems to know its pretty tough ..so many things going up, for us and everybody, and the publics money going down....

the white section

these hands are old glove molds, probably for rubber gloves......

this is my favorite section.

.but i dont know what to call this style...its kind of shabby chic, kind of european rustic, its a little fancy and mostly white...one of my cyber buddies calls it euro trash.....

..we sell a lot of white vanities and white buffets in this section......i like all the shades of white and tan..and also some french grey...

. but i dont like the white too clean and pure.....so usually we paint with a nice tan then white over it...i love big archetectural stuff in this part...this week i put 2 big door display cabinets in here....actually the big one that was on the truck a few posts ago......

i ordered some mirrored balls for this room ...not here yet tho...i like big wierd parts in this area,,,,big white angels, or chalices, and anything gothic of course.... i like to mix silver in here too...and plaster and cement..... and all the white pottery goes in here as wellas the milk glass...which is still really cheap around here....

fall at the store

its fall now for us.....and we are getting so much in.... the front has changed over to orange......dh is putting the small mc call candles on half price.... the garland we just got in is beautiful.....

carol did most of these displays.... our cupboards work great.... i hate plastic displays, and gag at particle board, and much prefer using ours and improvising....i would love to get an old truck inside...

linda

this is a shopkeepper from wolcott....her store is timeless treasures..and thats her dh......

..she is buying this frame to make a parisian chalkboard.....they will put a board in the gold frame,paint it with black chalkboard paint and walla!!!
she is an on the spot design consultant when she comes here.... she helped me lay out the foo foo room a little better when she came this time.....
her dh designed the post racks we make....
her store is great....kind of out in the country north of lafayette...

for the country girls.....

we have old country, new country, cheap junky country, rare expensive country, country in the rough,,,its a huge field...and i really think the country girls started trash to treasure a long time ago....they are so creative and so willing to repurpose stuff.....inside and outside...
hey , we are in farm country!!!!....heres some of our old country, lots of old bowls and graniteware and copper tea pots....all the stuff the farm women used in the early 1900s....

its pretty bad

its pretty bad when a customer on the phone tells you you need to rest and we arent getting any younger.....that happened yesterday...from a neat lady my age who was buying a gazebo ... she told me i worked too hard....well yea!!!

yesterday i had to deal with the 20 boxes we bought thursday...plus a whole lot of inventory they didnt get put away while i was gone wednesday when we went to decorate the mall booth for fall....
and thursday was kind of hog heaven...a huge pile offered to us....we took a lot of time and looked thru it..it was probably 150 big boxes of stuff....
but i had to bale out on it...it was too much money for my level of knowledge...i just didnt know what the pile was worth...i coyldnt even guess....and im pretty brave....
...so i called in a buddy..
..and he bought it.... the buddy is about 80 and 2 hrs away but when i told him it was 50 boxes of his thing and could he come right down, he said yes.... i dont know if the pile wasworth 3000$ or 8ooo$ but my buddy gave me a $300 group of stuff for calling him!!! and the seller gave me about 200$...
.actually in antiques the math is so wierd....i was supposed to get my pay /comission by asking 4000....but it looked so iffy.and my buddy had driven 2 hrs and i just couldnt buy it.....so, i offered it to my guy for 3500....then he offered the owner 3000....so there went my pay for making the deal happen.......for sure, im satisfied and i have 2 happy people, 2 guys who i have made a whole lot of money on in the last 20 yrs...so thats good...
.my old buddy..80 is what i call old, was in awe...it was the biggest pile he ever bought....
ill probably never know how good it was...i wouldnt ask....his wife said it would keep him busy for a year....i took it home for him in my box truck....
... hes called me every month for over 20 yrs to see what i got for him....im one of his pickers... he gets all my old gold and silver ...he gave me an 18k gold wedding band last year when mine got too tight....
..dh and i have used wedding rings .

back to age....dh sent in my social security today...so i guess im getting it..doesnt seem possible.... i dont feel that old...

back to the store...so all the stuff i got is all over the store, everything was a big mess then at the end yesterday ,ups brought 14 boxes., fall merchandise .from the buying trip to the chicago gift show......so its really bad this morning...and saturdays and sundays i really like the store to look good and not a big cluttered pile....
wade and lisa and i will be working hard this morning....
back to the gigantic pile...i couldnt face about 50 jim beam bottles so i left them for the dumpster...plus a lot of books....

in my pile for the store...i got big morning glory horns , lots of primitives, an old mickey mouse tea set, tools, st clair glass. little showcases, some beat up musical instruments, and a bit of furniture...and a dress dummy.... and an old bell.
this week i felt like an antique dealer again.... a good feeling...hot and sweaty and surrounded by stuff!!

for m