To end 2009 properly, I thought I would share some of my favorites with you, so this is the first in a 4 part series.  This series will include my favorite finds, small projects, and furniture makeovers.  I’ll also throw in some of the big “firsts” for my business this year.  I’m starting off with my favorite finds of 2009.  And they are… The wooden piece from a sewing factory – free, ironstone pitcher – $2.50, antique basket – $1.00 Antique yellow ware bowl – $7.00 at a thrift store Ironstone wash set – $5.00, Craig’s List dresser $30.00 Pair of French Provincial chairs – $20.00 at auction Pair of antique apothocary jars – $15.00 Cermamic birds – $2.97/each at Goodwill Caned chair – $10.00 at an antique store Vintage wagon – $5.00 at a thrift store Ironstone plates – $2.00 for the lot (I think…) German glass glitter – expensive,

Thank you for the amazing response on my $30 Craig’s List Dresser makeover. I think I had 40 comments by lunch time the day it was posted. One of my dear blog friends, BJ of Sweet Nothings sent me this side-by-side comparison with a Williams Sonoma dresser. It’s amazing how similar the lines are and the details on the sides and legs are almost identical. You would think this piece was my inspiration, but I just saw it for the first time yesterday! I guess I did something right.I also wanted to show you how my hubby’s dresser looks, now. We had to move his dresser to where my old Queen Anne dresser was and it looked pretty bare without a mirror. I found this large oak door in my grandparent’s attic (it’s from an old church), so I thought I would try it. I got some funny looks from

Can you believe that I still have more to share with you? (For those of you who don’t know, I just cleaned out my grandparent’s attic and hit the jackpot. I’ve been sharing all of the things I found and was able to keep.) I think I’ll be posting this stuff for weeks. Here are a few more finds from the great attic clean-out… My great grandmother’s monogrammed china. This set is so delicate (5 of the cups didn’t survive the trip home), but it is gorgeous! I love the teal border and gold rim. It is so special that I was able to take this home with me. Some more vintage ornaments. Aren’t these funny? An ant, a clown, and a cognac bottle. Sounds like a party to me. A Happy Home book that is a guide to the early 1900’s house wife. There is some really interesting stuff

The last day of my mom’s visit we got to “play” with my house and all of the fun things we found in her parent’s attic. Lately, I’ve been stuck in a sort of transition and a “busy working on stuff for other people that I’m not working on stuff for my own house” kind of phase. One of the down sides to buying and selling furniture all the time is that few pieces feel permanent. If I know a piece is going to go, why bother hanging pictures around it? You know? Because of this, there are lots of places that are neglected, boring, ho-hum, or downright not at all what I want. So, my mom and I worked together on some of those areas. The after of my dining room buffet is above and the before is below. You can see that I wasn’t even trying to make

Are you sick of me showing all of the wonderful things I found (and got to keep) from my grandparent’s attic? Well, I’m not, so here are some more lovelies… Isn’t this vintage Christmas ornament so cute? I love how the little bird is peeking out of her tinsel net. We found about 10 intact vintage glass ornaments. A couple of wooden duck callers that my grandfather used while hunting. A tub of vintage costume jewelry A vintage game called Tippecanoe. This is a challenging game and is going to be so fun to pull out to torture the teenagers who hang out at our house. You have to roll a tiny metal ball down the rails into the ring at the bottom. Not easy. A vintage Scrabble game and a wooden truck. I quickly combined the two to spell out a holiday greeting on my mantle. We also found

If you’ve been reading my blog the last few days, you know that I traveled to my grandparent’s house to clean out their attic. My grandmother died about 13 years ago and my grandfather died this fall. For years I have been scrounging treasures out of their huge attic (with permission) and my mom and I finally set the time aside to clean it out entirely. About 85% of what was left up there was trash. I did bring home an entire van load of wonderful pieces, though, that no one else wanted. They’re all mine! 🙂 Here are just a few of the things I found… a set of antique darts a miniature roulette wheel (it only has about an 8″ circumference) antique game pieces 4 five gallon buckets and 2 boxes full of shells, coral and sand dollars 20-30 antique glass telephone insulators two first edition Beatrix Potter

As I mentioned in my “Joy Banner” post, I am currently at my grandfather’s house to help my mom and uncle clean out the attic. This is quite a chore (and I get the heebie–jeebies digging through all of this bug infested stuff), but it is a treasure trove. Here are some of the things we’ve found already… Several antique Beatrix Potter books… (A Correction – the book pictured is an Edith Davidson book, but we have a stack of Beatrix Potter books and I just grabbed one. Obviously this is not one of those! Thanks to the Queen of Fifty Cents, a former librarian, for the correction.) …one of them dated 1918. Vintage glitter, sequence, rhinestones, and beads. This is funny…a liquor-lite. If you have a bottle of liquor and the contents of this box, you have an instant candelabra. Nothing says romance like a Liquor-Lite. Two gorgeous antique