Cold Weather Thrifting and Lettuce Show You A DIY Garden Update

It started to get cold here, real cold. I could only scrounge up 1 yard sale and 1 estate sale this past weekend. When I stopped at the garage sale, it was an older couple that had collected Hallmark and Barbie for ages, there were *hundreds* of Hallmark collectible ornaments for ultra cheap. I scooped many of the Disney, Coca Cola, and Year ornaments and quickly posted them in the ebay store. Also picked up some sweet old school Barbie stuff from the 90's, including the "gay" earring Ken doll that caused a Barbie uproar and the Barbie Sisters Holiday set which is in a stunning display box. A Santa Wilton cake pan also got thrown into my bag. The old couple was so sweet. It was cold and snowing outside and they had the garage heated and had cider, coffee, and cinnamon rolls. They chatted with me just enough to be friendly but not enough to distract me from my mission. The man even offered to carry my purchases to the car! Now that is what I call the perfect g-sale. Good prices, good service, and food!

Then it was on to the new Goodwill in town, the largest in the city. It was great and will now go on my list as a must visit on a frequent basis. I did think the shoes were priced awfully high though, have you all noticed this? Grabbed up some Pampered Chef, a men's dress shirt NWT, a Pendleton blazer, and a Nygard cropped knit jacket. Each clothing piece was scored for a buck!

Remember the Starbucks travel mug I posted about last time? I paid 2.99 for it and sold it as a buy it now for 24.99+ free ship (8.00) less than a week later. What a quick and easy flip! So, you can imagine that I was elated to see a Starbucks Las Vegas mug being wheeled out of the back in one of those horrible metal bins. I say horrible, because stuff has to get broken in those all the time, and probably good stuff, like vintage Pyrex :) I plucked the mug out of the cart immediately. This GW must price their mugs lower because it was 99 cents, woot! Goin' on the 'bay.

Stopped at the estate sale and scored this cool vintage industrial swivel task chair for my office. I am currently sitting in a overstuffed slipper chair that is so not ergonomically correct. I took a seat in this vintage industrial beauty and it felt like heaven! Mr. TP gave me the 'look' when he saw it in the garage. It has some torn upholstery on the arms and needs a cleaning, but I see the potential and will recover the chair. Because of the style, it will be an easy recover. New ergonomic office chair = $10 bucks.

I know ya'll have been on pins and needles to hear the DIY laundry room garden report ;) Here is a before and after photo...

Nov 29

Dec 20

Coming along nicely isn't it? We will wait for them to mature just a bit more and then thin them out and transfer them to a more appropriate container. Can't wait to have fresh salad greens and yummy Roma's. I might just have to start some sugar snap peas up in here! HA!

Lots of blog love to my readers. My followers are growing weekly and for that I am so thankful. Merry Christmas to all!

We're DIY'ers 'Round Here

Wow, these last few weeks have just flown by! I have been focusing on gearing up the shops for the post Thanksgiving rush. I worked on my keywords and tagging on Etsy and used the Etsy on Sale site to do my mass changes. If you have an Etsy shop and haven't used the Etsy on Sale site, give it a try. It is super easy to make mass tagging changes and to start/stop store sales. They charge a nominal fee and you can try your first few changes for free! Check it out here....Etsy on Sale website. Full disclosure, if you click through the link and sign up for a free test drive, I do get credits in my account, but Etsy on Sale has no idea who I am. Um, wow, I just said Etsy 6 times in that paragraph. Too bad they aren't paying me for the mentions!

I have been playing with my new camera and am still pretty confused on the majority of the settings. It is a Sony a55. A friend of mine made her own photo studio in her home and I was looking to do this on a smaller scale using a photo booth or light box type of set up. I could buy one on ebay with lighting for about the 40 dollar range. But being the thrifty person I am, I decided to try the DIY photo box first. You can find tutorials for this via a Google or Etsy blog search. Or you can link to one of my follower's blogs, Six Balloons, where she shares her DIY light box.

This is what I've come up with...so far:

I spent just over a buck for 2 pieces of white poster board (1 size cut for a horizontal fit and 1 size cut for a vertical fit), the rest, a plastic storage bin and sewing interfacing, I had. The *possible* Sonneman lamp is coming in handy, as well as some other vintage lighting fixtures from around the house. I have tested it out and I can see an improvement but I need brighter lights. Next time I am at the Goodwill I will pick up some of those clamp lamp things and put in some 90 watt lights. That should do the trick! Oh, and if you are liking the vintage Early American Pyrex in the light box, you can see more photos here in my shop.

Mr. TP worked on his own DIY project this past weekend...

A garden in our laundry room! I picked up this old school grow light at the same yard sale I found the lovely Herman Miller chair duo, and now it's being put to work. We are trying lettuce and Roma tomatoes. I'll keep ya'll updated on the progress.

No thrifting this past weekend, total bummer. But, I did step into a mall for the first time in at least 4 months! I took advantage of the Old Navy pay $10 get a $20 voucher Groupon X 2 and ended up with 2 new sweaters and 2 new shirts for just under $24 bucks!

Hopefully I will be able to rustle up an Estate or Yard Sale this weekend so I have some fun new stuff to show off next time :)

Thanks for taking a moment to visit my blog!