my attempt at vintage finds

As I visit all your blogs and drool over all the great flea markets that you go to and picture after picture of great finds, it makes me wish we lived down south so I could find such treasures as well. We do have quite a few garage sales in Juneau, but normally you won't find vintage items so guess I'll have to plan a trip to Texas or somewhere next summer! How fun would that be!

Saturday I had good intentions of visiting some garage sales but got involved in doing nothing that day.... As a last effort to feel like I accomplished something, ran to the consignment shop and found this cute little magazine holder for $10.99. It's not the same as going to a garage sale and finding it for $2.00!

Next door to the consignment shop is a used book store, Our Friends of the Library, and found these fine Gardening magazines tucked under one of the tables. What a find for only .50 each! Now.... I just need to find the time to look at them....

While looking in the gardening section, I also found this great book! I love love love vintage gardening books more than anything. And vintage cookbooks. And vintage bird books! This was published by the National Geographic Natural Science Library: The World in Your Garden, copyright 1957. Look at the pictures! I haven't had a chance to read it but it appears to be a story of which country our plants originated from. I can hardly wait to start reading it.

In case you haven't noticed, I'm not such an artsy crafty kinda person. I would like to be.... and I have done my share of arts and crafts projects over my life time, but then my eyes got bad and doing needlepoint and crochet was no longer so much fun looking through trifocals! But I still see art projects I want to do, drive to Joann's to get the project pieces, bring it all home, take it upstairs to my craft room (YES, I have a craft room!), and there it sits.... But arts and crafts is more of a fall and winter fun thing to do anyway. Our winters are so long and so dark that when spring and summer are here, we're outside as much as we can be, gardening, fishing, walking on the beach, picnicking. Anything to help us forget that another long winter is just around the corner. This time of year all I can think about is gardening. I love to garden and that's where my creative juices come into play.

I found this great website for yard art -- English Creek Gardens -- and can hardly wait to start shopping! I mean, look at this great apothecary jar and just imagine the uses for it!

Marbles.

Vintage buttons.

Crocheted cupcakes.

M&Ms.

Weathered beach glass.

Ribbons and lace.

Beads.

Lemons.

Cotton balls.

Well, you get my point. Anything will look great in this jar!

I hope you all had a safe Memorial Day weekend and did something fun to bring in the summer months. I worked, came home completely exhausted, sat down on the couch in my wet, dirty, stinky work clothes and promptly fell asleep. Today is my day off and I can hardly wait to see what the day has in store for us... besides rain.