Full of Wibbly Wobbly, Timey Wimey Stuff

Did you look at my blog post title and wonder what the heck I was talking about?   That's the name of a geocache that we did last weekend.

Full of Wibbly Wobbly, Timey Wimey Stuff  - isn't that a great name?

I originally heard about this cache from my friend Dave, who writes over at "Only Googlebot Reads This Blog."  Dave lives in North Carolina and he took his family on a roadtrip last spring on their way to a geocaching event in Missouri.  They made a grand event out of their trip, and Dave did a series of blog posts about their stops along the way.  You can read about this cache here.  They ended up caching not far from where I live.  How wild is that?  I wish I would have been in town when they were here so we could have met up.  Anyway, they did this cache that sounded cute, so I bookmarked it and we finally got around to doing it.  It was a really nicely constructed geocache.  I could tell that a lot of work and thought went into it.

The cache is in a residential neighborhood in front of the cache owners house.  It resembles a Police call box and when you open the doors, its actually a little free library that anyone can use.  Feel free to stop by and trade a book.  Isn't that cute?  The geocache is hidden in a secret compartment.  I won't tell you where....

I left a geocache themed book.  I received "101 Devil Caches" in order to do a book review.  I enjoyed reading about all the great geocache ideas and decided to share the wealth.  I dropped off the book with instructions for the next geocacher to read it and create a geocache based on the book, and then pass the book on to someone else to do the same.

I hope it inspires geocachers to go a little above and beyond to create a special geocache, like this one was.  I liked it so much that I gave it a favorite point.   Geocaches like this are what this game is all about!

Key to my Heart

Louie bought me a letter stamping kit for Christmas.  Does anyone out there do this?  I've been wanting to try it for the longest time and I was so excited to start.

Here's the first thing I've made so far....

I used one of the skeleton keys I got at an estate sale last summer and some twine that Chablis had in her craft box...

The stamping is quite fun and I wish I had more free time to mess around with it.  The hardest thing for me is getting the dark marker in the letters and wiping away the marker surrounding the letters while leaving it inside the letters.  Cripes, does that make any sense?

If anyone has any tips, please send them over.

Linking up with...
Sundays at Home # 46
Catch as Catch Can # 200

Vintage Inspiration Party 2-10-15

Party in Your PJ's # 42

Estate Sale Finds Feb. 4, 2015

I was excited to find a couple of Estate sales this past weekend.  I haven't been to any in awhile and sometimes I just need to paw through someone else's junk.  It's the thrill of the hunt - you just never know what you might find, right.

We went to 2 sales where we didn't buy a thing and I was getting discouraged.  I hate it when I go to estate sales and the prices are practically retail and the sellers don't want to haggle.  Hello, it's an estate sale - price this junk to move!!

The 3rd house was a little better.  Not a ton of stuff but we managed to pick up a few things.  I was digging through a closet and found an old Levi Strauss Jean jacket that was in really nice condition.  It was well worn and soft, with no rips or tears.  It was just really dirty, but nothing that a good soak and run through the washer wouldn't take care of.

Here it is all cleaned up.  I had plans to re-sell it until Chablis tried it on and darn it, but it fit her perfectly.  It's now hanging in her closet....  How rude is that???

After finding the jean jacket we headed down to the basement.  Louie was digging through a pile of outside Christmas decorations and found a leather bomber jacket laying under some strings of lights.   He motioned me over and I took one look at it and wrinkled my nose.  It was filthy!  It looked horrible.  I shook my head no, tossed it onto a table, and turned my attention to a box of wooden ornaments.   There was a lot of crappy ornaments but I managed to pick out a few nice wooden ones which I am selling....

Isn't this one great?  He was my favorite.  I was tempted to keep him but I'm going to list him for sale...

I get very irritated at some people at estate sales.  While I was going through the box of ornaments another woman came up next to me and kept trying to get her hands into the box.  Really?  She couldn't wait until I was finished?  I grabbed the box and moved away from her.  Idiot.

A little porcelain Santa bell....

This elf stole my heart but he's also headed to my Etsy shop...

I don't know why I bought this plastic rocking chair because it's in pretty rough shape but if someone wanted to paint it and remove the hanging string, it would look cute in a doll house...

Once I finished with the ornaments I turned around and took a second look at that leather Bomber jacket.  It had no rips or tears and I noticed that it was a Wilson Leather jacket, which is a pretty nice brand.  I added it to my arm with the Jean jacket and decided to see what the seller wanted for both of them.

I also found a Silk Tabasco tie to add to my pile....

The seller at this house was way more interested in eating his box of chocolate chip cookies than taking money.  Now that's my kind of seller.  We did a little haggling and came up with a lump price for everything. I went home and removed the lining from the Leather jacket and ran it through the washing machine.  Then I got some leather cleaner out and went to work on the bomber jacket.  Holy crap - this thing cleaned up  nice!!  It's now up for sale in my EBAY shop.  I have to say that Louie's eye is definitely improving on things to look for at estate sales.  **  UPDATE - this leather jacket already sold!

After we got home I was back online and noticed an estate sale in Chicago that I had missed earlier.  We decided to get  up early the next morning and head into Chicago to check it out.  Since it was the last day of the sale everything was marked down by 50%.  Don't you just love that???

We picked up a couple of things.  Chablis found this strawberry treat tin and a Chicago milk bottle.....

The graphics and green color on this tin are awesome and Chablis added it and this whiskey jug to her collection.  Photos were taken before she cleaned everything up.  I'm totally bummed out that she got her hands on that tin first....

I also picked up a Chicago milk jug for my collection and this green potato ricer...

The green on this is fabulous and the masher is heavy duty and in really good shape.  It's headed to my shop as well.

The Chicago estate sale was in a fabulous house.  It had 3 floors crammed with stuff and the people who lived there obviously had money.  The walls inside were inlaid with gorgeous stained glass that stretched from floor to ceiling.  They also must have been hunters because one room had over 25 stuffed big game animals in it - some of them full size  - bears, buffalo, lions, elk, deer, caribou.   It was amazing.  One whole room was an indoor swimming pool with skylights overhead and plants growing all around.  The back of the house had a huge greenhouse.  A lot of the rooms had giant elaborate wood cabinets with hundreds of drawers that were crammed full of crocheted doileys and candles in every size, shape and color that you could think of.   And there were hundreds of dolls everywhere you looked.  It was fun to walk though the house and just look at everything.  Unfortunately, even at 50% off, most of the stuff was out of my price range.  But it still made for a fun morning.

Crocheted Scrap Blanket

Today I want to share the blanket I just made entirely from scraps of yarn that I had.  I don't know about you, but I'm just an average crocheter.  By that I mean that I'm extremely slow and I only make a few projects each year, usually in the winter because I like to have that nice warm yarn in my lap.  Otherwise I just whip up blankets during the year as needed for anyone I know who is having a baby.

Last November I happened to take a look at the shit show of leftover yarn I had stashed behind my easy chair in the front room.   I had dozens and dozens of balls of different colored yarn, in various sizes.  I had anywhere from almost full skeins of yarn, down to small balls the size of a golf ball.  They were stacked up in totes and small bags and they were getting out of control.  One night I had a brainy idea -  I'd take the scraps and use them to make a blanket.

I started by using a "P" size hook and grabbed 3 random colors of yarn.  I chained 120 stitches and then just started single crocheting row after row.  Any time a strand of yarn ran out, I reached down, grabbed a new color, tied it on, and kept going.  Since all the balls of yarn were different lengths, the yarn colors would run out at different times, so there was always new color combinations going on.  I liked that because I get bored easily so I was always excited to add in a new color.

I just kept crocheting row after row until it got almost as long as I wanted, and then I began to crochet around the entire blanket until I had added a few rows all the way around.

I liked the contrast of the lines running around the outside of the blanket...

So there it is - the perfect yarn busting project.  I did a couple of rows almost every night while watching TV, so this took me about 8 weeks to finish.  See, I told you I was slow!  This blanket will probably get taken down to the lake house and put at the end of one of the beds.   And believe it or not, I still have a few more balls of left over yarn.  Looks like another project for next year maybe.

Linking up with....
DIY Sunday's Feb 7, 2015
Simple Saturday's Feb. 7
Thoughts from Home # 45
Catch as Catch Can 199
Craft Frenzy Friday # 77

Party in Your PJ's # 41

Vintage Inspiration Party # 175

Cribbage Board Key Holder

Last week Chablis was cleaning out her closet and pulled out a bunch of her old games.  One of them was this vintage cribbage board from the 1960's.  I have no idea why she had this in the first place as she doesn't even play cribbage.  The graphics are great...

All the original game pieces were tucked inside the little hidden compartment in the back.  It sat there staring me in the face and the wheels started turning....  First I attached a hanger so you can hang it on the wall....

Then I screwed in some hooks to hang keys from and I glued the original game pieces into the board....

And there you have it - a key holder for a lover of vintage games, especially Cribbage.  Won't this look awesome hanging on the wall?

And there's still a hidden compartment in the back - for love notes maybe??

Currently for sale in my Etsy Shop.

Linking Up With...
Sunday Showcase Jan 31, 2015
Sunny Simple Blog Hop 1-31
Funky Junk Upcycle Party #264
Catch as Catch Can # 198
Craft Frenzy Friday #76

Party in Your PJ's # 40

Vintage Inspiration Party Jan 27

Geocache Number 3000

Finally....  We found our 3000th geocache!  And we slid it in just before the end of the year.  I was determined to hit 3000 caches in 2014 and I felt like everything was working against us.  Since we started geocaching in 2009, this was actually our worst year ever, with the least amount of finds for the year.  So hitting 3000 was a big deal for me.

We took my mom and dad with us and headed out to Bolingbrook, Illinois for a morning of caching....

As you can see, we haven't been getting a lot of snow this year.   This cache was a fake apple hidden in a pine tree, hence the cache name "Pineapple."  How funny is that??

Mom and dad enjoyed being about to look for geocaches without trampling through the snow...

Montana Charlies is a famous area landmark and it's been there for years.  I remember going there with my grandparents when I was a kid.  It's not open this time of year, but I thought it was the perfect place to find my milestone geocache.......

Afterwards we went to White Fence Farm for a delicious chicken lunch.

The restaurant still had all of their Christmas decorations up.  It was just beautiful with the lights twinkling and decorations every place you looked...

White Fence Farm is famous for their mouth watering chicken.  One of the things I like about this place is the appetizers they bring to the table while you're waiting for your meal - fresh beets, cottage cheese, coleslaw, kidney bean salad and the best corn fritters in the world.  They sprinkle them with powder sugar and they are  soooo good!

 Now I call that a great day!

Keepsake Wedding Box

Ever since my son Tony got engaged, I've wanted to make Alex a keepsake box to put wedding items into as they plan their special day.  Then after the wedding they can use it for storage and decoration.  My first problem was finding a box.  Originally I was planning on finding a vintage hope chest and refinishing that, but I decided against it because of its large size.

Then one day last summer we were up in Kenosha, Wisconsin and we stopped at a yard sale where Chablis spied a box filled with old baseball caps.  I almost tripped over my own feet as I rushed over to check it out.  I quickly dumped all the baseball caps onto a tarp and purchased the box on the spot - for $ 3.00!  It was in really rough shape, but I fell in love with it and thought it was a steal!

I know, it's pretty sad looking, but I could just see what I wanted it to be.  First I scrubbed it down with soapy water and bleach, and let it sit outside to air out for a few days.

Next I got out my electric sander and smoothed out the entire outside of the box.  Next up I started painting.  Tony and Alex have chosen blue and gold as their wedding colors, so I picked out a pretty blue and got to work....

I wanted to line the inside of the chest with some wedding themed paper, so I got some scrap booking paper with a wedding dress and tuxedo theme.  I cut down the sheets to fit around the inside and glued them in and then coated with a couple layers of modge podge....

Once the paper was all dried, I glued lace trim around the edges and then added gold beading around the entire perimeter.  I spray painted some buttons gold and finally glued gold and white buttons and white pearls along one edge.  I also added a vintage skeleton key and a vintage number nine in one corner, to signify their anniversary date....

I wanted to stencil a quote onto the chest and Tony and I kept kicking around ideas, until one day I happened to see a Bible verse that Alex had pinned on her Pinterest board and as soon as I saw it, I knew that was the quote....

I added 2 lovebirds on a branch.....

And afterwards I distressed the entire chest and gave it a light coating of stain to age it....

At the last minute I decided I didn't care for the silver hardware, so I removed all of it, gave everything a couple coats of spray-on gold paint, and put it all back together.  I was so happy I did that because the gold hardware looks so much better....

And there it is, all finished  up.  I couldn't wait until Christmas got here so I could give it to Alex.  She absolutely loves it and she said they are going to try to use it for something at the wedding.

  I think that would be such a great idea.  The box is approximately 3' x 2' x 2'.  I hope they keep it and enjoy it for years to come....

Linking up with......
Thoughts from Alice # 44
Simple Saturday's Blog Hop Jan 24
Sunday Showcase Jan 24
Funky Junk # 263
Catch as Catch Can # 197
Craft Frenzy Friday # 75

Party in Your PJ's # 39

Vintage Inspiration Party Jan 20, 2015