Thrift Store Finds

I love thrift store finds!
I get such a rush from finding something really good and making it beautiful. I love knowing that all day people walked by my new find and passed it over as junk or too old. I feel like I'm giving it a new life and a cozy home.
I feel so proud of seeing the potential that others didn't. When people ask me, "Where did you buy that?", I love being able to say that I made it or found it at a thrift store.
Today I had wonderful luck at a local thrift store. They had obviously had someone donate a ton of old library books from many different libraries; some were local school libraries and a few said on them that they were from public libraries in other states.
I even found an old , or at least I think it's old, teak chopping block. Luckily it seems as if it was never used much. There are a few light scratches, but nothing very deep from sharp knives. It will be easy to sanitize it.
Although, I would have just sanded down any deep scratches if it had, had any.(and re-sealed/oiled it)

*[on a grammar-side note, the words: had,had never look right to me. Despite having made Honor Roll in all my Honors English classes, I still have difficulty remembering all the rules...]


Here's a few photos of my new-ish teak chopping block, or cutting board if you call it that:










Isn't it beautiful! I love it!
It reminds me of two chopping blocks I saw in a kitchen picture of one of Martha Stewart's houses. I about died when I saw her huge, HUGE square of a chopping block! It was the same size as the whole depth of her kitchen counter!! (not to mention it was gorgeously dark and antique-ie looking) I thought, sigh, that I would never have such a thing of beauty in my home...not only because of the fact that I don't have a means to travel the world in search for amazing antiques (the ones here are not as amazing as Europe, I'm sure), but also the fact that a block that size would have to cost a fortune, a fortune to me anyway. Chopping blocks (the good kind not the plastic kind) new are 20 ,or more, dollars. It's probably safe to say an antique like that would be even more.

Ours looks like the smaller one of hers and I was able to find a picture of it, but could not find a picture of the bigger chopping block, sorry guys.



And, that's about as close as I can get, I believe, to her exact chopping block.

So, needless to say I'm pretty proud!












The other things I bought from the thrift store were, in my opinion, just as awesome as that or more.
I bought three old books.

One was a family medical book from 1943, filled with lots of very helpful information and neat old photos.


















One was a colorful three ring binder on gardening from 1973, filled with extremely useful tips and advise for gardeners just like us. We will definitely find it very useful as we attempt to be like our grandmothers and have a family garden in our backyard. (and in some cases our front yard)





This little 'cheat sheet' will help our black thumbs a lot.




Isn't this picture just adorable! I can't wait to have cute little chubby hands helping out around the house.
I love the cute little 70's outfit too. Too cute.

This is a layout for a backyard garden. We're thinking of doing something along these lines...We'll see. Our house isn't laid out quite like this so I'm not so sure where we will end up putting a veggie-garden.

And one was a children's book (Dr. Doolittle) which had great old, black and white, drawn pictures. The kind of book I remember reading when I was little and my mom still had a lot of her old books.

If your wondering why we bought a children's book, it's because we have been collecting great books and videos that we enjoyed as kids, a lot of these items are not sold any more and can be hard to find. Thrift stores and patience have been our helpers in recovering old childhood favorites and sometimes recovering old memories we had forgotten.

Then we also bought a wire basket and a silver vase.

This basket is similar to a basket I love in a picture.

HERE:

It's so industrial, I think it will look great in the laundry room with lots of white and this lamp, from ShadesofLight.com:

The vase will look great in the kitchen window, of course our kitchen won't look like this one for a looong time:

Well, that's it. Everything we bought today. *sigh* I think this is the best I've done at a thrift store eva! Well thats not true, but I'm on a shopping high here people!

It Begins!

BRIGHT LITTLE HOUSE

Well, house obsession has officially started. After months of house hunting we finally found the one and while we aren't official owners until next week, we have already spent days sneaking over and day dreaming. We can't wait to sign our names and be handed our very FIRST set of keys!

Our little casa is quite the charmer if you can look past her disrepair. Unfortunately her previous owners (who also happen to be the original owners) had left her abandoned for two years. According to the neighbors his wife had been in charge of this house while they lived in another state for the past few years and then when she died he had just left the house. Boy does Little House need our help! The basement has had apparent flooding (and mold) and the back yard is a rainforest just to name a few things. Poor Adam had quite an adventurous couple days as he went about trying to carve a slice of trail through the weeds just to take photos and find out more about the state of her (the house).

Here is Adam hacking away...

Here is our first meeting of Little House, and her jungle- I mean backyard: Don't mind the date, it's wrong, our camera somtimes refuses to work right.

The Backyard!

Well, wish us luck! We have a long journey ahead of us as we try to make a house a home.

It takes hands to build a house, but only hearts to build a home. -Unknown

Home where our feet may leave, but not our hearts.- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.