Early bird or night owl?

I'm a night owl by nature but after years of getting up before sunrise with Annie, I lived the life of an early bird. Now that she's been gone for a two years :(  I'm slowly going back to being more productive at night. 

When I'm babysitting the labs, they get up very early (5:00am) but right after breakfast we all go back to bed. So I live the life of a hybrid getting up early and going to bed late, which means I don't sleep a lot. I've never been one to sleep for a solid eight hours and wonder how people do that!  Maybe that should be a goal I have for this year. So are you a night owl or early bird?

Lucky Pyrex Find

I love it when this happens! A few weeks ago I found a vintage Pyrex lid at Goodwill. I started picking up the tops because it's much harder to find than the bottoms. I had a debate with myself if I wanted to tie up my money on something that may take a long time to sell. At the big auction house this past weekend I bid on the big lot for glass because the clear glass glowed. In that lot was some Pyrex pieces so it went a little higher than I wanted. I had seen this blue pyrex in the lot and hoped the lid I had at home would fit. 

It going up for auction on my Whatnot site on Thursday. 

Auction Week

This weekend was auction week, my favorite time of the month!

This is a great example of things that don't hold their value regardless of what people think. This whole set sold for less than $50.00. I think it was a 12 piece set with all the serving pieces. The only things worth any resell value is the serving pieces because there weren't as many as made. Maybe one day it will come back into vogue again and be collectable. 

It's been tough sourcing things to sell for my WhatNot auction, especially having to stop at all the thrift stores everyday to hopes of finding just one thing. Buying at the big auction houses is the only way I can source inventory in bulk. My life seems to be packing and unpacking boxes! I'm going to process everything on Tuesday and do a show on Wednesday and Thursday. I did manage to buy so very cool glass pieces that glow green, which is slowing starting to becoming my niche. Will post pictures once I get things unwrapped and photographed. 

Beautiful photo to keep on inspired

My Farmhouse Love

The weather here has just been wild! I'm even more surprised about all the people who think just because we live in the high tech capitol of the world, we shouldn't lose power and wifi. Seriously we had gale force winds blowing through town!

I didn't do a WhatNot show last week because of the chance of losing power, which I was lucky and only lost it for about 8 hours. Wifi was down for about 24 so not bad at all. Some people were out for a week. 

Last night I had a WN show that was going super well and I think I would have sold out but WN froze. I was so bummed out I had to end my show early! 

I love this picture I found on "My FarmHouse Love". It so captures how it is around here. Raining but the trees are starting to bloom. I'm amazed any of the trees have blossoms on them after the storms we've been having! One of the YT artist I follow (the frugal crafter) asked "what would you like to be able to paint" and this picture is one thing I would love to be able to paint!  

Keeping in touch

Now with the boys living in Holland, I visit with them through FaceTime. I have books ready to read to them, because being toddlers there isn't a whole lot of conversation going on. Mees is really into airplanes and Little Smokey so far is a favorite. 

Henky is very good at closing the laptop so most of the time I get hung up on. :) Can't beat technology! 

Another reason I'm happy to be back in Cupertino

My eczema has really gotten bad on my hands. One of the things they recommend is to wear cotton gloves. I didn't think finding a some would be that hard but I was wrong. I went to several stores because on their websites they had them and I want to support the local stores.  I gave up when I found nothing and ordered some on Amazon. 

Then I was thinking (that's always scary) that I see a lot of Asian woman driving with white gloves. There has to be a store that carries the gloves because there is a demand here for them. Then the light bulb went on and I stop at the Daiso (Japanese dollar store) and bingo I found a pair. They even have a mesh covering the fingers you would use while on your cell phone!  Another reason I'm happy to be back in Cupertino!

Stinky but good doggie treats!

This was one of Annie's favorite snacks. When we were down in Carmel we would visit the local high end pet store because they had some hard to find treats. They were more the raw food type of place called the Raw Connection.  I drove pass this store for years thinking it was a a heath food store! They carry more of the high quality foods and snacks. Annie had a sensitive tummy, so I always looked for treats that basically had one or two ingredients.  This snack is super expensive so Annie didn't get them often. I was walking though Ranch 99 one day and just happened to glance over into the frozen fish section, when I stopped let someone pass by me.  I never look in the frozen fish section, as I don't like frozen seafood. The word Capelin just pop out!  Buying the fish already dried works out to be about $1.50 per fish and that is if you can find it. Buying it and drying it (not counting the power to run the dehydrator) work out to about .25 per fish.  Now it does make the whole house smell but it was worth it.

My dehydrator was up in Tahoe with my son and getting it back to me was the challenge. It's too big to ship (it's a big heavy duty one) and with the major snow storms up there, I really didn't think I would see it again any time soon. I babysit the labs all the time now and I know this fish would be good for their joints. It's fun to be back to making doggie treats again!

Side note: One of the major reason I moved back to Cupertino is to be closer to family and all the Asian stores. I went to Ranch 99 and they didn't have the fish anymore. I was a little bummed but then I remembered there was another Asian super store down the street call Marina, so I popped into there. They had a full freezer full!

Booth make over - long over due

One of the many things on my frog list was to do a complete make over of my booth at Cottage Crafts. It's been years since I changed the layout so now that I have the time to do it, I went for it. With all the rainy weather the store hasn't been busy, so this was the best time to do it. It was a hot mess which I forgot to take a picture of with all the glass shelves coming out, packing paper and boxes everywhere. Since I'm picking up more art work I needed to open space. It's not a packed as it was before but at least now you can see everything!

Trying something new - no hardware used

I've been following a YouTube called "Point of life" that does floral arrangement without using a metal frog or tape. I was bored on Sunday and really didn't want to tackle anything important so I gave this technique a try. There's no sound with the YT so I had to guess what they are doing. I learned that the support base twig has to be fresh and be able to bend. I first tried to use bamboo, which didn't work. 

I have a lot of ikebana vases so this method is a perfect fit. I think this vase came from my mom's collection. 

So do you like the bamboo one or the skinny twig one?

A perfect day 3-4-23

On Friday I had to drive over to Half Moon Bay to pick up

some auction things from MaxSold. I purposely did very low bids on everything so the drive would be worth it if I won anything. I also scheduled a 10:00 pick up in case there was traffic. The weather was perfect, sunny and warm with just a light breeze. After I picked up everything I decided to make the drive down Highway 1 to Pescadero. Had no plans but to just enjoy the easy drive. 

I stopped at the Pescadero Beach because it's free to park there and walked down to the beach. One of my favorite things to do is walk along shoreline! I was the only person on the beach which made it even more special. I decided to do a mini beach clean up and pick up any trash I came across. There wasn't a lot, mainly just the tops to plastic water bottles. After that I went into town to visit the grocery store there that make this wonderful artichoke herb bread. I use to have to go to Pescadero a lot for work so this is differently a place I know well. As I was waiting for things to open up I discovered there was a small thrift store on the corner I didn't know about. I didn't expect much but I was there and with the weather being so nice just waited down by the beach. It is just another overpriced thrift store with mainly junky clothes.  

I then headed home and there was a huge traffic jam coming into Half Moon Bay.  Guess everyone thought heading to the beach on such a beautiful day was a good idea. I was thankful I was going in the other direction. 

I stopped by FabMo because I was already on the road and to drop some things off. While I was there, I looked for 100% wool yarn to make more dryer balls. This will be my project for when I babysit the labs next weekend. During my search I  organized and cleaned up the yarn section - because I like doing that type of thing. :) 

Thinking my perfect day was over when I got home, I realized that "Next in Fashion" season two was just released. Season two was just a little too over the top for me but those designers can really sew and are so creative! So I binged watched the whole show. 

Yes, it was a perfect day!