Trees

Yesterday we planted our new magnolia trees in the front yard. I was wondering if we should plant one in the front and one in the side yard, but I finally decided that I wanted two matching trees in the front yard. We picked our spots and The Hubs began digging.

After digging the hole for the tree, he carted off some of the dirt from the hole back to the garden area.

The Hubs running the wheelbarrow. It’s harder than it looks.

After digging the hole the correct size for the tree, The Hubs mixed some of this planting compost mixture with some of the dirt from the hole.

Once a good amount of dirt and compost were mixed, The Hubs put some of the compost mixture and a couple of handfuls of this transplanting fertilizer at the bottom of the hole, as directed by the nursery worker he had spoken to.

Then he plopped the tree in and he filled the hole with the compost mixture, tamping it down good and solid. I supervised during the planting process.

After doing that twice and watering them well, here is the finished result.

Two baby magnolia trees!

After planting the magnolias, The Hubs suggested I might like a tree to plant in “my” yard, the side yard, and I said, “Why not?” So we made the drive back up to Al’s, this time in the minivan. We had driven the big truck to get the magnolias and they would have fit easily in the van, so we thought we’d just take the van since the big truck uses a lot more gas. When we got the Al’s I was able to find a worker to help us find the “Venus” dogwood that I had chosen from their website. You can see from the tag that it has “exceptionally large white flowers” and also has nice fall color and attractive (though inedible) fall fruit!

The lady said, “Oh, those are BEAUTIFUL,” and I was glad to hear it since I hadn’t seen one bloom in person. She talked to a man called Gustavo on her radio and he came and led us the long way down to the fruit and flowering trees. I chose a tree I thought looked good and The Hubs dragged the pot to the cart. Once we got it up onto the cart The Hubs went in to pay while I stayed with the tree and the three Marzinera tomato plants he had picked out. When we got to the van we realized that the dogwood tree was a bit taller than the magnolias and it reached clear up into the front seat!

Oops! I had a couple of plastic bins in the way back of the van, so we put the tree’s pot in one of those ostensibly so the van floor wouldn’t get wet and dirty. It kept the floor from getting wet, but a whole lot of dirt came out of that pot when The Hubs was taking it out of the van! He did (bless him) vacuum out the dirt and also the driver’s side floor with the mini ShopVac.

We stopped for lunch at Route 99 in Brooks on the way home, and then started in planting the dogwood outside my office bay window. The Hubs dug the hole and put the fertilizer in, and we took the tree out of the pot.

The bottom of the tree was wrapped in burlap, with some rather hard clay-type dirt around the roots. The Hubs cut off the burlap before planting the tree but we left the dirt around the roots to protect them.

The Hubs with the “Venus” dogwood tree.

It was the goal on Saturday to get all my yard decorations put up and around the yard but that didn’t happen again, so I’m shooting for this coming weekend when it is supposed to be sunny and warm.

Updates forthcoming!

Another Flea Market!

The first Saturday of April Marnie and I went to the monthly flea market in Rickreall. We had a fun experience and I brought home a ton of neat stuff! First, I decided we should attend the “early bird” time on Saturday – the regular admission time is Sunday starting at 9:00 a.m. The Saturday opening time is 10:00 a.m., so we got there about 9:40 to be sure we were close to the beginning of the line. We soon realized that they don’t even let the vendors in to set up until 10:00, so we walked into mostly empty rooms, haha! We made a beeline to the booth of the first guy that was quickly getting his things out on tables, and I immediately discovered bundles of Dr. Seuss books for a very reasonable price! I paid the man and gleefully stuffed all of the (heavy!) books into my very large bag. I had brought a large bag and a smaller bag just in case.

We walked around the market and looked at the items for sale as they came out of the vendors’ tubs and boxes. I saw one box and zeroed in on a Sue Grafton book in it and asked the man how much it was. He said, “You can have it, I don’t do books!” so I looked again into the box and found three more Sue Grafton books, and he let me have them all for free! I discovered when I got home that I already had a couple of them but I couldn’t remember all of the ones I have. I just grab them when I see them and sort them out later, like I do with Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew books!

Happily, I found TWO booths selling vintage Fisher Price Little People toys and bought them up. The furniture is hard to find and usually very expensive!

I found many old Look and Saturday Evening Post magazines, all in plastic with cardboard backing.

And this not-so-old magazine I wanted because two of our kids were born in 1994 and I thought they might like to read something that was made close to the time of their birth…

I got this little nightstand/end table that I will redo somehow, it’s a great size!

One of my favorite things seen at the flea market. The little old lady who was selling him said, “Isn’t he handsome?” I thought he was a bit scary myself, wouldn’t want to run into his kind on a dark country road!

After we made a few more rounds to make sure we hadn’t missed anything, we got in the car and started back up the road from the fairgrounds where the flea market was held. We noticed that the Rickreall Grange was having a “bazaar”, so we decided to check that out too. There were a few tables with handmade items and vintage things, but the jackpot came when we went into another room and a lady was selling all sorts of clothes for $1.00 apiece! I rummaged through her boxes and found quite a few nice things, including a Columbia fleece in new condition and some great quality things for The Grandbaby when he gets older. I think we might go back there, I’d like to go through the boxes again!

Flea Market!

Over the past few weeks I have been to a couple of flea markets and came home with a lot of cool stuff. We attended a market in Albany that was supposed to be Linn County’s largest flea market, and I found some great buys. We got to the market early so needed to stand in line in the cold. I was proud of myself in that I had bought a long, warm Banana Republic sweater at the consignment store for $8 and it works great to go to events like this. It is warm enough to stand in line outside, but cool enough to not get overheated inside!

At every flea market, estate sale, or antique mall we go to we always find some item that is the “theme” of the day. At the Albany flea market, we saw quite a few of these old safety razors. They were everywhere!

Old safety razor. This was from a booth with very reasonable prices.

Here are photos of the things I bought at the Albany flea market. I got this lamp , which Marnie very nicely carried out to the car for me. I also got a vintage Fisher Price Little People village and a bag of cars and people to go with it, a large number of Hardy Boys books for just $8.00, a big bag of letter magnets for when the grandbaby is old enough to put words together (there are enough magnets to have some at Baby’s house and some at Nana and Grandpa’s house!), some Tupperware from a booth that had so much vintage Tupperware I didn’t know what to do with myself, a beautiful hand-tied necklace made of rose quartz beads, and other things!

I can’t resist these lamps if they are a good price. It might soon become a problem…

The village was a really good deal! It has the two sides pictured. An arch with a traffic light attaches the two sides together, but it didn’t come with the arch. I will be looking for one of those for sure!

These were a pretty good deal.

$8 for all!

I loved these when I was a girl.

These scoops and spatulas are very hard to find, so I bought 2 of each. The cake taker top was just what I needed as well, and only $1!

Hand-tied rose quartz necklace – worth much more than $3!

After we were done at the Albany flea market, we decided to go downtown for lunch. We chose to eat at the Brick and Mortar restaurant, since we had eaten there before and I wanted breakfast for lunch. The restaurant was full and they have the technology to text you when your table is ready, so we went next door to Sniffany’s Pet Boutique to check it out. It’s a lot bigger inside than you can tell from the outside, and oh, what a selection of pet things they have! More for doggos than kitties, but we enjoyed looking at all the fun things and petting the shop cat.

These are doggie treats!

The shop cat. We didn’t get his name.

But then we saw these:

😦😦😦😦😦😦

And these:

😧😧😧😧😧😧

And THESE:

😨😨😨😨😨😨

We tried to have some fun with them, but we really got quite a case of the heebie-jeebies, and while I’m sure these chewies are great for dogs we both decided that we wouldn’t have them in the house! Ewwwwww…

What is that? Why, it’s a…hog snout. 😳😳

The restaurant texted shortly and we went in and sat down to get ready for our brunch. Thankfully looking at the doggo “treats” hadn’t ruined our appetite, and we both ordered our breakfast foods. I had my hashbrowns “mortar style”, with cheese and all sorts of other things, and they were delicious.

Marnie concentrates on the menu.

Here is my brunch.

After our meal we walked around downtown Albany for a little while. We searched for and finally found a clothing consignment store we were interested in and looked around in there. Then we walked back to the car (at least we got some steps in!) and came on home. All in all a profitable day! I’m so thankful that my bestie likes to come with me to these events!

Christmas, Part 2

As I mentioned in a previous post, we had our Christmas celebration at Mom and Dad’s on New Year’s Day instead of Christmas Day because an ice storm we had messed up schedules. I went over to their house on New Year’s Eve to make the dressing and do a couple of other things for meal prep. To make the dressing you first make the cornbread, then eat a bit of cornbread when it’s done with lots of butter. When the cornbread is cool you break it up into pieces, add white bread (in this case, hot dog buns) and add the chicken broth, onion, salt and pepper, and sage to taste. I mixed it all up and didn’t even really have to add anything except a little bit of pepper after I tasted it. Mom declared it a triumph, so we put in in the fridge to cook the next day.

Mom has the timing down exactly right for all the holiday foods, so I kept going to her to figure out what to put in the oven next. We had rolls (they go in the oven last); mashed potatoes with sour cream, butter, cheddar cheese, chives, and bacon (The Hubs made that); turkey breast (that goes in first since it isn’t cooked), ham (made the glaze the morning of, didn’t have any cornstarch to put in it the day before); a veggie dish with broccoli, cauliflower, pepper jack cheese, sour cream, and other yums; chips and guacamole (always made first for an appetizer); and sweet potatoes with orange juice and marshmallows (put the sweet potatoes in under the broiler to brown the marshmallows — I didn’t do it quite right and the marshmallows melted into the sweet potatoes but they were still delicious). The we had chocolate pie and pumpkin pie for dessert, but everyone wanted chocolate pie so we left the pumpkin for Mom and Dad to eat later. It wasn’t the same as when Mom makes the dinner, but it tasted good and everyone enjoyed it as far as I know. The Girl and Her Fiancé weren’t able to join us because she wasn’t feeling well and he was scheduled to work.

The soft trivets were made by my Great Aunt Clara.

We had gift-opening time before we ate and that was fun as usual, I got some very nice gifts and I think everyone appreciated their goodies. I received this Garmin Venu smartwatch and I then modified it with a screen protector with a pink frame and a new black band with a lace design, because I enjoy making things my own, ha. It started out like this:

Original Venu Sq watch.

And now it looks like this:

Modified watch.

The screen protector just snaps over the whole front of the watch, and came in a set with many other colors. The band came in a set with many colors to choose from as well. I found both sets on Amazon. I also ordered a new RoadID with my pertinent information on it in case of emergency, it fits over the watchband. The one for my old Garmin watch was too large for this band.

Some other photos from our Christmas celebration:

Having dinner.

Another angle of the dinner eating.

Some of our goodies.

A nifty lantern snow globe Mom received from a friend.

I wish I had gotten more photos, but I was busy concentrating on the food.

We all had a great time visiting and I was sorry when we all had to go home. I went to Mom and Dad’s again this last Sunday and helped put away the Christmas decorations. They have been using a potted pine as a Christmas tree for the last three or so years and it is oddly doing well in its pot outdoors during the year. Dad says it is almost a bonsai tree at this point. Here he is taking it back outside to its place on the deck.

We had a great time together celebrating what God has done for us through His Son, Jesus. Amazing Grace, indeed!!

Washcloths

The other day I ordered three dozen washcloths, two dozen for us and one dozen for Mom. Our gray washcloths were looking pretty shabby, and when I was taking care of Mom a couple of weeks ago I noticed her drawer was full of a bunch of threadbare washcloths that wouldn’t do much good, and I thought she deserved some nice luxurious washcloths to wash her face with. I got the washcloths from Kohl’s, they were on sale and I had a nice coupon I could use on top of the sale.

My order finally arrived and I got the washcloths out to prepare them for washing (I always wash new towels before using). They came in plastic bags like this:

And they were rolled up like this:

After I took off all the plastic bags I had to cut off the ribbon around each bouquet of washcloths:

So I did that and tossed them into my laundry basket, thinking I was done.

But then I discovered one of these in each washcloth:

And I had to cut each one very carefully so I didn’t snip a hole in the washcloth:

36 washcloths and a zillion minutes later I finally had all the little plastic widgets taken out of the washcloths and the washcloths in the washing machine. All in all, much more of an ordeal than I expected, ha!

Doorknobs

You GUYS, guess what? After 18 years living in our house I finally get to have all matching doorknobs!! Isn’t that the neatest? The Hubs started in this morning and asked me if I wanted to learn how to put on a doorknob, and of course I said I did. This is the new doorknob design – I got them at Lowe’s.

The Hubs began by taking the old doorknob off the hall closet door. There are five doors in our “hall” (a square area in the middle of the house). We had already replaced the bathroom doorknob, and while the two offices and stairs doors matched each other, the hall closet had a totally different knob. When he got the knob off the closet door, he discovered this on one side:

And this on the other side.

I think they shot at it from far away…

Um…ordinarily you would just make a hole with a hole saw or something, like this one in my office door:

So right off, there were some annoyances. This was not unexpected, since our house was formerly owned by a man who thought he was good at building and remodeling. Note the word “thought”. He was not good at building or remodeling. In fact, we would describe most of his work as “horrible”, and often “nonsensical”.

The Hubs (while making sure I knew that this isn’t the best way to do a doorknob, the best way would be to get a new door and then put on the doorknob, but we don’t have new doors in our budget right now) had to get out his Leatherman tool with the little saw and saw out some of the material to make the hole bigger. Then he realized that there were two little tabs on each side of the new doorknob that needed to fit in, and he had to get a pointy tool to dig out some space for the little tabs. (I don’t think The Hubs has a hole saw, so he just had to make modifications.)

Digging out for the tabs

See the little tabs at top and bottom?

The strikeplate wouldn’t fit in its spot properly, and then The Hubs suggested I sand and paint the area before he put in the new plate since it wouldn’t cover the brown.

The Hubs decided I should put on my office doorknob, so I got the screwdriver and started taking off the knob. The screwdriver was a bit thin and kept falling out of the screw, so that took awhile.

It finally was done and then I took off the faceplate and the innards of the knob, and then we found that the hole wasn’t big enough for the doorknob works to fit through. The Hubs got out a round file and filed the hole out so the knob workings would fit.

See how it’s too wide?

The Hubs with his file.

Then The Hubs just went ahead and put my office doorknob on himself, and later I started removing the doorknob on his office door. That one had to be filed out as well, so he did that and then went ahead and put THAT knob on, so I didn’t get to put any of them on, but that’s OK. We still have to put on the one that goes on the stairs door and the one on The Girl’s door, and the one on our bedroom door, but now we have to wait to do those until The Hubs has more days off from work.

Isn’t it nice?

So much more up-to-date!

But I just can’t BELIEVE I finally have matching doorknobs!! How awesome!!

Honor Book

This week I got a bunch of goodies from Facebook Marketplace. I got a large group of Hardy Boys books from one seller, and a lot of old magazines, recipe books, and other random books from another seller. One of the random books was this Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary with a publication date of 1925.

Honor Book

Mary Collison was such a good speller from Detroit in the 1928 National Spelling Bee that she won this dictionary. It was awarded to “one of the best spellers in the schools of the Detroit Metropolitan Area” by The Detroit News. The dictionary is three inches thick! (I’ve always enjoyed dictionaries. In middle school when I got caught talking and had to copy the dictionary, I didn’t mind a bit. I think the teacher knew it, ha.)

Lots of words in here!

It has nice little illustrations and is still very usable, although the binding is damaged and some pages are coming out.

I had never heard of a fulmar until I read this page.

Binding not in such great shape.

I found a surprise or two in there!

I have the dictionary for sale on Etsy, and hope someone else will think it as fascinating as I do! I’ll share some of the other goodies I got in a later post.

New Machines

We received our new air fryer yesterday. We have never had one before and wanted to try it out, so we put some two-day-old apple cider donuts in it at 350 degrees for 4 minutes.

New air fryer.

The donuts turned out quite well. They were warm and the sugar on the outside of the donuts didn’t melt, but stayed nice and crunchy. Here is a photo of…well, part of a donut after it came out of the air fryer:

Erm…oops, I ate them.

I might put them in for only three minutes if we do it again.

We got the air fryer because someone brought one to The Hubs’s work, and after he cooked a piece of pizza in it he decided that it would be good to have one as the pizza came out crispy and delicious. I have looked at recipes for cooking frozen chicken breast and fried okra in the air fryer so far. I think we (well, I) will be having okra for lunch today. Yum-O!

I also bought myself a Roomba robot vacuum cleaner. I have been wanting one for quite awhile and found this nice one on the Kohl’s website, on sale with a 40% off the last sale price coupon.

Roomba.

It isn’t the fanciest one they make, but it does have the capacity to empty its dirt bin by itself if I bought the attachment for that, which I may. You can control it from your phone, and once I finally got that set up I let it out into the living room and it cleaned and cleaned, but then took itself back to its charging station because the dirt bin was full. I was overdue on vacuuming myself and decided that I had better vacuum the carpets thoroughly before letting the Roomba go, just so it wouldn’t fill up its bin so quickly and would keep on cleaning. It rolled around back and forth from my office to the living room, and certainly picked up a lot of dirt. I plan to have it go again today, and maybe set it to go every Monday or Tuesday!

Great Junk Hunt

Today I attended The Great Junk Hunt, a vintage show and flea market held at the Oregon State Fairgrounds. It is, according to their website:

• Voted top traveling vintage market in the USA by Flea Market Style magazine!
• Recently named one of the TOP 5 2019 Flea Markets in the U. S. and voted one of the Top 15 Flea Markets 2016!
• Listed as a must attend Flea Market in America by Flea Market Decor magazine!

I’ve been to the market once but it has been a few years. Marnie had other plans today so I went (gasp!) by myself! I wore my fall black cat/pumpkin shirt to be festive.

Last time I wore this shirt I received many compliments! Today not so much.

I paid $12 for a ticket for the early bird entry (an hour earlier than general admission) and got there at 8:20 to be in line for the 9:00 opening. They had even earlier-bird entries available yesterday, but those were even more expensive and in the afternoon, and I prefer to go places in the morning.

I waited in line and listened to the ladies around me talk about their teenagers and lawyers and other things. It started to rain a little and people ran to their cars to get coats and umbrellas, after which it promptly quit raining. It was definitely very chilly and my eyes were watering from the cold! I’m glad I got there early because there was quite a line behind me as 9:00 rolled around. The show encompassed two fairgrounds buildings and since I was in the right-hand line I went in the building on the right first.

Here are some things I saw that I found interesting (obviously there were many more interesting things, these are just a few of the things I saw):

A large fungus – we see them on trees quite often on our hikes. I didn’t see what the price was.

$35 is a bit steep.

Adorable Racoon Family metal sculpture. I’m going to see if The Hubs can make something like this.

Super neat “ferris wheel” plant holder. It was $110 or I would have snapped it up. I saw that later someone had bought it.

This is from the Rusty Birds metal artists. They make many cute birds and lots of other garden art, including the little kitty peeking over our fence you can see in some of our yard photos.

This lady added weird things to paintings. I guess that is Boba Fett(?) added to Gainsborough’s Blue Boy. I prefer the original Blue Boy myself.

I have some lamps like these. They came with plastic ruffled shades with a fabric overlay. I didn’t know they were worth this much, ha!

Plastic dinosaurs with candle holders. What a fun idea! There were also some dinosaurs made into bookends. This was in the booth where I got my treasure 🙂

Lots of children’s books at this market, but no Nancy Drew or Hardy Boys. I did see a couple Bobbsey Twins.

Someone’s old floppy disks made into notepad covers.

One booth had a lot of this pottery. I can’t remember the name of the maker but it is vintage and very expensive. This vase had no price tag but the one below it was $245. It has a wonderful, soft feel and beautiful pastel colors.

I got a couple of frames like this at the Mama Roost yard sale for $5 each. This one was $32.

I should have grabbed a couple more of these old keys, but I couldn’t get past the $4 price tag. Although, that is the going price for these.

Old paintbrush with case.

Back of paintbrush jacket. Isn’t that interesting? The man who had this booth was telling me he was running on only 4 hours of sleep in the last few days, after we literally bumped into each other. It was their first time selling at a show. I told him I had an Etsy store and he asked for my info, so I gave him a business card I cleverly had with me. 😀

Why did it never occur to me to make magnets out of my Scrabble tiles?

I could make a garland like this with all the scrap fabric I got a few weeks ago at the Mama Roost yard sale.

I thought it was a fine idea to make a little storage space under a chair cushion.

I have three little chairs like this.

I have this exact same light fixture globe for sale in my Etsy shop but mine has the fixture and chains that go with it. I am selling mine for quite a bit more though. Perhaps I should lower my price.

This was already sold or I might have grabbed it up too. Isn’t it fun? It’s made out of an old door like the one I have in the storage room.

And FINALLY, here are the treasures I bought, including the most bestest one, a rolling pin with green handles! That’s what I was searching for and I found it for the right price. Hooray! The little Christmas tree was only $5 and it has lights! The books are just for color to decorate with, since we are doing a black/white/blue/silver theme for Christmas this year. I think I will use the drawer and basket to put on my kitchen decor shelf to make “levels” so I can display things better.

Treasures!

These tiny ornaments came with the tree, the booth man came running up to me after I took the tree and said that the ornaments and garland went with it. I think they were anxious to get rid of them, ha! The garland is in bad shape with the paint coming off, so it had to go “the way of all things”. There is an interesting assortment of tiny ornaments, including 4 Bratz doll ornaments with a hanger that says “Bratz” on it. I’m sending those with The Girl to take to The Youngest Girl, who enjoyed playing with her Bratz dolls when she was little.

Odd assortment of ornaments.

Tiny Bratz ornaments. I might use the little snowflakes since they are blue and white.

After the show I went over to see The Boy and take him a couple of things. I visited with my grandcat, Basteta, and The Boy’s roommate’s cat, Piglet. Basteta is a fluffy gray kitty, and Piglet is a big cat with a curly tail.

I’ll say that if you want to go to The Great Junk Hunt, it is worth the extra few dollars to get in early. By 10:15 there were so many people that I could barely get through the booths. Much nicer to be there when it wasn’t so crowded!

Eggbeater!

I looked in some storage bins this last week in order to consolidate things, and found this vintage eggbeater I had bought awhile back. I completely forgot about it! I think I put it away because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with it.

I like green-handled vintage kitchen implements because my kitchen color theme is green. The green theme came from this green secretary desk I bought at a second-hand store a few years ago.

Vintage Secretary Desk – chippy and shabby

I asked The Hubs to figure out how to hang the eggbeater on the wall with my other kitchen things, and he decided to make a hook:

Eggbeater hook.

Eggbeater on hook.

Here it is on the wall with some of the other vintage kitchen things. The ads for canned fruit and cookies came out of a 1922 Ladies Home Journal. All I need now is a vintage rolling pin with green handles and my wall will be complete! Well, maybe… 😃