Inspiration from Design Sponge

What a great repurposing idea found on Design Sponge!

For more about how to make this very cool planter from a vintage kitchen food mill, go here.

Toot: My Recent Examiner Articles on Antiquing & Vintage

Okay, this is shamelessly tooting my own horn, but just in case you haven't clicked on the right sidebar, where my Examiner articles are located, I thought I'd give some titles out for those who might be interested:

"Where, Oh Where Have All the Bargains Gone"

Wherein I discuss one place I find them...

"Etsy? What's Etsy?"

Which I wrote after everyone kept asking me...

Life So Far on Etsy

Well, it's been an interesting learning curve these past few months....

I registered Either/Or Finds on Etsy in December, but didn't put up my first item until mid March...

...first there was Christmas and then I had to figure out how to do everything. If I know what I do now, I wouldn't have registered until I'd gotten some of those things figured out--like how to take good photographs, how to calculate postage, how to...well do everything.

Musing on Repurposing

"Repurposed" is a "green" term you hear a lot these days, so my latest latest article at Examiner.com, was on that subject, and while researching it and thinking about repurposing I realized that we've been doing this in our home for a long time.

For instance, we've made lamps out of coffee grinders, blue Ball Mason jars, and old tin milk cans:

Spring in all its forms: snow, rain, cold, garden vintage, flower earrings....

It snowed the day before Easter here in the Northeast. Unbelievable to wake up to that white stuff, and not just coming down--all over the ground!

Thankfully the temps rose and melted everything before our family Easter egg hunt, which this year was more complicated as treasure maps and clues had to be designed for three different ages: the littles, the middles, and the teens. My husband is the mastermind, so he spent Easter Saturday trying to craft hunts for each age range that weren't too hard or too easy. Way too much candy was consumed the following day by the littles, the middles, and the teens, but they had a lot of fun trying to find their candy baskets.

And even though I didn't have any candy, I did partake of way too much turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes and stuffing, ham, that old faithful green bean dish with French Fried onion rings that shows up several times a year, and my daughter's special dessert filled with whipped cream, strawberries, custard, and Oreo cookies.

Which is why we keep a huge tub of Tums in our bathroom.

Writing About Antiquing for Examiner.com

Years ago I wrote an antiques column, first for the Morristown Record in Morristown, NJ, and then for the state newspaper, the Newark Star Ledger. It was a lot of fun writing those columns, and back then I mostly wrote about my personal antiquing adventures out and about with my husband and daughter. I reviewed shops and antique centers all over New Jersey and wrote a bit about my own antique specialty--American primitive furniture and accessories.

Now my daughter is grown, we've all moved up to New Hampshire, and some of the grandchildren are taking an interest in antiques and collectibles--particularly my eldest grandson, whom I've taken with me on Saturday morning yard sale excursions. Both of us delight in the thrill of the hunt and the joy of discovering true bargains. He's put some of his treasures on Ebay and was the one who encouraged me to start selling vintage on Etsy.com.

All about roosters

I have a thing about roosters--for me they symbolize all things country.

Symbolically, roosters have a long history in world cultures: the ancient Greeks believed the rooster, with its hearty morning "cock-a-doodle-do," was a sign of victory over night. In Christianity, since a rooster crowed three times after the apostle Peter denied Christ, it became a symbol of his passion and resurrection. And even now a rooster on a weathervane (something we're looking forward to having one day, hopefully a nice big copper one) symbolizes a watchful vigilance over evil.