May Art Journal Challenge

Errrr......How frustrated do you think I am?

So, like I said before; got rid of and sold mostly all of my antique junk, collectibles, and ALL my craft supplies when I chose to move west.

Easy enough, just collect more junk and such right! Right, 14 months later, stashes, junk and craft supplies coming right along. thrift store furnishing and decor repurchased. Liking the NEW to me items. New things, new adventures, new friends, family close, great basement suite, new field of work, new indipendance, new thirft stores to do my daily (or close to), most importanly, great new man. Life is wonderful!

Until the big commitment move......yup, that's right, moving in with Mr. Wonderful. Happy right? Right!
Except, now we have two of everything and the house is very small 2bdrms, 1 bath and a cellar.

Now I find myself having to downsize all of the new lovlies that I have now, again, recollected. Trying to incorporate our design styles. Actually, that's the easy part! I just hate moving and love it all the same. It's like playing house. I just really hate getting rid of my stuff. Oh lovley stuff, how can we part ways? Someone tossed you away before, I swore to you I'd love you for a long time and now some of us must part. But which ones? So hard to choose.

It's not like it's garage sale season here. At least then I could check out your new folks and make a buck! These days, Oh lovlies, it's ALL about the Almighty Buck!

What to do, what to do?

Thanks for feeling for me. Gotta go pack, throw and store some more!

Backyard Reno on the Thrift

My BF and I knew when we met that I would eventually move in with him into his modest bungelow. He himself had just purchased it mere months before I had met him. Being the house is small and grandbabies are in the future, we needed somewhere for BBQ's and kid fun. Anyhoo, the back yard was a great size and has a garage to work with and a huge elm tree. Great bones to work with. The not so good outweighed the good as follows: Here's the before pictures......

A veiw from the house of the missmash of felt paper and strange tin encassed insulation (was already removed when picture was taken) that only covered two walls do the garage.

Note the sparse grass (more like weeds).

Over the man door of the garage was a delapitaded awening and handrail that almout reached the fire pit seen above.

The worst of it all was the fence that must have been there forever and a day, crooked and all.

This is a veiw from the alley man gate and unknown use gate.

This is yet another gate, cuz you know how strong lattice is to keep dogs in and people out!

 -  A large cistern right outside the back entrance, the hot tub is on top of the hole.

Notice how you step out the door and run into tub, or you'd fall in the big hole.

This is the ugly garage car door.

This is the fence now, this view from the alley-one man gate which is open in this picture, and the garage door gate just slightly stands above the fence. Not that you can see it well in this picture, but note the garage car door! Big Differnce! What was so thrifty about this you ask? Well.......The fence posts....free, hole digger-free (BF laboured that is). The garage door was purchased at a box store ($300.00) and then we hired the local garage door specialist for only $150.00 to install within one hour versus, exactly the same brandname door from the specialists with install for.......are you ready......$900.00. How the #@$% can they do that? Oh well, all it takes is a little research and you too can save $.

Note the hot tub moved to the wall and no more cisterne to fall into.

New man door. The bench.....free. The siding we installed ourselves including new roof, just me and my BF.

So I'm not much of a green thumb but decided to keep the mini garden and just add my own junk. The bird bath was made with left over pole from the fence and a $2.50 farm impliment that I grabbed from the scrap yard. What you can't see is on the base of the bath is a fondue pot base that I painted black and the scroll detail makes it look like it a part of the pole. The finial on top is a fireplace tool handle that was found in the garage when we cleaned it out. The light globle is just sitting on a candle base all purchased at a thrift store I frequent.

Another view of the deck and tub. Harley (Boxer) loves to lie in the sun up there and peer in the kitchen window. The back of the garage all sided up. I just painted the window with salvaged paint to freshen it up. All the gravel that you see was moved from under the deck and over by the firepit by moi to make the dog kennel (beside garage by the flag pole), and to make our creekbed.

Ohhhhhhhhhhh the love of fresh sod....save money by picking it up yourself (if you have use of a truck of course) and installing it yourself (very easy to do) instant lawn to enjoy.

Another view of the elm tree and sod. Note the boarder of 3 River Slate ($1.61/lb), it goes all around sod line of the creek and around the tree. Valued at ($700.00), we only paid....$0.00. Yup, hauled it off a unbuildable lot after it sat there for 10ys or more. Yes it was work, put slab after slab in my little mini van and kept in the yard until we were ready. I probably moved it all about three times in the three months it took us to complete the renos. It took this long because we did it ourselves on weekends or days off work.

So this was the longest post ever, for this I am sorry; however, I love my back yard.....and I did it myself (BF too)!

Hope you enjoy!

The winter birds are coming!

It took a couple of days for them to notice the seed in the feeder, but have seeds and they will come.  The one peering over the top was watching out for the males that come and swoop in.

I made this feeder out of some old barn boards cut to size and nailed together.  The lid is strapped with two pieces of scrap leather which allows it to flip up easily.  The picture that I missed taking was of my small dog sitting patiently underneath for one of the nuts to be tossed out.

My First Post

I've been collecting craft supplies, bits, bobs, good junk, and thrift items for a while now with hopes of starting a Blog and get back in the swing of crafting for some time now. Well, since I moved to Alberta from Ontario almost a year ago. That's some time for sure! I had to leave most of that kind of stuff behind and start anew. I've re-collected collections and decorated my suite with mostly thrift finds and repurposed items.

Today, I started getting my craft room organized with all my goods. I set up my new-to-me PFAFF Hobby machine just to find out there was not bobbin case. May have to buy a new one....I'm not a new kind of gal, so we'll have to put sewing on hold for a bit.

I will do my best to get projects posted along with pictures on a regular basis, but let's face it, life goes on and on some times.

I dedicate this first post to all the fellow Blogger's that I have to admit that I've been kinda stocking for some time. It all started with the JMS (Junk Market Style).