Lemonade Stand!

It does not get any cuter than this!

My sister Kim was on a hunt for cheap crates at the last flea market.  She wanted to make her daughter a lemonade stand.  She found 3 pretty worn out crates for about $3.00 each.  Not a bad price! Some crates these days are $40.00!

She spray painted each row of wood yellow and white.  Once they were dry she nailed together the 3 crates.  She used stencils and spray painted LEMONADE on a piece of scrap barn wood for the top. That is my favorite part!



Crates are perfect for a lemonade stand.  You have shelves to store your cups, change, extra lemonade etc. 

Ellyson put the lemonade stand to work this past weekend.  She did awesome and had so much fun!

As long as we are talking about FUN I had to show you this cute bucket!  This was a steel wash tub Kim found for $5.00 at the Elkhorn Flea Market.  She taped it off and spray painted it.  She has plans to use it for her twins circus themed b-day party! 

I think this lemonade stand is just the cutest thing ever.  For a few dollars Kim created something for her daugher that she will remember for years to come.  It does not get any better than that! :)

Happy Memorial Day!

I hope everyone is having a wonderful long weekend!  Weekends are not always LONG in our home.  Wtih TJ being a firefighter he does not get weekends or holidays off.  He is working today, but he was off yesterday and we had a great family day!  Wish he was home today though!

I thought I  would share a few pictures of our yard.  Well, not acutally the yard, but flowers.  Our yard is looking abit like straw right now.  It has been so dry here!  We do have a sprinkler systems (installed from our bro in law Steve-check him out at http://www.oaccents.com/home.  We just need to get that baby on!  It is not usually so dry this early in the year!!

I got this wood flower box from the Kane County Flea Market for $5.00.  I love it!  Old and weathered!

 

This planter is from Homegoods.  I love that store! 

Love those purple flowers!  My mom gave me that beautiful basket!

I made some blue mason jar candle holders this weekend.  I got the blue jars from a flea market for $3.00 each.   I tied some garden wire around each one and hung them on shepard hooks. They would look awesome in a big tree too!

Such an inexpensive and easy project!

I LOVE to be outside!  I bought this furniture set from Target last summer and it is so comfortable!  This is my favorite spot to be!  Very peaceful!!

Happy Memorial Day Everyone!!!  :) 

 Remembering Lon Gregorash, son, brother, uncle & friend. KIA Vietnam June 16, 1971

Friday's Favorite Flea Market Find!

Happy Friday!!  I have such a hard time picking out my favorite things from flea markets.  I do LOVE everything!  Today I decided to go with these cute little bottles I found at the Kane County Flea Market.

There is a vendor at the Kane County Flea Market that sells bottles.  Just bottles!  Hundreds and hundreds of bottles! He knows the history of almost every bottle.  I love that!  The blue bottle on the left is a Mrs. Stewart's Bluing Bottle. This one is so cool! Mrs's Stewarts was added to laundry to make the white clothes whiter. I read the history of Mrs's Stewart and it is actually really interesting. Really!  This bottle was from the early 1900's and was hand blown. 

Here just a small amount of history I found on Mrs's Stewarts web page.......

The History of the Bluing Process

Before the automatic washer arrived, the process for bluing white fabric in the home consisted of soaking or washing the clothing in hot soapy water, usually in a large kettle over a stove or in a wash tub, then rinsing the clothing thoroughly in another kettle-often two times. Finally, a "bluing" kettle was prepared in which the clothing was simply dipped in briefly and removed, then hung to dry.
Today, bluing can be used in the wash cycle or the final rinse cycle to restore fabric to the "whitest white"!






The clear glass bottles are milk bottles.  Golden Guernsey.  The vendor said they were found in the basement of an old school in Chicago.  How neat that little kids years and years ago drank milk from these!!

I love these little bottles.  They look abit Anthropologie-ish to me!  I paid $3.00 for the milk bottles and $5.00 for the blue bottle.  Not bad for some beautiful history!  :)

White linen bench project!

  I had been looking for a bench to put in front of the window in our master bedroom.  I knew exactly what I wanted.  White, linen, simple.   I found quite a few.

I love these benches from Ballard Designs. $549.00

Or this one from my favorite Pottery Barn.  $499.00

This cute one is from Z Gallerie:  $399.00

This one I found at Wisteria.  $400.00             

This simple bench is from William Sonoma-$850.00


I love all these benches!!!  BUT I did not want to spend alot.  I started looking for a less expensive bench I could re do.  I found this little zebra bench at Kirklands. It was on clearance for $49.00.  I did not bother putting it together since I was getting right to work on it!

The first thing I did was paint the legs.  I used Annie Sloans Chalk Paint in Old White.  I then mixed a few drops of Annie Sloans Provence in with the clear wax and applied a coat of that. I followed up with a coat of the dark wax. 

Now for material.  I knew I wanted white linen.  I was SO EXCITED when I realized I had some laying around that was perfect!

I had bought these curtains from IKEA for my bathroom.  I wanted  white linen curtains on the windows. I could not find that in a valance.  These are the Ritva curtains from IKEA and they are $24.99 for 2 panels.  It is a great linen material!

Since I can't sew, I brought the two panels to a little sewing shop near my house and had these made.  I think he charged me around $10.00.  And I was left with a lot of left over material.  PERFECT for my bench!!!!

I missed a few pictures of me actually recovering the bench. I get on a roll sometime and just GO!  I did remove the zebra fabric first since it would show through the white fabric.  I then used my staple gun and attached the fabric.  I followed up with some left over nail heads I had.  I love that look and it is so easy to do!  I attached my white painted legs and here it is.......

The little throw pillows are from Pier 1.

Here is one of the legs close up.  I love the Provence Annie Sloan Chalk Paint color.  It is a beautiful blue.  Mixed in with the clear wax it gives just a hint of blue.  PRETTY!!

I love this bench.  It is absolutely what I had wanted for that space.  Here is a break down on what it cost me to make it:

Zebra bench:  $49.00
Annie Sloan Chalk Paint: FREE already had on hand
Material: FREE-extra fabric just laying around!
Nail Head Trim: FREE had left over from another project
Total: $49.00.

So I saved a couple hundred at least making this bench myself.  LOVE THAT!!!  :)

Elkhorn, WI Flea Market

My sister and I spent our Sunday at the Elkhorn, WI Flea Market.  We went to this one once last year but it was pouring rain, and most of everything was covered in tarps.  We still found some cool stuff and met some cool people though!  We met Monica Pederson from HGTV and Hippie Tom from American Pickers last year!  Awesome!  We could not WAIT to go again!

The weather was in the 90's, windy, and very sunny!  Not bad, better than rain!  A few things we learned yesterday.......

1.  If you are going to be out in the hot sun for 8 hours PUT ON SUNSCREEN!!!!  We have no idea how we both missed doing this but we are paying for our mistake!!

2.  We need to get some kind of wagon to carry our stuff!  Most times we have a stroller when then the twins are with so we put stuff on the bottom.  When it is just us it is impossible to carry everything around with you!  Going back to pick it all up at the end is alot of work and gets confusing!! We did get smart and started writing down what and where it is so that helps!

3.  Bring more snacks!  Kim had a few things but not enough.  The lines for the food were so long and after Kim told me some stories about how dirty those little food wagons are I lost my appetite!  (although the food does smell great!!)


Now to some of the cool stuff we saw.......

Beautiful chandeliers and lots of white weathered frames!

Not sure why but duck decoys are big this year!  And they are not cheap!

Love the old fans!

Remember my post on how to make corn feeder mirrors? http://myeverchanginghome.blogspot.com/2012/04/corn-crop-feeder-machine-mirror-anyone.html This is where I got the idea from! This vendor has beautiful things,  but we did not dub her the expensive lady for nothing! :)

We loved these orange industrial drawers but we could not get them for less than $40.00 each.  Did not want to go that high, but they are awesome!

 Cool old rusty stuff!

Men in feathered hats selling awesome barnwood industrial tables!

Highlight of our day????  Hippy Tom!!!  My sister bought a really cool birdcage from him.  We can not wait to check out his huge barn sale he has every year!  Check him out on American Pickers!!

Kim always manages to find a friend at flea markets!  Seriously we were so hot and tired at the time of this picture that we sat here and rested for a bit.  Kim had a conversation with this lady and kept answering the old antique phone that was on the table.  I was laughing so hard! (probably from heat exhaustion!)  We do manage to draw quite a few stares at flea markets!

This is what I found!  **Kim found some amazing stuff, but as we were leaving a big storm was blowing in. We had to split our stuff up and get on the road.  I will have to get some pics of her finds.  She got this really cool chippy blue table for $10.00.  AMAZING!  And a handmade bookshelf made out of cedar fence wood, $10.00 for that too!  If you wait it out until the end you can get some good deals! 

I am excited about these old rusty rings.  I am going to make something with them, just not sure what yet!

Cute little owls!  The lady that was selling these had let Kim and I use her sunscreen. (it was abit too late for the sunscreen, but we felt better putting some on!)  I felt I had to buy something and fell in love with these two guys!

I am so excited about this antique sunburst mirror!  I plan to take it off the stand and hang it up.

I was on the hunt for an old fan.  I just think they are so cool! Kim got a blue one that is so pretty too!

I love this little table too.  I got it for $15.00 and have big plans for it!  The crate and metal flower are for my daughter's bedroom.  Changes happening in there soon!

So all in all it was a great day!  We found awesome things, laughed so hard we could barely walk at times, and have a bunch of new projects to work on!  :)

Friday's favorite flea market find!

It seems lately Friday is coming faster and faster!  The weeks are flying by!  Things sure have been busy here!  Between the busy end of the school year, sports, and I am happy to report busy real estate market I am running like crazy.  Love it like this! 

 So here is Friday's favorite flea market find! I think I say this about all my finds, but this is one of my true favorites!  I was on the hunt for a new coffee table.  We were using a leather ottoman as our coffee table and while it worked fine, there was way too much brown leather going on in that room.  So we moved that to another room and I started searching.  I knew what I wanted, I wanted barn wood.  My sister Kim and I (and a couple of our kids) were at the Kane County Flea Market.  Now let me tell you, when you are on a mission you usually do not find what you are looking for.  It just works that way for some reason!

We were there for hours and hours and I was losing hope of finding the perfect coffee table.  Then I saw it!

I knew I was buying it as soon as I saw it!  It was exactly what I had in my mind!  The vendor who was selling it made furniture out of reclaimed barn wood.  He had some really cool things.  Another neat part is he has a photo album of the barn that the wood came from.  This barn wood is from an old barn in WI. 

This table is so solid!

The bottom has little wheels, perfect!

Now lets talk about price.  I got this table for $90.00!  I think that is an awesome price for a one of a kind hand made solid wood table!  Funny thing is I got this table last summer.  Since then I visit this vendor every time I am at the Kane County Flea Market.  Although his furniture is AMAZING nothing is anywhere close to $90.00 anymore.  I like to think that I got his last deal before he got famous!  His stuff sells for 3X that now and he always has a crowd. 

One of the fun parts of a flea market is figuring out how to get the piece out and in your car.  You are kind of on your own for this.  Luckily for me this had wheels, but I still had to wheel it out pretty far through many isles.  Then fit it in my car with the many other things I found that day.  BUT where this is a will there is a way and we ALWAYS make it work!  :)

Our dog Cubby loves the table too!  See how excited he is!

Excuse the dog bone on the carpet!

                  Have a great weekend!