Western Charmers!

I saw these charms on eBay and knew immediately I wanted them and what I'd do with them!
(Click on photos to enlarge them!)

Great gumball charms, all with a western theme.  I took them and turned them into these!

Above:  antique copper and below, silver:

They turned out better than I expected!  I'm so thrilled with them and will be listing them on Etsy shortly.  Some of the charms are stage coaches, horse shoes with horse, bull, horse, bronco, boots, cowboy and gun in holster.

Rob and John, dancing the day away!

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

We are old people!

As you know, I'm a huge fan of flash mobs, when done legally, that is.  Seems there's a new type of flash mob that is becoming very popular!  Here is just one that I found!

You might want to scroll down and shut off my playlist so you can hear the music for the flash mob!



I just love it.  There's seniors on oxygen, dancing away in some of the mob flashes!

Antique fun!

Yesterday, I spent the day with a friend and we went antiquing!  We met at a new thrift shop that we both wanted to visit.  This sure was an adventure!  We went around to items 3 or 4 times because they just kept putting items out.  This item fascinated me and at first, we couldn't figure out what it was.  Yes, I know it's a snowman, but what is it's purpose?

Then it hit me, it's a plate holder!  It's a heavy wire with hooks and it folds in half to store!  I tried so hard to pass it by but as you can see, it came home with me in the end.

Wouldn't it be cute with snowman plates?  How about this?

Your favorite ornaments, perhaps!  OR:

On the front door with a wreath?  Okay, enough of that.  

Home decor was half price!  Woohoo!  I got this for only $3.00, the frame is worth that much alone!

Picnic plate holders that are chickens!  They only had two.

They had container after container filled with electric Christmas candles.  They were only .50 cents each so I got two for my front windows.

Now, just one more time around, quickly.  LOL!  And that is when I spied this cutie.  I know it wasn't there the first 100 times we circled.

She drew me to her and then I realized why:

Yep, that's Holt Howard!  Just an awesome piece and even more awesome at $1.00!  I had every intention of selling her but guess what, I don't think so, she is mine!

After two hours in this place, we went to the second place.  An antique co-op.  Barely inside the door, my friend says to me, did you see this PEZ?  Just thrown in a basket on top of a cabinet, she picked up one after another one to show me.  You have my attention!  

No WAY!  Yes, way!

The home worker on the chick must have drank her lunch before painting the chicks eyes, she gave this chick one too many eyes!  I love it.  Go ahead and ask, what did you pay for those?  I'll tell you!  A total of $12.50 plus tax!  Estimated value?  $170.00, woohoo!  It doesn't happen too often but it still happens, oh, I love the hunt!

The only other thing I got are these:

Something else that fascinated me.  Vinyl coated metal hangers that fold down!

They are so interesting!  You pull the sides out, fold up the hanger part and waalah, a hanger!  You can pull them out to different lengths for different sized clothing!

Let's look at just one of them, above is one that is totally folded down and pushed together as small as it gets.

There is the same one fully extended.  It's a shame you really can't see how awesome these are!  I got four of them, red, light blue, blue and green.  

It was time for lunch, we couldn't believe we were in that first shop for over two hours!  No WAY!  Yes, way!  We ate at this really cute, old time place and had a really nice time.

Hit 3 more antique shops and this quaint 5 & 10 cent store.  I found only one more item in the last antique shop:

What a work of art!  :o)

It was just the perfect day!

Hawk

I was lucky enough to see another hawk today.  I'm really not sure what this is but I'm going to guess it is a sharp-shinned hawk.  It's smaller than the ones I usually see but still quite impressive!

 If anyone knows for sure what this is, please let me know!

Tree Day

You know, I've always enjoyed decorating the tree!  Despite getting it, putting it up, then deciding how you want it done this year, the dreaded lights that never seem to work from one year to the next.  Then, stepping back and thinking, nope, that is just not going to do it, so re-arranging the hanging decorations over again. 

 

It takes hours and hours of thinking and planning, doesn't it?  After all, it's going to be up for a month, it has to look perfect!  And you want it to reflect how you feel, show handmade ornaments from friends and relatives.  It just has to be perfect.

 

Today was my day to put up the perfect tree.  When I finally stepped back, I knew it was perfect and had to snap a photo.

 

I'm not positive, but I'm fairly sure I've done Charlie Brown proud!

Grand Jury Duty

We had grand jury duty yesterday.  It was another short session and I know that won't last too long!  There's several cases started but the DA's are still collecting documents before coming in, so they will probably all hit us at once!

I had to laugh because there was a toaster in the break room so people could toast their bagels and I thought someone got it out of the evidence room but here the court reporter brought it in.  Now there's talk about the DA Steve having an omelet station!  LOLOL!  We waited over 45 minutes for this session to start, it would have been a good time for omelets.

Steve had called a witness to appear that swore she'd be there but she never showed up, so a material witness subpoena will be issued for her arrest so she is forced to appear.  It means, they can pick her up and put her in jail until the next session.  Then, he had an officer scheduled to appear but he was really late getting to court because he went to the wrong courthouse!  LOL!  And he's a traffic officer.  He finally got to the right place and explained how they use the Total Station to keep track of evidence at the scene of a crime.  I have a new favorite word, projectile.  Say it, it's neat sounding.  I like it.

When Steve was done, Charlie came in to tell us about the progress of a case that went before the judge and a new one he'll be presenting.  And that was the end of that session!

We have one more session this year and then have a break until Jan.  Me, I'm looking forward to my HUGE paycheck!  HA!

The unveiling!

I've been talking about this for ages, today was the day!

I added pages to my Pez site and set them up for ecommerce!  Woohoo!  I now have Pez for sale on my site.  Stop by and visit it here:  Pez for Sale   Doesn't it look pretty?  

Visit the rest of the site here:  ThePezt.com

I'm quite proud of my little site, it's been a long time in the works and it's coming along.  Still needs work, like I just figured out how to make it so you can click on a small photo and enlarge it!  LOLOL!  Looks like I'll be going back through thousands of photos and fixing them.  

Update!

I did not have jury duty today, it was canceled.    So, I went shopping.  :o)

When I came home, I found this!  

Yep, that's a sign on our new shed!

I laughed so hard!  My neighbors are loads of fun!

Hawk

We often get to see hawks in this area but rarely am I able to get photos.  This one landed on our fence but by the time I got my camera, it had flown to a nearby bush.

This is a red tail hawk and it's amazing just how large they are!

The other day, I was lucky enough to be outside just as a blue heron flew over my head!  This heron has been here for years but I wonder why it's still here in this cold weather!

New Shed!

Remember this post from months ago?  http://runswithscissors4.blogspot.com/2011/10/fall-harvest-day.html  That post was from the day we ordered our new shed.  

Since then, I wondered and bit my nails, wondering if I picked out the right colors, if they would look okay, how the shingles would look etc.

Well, no need to wonder anymore!  Today was delivery day!  I was horrified when it poured last night and wondered if he'd be able to drive a truck on the wet yard.  It did sink in at a few spots, but not too bad, not huge ruts which we were worried about!

Here comes the truck down our tiny, narrow road!  It arrived at 9:22 AM.

Not much room to bring it in, it's amazing how these men can drive these trucks!

This shows just how close to the house he had to get to the backyard.

Arial photos courtesy of me, standing on my toilet upstairs and hanging out my window!

Getting closer!

Now, they swing the bed of the truck around so it's facing the direction you want!  

Now, they start moving the bed of the truck forward.

Okay, this is just plain scary.

Make any adjustments as to where it is to be placed.  Continue to move the truck bed out as the back of the shed rests on the ground.

And there it is!  They added the ramp kit to the doors and had it all set up!  They actually left our house by 10:17, isn't that just amazing?  

My hubby says I can have the left side of it, I'm going shopping for carpet, a sofa, light and table!  Now we have to build shelving for the inside and move everything back in it from the old shed and see how much space is in it!

Landscaping around it will have to wait for next year.  I will be adding two curly willow trees to each side of the door that I all ready have in large pots.  I think a bench along the side and I'll probably keep it simple with a few potted plants.

Now I want to re-side the house to match the shed!

Charming!

I've been searching for all kinds of vintage charms to make a bracelet.  It took awhile to collect enough but here it is!

I have a few duplicates, so I might replace those if something else comes along.  There's two mustard seed charms, two pink Lucite cubes and two shoes with birthstones (different stones in them).

I can't decide if I want to continue and add more charms on the other side of the chain, too.

I love the door knocker, it moves but my favorite one is Popeye!

See the old license plate?  I want to find a ton of those to make another bracelet, so if you happen to have any laying around, please let me know!

Wreaths

I've been wanting a new wreath for my front door for a long time!  I've finally got one!

I took a straw wreath, 3" square pieces of fabric that I cut with a wavy edges and my hot glue gun.  I wanted to work on this last weekend but couldn't because of the power outage!  I finally got to work on it this week and this is what the finished wreath looks like.

The word IN was purchased from my friend at VintageEmbellishment on Etsy.  She sells vintage marquee letters and I was fortunate enough to find this in her shop!

Then, while on the subject of wreaths, I wanted to get some letters for family members for Christmas and I purchased letters from Peppercorns2  and yes, VE and Pepper are sisters!  

I was rushing to get these done before it got dark today so you aren't seeing the actual finished wreaths but you can get the idea.

I am using wonderful Sweet Huck wreaths and simply attaching the letters to the wreaths for a welcome feel to their homes.

I just love these Sweet Huck wreaths!

 LOL, no, the M really isn't that off center once I got the letters wired into the wreath!

And they do look better now that they are wired in!

I have a great head start to Christmas presents!  I even have one full set of cluster balls with bowls finished!  Woohoo!

Grand Jury Duty

It's been a long week and I'm still not caught up with everything I need to do after being without power for four days.  I'm not going to complain because I know a lot of people are still without power and we were fortunate enough to have a generator and propane heater!  The sound of generators has been replaced with the sound of chainsaws, for those who have to deal with downed trees and limbs.

We still had to go to court today!  Luckily, it was a very short session.

As we were just getting started, my table started to vibrate.  I tried to ignore it, no one else's table was vibrating, just mine!  Finally, I couldn't take it anymore and asked, why is my table vibrating?  LOLOLOL!  Here the assistant had left her cell phone at the end of my table and she was getting a phone call.  I didn't know a vibrating cell could move things that much.

We were introduced to a new case.  This one with a new DA, Christine.  She was the one that was with us the day of jury selection and is a super nice and very funny lady!  I look forward to seeing more of her.  We were basically just introduced to the new case and didn't hear too much of it since they are in the early stages of collecting evidence.  We had a witness to hear but briefly and she kept going back and forth from Sargent to corporal in rank with the poor policeman and she finally said she keeps demoting and promoting the man so she's just going to call him Protector of the Universe from now on.  LOL!  She also forgot to swear him in, so when she did swear him in, she asked him if he's been telling the truth or he's just going to start telling the truth now that he's sworn in.  :o)  She's a hoot.

We had a witness from another case come in but he was so rude and obnoxious and decided he wasn't going to answer any questions, he pled the 5th. and after asking him if he was going to plead the 5th. for anything asked of him and his reply was yes, they dismissed him.  At this point, an entire review of his part of the case was made and the jury decided it was time to submit it to court.  In other words, an arrest warranty will be taken out for his arrest and now it is in the hands of the courts to decide if he's guilty or not.  We might, in the future, hear about other participants in this case but for now, that case is off our schedule.

The third case we are hearing now was put on hold for this session, so we got to go home!  It was a short one, for sure.  I fear that means the next session will be very long in order to get caught up on things!

It was interesting, got to have a few conversations with a detective while we were in breaks.  I found out there's an underground system in place to bring prisoners from the prison to the courthouse.  Why was I interested in this?  Because I feared running into a shackled prisoner that just gave testimony, while I was waiting for a ride home!  And I wondered why the detectives were wearing tiny little bright green tags on their suits today.  Why did this interest me?  Because I'm nosy.  The reason is, it shows they are carrying firearms.  Now, isn't that interesting?  He, also, said years ago, the bad guys caught onto this and were copying the tags and walking right into the courthouse with weapons and that they used to wear a certain color shirt to show it, too but that caught on and the bad guys were walking the streets with the same color shirts and other people could tell they were carrying weapons!  sigh.  I lead such a sheltered life!

Not Funny!

This is what we are dealing with today!

At the beginning:

About 12:30 PM, we lost power and it was out until 5:00 PM.

I've been watching these trees:

One small branch at the front has fallen.

Now, one larger in front of the car and in back of the car has fallen.

The trees are just not used to having both leaves and snow on them at the same time.  I was standing out back on my deck and you could just hear cracking and then the branches falling all around us.  I never heard or saw anything like it before!

As I was watching these trees, the largest branch came cracking down in front of my eyes.  Luckily, the owner of the car had moved it before this happened.

This is nuts.