Friday Finds

Welcome to my new monthly feature, Friday Finds!!! I’ll be sharing some of my favorite finds(stuff I loved so much that I bought it) each month.
My favorite find of January was this light up globe (vintage 1982 – is that really vintage?!?)It works great, but it does have some damage here on Africa and also on the top. I think I can patch it up with some tissue paper and Mod Podge. If not I am making it into a light up Death Star(scroll down).
One of our local thrift stores last day of business was today and they we selling most of their clothing for 25¢. I managed to only spend $4.00, but it took a lot of restraint. This pair of gray cords and these camouflage cargo shorts looked perfect to recon into some tote bags.I was really excited to find this 100% cotton velveteen jacket in my size, now I need some fun accessories. Velveteen is apparently difficult to photograph, it is not nearly this bright in person. I won't bore you with all the t-shirts I brought home.
And finally some treasures that I found cleaning in the basement. My vintage (from the 80’s again) rainbow unicorn bandanna, my witch boot cookie jar, and my Victorian boot vase. I actually have a fairly large collection of shoe figurines, but really no where to display them.What is your fabulous find of January?, I’d love to hear about it.
Have a super crafty weekend!

Mini Pin Cushion Jars

Eight years ago I was working at the Holiday Inn in Memphis, Tennessee. I delivered room service during the week and bartended on the weekends. Everyone who ordered a sandwich for room service got a tiny little jar of mayo, a tiny little jar of mustard, and a mini jar of ketchup. I loved those tiny little jars and I would often rinse them out and bring them home. They were stored in boxes and hauled to several new apartments, back here to Nebraska, a few more houses, a storage unit, and then to our new house where they we promptly stored in the basement with everything else. I brought a box of them up this weekend, one of the treasures found while cleaning.
A milk jug cap was the perfect size for a pin cushion for the lid, I have attached it permanently to the metal lid with a brad.The pin cushion will, of course, be embellished more (rick rack!!!) and the metal lid will be painted. This color combo reminds me of cotton candy, which then makes me think of the circus, so I will be painting “big top” stripes on the lid. (Yes, that is exactly how my brain works!)
Fill the jar with buttons, safety pins, and thread card, add some more pins and a needle to the pin cushion and it’s a mini sewing kit, wouldn’t it make a great gift?
I have a lot of these little jars, anyone have any ideas on what else I can do with them?

The Basement Hoard, 2 Years Later

It’s been 2 years since I shared photos of my messy basement and talked about all of my plans. The good news is that some of those plans have worked out. My husband does have his nerd cave set up and often has friends over to play Magic the Gathering and my craft room is set up and staying fairly organized!We have divided the basement space into three separate areas using giant shelves as walls. The far end is the nerd cave, the center area has been stacks of boxes and totes (all my stuff) and the other area is laundry land. This weekend I decided to start working on the center area. We want to set it up to be our paper craft/collage making area. We have an old school paper cutter (the kind you can chop fingers off with), some library card catalog files, file sorting shelves, and a drafting table waiting to be set up.
I made a ton of progress! However it doesn’t look like it (forgot to take a before photo). I labeled some of the piles to give you an idea of what all is down here. Once I get things more situated all of the holiday stuff will be put into a small storage room at the back of the basement. Right now that room is filled with chairs and bags (and bags) of fabric. Baby stuff will be eliminated. A lot of the totes will be emptied, they are full of clothing that needs to be sorted, sold, and donated. Personal memorabilia (photos, cards, and knick knacks) will be relocated to the up-upstairs. I have learned a lot:
1.  I seem to have some sort of obsession with glass jars/bottles and tins of all kinds.
2.  We are not minimalist, we like stuff and we like to display it all on shelves and tacked to the walls.
3.  I have a lot of fabric! (no really, A LOT)
4.  When the zombie apocalypse hits we will have enough supplies to survive (now we need to start stocking up on food).
Once we get this area cleaned up and set up I’ll share more photos.

Champagne Chairs

The minute I saw these tiny chairs by Martha Stewart on Pinterest I knew I HAD to make them! I asked all my friends to save their champagne corks and cages on New Years Eve and I ended up with 3, I was soooo excited, I didn’t think I was going to get any (there were a lot of screw on lids this year)!
I LOVE them, I love them so much that I’m thinking about starting a new tradition of drinking a bottle of champagne every New Year and making a little chair with the cage!