The New Wheels

My new ride!

It is a 1959 (I think) AMF Roadmaster made by the Clevland Welding Company.  She was a little rusty and dirty, but after finding that you can clean chrome with tin foil dipped in water, I've got her looking much better.  

You can see what it looked like before here:

I bought it for $15 at a garage sale this weekend - along with a $5 NES for my husband.

Of course we had to set it up right away when we got home and try it out.

Night Lights

Captured these shots as a wicked lightning storm blew through town last week.  I love late summer thunderstorms.

Monster Garden!

This year's garden has been great (despite the zukes biting the dust, and the basil failing to grow).

We've been using almost everything and giving away anything we can't use.  The cherry tomatoes have been my favorite (the heirloom eggplants above are from the farmer's market).
The tomato plants have gone gangbusters.  These things are insanely huge!!

There is nothing like growing your own food.  I have big plans for next summer as well. :)

GIANT swiss chard!

Re-Wired

Scary old wiring:


Brand new wiring (courtesy of a $2 extension cord and some extra wire nuts from a previous project):


Revamped clock - good as new!


Nate picked out this awesome clock for us while we were hanging out in Milwaukee about a month ago.  I'm slowly bringing him to the dark side.  I love taking broken/discarded things and making them new again - re-wiring things isn't hard at all once you learn the basics.

Wisconsin

Snapshots taken while driving through Wisconsin:

I always felt lucky to have lived in southwest Wisconsin. :)

Door County

Sorry for the recent hiatus from the blog, we've been traveling across Wisconsin for the last week or so visiting family and taking in the last bits of summer.  Here are some snapshots from our vacation with Nate's family in Door County:

Last week was also my four year wedding anniversary with this man:



Thanks for putting up with me for so long love!  I still think you are the bees knees!



Happy Anniversary!

Working on the House

I've got about five projects in the mix right now!  I'm painting this formerly super ugly console tv surround to go on the sides of our refrigerator and increase our kitchen storage space.  Currently we have no pantry in our kitchen, so this will really open things up.  I'm planning on putting chalkboard painted panels in the doors so it will all be enclosed.


I'm also priming this buffet that my sister made for us in her shop class!  We are going to paint the bottom grey, and stain the top dark cherry to match our kitchen table  I'm waiting until it is a little less humid out to do the staining though!


Do you see the beautiful dishwasher to the left of me?  We finally got around to buying one after a year of (mostly my husband) doing dishes by hand.  We didn't want to tear out our whole kitchen for a dishwasher so we tried our best to integrate it into the original cupboards.  We had some good help from some handy friends  from the university (Thanks Kurt and Steve!) who did the bulk of the carpentry/pluming/electrical work.  I've been slowly hacking away at the sanding/priming/painting of the cupboards the last few days.


I refinished 4 doors and 1 drawer, and then patched any areas in the existing cupboards that had been chipped.  Sometimes the smallest jobs seem to take the longest!


I'm also in the midst of a bunch of refinishing projects, and I've finally got my garage 'shop' up and running.


I just painted this mirror frame as well - it used to be a shiny brass plastic (yuck!) but I painted it gray to tone it down.  The yellow paint behind the mirror is on the way out as well - I bought white paint for the kitchen yesterday, so say goodbye to the ugly country yellow!

In other news, the cats say hi:




I hope all of your summer projects are coming along swimmingly as well.  I always feel like I get a lot done around the house in the late summer/fall because it is my way of avoiding thinking about school/working!

Thrifted Recently:

I've been having excellent thrifting luck recently, here are some of the goods:


{ Deer Skull - this bad boy sits above our TV, and I love it.  I'd been looking for the perfect one for a while, and I just happened upon it at a junk shop downtown.  It was $15, and I rode home with the antlers sticking out of my backpack! }


{ I love lamp!  Mid-century Lamp Base - $1 !! - This also came home from a garage sale in my backpack. }

{some great dishes that will be hung on the wall in the kitchen - $1 each}


{ $5 Retro Ottoman/Stool.  I've got big plans for this! }

{ A giant straw bag with leather handles - $5 - I've been looking for one of these for a while! }

{Beautiful typewriter in pristine condition - I LOVE it! }

{ Conte crayons }

{Belts! 25 cents a pop! - I wanted more high waist belts as I've recently bought a bunch of dresses that need to be belted. }

{ Lovely owl necklace!! $2 }

There was more too, but I'll save that for a later post.  :)

Sister Week!

This last week my sister Molly was up to visit before she goes off to college and finally makes my parents empty nesters!  She is 9 years younger than me, and I moved out of my family's house when she was only 8 years old.  I remember when she was born my mom made me take a red cross babysitting class so I could be certified to babysit her when I was 12 years old.  My mom was a nurse, and my dad worked a lot, so often times I would babysit Molly and Amy (my sister who is two years younger than me) on the days my mom got called into work - making them frozen pizzas and microwave hot dogs for dinner, and secretly letting them stay up watching movies.

This week we got to do a lot of thrifting, cooking, shopping, and hanging out.  I believe we visited 7 different thrift shops between Sioux Falls, Madison, and Brookings and found some great stuff - I'm glad she enjoys thrifting as much as I do!
Here we are at Sioux Falls:

And we may have gotten some sushi........

She got to see some real South Dakota big skies:



And we made a lot of good food - like bacon wrapped sirloin with salad from our garden:


It was a great week!