It's Flea Market Time

I am sooooo excited. Me and Irv and Michael and Bern are headed to the Kane County Flea Market today. This is a one time a month flea market and it's usually pretty good. I bought a great vintage table cloth there. I always see awesome stuff when we go...so hopefully I will see awesome stuff today.

I'll be looking for vintage china of all kinds to make cake stands, clocks and lamps. I saw a lamp in a magazine that I just loved and want to try making one if I can find some good pieces. If it works out, I'll be selling them at the consignment shop. I can't believe they open in two weeks. I'm excited for them. I've always wanted to own my own shop of some kind.

Well, this is going to be short because we are going to be out of here early. If I find some good stuff, I'll post pictures tomorrow or Monday. Make it the best day ever, and do something really, really nice for yourself today!

Dog Fight Follow Up

If you read my post the other day, you know that two of our doggies got in a fight and silly Irv stuck his hand in there and got it chomped. I thought he needed stitches, he thought he was too busy. We took the bandage off the next night and cleaned it up again and rewrapped it and all was well.

He showed it to the nurse at the school the next day and she checked it all out. She said there was some swelling, but it wasn't oozing anything ugly, so she cleaned it up again and rewrapped it. She also told him to leave the splint off if he can, and NOT to get any dirt in the wound. She's been cleaning it up and rewrapping it everyday. Irv took her a set of coasters I made as a thank you. :)

When I got home from work the first day, he showed me how nice she wrapped it up and he proceeded to head outside to get some work done. I look outside and he had taken a bag, made a little finger "glove" and taped it with.....of course, duct tape.


Well at least he wasn't getting it dirty! I made him pose for a picture....and I can't show you the other picture because it wasn't the right finger and this IS a "G" rated blog!

I Kicked The Habit

Remember when I talked about my addiction....to lip balm? You can read about it here. Well, I forgot to follow up and let you know that my addiction is long gone! I started putting a little Aquaphor on my lips when they were so bad....and presto....in a few days they were almost as good as new. A few days after that I took all of my lip balms from the car, my purse, the bedroom, the bathroom, my workshop and my office and threw them all in the garbage.

I can actually go days without putting anything on my lips now! Really! It is amazing. The lip balm companies are creating our addictions by making a product that causes us to have to keep using it more and more. It dries out our lips and makes us go crazy.

I have one tube of Aquaphor in my purse. I sometimes put a tiny dab on in the morning...and sometimes I don't. I try to put it on before I go out for a walk, but if I don't.....I do not freak out and have a panic attack and I don't carry it around with me. It just stays in my purse and if my lips are feeling really dry....a little dab and that is it.I don't put it on 50 times a day and I don't put it on before bed.

I AM NOT ADDICTED TO LIP BALM ANY MORE!

For all of you "users" out there....you can kick the habit. It wasn't hard at all once I found a product that doesn't force you to use it more and more often.

Now, I do have to say that Aquaphor does not come in a cute little lip balm tube....it comes in more of a small hand cream tube...but it works fine for me. I also have to say that I am a big fan or natural and organic products and this is certainly not either of those, but if I am only using it occasionally....I think it will be fine.

So if you are looking to kick the lip balm habit....all I can say is Aquaphor!!

Wordless Wednesday.....My Friends at the Office

Dog Fight!!!

I'm sitting here propped up in bed with my laptop blogging. It's actually Monday evening as I write this. Sparky my 13 year old toy fox terrier is next to me, snuggled under the covers. Wrigley and Maggie are sprawled out next to each other on the end of the bed. So peaceful they all are. They look so angelic.

That was not the case at about 4:30 in the afternoon when Irv was feeding the crew. Normally when he feeds the dogs...Sparky dances all over the place but stays over near her "corner". Wrigley stays near her "corner", but barks at Maggie if she gets too close to Irv when he's fixing their dinner. Maggie has to be as close as she can get without getting stepped on.


Irv is fixing their food and I am standing there and we are talking. All of a sudden all hell breaks loose. Apparently Sparky came over and picked something up off the floor....the other two figuring it might be food started growling at each other and then the fur flew.

The dogs don't get into it very often, and when they do we can usually yell a little and stick a foot between them and they are done. Not this time. I honestly thought Wrigley was going to be missing parts...and even though she is much smaller than Maggie...she fears no one and holds her own quite well.

The mistake we made was that we yelled....a lot....and that just fuels the fire. We lost our cool and we know better. I stuck my foot in between them a couple of times, but really thought I was going to lose my foot. Irv finally stuck his hand in and grabbed Maggie....and managed to get his hand in the way of a snapping mouth and got bit....really good.

We did get the dogs apart and I put one in the bedroom. Irv had blood running down his hand all over the floor. Visions of a visit to the ER .....

It took a long time to get it to stop bleeding. Then we did some temporary cleaning, gauzing and taping. I went and got more supplies and a splint and we fixed him up a little better. He decided NOT to go to the ER. Instead he went out to the garage to work on something he's doing for Michael's house. I thought he needed some stitches....he thought he didn't have time.

I checked Wrigley out to be sure she was in one piece. I was amazed that she was fine...not a scratch on her! How they can bite and tear at each other and not hurt each other is beyond me. I told Irv that we really need to do a bit more training so all three of them sit in their corners when he's fixing their food and then we also need a "dog fight" plan. We can't yell and we need to just grab a broom or someone mentioned a glass of water.....we'll have to work on that because I'm sure it won't be the last time.

When I let Wrigley out of the bedroom, the two dogs sniffed each other...I let them outside where they ran into the yard to play. Now they are sound asleep right next to each other...best friends.

Oh if only it worked that way with humans!

The Excitement Mounts

What a fantastic day we had yesterday. We got up and headed to the grocery store. We even stayed within our budget for the first time in a few weeks!

Next we hopped in the car and headed to the consignment shop in Chicago. Since we didn't eat breakfast, we made a quick stop at Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts. No, those things are not on my diet...not even remotely close to being on my diet, but you know what.....I have done so well on my diet that I felt no guilt whatsoever.

We arrived in the Andersonville neighborhood and knocked on the door of necessary exTRAVagance. The Andersonville neighborhood is filled with wonderful restaurants and shops. It is clean and it is everything good about city living.

The shop was wonderful. They did a wonderful job painting and decorating and filling it with beautiful and exciting handcrafted items. We had the opportunity to meet Travis, one of the owners along with some family members that were there helping check in, price and display items. Even grandma was there sitting at the sewing machine putting the finishing touches on some pillows.

My clocks and cake stands will be right at home among some pretty amazing art. There were glass pieces, pillows, quilts, rugs, napkins, wine stoppers, some refurbished antiques, paintings, dishes and more. The more I looked around, the more excited I got.

I am a country girl and don't spend much time in the "big city". I really wasn't sure what fabrics to use for the clocks or what kind of cake stands people shopping there might like, but I think I made good choices and hopefully things will sell.

The one problem that I had was trying to figure out how to price my things. This particular shop has you price your items and then you split 50/50. I have a formula that I use when pricing my items for my etsy shop, Four Dog Day. There was no way that I could price my items the same as on etsy and give them half. I thought long and hard and tried a couple of different ideas, but each one ended up with me not making nearly enough for the time I put into my things. I finally figured out a formula I was comfortable with and went with it.

While we were walking around the shop, I looked at a lot of the prices and I knew I had done the right thing. My items fit right in at the prices I decided on. Now, we just have to hope they sell.

Tresa and Chris met us at the shop and the four of us took a walk around the neighborhood. We went in a couple of other awesome shops. If I were ever to move to the city....Andersonville would me my kind of neighborhood.

The shop opens on May 15th. I can't wait. Next Saturday we are headed to a big flea market and I will be in search of "things" to use to make more clocks and cake stands. Should be fun!

Silent Sunday......Between What?