Category: life-threatening clutter

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Mond…TUESDAY Rounderp!

You never call, you never write. Oh wait, that’s me. I skipped a whole week (plus) and you said nothing. Nothing at all. I will assume that this is because you are all so polite, and not because you simply didn’t notice.

The last 10 days, in summary: stuff and things, things and stuff.

Winners!

The Highlights

  1. Hey, remember my other “family” over at Reminisicin’ Racing? The last race of the season was held on Saturday, and not only did Reminiscin’ and her sister, Mile-Hi Flyer, finish first and second in the day’s races, but they finished out the season #1 and #2 in points. And there was much rejoicing!
  2. Throw another hat on the stack; I’m now working part-time for a local estate sale company. I know you’ll ask: Yes, I do get first dibs on stuff, but I pay full price and I have to be nice to every jerk who shows up on every day of the sale. There are far more nice people than jerks, but if you’ve ever been to an estate sale as a buyer, you know the people I’m talking about (arguing about prices, “secretly” switching price tags [we know], and/or flat-out rude). Also, my very first sale as an employee was in a mountain home that has been vacant for many months, meaning its corners and recesses were riddled with mouse poo. I went through a small bottle of hand sanitizer in three days. Yuck!
  3. My rack of unlisted stock for Tiddleywink is still packed as full as it can get, but I kinda sorta wound up with yet more stuff for you because my dear friend Erin of Theda Bara’s Vintage Boudoir and I just had to go shopping yesterday. I also acquired 4 more foofy wedding dresses that would fill up the whole rack on their own anyway. If any of my local readers can help me with the overwhelming task of photographing (and/or measuring) all this stuff, I pay in home-cooked food! Or maybe one of these lovely vintage coats! Help! ::buried under vintage clothing::

Coming Up

For the immediate future, my Thurs/Fri/Saturdays will be spent working at estate sales. Between the on-site hours and the travel time, those days are pretty much used up, and with fitting in design/production work on my days “off,” I won’t likely be able to post to the blog every weekday as I have been. Particularly if I ever want to list new items to Tiddleywink or Winkorama again! I’m once again running out of time to get the Christmas crafts magazines listed in enough time for you guys to actually craft from them, so it’s a priority I really need to work into my schedule. Tomorrow sounds good, right? Tomorrow it is! In the meantime, you can follow my daily “antics” visually via Instagram, where I’m @ampersandwich. If you don’t have an Instagram account, you can instead follow along at Followgram, where there’s an RSS link to make things easy.

And with that, I’m off to start putting up Halloween décor and to rummage the pantry for dinner. Until tomorrow, dear readers!

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An ASTRONOMICAL Sale!

Tomorrow, at 8:49am MDT (14:49UT), is the Autumnal Equinox. There’s a whole scientific description of this biannual astronomical event, but to the layman: equal lengths of night and day. 12 hours of light, 12 hours of dark. Half and half.

Warm up your keyboards, folks, as I’ve had the crazy idea to observe this phenomenon (♪ do doo de doo doo ♫) with a 12 hour/half off sale at Tiddleywink Vintage! From 9am to 9pm (MDT) tomorrow, September 22, 2012, you’ll save 50% on EVERY SINGLE ITEM. Even clearance listings! No code necessary! In fact, I’ll be turning off all other coupon codes for the duration of the sale. Don’t be greedy. (Shipping is still full price, sorry. Remember that all listed shipping fees are estimates, and any charge in excess of $2 over my actual cost will be refunded to you with-the-quickness.)

I’ve never before offered such a deep discount on the entire shop, and who knows when I’ll do it again. If you’ve had your eye on something, jump on it during this sale! There are only 187 days left until Viva Las Vegas, you know. Time is ticking!

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Postscript: I was scheduled to write yesterday about transforming some unfortunate TV trays. The project is at a (hopefully brief) standstill while I try to remember whole out running errands to buy new ink for my printer, which is an integral part of this project. Stay tuned.

Post-postscript: You’ll notice that today’s blog post is not—as originally scheduled—centered on a vintage recipe. I made a Pinterest-via-Bon Appètit recipe for dinner the other night, and I’m still eating leftovers. No point in making more food just yet.

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Monday Rounderp

Whoa. Number of things I’m getting done today: Zilcheroonie.

Well, that there’s the “beauty” of the way my disorganized mind works. It’s not that I got nothing done, just nothing on my list. I was going to work on finishing Friday’s “To Do” list, which got preempted by spending an afternoon with a friend whom I don’t get to see enough (which describes most of my friends, really, but I digress WHAT A SURPRISE) and so Friday’s list was to become Monday’s list and then I woke up this morning with an idea for reorganizing some bakeware in my overburdened kitchen cabinets and I figured I’d better act on it before the brilliance wore off and that led to my completely rearranging my living room furniture. Which kind of cut into my morning plans. By the time I took a lunch break, I’d pretty much written off getting anything done today (outside of a little freelance and packing weekend orders). But I have an obligation to you guys, and I shall not shirk my responsibilities! So here is this week’s Rounderp:

Nifty frosted glass Kansas tumbler from 1961 picked up at a thrift store.

Whoop whoop, after a day of errands and a brief thrift store adventure, I picked up my newly tuned-up and re-tired bike from the fine folks at The Bicycle Shack on Saturday! Buuuuut I didn’t have so much as a minute to test ride it, as we were leaving promptly to go to Colorado National Speedway, where I had my first experience with watching figure-8 races. I had no idea that these existed in real life, I thought they were just the domain of slot car tracks! We had a good time, and the Speedway is close enough that we were home before midnight. Yup, I’m apparently an old lady now.

New Schwalbe “Delta Cruisers” on my 1972 Raleigh Sports.

Sunday morning started with a first come, first served come-and-get-it offer on Facebook, and I didn’t think Woody should pass it up. It wasn’t until after the (surprise, you’ll find out later) was loaded into the back of his pickup truck that we looked at each other and asked, what are we going to do with this? But we’re smart cookies, and between the two of us, we’ll think of something. After all of the fetching and depositing was complete, I finally got a chance to test the newly-tune Raleigh! The brakes, even with brand new pads, are still a disappointment (if not outright dangerous) but I doubt I’ll be zooming around at high speeds. The next project is to find myself a helmet that looks appropriate with an old English 3-speed, which may take some doing. So far, friend Erica’s idea to don an English equestrian helmet is sounding like a not-entirely-wrong option!

Now, how to fill the rest of the week?

Tuesday: A couple of simple tips for taking better photos of your friends.

Wednesday: Mmmmm, tiramisu!

Thursday: I’ll show you how to “upcycle” ugly old TV trays into customized decorator trays with spray paint and water-slide decal paper. Or how not to. Depends on how it goes. 🙂

Friday: Vintage Victuals. What are your suggestions for this week, dear readers?