Category: just stuff.

It was three years ago today that I started this blog.  Wowza.  Time flies!  I can’t believe it has been three years already.

It seems like an anniversary is always a good time to evaluate where you are and where you want to go.

A good time to stop and wonder, why do I do this?  And am I successful at it?

Success is defined as:

• the accomplishment of an aim or purpose.
• the attainment of popularity or profit.
• a person or thing that achieves desired aims or attains prosperity.

When I began my blog the goal was to use it to sell my painted furniture.  As it turns out, that has been hit or miss.  While I do occasionally sell a piece to a reader, those sales are not the norm.  Most of my pieces end up being sold on Craigslist.  So I can’t say that I have really achieved that goal.

I’ve read that on average it takes 8 to 10 hours to write a blog post.  That includes writing the post as well as taking & editing photos for the post.  And it also includes the time invested in the project itself whether it be painting a piece of furniture or decorating a room for the holidays.  That sounds about right to me.

I usually post about 3 times a week.  That translates to 24 to 30 hours per week.  Holy cow.  Do I really spend that much time on it?  I think I might.  If you count the time spent painting furniture.  But the thing is, I’d be painting furniture anyway so even if I wasn’t writing a blog I’d still be spending a significant amount of time on that.  The time I spend just writing the blog is more like 6 – 8 hours per week.

Earlier this week I came across an article about how to drive more traffic to your blog.  I got about halfway through the article and then I just grew bored and stopped reading it.  I realized I didn’t want the goal of my blog to be gaining more followers.  I don’t want to tailor the content of my posts for the sole purpose of attracting a wider audience.

So, if I’m not meeting my original goal of selling furniture via the blog and I’m not particularly motivated to ‘attain popularity’ in the form of more followers, why do I spend that much time on this?

Well, the answer is simple.  I really enjoy the process.

This is not a job for me.  It’s a pleasant pastime.

Every now and then I have to stop and remind myself that it doesn’t matter how many followers I have, or how many ‘views’ my blog gets every day.  I have to resist the accountant side of my brain that wants to crunch the numbers.

I am not going to measure the success of my blog by the numbers.  I’m going to measure my success by whether or not I am having fun with it because that is why I do it.

That being said, an anniversary is also a good excuse to host a giveaway to express how much I do appreciate my readers, even if I’m not counting you to measure my success.  Especially those of you who take the time to leave comments and let me know that you are out there.  Getting comments is one of the things that makes blogging fun for me, so please keep them coming.

I’m going to give away two gifts today.  The first is already spoken for and is going to Victoria.  Victoria and I have never met.  She lives down south, while I am up north.  Victoria found my blog back in December of 2013, so only one month after I started blogging.  Since then she has left me 557 comments making her far and away the most prolific ‘commenter’ (not a real word, I know) on my blog!  And I have appreciated each and every one of those comments.  Thank you for all of your kinds words of encouragement Victoria!  I hope you enjoy your gift, it will be on its way to you soon.

For the 2nd prize, I will draw a name at random from any comments left on this post by Friday, December 2 at midnight.  There are no special requirements, you don’t have to follow me or click on a link to something; you just have to leave a comment.  I hope you’ll take a moment to do so.  Here’s what you’ll get (MMS milk paint in Schloss, a tiny green vintage floral frog with a Christmas greeting, a set of vintage cookie cutters, the latest issue of Flea Market Style and the Winter 2016 issue of Flea Market Decor).

Flea Market Style has a great article about re-purposing vintage cookie cutters …

So when I saw this Christmas-y set at a local shop I knew I had to grab them and throw them in.

I hope you’ll continue to read my blog and leave the occasional comment or two down the road just to encourage me.  Here’s to another year!  And don’t forget to leave a comment for your chance to win!

Here in Minnesota I never have much luck finding ironstone in antique shops.  If I do find some, it’s usually quite pricey … or it’s a chamber pot.  So most of my ironstone pieces have come from garage sales or estate sales.  One of the pieces I find most often is the gravy boat.

I wonder why that is?  Do we eat more gravy in the mid-west than in other parts of the country?

Maybe it’s just because a gravy boat is so darn practical so there were lots of them.

Or perhaps it’s because a gravy boat is a less expensive piece than a covered casserole or other more elaborate pieces.

A gravy boat with a lid is handy for keeping your gravy warm.

When not in use you can add some rolled up book pages for display.

Or maybe a pretty silver ladle.  I found this one in a local antique shop and it was only $4.

I hang some of my gravy boats on a rod behind the stove.  I like that I can also see the marks on the bottoms.

How about you?  Do you have a stash of pretty gravy boats to use on Thanksgiving?

Whether in a pretty gravy boat or not, I still say ‘please pass the gravy’.

For a while there I was searching out old gunky paint brushes at garage sales.  They are harder to find than you would think.  Possibly because most people who have these old brushes think they should be destined for the trash heap, not sold at a garage sale.  But every once in a while you find those really frugal people who are selling every last thing, including old paint brushes.

So over the course of a year or so I accumulated a few old paint brushes.

I wanted to hang them on the wall in the Q Branch (a.k.a. my study), and I did do that with some of them.

But I had a few left over and for a while the extras resided in the blue Structo truck.

But I decided to sell the Structo truck at my recent sale.  Gasp!  I know, right?  I actually had a few vintage trucks and I can’t keep them all or I would technically qualify as a hoarder.  I have to admit, it was a little hard parting with this one.  That blue was the perfect color.  But in the end I loved my aqua truck more, so the blue one went.

And the extra paint brushes had to go as well.

But first I decided to doctor them up with a few rub-on’s.

This one was my favorite.

But really they all turned out pretty fab.

They ended up at the Carriage House sale.

And from there they all went to new homes!

If you happen to be someone who purchased one of my altered brushes I’d love to know what you did with it.  Did you hang it on the wall?

Every now and then Mr. Q tells the story about the time he and his friend Jimmy set Jackson’s cow fields on fire.  Mr. Q was … well … let’s just say he was a bit of a rebel in his youth and leave it at that.

That spring he and Jimmy fashioned a ‘polish cannon’ out of Coke cans and made a practice of setting it off out in the cow fields behind Mr. Q’s childhood home in Marine on the St Croix.

Those fields were pretty dry in spring.  It was probably not the best plan to be playing with fire out there.  I’m not even sure I should share the part where the cans were overfilled with lighter fluid and Mr. Q dropped a match in them and swung them around shouting “hey look, it’s a flame thrower!”

Remember, I already admitted he was a bit of a rebel.

Once they realized they had set the field on fire, panic must have set in.  They tried to put it out themselves but eventually realized that wasn’t going to happen and they had to call the fire department.  This was absolutely a last resort because you see, Mr. Q’s dad was the Fire Chief and Jimmy’s dad was the Assistant Fire Chief.  Mr. Q was just hoping that his dad was still at his day job (the fire department was all volunteer) and that someone else would show up.  But no, the fire truck rolled up with both of their fathers riding up front.

The fire was put out and Mr. Q says that several weeks later the fresh new green growth was just lovely.

Back in those days Jackson’s cow fields were just that, cow pasture, but today they are Jackson Meadow.

You can read more about Jackson Meadow on their website.  Basically it’s a housing development based on the cluster-housing model.  Over 70% of the land is preserved as open space.  The houses themselves have a very Scandinavian feel, an homage to the early Swedish immigrants who settled in Marine.

Last Saturday Debbie and I decided to take a scenic fall drive up to Marine for lunch at the Brookside.  After lunch we headed up the hill and noticed a sign for a neighborhood garage sale at Jackson Meadow!  I’d always wanted an excuse to snoop around in there without looking obvious.

 Have you noticed something about Jackson Meadow?  All of the houses are white with galvanized metal roofs.  Their website states that you are not allowed to paint your house any other color than white, and I suspect that there is a huge long list of other requirements for buildings here as well.  Their website also mentions that only “native trees, shrubs and herbaceous plantings” are allowed.  So you can just forget about that Limelight hydrangea if you live here.

I’m not sure how I feel about that.  I definitely think that there is a kind of beauty in the austere buildings set into a natural landscape.  But it also kind of gives me the heebie jeebies.  That feeling of everything is beautiful on the outside, but controlled with an iron fist just beneath the surface.  You can live here, but only if you fit into their very narrow definition of what is acceptable.

It doesn’t help that the last time we were visiting old friends from Marine they mentioned that Jackson’s cow fields were always haunted.  Debbie and I had heard rumors of ghostly goings on in Jackson Meadow, so it was interesting to hear that these stories pre-date the Jackson Meadow development.

Maybe the fact that my sister and I stopped off at the cemetery next was really what left us in a spooky mood.

Not only is it a very picturesque cemetery, but I was betting my sister that they’d have a porta-pottie there and fortunately I was right.  That glass of wine I had with lunch had caught up with me.  Debbie scoffed when I first suggested it, “they don’t have porta-potties in cemeteries!”, oh yes they do!

This particular cemetery has some really cool old headstones too.  It looks like poor Sophrona was only 28 when she died.

After leaving the cemetery, we headed out of town the back way just to admire this stretch of road which is always gorgeous this time of year

By the way, I hope the residents of Jackson Meadow don’t take offense if they see this blog post.  They were all exceptionally friendly and welcoming.  I even came away from their garage sales with this fab vintage find …

But I do wonder if they ever see the ghost of Sophrona wandering around in those fields on spooky misty evenings, don’t you?

Over the course of the summer I happened upon five different vintage hand held graters at garage sales.  I love the patina on these old graters, so I thought it would be fun to turn them into something decorative.

I started by adding some Tim Holtz rub-ons.  If you aren’t familiar with those, you can usually find them at Hobby Lobby or Michaels (or other craft stores near you perhaps?) or just google them because I’m sure you can also find them online.

I just added random words, numbers and graphics to each one …

and then clipped on an old photo.

I feel fairly certain that these people ended up having a wonderful life, don’t you think?

I hung them above one of the chippy windows at my sale last weekend.

And they all flew out the door!

They were a fun and easy project, so the next time you see an old grater at a garage sale keep this idea in mind!

Remember the pile of drawers I bought at a garage sale?

They were super cheap, had gorgeous hardware and I figured I could do something creative with them.

Today I’m sharing just the first one.  It’s the one on the top of the pile that is divided.

It was just begging to be turned into a shelf.

I used spray adhesive to adhere some decorative paper inside, and now it looks like this.

I filled it up so you could have an idea what it would look like hanging on the wall for displaying stuff.

It makes a great spot for some ironstone, vintage cameras and old photos.

This piece will be available at my upcoming sale.  Speaking of which, my sister says I’m not ‘advertising’ it enough on the blog.  So let’s set that straight, shall we?

The Carriage House Sale will take place on Saturday, October 8 from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.  I’m located in a suburb of St. Paul, MN.  If you are local, stay tuned for more info here on the blog as the date gets closer.

If you’d like an idea of the sorts of things we have at our sale (besides this drawer shelf) check out {this post} from last year’s sale and {this post} recapping sales from years past.  I’ve been pinning some of the actual items that will be at the sale this year, you can see that pin board {here}.

So if you’re local, be sure to pencil it in!

And even if you aren’t local, what do you thinking of the drawer shelf?  What would you display in it?

Hi everyone!  Just a heads up that I have a post today on the Reclaiming Beautiful blog with a detailed tutorial on using milk paint.

If you are within driving distance of Stillwater, Minnesota be especially sure to check it out since there is a fun giveaway at the end (you must pick up the prize in person at Reclaiming Beautiful in Stillwater).

And hey, while you are there visiting be sure to check out the ‘tour’ posts of RB owner Monique’s house if you didn’t see it back in July.   She lives in a beautiful 1892 home that I know you’ll enjoy seeing!

You can find their blog {here}.

I came home from South Dakota with a pile of old family photos that no one wanted.

While there, we got together with my mom’s cousins and we all sat around the dining room table and sorted through a big tub of photos that came from my Great Aunt Lula Perline Moe.

I’ve mentioned Lu before, I named my manikin after her.  When we were kids we would go out and stay on Aunt Lu and Uncle Homer’s farm in the summer.  Here are Homer and Lu …

 You see, Aunt Lu never had any children of her own so she enjoyed having various nieces and nephews come to stay.  And sadly, what comes of having no direct descendants is a big tub of photos that got shoved into someone’s attic after she passed away.  None of the South Dakota relatives seemed to want Lu’s photos.

So we sorted through them during our last visit.  All of the photos that included the other aunts and uncles were put into piles to be shipped off to their branches of the family.  Most of rest were put into the ‘reject’ pile, otherwise known as the pile I would take home with me!

We weren’t able to identify the people in most of these.  For example, no one knew who these guys were …

Although clearly they were farmers who were outstanding in their fields, or should I say out standing in their fields?

I seem to be the only one who wants old photos of unknown people.  But some of them are crazy adorable, so how could I resist?

These little cowboys are cute as can be.

I did also nab a couple of semi-recognizable photos such as this one.

Remember ‘blind John the peddler’, my great grandfather?  That’s him on the far left.  He is usually recognizable in photos because he wore dark glasses that covered his eyes.

I wonder why they didn’t ask him to turn his head forward.  Perhaps he heard a sound and turned his head at the last minute.  Maybe they re-shot the group photo and this one was just discarded.  It does seem like an slightly cruel joke, hey, look at the blind guy, he doesn’t know which way to face for the photo.

But then I looked at another photo that included John (on far left) and same thing, he’s not facing the camera with everyone else.

Perhaps that was just his way of posing and no one questioned it.  Here he is again with 4 of his daughters, Olga, Carrie (my grandmother), Evelyn and Lu.

My grandmother had 7 sisters and two brothers total, although the youngest girl died as a baby.

I think that my grandmother fully enjoyed her sisters.  After moving to Minneapolis with my grandfather, she would go back to the farm every summer to visit and spend time with her family.  In fact, I think she even went back to the farm to give birth to her first child.  Her sisters would come and visit her in Minneapolis as well.

Just for fun, I thought I’d share a behind the scenes photo from my photo shoot.  The whole time I was setting up and taking these photos, I had a little assistant.

She’s not a very hardworking assistant though, she mostly tends to just get in the way.

Do any of you have a fascination for old family photos?  Or even just old photos of strangers?

Last weekend my mom flew in from Vegas (she lives there) and, along with my sister, we drove out to South Dakota for a funeral.  The funeral was for my mom’s cousin’s wife.  Although I had met her a few times, I didn’t know her well.  But funerals are always a good time to connect with family and to see many of our South Dakota cousins while they are gathered together in one place.

For me the drive is somewhat torturous.  I’m not a fan of the road trip.  It’s about 4 hours through mostly farm country.  I always know that we are getting close though when I begin to see these.

I don’t think my photo does justice to how gigantic these things are.  According to my research, on average these are 260′ tall.

There are 100’s of these strewn across the landscape along the Minnesota border with South Dakota.

I find them rather creepy, like something out of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds.  Giant alien beings that have landed in the corn and soybean fields.

My maternal grandmother’s father, John P. Nordaune, immigrated to the United States from Haltdalen, Norway with his parents when he was a young child.  At that time the family name was changed to Moe. I’m pretty sure he didn’t see any of these wind turbines when he got to South Dakota!

Have any of you read Laura Ingalls’ books?  If so, perhaps you remember her book The Long Winter which was about how her family survived the winter of 1880-1881 in De Smet, South Dakota.  That winter is still considered to be the most severe winter ever recorded in the United States.  The snow was so deep that trains stopped running for a good part of the winter and thus were not able to bring in supplies.

Not only that, but the snow came so early that many farmers hadn’t yet harvested their fields.  If you’re familiar with the book, you’ll know that the Ingalls family came close to starvation that winter.  You can read an account of that winter {here}.  That spring my great grandfather, his two brothers and their mother were on the first train to come through the area after the thaw.  They were coming to join their husband/father on the land he had claimed in Arlington, South Dakota.  My great, great grandmother once said that they had more food in the trunk they brought with them than was in the entire town where they disembarked from the train.  My cousin Ronnie actually still has that trunk, by the way.

The Moe Farm is still in the family 135 years later.  My cousin Travis now lives in the farmhouse with his wife and six children and he farms the land.

Travis (on left) took my sister, our cousin David and me (at the back) on a tour of the farm last weekend.

That corn is tall when you get up close to it!  Well over my head and I’m 5’10” tall.

My great grandfather, John J. Moe, was blinded in an accident as child.  I’m not sure of the exact details, but somehow he ended up piercing one of his eyes with a nail.  Infection set in and he ended up completely blind in both eyes.  Despite complete blindness, he married and had 10 children.  No only did he farm, but he also was a peddler.  I think ‘peddler’ has a slightly negative connotation these days, but all that meant was that he traveled from place to place selling small goods out of his wagon.  Thus my cousin Ronnie claims that he was called ‘blind John the peddler.’  When I was first told about this, I wondered how in the world he managed this while blind.  I was told that he used a horse drawn wagon and he relied on the horse to know the route.  He also carried a small pistol for protection.  My cousin Ronnie has the pistol now too.  I’m not sure exactly how he would have aimed that thing!  I suspect it was more for ‘looks’ than actual reliable protection.  Then again, perhaps a blind man with a pistol would scare most people!  As for the money, I’m told that he kept track of exactly how many bills he had and he kept them in numeric order.  So he knew what he had for making change.  He most likely relied heavily on the honesty of his customers.  When he returned home, his wife, my great grandmother, would make sure that they he had been paid correctly.

Many of my Moe ancestors are buried in the Bangor Cemetery which is a small family cemetery just down the road from the Moe Farm that is surrounded by cornfields.

It has the most gorgeous view that includes the farm.

OK, I have to get a little closer for you to see the farm.

Can you see the dragonfly in that photo?  Look to the right, yep, that’s not a helicopter.

I always enjoy spending some time out on the farm and being reminded of my roots.  Each time I visit I’m gifted with a few more old family photos that no one out there wants.  I love using them when staging my furniture photo shoots.

I came home with a fresh pile of photos, so hopefully I’ll have some furniture photo shoots coming up soon.  Stay tuned!