Six Unimportant Things That Make Me Happy

I have been tagged by Melanie Elissa to write down "Six Unimportant Things That Make Me Happy." Make sure you go over and check out her blog and don't miss this post where she updated a Goodwill chair. You know how I love makeovers.

Without further ado...

Six unimportant things that make me happy.

1. A Saturday to myself while the family took in a movie, a trip to the bookstore and other various and sundry things.

2. My hubby's grilling anything. He is such a marvelous cook. (well, he's not unimportant, but I am still very appreciative.) Tonight we are having a quick meal of chili slaw dogs that we didn't get to grill on Saturday. Sure they are just hotdogs, but over charcoal they are always better.



3. The flowers in my yard and the buds bursting forth on a plant that has been dug and carried from the home that my parents lived in when I was born. I thought this one had come from my grandmother, but my mom told me yesterday that it came from a home in South Atlanta that they were caretakers for in the early 1970's.

When they bought their first house they dug some cuttings and it grew in a flower bed by our front porch while we were growing up in GA. My parents moved to another city in GA just before I married and took some with them, an now I have cuttings that grow in my garden, also in GA. Soon a few pieces will make a trip to Amelia in OK. How cool is that.

A bloom about to burst on a yellow daylily. These were my husband's grandmothers.

An altromeria plant that was given to me by someone I worked with during our second year of marriage. She was a master gardener and had a beautiful yard. When we bought a house, I dug it up and carried it with us.

Butterfly weed dug out of a ditch in front of a friends property over 12 years ago.



Chaste tree that I bought for our yard after seeing one on a trip with my husband to Barnsley Gardens almost 11 years ago. It is like purple saliva on a tree.

photo taken by my daughter Chloe

My orange daylilies after a rain. A friend and I had permission to dig these up from an old homestead after the property was sold to a commercial developer.

photo taken by my talented husband

I love the history of my plants---can't you tell.

4. My camera---though I'm sure some of my family wishes that it wasn't always around. : )

5. A gallon zip loc almost full of roma tomatoes from a neighbor

6. bug spray to keep mosquitoes at bay. Even just a few years ago, I would not spray the toxic stuff on myself---now I am just not willing to be eaten by mosquitoes anymore. Most of the less toxic stuff doesn't work on me---so I use "off" most of the time or stay inside during mosquito hours.

I would love for any of you who would like to do this tag. There are so many things in our lives to look around and be happy about. Let me know if you play along. I would love to read yours.

Happy Monday!

Christina

It's Thursday....

and you know what that means...

Time to show off our thrifted treasures and join in with Holly at Homebody for Thrift Store Thursday,


and Leigh at Tales from Bloggeritaville for Thrifty Thursday.



The chalkboard above was $1.51 at Goodwill ... who has enough chalkboards???

I mentioned that we had a yard sale two weeks ago at my in-laws and their neighbor decided to have one as well. Of course I had to head on over and check out what she had!


I was instantly drawn to this picture but not as much to the $10 price tag. At the end of the day she walked over to see how we had done and I asked her if she still had the picture. She did and she took $5 for it!

I actually gave it to one of my sisters to hang in her bedroom but if she doesn't hang it by July 1st, I might get it back and try it in my living room. ;)

Now, I'm off to the mountains for the weekend!

Victoria


Christina here...

I also have a few finds to show this week.

I paid $2.00 for this little box/shelf/whatever it is. It has a tortoise shell look to the bamboo and wicker. It would also be pretty painted white. Mmmmm.


My taste in art is very broad. I love traditional and contemporary. I found this very contemporary piece at a yard sale for $5.00. My son (almost 13) wants this in his room. I'm still deciding.



Here you see my more traditional side. Paid $5.00 for this traditional landscape. It has beautiful colors and such a calm scene. It is dirty and dusty, but will clean up nice. I will probably paint the frame or at the very least make it darker.


Yet another in my broad range of art taste. An old black and white photograph found at a yard sale. My hubby and I actually found this during our first year of marriage at an estate sale---some old, old, fun stuff. It has been put up for a long time and forgotten about. You can see some of the others that we found that same day in this post. I am a huge black and white photography fan. I remember clearly getting my first Ansel Adams calendar when I was around the age of 14.



My sister in law gave me two magazine subscriptions for Christmas and today was a magazine day!!! I love the idea of a fresh, thick magazine waiting for me at the end of the day. Does this count as a thrift find??----They were a gift so, I didn't have to pay for them. Thanks, Michelle!!!!


Off to look at some of your Thrifty finds! Happy Thursday.


Christina

Winners!

Christina and I have had such fun meeting you all! As I wrote down the names I smiled as I thought of certain of you and how that I feel that you are dear friends now. We are also thrilled to meet those of you who are new here or have lurked awhile. : ) I also want to give a shout out to Christina's MIL who FINALLY commented on our blog. ;) I ran into her in Target one day and she told me that she enjoys reading "As Time Goes By". I was blown away. I called Christina on my way home and I said "I ran into a fan of our blog at Target". :) He he.




And the winners are....





we will be back after a commercial from one of our sponsors.....




oh, wait---we don't have any sponsors.......



Christina's son, Ian aka Outside Vote Certifier, pulled the names.

Tablecloth
Darlene from Darlene's Days

Bowl and Starbucks giftcard
Amelia from Amelia's Musings

Scrapbook
Holly from Homebody


Email us your name and address at christina-victoria@bellsouth.net and we will get it sent out. Thanks for entering!

Victoria

Last Chance to Enter Giveaway

Just wanted to remind everyone one last time to sign up for our giveaway. Sign up ends at
10pmEST tonight.


Christina

More Thrifty Finds

So how about some more thrifty finds on this Thursday evening. I went to visit Victoria yesterday and we just talked and enjoyed our time together. We were suppose to be working on projects, but we really had fun talking and hanging out. We snapped a few pictures of some of Victoria's latest finds. She also has some more wonderful things to take pictures of to share.

In fact, go over to our give away post to see one of Victoria's recent finds. You have until Monday evening to sign up.

Vic also found this soft yellow homemade baby blanket with lovely stitching at Goodwill along with some others for $2.50.

You can click to make the image larger.


This pillow was only .25 at a yard sale. It is from Target's simply shabby chic line. A quarter!!



Now for my finds.

I found this soup tureen and ladle a couple of weeks ago for $3.00. I was really happy with this purchase.


Ok, this is possible scary, but it is a very large enamel platter that I paid .25 cents for. I have already started a makeover on this. Honestly, the bright orange, yellow and brown flowers didn't scare me too much---I even think it would be a great serving piece for an outdoor bbq, but I am going lighter with lots of things and this is one of those.


A candlestick with a little snuffer hanging on the side. It is going to get a makeover also. My dad's father had one of these in his house when we were growing up. I can remember sitting and pretending the snuffer was the ear piece for an old phone. Paid .50 for this. More than anything for the memories.




Go on over and check out the great finds at Tales from Bloggeritaville's Thrifty Thursday



and Homebody's Thrift Store Thursday.


It is always fun to look at the great things that everyone finds.


Christina

Our "Just Everything" Giveaways

Victoria and I have thoroughly enjoyed blogland and we have enjoyed blogging with each other. It is so nice when one of us has a crazy time in life for the other to pick up things and carry on. From time to time life gets in the way for both of us at the same time and we have to take a deep breath (as Amy aka Maisy told us to do in the comments the other day) and obviously blogging gets put on the back burner. This has happened the last couple of weeks and we hope to be back on track now that summer has arrived. We love reading and commenting on your blogs too. Occasionally over the past year time has gotten away from us commenting in a timely manner but we really try to get back to each and every one of you as often as possible, just like so many of you do with us. Thank you girls for your blogs and comments. We have loved "meeting" you all.

We have decided to do several giveaways in this post. Today we were joking with each other that this is our 100th post, winter, spring and summer giveaway because we never did any of those. They just didn't happen. So, we are calling this our "Just Everything" giveaways.

Since we love to find things at garage sale and thrift stores, we wanted to let you guys in our some of the great finds. There are really no rules. All we ask is that you comment on this post with item or items you would like to win. This way you can sign up for only the things you would like or use----or please feel free to sign up for all of them. Just to make sure you understand, these are not new items. They are just great things that we have found in our thrifting excursions.


Our first giveaway is a beautiful tablecloth and ten napkins that Victoria found at a garage sale for $1.00! It is just lovely and so summery. In fact we put it on her table to take a picture and her sweet girl said, "what a beautiful table cloth." We know someone out there will appreciate the springy pretty embroidered flowers and the delightful green trimmed napkins. This is a large tablecloth. Maybe Victoria can do some quick measurements and post them for us on Friday--her day off.






Our second giveaway is a 12x12 scrapbook album. Those of you who scrapbook or even just would like to fill a pretty book with photos, will love this. I found several of these for a good deal and would love to pass one of them on to you.




Our third and last giveaway is a bowl. : ) You may remember one just like it from a previous post. I found three of these in a thrift shop for .10 each, kept one for myself, gave one to Victoria and I'm giving one away. It is just a cereal size bowl, but it has a unique shape and the black medallion in the center won me over. I'm sending one plate/bowl hanger that was also found while thrifting along with the bowl. To make this particular giveaway more exciting than just a bowl, it also includes a $10.00 Starbucks gift card. The card is not shown, but will be included. Mocha Frappuccino here you come!!!




These giveaways are a thank you to all of our blogging friends, but please feel free to sign up even if you are new to our blog or have been a lurker. We love to meet new friends too.

Sign up for these giveaways will end on Monday evening, June 8th, at 10:00pm EST.

Happy Wednesday and happy "just everything" giveaway.

Christina and Victoria

LOST

I am at Victoria's house right now and we are taking pictures of our giveaway. We are desperately looking for our blogging mojo. Somehow it has disappeared in and amongst our busy and chaotic lives.