Peaches to the Beaches!

Our second road trip down Highway 341 for the annual Peaches to the Beaches yard sale was a lot of fun, it was HOT and it was exhausting!  I started Friday with two of my friends from work and the three of us got as far as McRae.

Here we are starting the day in Perry.

Debbie, Christie and I drove and stopped and shopped all day long and got home around 8:00 Friday night.

Here are my treasures from the first day!  I picked up one Pyrex piece, a lid to a Verde divided casserole (now I just have to find the dish to go with it!) and I got my very first Fenton piece!  A beautiful red, orange and yellow compote.  I added Josef Originals Number Nine Birthday Girl to my collection, too, and for only a dollar!  And we all got a laugh out of the 1960's aluminum lobster jello mold I found at an antique store.  I picked up some old campaign buttons and military patches for Larry and some earrings for me.  We girls laughed all day long and just had the best time!  It was truly a great day!  Complete with some Huddle House lunch and a sunburn for me.  Yay!  :)

Saturday, Larry and I got up early and we went on our own PTTB adventure.  We had planned to pick up where Debbie, Christie and I left off but we started in Perry, too, and worked our way east, ending up in Hazlehurst.  A little farther than we got last year!  I made sure I had on lots of sunblock and my floppy beach hat most of the day. 

Here are a few pictures from our day!

 Our Peaches to the Beaches t-shirts

 Smokin' some pig!

 On the road!  We could not have asked for a more gorgeous weekend!

Here's what we found Saturday!  Larry found that Barbed Wire Pyrex divided dish and got it for me and I picked up another Fenton piece (although I thought at the time the lady was pulling my leg about it being Fenton.  It has NO markings.  I researched it when I got home and discovered it's a piece from the 1940's, before they started putting the Fenton mark on the bottom.  It had a sticker instead, which is long gone.  It's a nut/candy dish and I am most happy with it!) along with some Depression glass pieces and a few other treasures.  And I love my "All I need is sweet tea and Jesus" t-shirt!

Two of my favorite finds!  A 1970's tea kettle and a vintage German ballerina music box clock from the 50's. 

We had a Huddle House lunch, too, and while we were waiting for our food and listened to some tunes on the jukebox, Larry took this picture of me with the lapel pin he had gotten for me earlier, hoping that one day I'd be able to truthfully wear it.  I thought it was funny and he didn't realize why until I told him that Saturday was my fourth anniversary at the base.  This pin was a pretty cool, if not a little bit bizarre, find!

Peaches to the Beaches 2016 is in the books.  It was bigger, it was hotter, it was more fun and more crowded than any other year before.  SO MUCH STUFF.  I can't wait to see what next year's is like!  I'm pretty sure that I'm only gonna see it just one day, though.  'Cause zzzzzz....  AND we lost an hour this weekend.  Did I mention zzzzzz....?

Sweet November

Wow, November is nearly gone!  We have had a great month, cleaning out the garage, having a very successful yard sale on the 7th, driving down to Jacksonville Beach to visit Larry's aunt and uncle and getting ready to host Thanksgiving next week!

Our yard sale went better than we had even hoped!  We sold almost everything and what we didn't, we donated to a local church that has its own thrift store. 

I made these signs Friday night and Larry and I went around the neighborhood and put them out!

Saturday morning, we had folks out there at 6:30!  We had Tom the Turkey up early!

It threatened to rain all morning and did sprinkle on us once but I started praying and the rain clouds blew on away from us, the sun came out and it got HOT!!  Thanks to all of y'all who came out to see us and buy our junk!  :)  We had some pretty cool stuff.  And now the garage is empty and I can park my car in there again.  Yay!!

Sweet Cleo

Last weekend, we went to Florida and had the best weekend with Aunt Ruth and Uncle Don.  Larry had not seen them since he was a teenager and I had never met them.  They greeted us at the door with big smiles and warm hugs.  Aunt Ruth had homemade chicken salad and crackers waiting on us for lunch and she made a delicious lasagna for supper.  Then we had brownies and butter pecan ice cream at bedtime.  We were so tired and so dang full but we still got the best sleep that night in their guest bed and then we got up and went to church with them Sunday morning.  I made friends with their cat, Cleo, who has the most adorable black "ink spots" on her face!  She's an old girl, born in Germany about 13 years ago.  When raccoons started eating her food, she found her way to Aunt Ruth and Uncle Don across the street and they adopted her.  Her owners were okay with it so now she's theirs.  And she never has to fight raccoons for her food again!  And she likes to play in Aunt Ruth's hair at night.  :)

They gave us lots of old family photos and told us the stories that went with them.  Like this one of Larry's grandpa, Herb, and his cat, Smoky.

I loved this one of Larry's aunts and uncle, Carolyn, Wilma and Hal, Jr.  I LOVE that Wilma has her eyes closed!  We are kindred spirits.  :)  They were all very talented children and all played musical instruments, were actors and sang.

This handsome boy, Hal, Jr. has such a sad story.  Days after this picture was taken (he's the one on top) and hours after his performance as Huckleberry Finn in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer at Jacksonville Beach's Junior Little Theater, he went to his job at the boardwalk amusement park and was killed trying to retrieve a lady's pocketbook from the roller coaster she had been riding.  He was only 15.  I'm thankful for all the photos we were given but the ones we have of Hal are special.  What a smart, talented, handsome, sweet kid.  He died helping somebody out.  So very sad. 

 

Aunt Ruth and Uncle Don are models, too!  We got to see this Winn Dixie circular they did several years ago.  :)

Sunday morning at First Baptist Church, they voted on their new pastor and we were there to welcome him in!  We made a new friend at church, too, a guy named Zach, who had the most awesome t-shirt on.  It said, "Pirates, Terrorists, Sex-Traffickers.  They need Jesus, too!"  We were immediately drawn to this guy and made fast friends with him, "friending" him on Facebook so we can stay in touch.  He shares Jesus with the homeless on the beach and we think he's just awesome.  If you're reading this, hey, Zach!  :)

We had lunch together at Longhorn and then Larry and I went to the beach!  Lannadoo was going on at the Seawalk Pavilion on the beach and we enjoyed the beautiful Celtic music, the dancing and the arts and crafts festival.  We even saw a guy walking around in a kilt! 

The beach was absolutely glorious!  Windy, with strong waves and a few clouds but I've never seen a beach day I didn't like.  

Now we're looking forward to hosting Thanksgiving here on Thursday with our family and some friends.  When we found out a few neighbors and friends didn't have anywhere to go for Thanksgiving, we invited them to join us.

It's almost Christmas.  Eeeeek!!!

Peaches to the Beaches!

We didn't see no peaches and we didn't see no beaches (dang it!) but we saw just about everything else!

We went to the Peaches To The Beaches yard sale yesterday, Georgia's largest yard sale, starting up in Barnesville and ending at the ocean in Brunswick.  We had big plans to make it all the way to the beach but there was just SO MUCH to look at.  We started in Perry and only made it to McRae.  And we were exhausted!  We'll have to be much more selective next year if we want to make it all the way.  Or start Friday and go halfway each day or something.  There was a booth or table nearly every five feet!  And the official vendor sites had hundreds of booths and tables.  It quickly became really overwhelming and too much to see.  I had no idea this had gotten so big.  My friend Donna and I went in 2003, the first year it started, and it was waaaaay smaller and a lot more manageable.

We had a blast, though, as usual!  What was really funny is how we kept running into my friend, Debbie, and her husband, Jerome.  I said it's because Deb and I are kindred spirits and we're both after the same things!  It was really hilarious.  We ran into Lisa and Bryan Hudson, too, twice.  Out of those thousands and thousands of people, I thought it was pretty awesome to run into folks we knew. 

We saw some really cool stuff!
  

This poor baby was walking around strutting, not even aware (or maybe he didn't care!) that he was missing most of his tail feathers!  :)

It's not every day that you see this!
 

This was my lunch.  The best pulled pork sandwich I have ever had.  Plus mac and cheese, potato salad and cold Mountain Dew.  After hours of walking and looking, this thing hit the spot!

We started out a little cool, rainy and foggy but the afternoon turned into this!  80 degrees and absolutely gorgeous.  I had to get a picture of this old Dairy Queen sign.  He sure does!

 

I've been wanting a 1960's two-tier table forever.  Like the ones Mama and Daddy used to have as their nightstands.  We found TWO yesterday!  Got the first one for $10 and then found the second one for just $11.  I couldn't leave it behind.  We also found a yellow rotary phone, another thing I've been looking for for a long time.  Not necessarily yellow, that was just a bonus.  All I've seen up to now are black ones and none for less than $40.  This one was only $17!

This adorable little cow creamer has a funny story.  This one is the third one I saw yesterday.  I've never seen this style before.  I saw one at a yard sale and I passed her by, I saw one at a church sale and again, I left her there.  We were at an antique store in McRae and I looked up and on the top shelf was this one looking at me and smiling.  I told Larry that was it.  "That's the THIRD one I've seen today.  I'm getting it."  So she's here now.  :)

  

We found a complete blow mold nativity set at a yard sale and a Santa at a church sale, some grapevine reindeer for the yard, a few pieces of Pyrex, some adorable Easter and Christmas draft stoppers, a 1968 Empire blow mold Santa that I got at an estate sale along the way (for 17 cents!), a gravy boat that matches my Christmas china (for $1 at a church sale!), a pair of jeans for me, a couple of ball caps for Larry, patches, pins, team pennants, a Vietnam era Army helmet that we bought to resell and a bunch of other stuff I know I'm forgetting.  

We had so much fun visiting each town along the way, talking to folks and finding things we couldn't live without.  I get asked sometimes what we DO with this stuff we find.  We have a bigger house now!  Ha!  Seriously, I put things on a rotation, bringing things out, packing other stuff up for a while.  That's the only way you can do it without living in clutter and chaos.  Lucky for us, we have two attics now!  :)

It's October!!

So I'm a few days late.  I've been busy!!  We are waiting to hear back from the appraisal on our new house and that should be the last thing to do before we close on it.  We wanted to close around the 15th and be in by Halloween.  That is still the plan!  Cross your fingers, say a few prayers and send us some good thoughts.  We are convinced that God is 100% behind us as He has worked out every single detail up to this point.  We met our renters this weekend and they are the sweetest people!  They're moving down from Indiana because they just cannot bear another Indiana winter.  I don't blame them one bit!  It was nice to get snowed in for a few days last winter but when you think about having to deal with it for months on end??  That's just not for me.  And apparently not for them!  They are a really nice couple and we believe that they are another of the details God is working out.  They're helping us and we're helping them.

We had a yard sale this weekend to get rid of some stuff and we sure did!  Larry sold most of it Friday all by himself.  Saturday was a little slow but we honestly didn't have much left.  We made over $200 and I thought that was awesome since we were really just trying to find new homes for things we just didn't use anymore. 

Our neighbor, Gladys, passed away about a year and half ago, during an afternoon nap, and her children finally had an estate sale this weekend, too.  I went over and got a few things beforehand, some things that I remembered Gladys having, Christmas things mostly, but she had a medium Corning Cornflower casserole dish that I didn't know about.  I have the large and small already so hers completed my set.  My very favorite thing that I got from her house was a vintage tea cart that was still in the box.  She had never even used it.  I absolutely adore it and I'm thinking about storing some of my Pyrex on it in my new kitchen.  I think that would be just lovely!!

Gladys' estate sale was a pretty big hit.  There were people in and out all day long and that helped us sell the rest of our stuff.  Our renters bought a few things from us, too, and I joked that they were just going to take that stuff right back into our house!  Ha!  They also did something that made me cry.  Gladys replaced her stove a few years ago.  And she got a nice one, too.  My stove is the original that came with the house and it's 27 years old.  I've joked that she has hot flashes right along with me because the oven tends to run a little hot.  We've done some repairs to it over the years and the stove does great, cooks every single day and y'all know that oven has baked about a bazillion Sunday Cakes this year.  I have taken good care of it and it's in excellent condition for its age.  Anyway, our new renters went and bought Gladys' new stove and it's going in my kitchen.  Well, their kitchen now, I guess.  I think she would be so proud for us to have it.  I got a little emotional at the thought of her beloved stove going in my kitchen.  I remember when she got it.  She was so proud of it.  We're giving our stove to another neighbor who also has an original but it's not in very good shape.  So everybody wins!  They also bought her dresser, chest of drawers and bathroom towel rack.  I'm just tickled that her stuff will be used and will stay right here at home.

I'm starting a new part of my job tomorrow.  I'll be working in the VPP Group Office until February.  We are in the process of making all of our safe sites Gold by January so I'll be right in the middle of that.  The reps in the group office are the Gold Assessment team so I'll get lots of experience there.  I'm really excited about it!  

And I need to go to bed now so that I will be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and ready to get to work in the morning!  :)

Welcome September!

We said goodbye to August and hello to September this weekend.  The first day of September was a hot one, highs in the upper 90's this afternoon and a good rainstorm tonight.  I'm really looking forward to fall this year!  My and Larry's first time at the fair, our first pumpkins and mums on the porch, our first jack-a-lanterns.  We're also hoping to fit a weekend camping trip in up at High Falls as well as the Country Living Fair with Ami and Brian at Stone Mountain toward the end of October.  

We hit some yard sales early Saturday morning and picked up this adorable little vintage Mersman table for five dollars!!  It was in great shape, just a few little dings and scratches that Larry buffed out when we got it home.  Then he rubbed some Old English on it and shined it right on up!  It looks brand new.  I just love it!!  

Saturday afternoon, we went down to Oglethorpe for a family reunion on my mama's side of the family and had the best time!!  I had cousins I hadn't seen in a long time (except on Facebook) and their spouses and babies I'd never met.  I didn't make a Sunday Cake this weekend because I made a birthday cake for the reunion.  We had several folks with birthdays in August, my mama included.  Hers was Saturday, the day of the reunion, and she's never been able to see so many members of her family ON her birthday so it was a great day.  I made The Pioneer Woman's Best Chocolate Sheet Cake. Ever. again and then Larry and I decorated it to kinda look like Banjo's house.  :)

Here's Larry with our baby great-niece, Katie.

 

And here's Katie with Aunt Ninner.  :)  I love my face in this picture!  I'm like, "somebody needs to come get this heah baby!"   

She wasn't hollering the whole time I held her.  Ha!  Sweet baby girl.

I took this picture of Larry standing out on the dock at Whitewater.  I love how it turned out.

And here's the whole Clark gang!  We had a wonderful time and I'm already looking forward to getting together again.

Today was Labor Day and we did just as little labor as possible.  I made us grilled roast beef and gouda sammiches and we just laid around and watched TV.  A great way to spend the first day of September!  I'm wondering if I get my fall decorations down from the attic this week if that will hurry October up. 

Sunday Cake

Larry and I went to an extreme couponer's yard sale yesterday and let me tell you, she had some stuff!  I told her it looked like Mama June's stash!  She laughed, obviously proud.  She said she'd call me about a class she teaches about how to do it.  She told me she gets a STACK of Atlanta papers every Sunday with STACKS of coupons and she goes from store to store buying stuff.  I don't think so.  Ain't nobody got time for that!  I don't even like going to Kroger AND Target.  One-stop shopping.  That's what I like.

I admit I was a leeeetle overwhelmed so we just grabbed some necessities, like toilet paper and shampoo, that we were going to have to get anyway and Larry grabbed a 50 cent box of white cake mix.  

He wanted something pineapple-y and tart so this is what I did.  I threw together that box of white cake mix, substituting the egg whites, oil and water for whole eggs, butter and milk (I'm telling y'all, that makes a huge difference!  IF I HAVE to use a boxed mix, that's what I do!  And for this one, I used half whole milk and half buttermilk.)

After I threw that cake in the oven, I whipped up a pineapple-y tart icing.  Cool Whip, a block of cream cheese, a can of crushed pineapple (drained), a can of lemon pie filling, the juice of two lemons, a cup of powdered sugar, a teaspoon of vanilla extract and a half cup of chopped walnuts and mixed all that up with my new-to-me yard sale mixer and I frosted that cake and this is how it turned out.

It is so good!  And lemony!  

And not bad at all for a 50 cent box of white cake mix.

Another day in our life

Our yard salin' pretty much got rained out this morning so after we braved four or five, we headed up to Smiley's.  Larry checked on some military patches for his collection and I checked out DD Country Kitchen's little store.  They had all kinds of goodies!  I got a pound of blueberries (and I put some into some pancakes tonight for supper) and jars of pickled red cabbage, stewed tomatoes, spaghetti sauce and sweet corn.  We go to Smiley's in search of patches and old Pyrex and  sometimes we find something unexpected! Like my friend, Debbie, who we ran into today!  :)  We'd all gone to the same estate sale this weekend, too.  I picked up a bottle of super expensive Estee Lauder stuff for old lady eyes in a mixed bag of stuff for $3 and a handheld Shark vac for $5.  And I got the most adorable vintage handpainted serving tray at a church sale this morning.  I'll be adding it to my Etsy shop.

This past week was my first official week on my new job and we were busy, busy, busy getting our areas ready for the big inspection that's taking place next week.  I told 'em it'll be like a wedding.  The rehearsal is always total chaos but the wedding goes off without a hitch.  When it comes down to crunch time, folks are gonna do what they are supposed to do.  I think we'll do great on the inspection.  I love my new job.  I guess I've just gotten used to working in the heat because I nearly froze to death (....do you wanna build a snowman??) all week.  I actually had to step outside the office about a dozen times to warm up.  I'm sure I will get used to my new environment quick like and in a hurry when that humidity and heat return next week.  

We got a new Nikon camera last week and I set my Smiley's stuff on the counter and took a picture of it with the new camera.  I think it takes great pictures!  I can't wait to go on a trip!  We're talking about packing up a tent and a couple of sleeping bags and heading up to High Falls the first cool weekend we have.  I'm really looking forward to that.  And possibly another beach trip before the summer's gone.  This time down to Jacksonville to visit Larry's aunt and uncle.  

I bought a ceramic pumpkin and a Santa mug today, too.  It won't be long!

Treasure Huntin' 2.0

Our once-a-month yard sale treat is fast becoming an every weekend thing.  We went to NINE yesterday before 1:00!  We prefer estate sales because we like going in folks' houses and pilfering.  Ha!  No, we have really found some great stuff the past couple of weeks.  We've gone to some awesome estate sales with homes just slap full of vintage love.  We started using estatesales.net to find them and we've started following Sweet Southern Home Estate Liquidators on Facebook.  We've run into these sweet ladies two weekends in a row, at estate sales they were hosting and they are just so nice, friendly and helpful.  I expect we'll be seeing a lot of them around this summer!  We hit one of theirs twice this weekend, going Friday and Saturday.  The first time we went, I missed these adorable orange dish towels!  Cannon dish towels, made in the USA, $2 for both.  They bring a sunny summertime feel to my kitchen and I just love them.  I also picked up two pretty vintage pillowcases to add to my ever-growing stash of oldie-but-goodie linens.  Also $2.

My favorite find yesterday was this set of vintage Santa mugs.  I knew they were old so I googled 'em and found that they are Brinn's Santa mugs, made in 1959!  I got these for 50 cents each.  Yeah, I couldn't believe it either.

I got a cute little copper loaf pan, several pieces of old Tupperware, some hand towels, a plant hanger and at one yard sale, I picked up this super cute Royal Standard tote bag for $3, still in the packaging! 

I thought it would be perfect to take to the beach with us in a couple of weeks.  We're going to Jekyll Island and St. Simon's later this month and we're taking Banjo with us.  Gonna teach him to catch a frisbee on the beach.  :)  We went to one estate sale this weekend that was a two-story house with a basement, pool and several outbuildings.  They had lots of beach towels for sale cheap and I picked up one huge one to take with us.  Larry has been racking up with tools and things for the shop and he's been trying to replace some of his old military patch collection that was lost and he's had a lot of luck at these estate sales!

Another awesome find yesterday was this second edition Laura Ingalls Wilder book!  Again, two dolla.  I had all of these books when I was a kid and I don't have one of them today.  They were paperback and I read 'em until they fell apart.  I was so happy to find this one, published in 1953.  I think I shall read it again.  :)

We also picked up a beautiful solid maple end table for dirt cheap that Larry is going to refinish and then we'll see if anybody's interested in buying it.  He did such a beautiful job on my desk and this little table has so much potential.  We've given some thought to maybe turning our newfound passion into a business, maybe starting with a booth at the Big Peach or a couple of tables at Smiley's.  And then there's eBay and Etsy, too.  I know vintage sheets and Pyrex are hot right now and it just so happens that they're hot with me, too!  I don't know exactly what we'll do but I'm excited to see what the Lord has planned for us!

We found lots of treasures this weekend away from home and then Larry finds one he wasn't expecting when we got back.  He was in the attic going through some old boxes of photos and things I picked up at his parents' house years ago and he found his old Cub Scout cap!  I didn't even know it was in there.  He hung it over his baby picture.  Awww!

I already can't wait for next weekend to get here!  We even talked about finding a couple of yard sales at Jekyll. :)