A sweet weekend

We went up to Roswell Saturday morning to attend the birthday party of our little granddaughter, Emma, who will be three tomorrow.  We had so much fun!  Larry did a great job decorating with streamers and he had the best time swinging and playing with his granddaughters.

I snapped this one of him and Elizabeth in deep conversation.  :)

 

Here's Emma with the present we brought her.  She and Elizabeth were so funny holding on to their gifts all day!  They couldn't wait to tear into them.  Emma had the side of this one torn away before the party even started.

  

Blowing out her candles!

I finally got to go to Trader Joe's Saturday, too!  There's one five miles away in Sandy Springs so we went!  I was so excited!  We don't have any TJ's down here in central Georgia and seriously, I need to go talk to somebody about that.  We got some really cool stuff and I was so impressed with how clean the store was, the prices, the selections, pretty much everything!  It was all I'd ever dreamed of and more.  Ha!  We got sunflower seed bread, orange marmalade, fine sea salt, pasta, pita chips, barbecue sauce, environmentally responsible laundry detergent, recycled toilet paper, hippie body wash and soap and a bunch of other stuff.  I was just throwing stuff in the buggy!  We got their baked green pea snacks called Inner Peas, too.  And I picked up three reusable shopping bags, too.  I cannot wait to go back.

We stopped on the way home and picked up that king-sized bed we've been talking about for months, brought it home and set it up.  And slept so goooood that night!  We were just worn slap out.  We love our new bed!  Every time we go to the beach, we get a room with a king and we've been saying for months that we were going to get one and so we finally did.  We still have lots of room when Banjo gets in bed with us and promptly turns sideways between us.  :)  Now I'm on a quest to find vintage king sheets!

Speaking of, we found time to hit a few yard sales this weekend, too!  At one estate/moving sale, I found these awesome vintage pieces!  A mushroom oil and vinegar set and three gorgeous green tumblers.  Y'all.  $1 for the mushroom set and $1 for the glasses (all three!).  Wow.  I got the glasses with the intention of reselling them but I kinda like 'em too much.  I found them online and they're from the 1960's and were made by Bartlett-Collins Manhattan.  And they're worth a lot more than the dollar I paid for them!  Larry says I have an eye for that kind of thing.  I just know what I like and I get really excited at estate sales when I find things like this that have been packed away for years, unloved and forgotten.  I can't wait to see what we find next!

Seashell wind chime

We picked up this beautiful seashell wind chime at the beach and Larry hung it under the patio umbrella.  I just love it and every time I look at it, I will remember our wonderful little getaway to the beach!

Happy Birthday to me!

I have had the best birthday ever!  I got to sleep in with Banjo nestled by my side, I opened my presents that have been sitting on our dining room table for weeks just killing me, Larry took me to lunch at Margarita's Mexican Grill and I had fish tacos for the very first time and they were delicious!  The guac was pretty dang good, too.  Sneaky Larry gave the waiter a pink candle without me seeing him do it and after we had eaten, they brought out a plate of sopapillas and vanilla bean ice cream with that pink candle right in the middle.  And then they sang "Happy Birthday" to me!  It was all so sweet. 

Here are a few pictures from our wonderful day!

Larry got me this gorgeous vintage handpainted Belgian pitcher and glasses set.  I can't wait to make lemonade!

Here's all my loot!  I had a family party last Sunday with my daddy for Father's Day and Ami and Brian gave me that beautiful yellow garden stool and Mama and Daddy gave me the vintage FireKing orange pearl coffee cup and bowl.  Larry found some vintage Tupperware and meatloaf pan for me, he made me a Scrabble playing piece birthday work of art, gave me those little stuffed balls (Goofballz, they are, and their names are Fannie, Ping Pong, Keely and Calli.  You guess who is who.  Ha!), he got me a phone case with Colton's description of Jesus on it (and I believe every word that kid said!), a Life magazine from June 1967 so I could see what was going on the month I was born and of course, my Le Creuset French oven we picked up at an estate sale Sunday at the beach.

 

While I worked a few hours today, Larry baked my birthday cake!  He did such a great job that I told him he'd have to bake our Sunday Cakes from now on!

He insisted on putting all 47 candles on there!  And then lighting them!! Eeeeek!

We got out the fire extinguisher, you know, just in case.  :)  Banjo and Tabbie Hoffman immediately went into hiding. 

Every girl needs a little glitter on her birthday.

I got some really sweet cards, too!  That pink envelope in the corner held Mama and Daddy's card.  Daddy drew us on the back, Larry wearing his fedora, me with my hair up, Banjo and Tabbie Hoffman.  I LOVE it!

I also got 150+ (I stopped counting!) Happy Birthdays on Facebook.  I am truly blessed to have so many people who love me.

If my 47th year on this earth ends up being anything like it started, I'm going to have an amazing year!

Our trip to Jekyll Island with a side of St. Simons

We left out early Friday morning and went to Jekyll Island for the weekend.  Banjo went with us and we had our very good neighbor, David, babysit Tabbie Hoffman for us.  

We had so many wonderful experiences that I hope I can do them justice here!  We took over 400 pictures in three days!

Jekyll Island is such a beautiful, quiet little beach town and we met some really good people there.  The lady at the gift shop, Nana, who told us about the huge convention center "they" just built there and the monstrosity of a hotel that's going up, too.  There was an estate sale Saturday on the island that we went to and I found a Le Creuset French oven that I wanted really, really, really bad but wouldn't get it because it was $75.  A great deal, I know, but I'm like that.  I won't spend a lot of money if it's something I want.  If it's for the house or for Larry or one of our babies, I'll do it in a heartbeat.  I thought it was just a little self-indulgent so I wouldn't get it.  Larry went back Sunday and got it for me.  That's an amazing man I married.  But, hey, I knew that 26 years ago! Standing in line to get in to the estate sale, Larry talked with a lady who was also furious about the convention center and the hotel going up and she even told him that Governor Deal has made a deal (grrr!) to bring some hunters in and kill the "excess" of deer there so that they can build more stuff.  Larry and I encountered a beautiful small deer in the woods at the beach and he came right up to us (but of course, that's when we were frantically trying to find Larry's wallet and didn't have a camera with us!) and we just cannot bear the thought of them being killed.  We got her name and we're joining the cause to save those deer.  That's what we liked about Jekyll.  It was quiet and peaceful, natural and full of wildlife and the people who love them.  We ran into another lady on the beach who feeds all the feral cats on the island.  We have activism in our souls and while we realize that tourism brings jobs and money, what's more important is what the people who LIVE there want and from the very outspoken folks we talked to, this is not what they want.  Bringing things to a vote seemed fair to us.  "They" didn't do that.  If there is an excess of deer there, looks like we would have seen more than one since we combed every inch of that island, beach and river side.  Hmph!

Saturday afternoon, we discovered that Larry's wallet was missing.  He thought he'd left it in the truck and I couldn't remember if I locked my door or not so we were convinced that it was stolen.  I told Larry when we first discovered it missing that I believed some good person had found it and would mail it to us.  I said we were going to trust God with this and even if we didn't get it back, if someone had stolen it, there was nothing in there that couldn't be replaced.  I had $14 in cash in my wallet.  Every other dollar we had was in that wallet!  Of course, we had my debit and credit card but still, we had a chuck of money in that wallet!  We backtracked our steps, went back to Driftwood Beach where we had gone that morning, looked everywhere and just could not find it.   We went to SeaJay's and had lunch and I spent the entire time trying to get Larry to perk up and stop worrying about it.  He felt awful.  We prayed about it and decided that we were going to see God working in it NO MATTER WHAT.  We went back to our room and no sooner were we done with our showers when Larry's phone rang.  He answered and I could hear the voice from the other side asking if he was Robert Schneider and when he said yes, she said, "I have your wallet".  I just broke down and started squalling!  Not because of the money, not because of the many cards and things we would have had to replace, but because I KNEW without a doubt that God had done this.  We had been strong, we had gone to Him with it and we had trusted that He was in control.  And He was.  Larry gave me the phone and I got the lady's name and directions and off we went to St. Simons to meet her.  It took us about twenty minutes to get to the Sea Palms Resort but we met her in the lobby and got it back.  Not one dollar was missing.  Not one thing touched.  She'd found a card in there that had the phone number of a friend of Larry's, called the friend, got Larry's number and called him.  After she'd googled us and found us in Warner Robins, called the house and got no answer.  :)  It was truly an amazing experience, one that still has us in absolute awe.

Banjo was super good all weekend but he was a little afraid of the water at first.  He didn't realize he could swim!  By Saturday afternoon, he was running to the ocean!  It was so sweet and I'm so glad we took him with us.  We enjoyed him so much!

We bought a beach umbrella and anchor from a little souvenir shop and that was the BEST thing we could have gotten the whole trip!!  It was SO hot and we sprayed each other down with Banana Boat and I am happy to report that this was the very first beach trip of my life (except when my mama was keeping me covered!) that I didn't get sunburned!  We both got a little pink on the shoulders but NO BURN.  Not even our heads or feet.  We might have figured this thing out!  Ha!  

We had a cooler full of ice and drinks and a big bag of cheesy poofs.  We just hung out at the beach all weekend and life was pretty much perfect!

Sunday morning, we went for a sunrise walk on the beach and found a washed ashore jellyfish.  I wanted to pick him up and throw him back in but Larry was afraid he'd sting me.  We noticed he didn't have tentacles but we didn't know if he was storing them inside or what.  We didn't know what to do!  Just then, a Jeep belonging to the Georgia Sea Turtle Center comes by and Larry flags them down and we show them the jellyfish.  One of the interns there picked him up and told us that he was a cannonball jellyfish and was totally harmless to people.  We noticed a tiny crab had latched on to him as well.  I took them both from her and headed out to sea with them.  I can't even describe how it felt to give an otherwise doomed jellyfish back to the ocean at sunrise but I can say that it was a beautiful experience and one I know God had a hand in, too.  I kept talking to them, "we're almost there, y'all" and "hold on, little buddies".  :)  It was pretty amazing.  God was all around me, in the beautiful colors of the sky to the cool water around my feet to the cold little rubber ball I was holding in my hand.  No church service I've ever been to could compare.

We spent the rest of Sunday morning at Driftwood Beach and pretty much had the whole place to ourselves until some folks showed up to get married!
  

  

We made it a point to go to the Sea Turtle Center that afternoon!  We got to see a little bit of the work they do to save little sea creatures and their habitat and how we can all help.  This little girl's name is Glory.  She swam around to look me right in the eye.  :)

We checked out the historic district on the river side of the island, too.  The Horton House that's been there since 1746!  If you want to build a house that'll stand the test of time, build it with sand, water, lime and sea shells.  Sounds like my kind of house to me!

We'd had to cross the Sidney Lanier Bridge going over to St. Simons to pick up Larry's wallet so we went back and hung out at the park under the bridge Sunday before we started home.  

We had such a great trip full of sunshine and breezes, salty sea air, laughter, a few tears and a whole lot of love!

Sunday Cake

Larry wanted brownies for his Sunday Cake so I made him some chocolate fudge brownies with Reese peanut butter cups and M&Ms.  We had an ice cream social at work Friday night and I had left over ice cream and all the toppings so I made him a brownie sundae today after we grilled burgers and bratwurst and had potato chips, mac and cheese and corn.  Carbed it UP, we did.  :)

And yes, we are going to the beach in a few weeks!  Eeeeeek!

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. :)

It's My Birthday Month!

June is finally here and I'm celebrating my birthday month all month long!  Larry has four wrapped presents for me on our dining room table and tonight, I talked him into letting me open one!  

This is what was in the box!  A vintage Pyrex Crazy Daisy butter dish!  Squeeeeee!!!

Hello Jello!

Just say no to Jello mold crack

Tupperware is so awesome!  I bought a vintage Jello mold at The Big Peach a few weeks ago and didn't realize it had a crack in it until I poured hot Jello in it.  Ugh.  Larry said he thought Tupperware had a lifetime guarantee on their stuff so I called the Customer Service number and told them what I had and they sent me a brand new mold! 

 The old and the new 

(the new is actually purple but that bright blue is pretty, too!)

I made strawberry banana Jello in it today.  Try not to laugh at where it caved in on the side.  I wasn't real sure how to get it out.  I know now!

I told Larry we'll be eating Jello molds all summer!  There are thousands of recipes online.  I can't wait to make a couple hundred.  :)

Sunday Pie

We picked up a pound of pecans yesterday at a yard sale for $5 and they became this week's Sunday Pie.

This time I used the Pioneer Woman's recipe for The Pie That'll Make You Cry.  It will.  Squall.   

Larry even ate some for breakfast this morning.  :)


1 unbaked pie crust
1 cup sugar
3 Tablespoons brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup corn syrup
3/4 teaspoons vanilla
1/3 cup melted butter
3 whole eggs, beaten
1 cup chopped pecans
 

First, whip up your pie crust.  
Next, mix sugar, brown sugar, salt, corn syrup, butter, eggs, and vanilla together in a bowl. Pour chopped pecans in the bottom of the unbaked pie shell.
Pour syrup mixture over the top. Cover top and crust lightly with foil. Bake pie at 350º for 30 minutes. Remove foil, then continue baking for 20 minutes.

PIE SHOULD NOT BE OVERLY JIGGLY WHEN YOU REMOVE IT FROM THE OVEN

If it shakes a lot, cover with foil and bake for an additional 20 minutes or until set. Required baking time seems to vary widely with this recipe. Sometimes it takes 50 minutes; sometimes it takes 75!  Allow to cool for several hours or overnight. Serve in thin slivers.

Thin slivers, my big old butt.  Who does that??

Treasure Huntin'

We started this weekend by hitting an estate sale in Perry early Friday morning.  The people have moved to Alaska and they have an estate company selling their stuff and the house.  Beautiful house out in the country, complete with walk-in pantry, huge closets, shop, garden area, greenhouse, chicken coop and clothesline!  All of my dream house must-haves.  $214,900 is all they want for it.  Since I couldn't load that house up on the truck and bring it home with me, we brought home what we could.  I'm always on the lookout for baking dishes and I found a 9x13 Cerutil stoneware casserole dish marked $5 on a rack in the kitchen!  I found two other Corning French White pieces that I quickly scooped up and placed inside the Cerutil and went on my merry way toward the pantry.  Did I mention it was a walk-in pantry??!  My heart skips a beat and flips completely over when I see a walk-in pantry.  I could've stayed in there all day.  They even had canned goods, spices and pickles and jellies that were put up last summer still on the shelves for sale.  This lady comes in there and tells me she saw the stoneware dish first and acted like she wanted me to give it to her.  Um, no.  You want it, you have to PICK. IT. UP. and hold on to it like I was doing!  That's the rules.  I think.  I was nice, I laughed a little and said, "yeah, it's nice, huh?" but that was it.  Well, four other times during our tour through the house, this lady said, "I saw that dish first" to me.  Lady.  Don't.  Just don't.  I meet up with Larry and he's found an Indiana Jones fedora that he's decided to get.  (I'm glad, too, 'cause it looks awesome on him!)  Well, that same lady's husband comes up to us when we go to pay for our stuff and says HE was gonna get that hat!  We decide to gather up our things and pay and get out of there 'fore somebody got hurt.  Namely my casserole dish.  

Then I spied an adorable little patio set out on the deck! There's a lady sitting out there at another table and she tells me she thinks it's sold already and she was going to get it but she couldn't find the tag.  Well, the tag's right there, tied to one of the chairs.  $75.  I go inside, ask the folks if that set is sold yet and they say no.  I walk right back out there and grab that tag and then go find Larry again to get him to come look at it.  We were going to buy a set for our deck this summer anyway and this set was in perfect condition for $75!  While we loaded it up on the truck, Casserole Dish Lady and her husband are STILL goin' on about the dish and the hat!  Then the husband says the dish is too big for them anyway and I said I was getting it to make enchiladas in and boy, they really DID hate me then.  Lesson learned.  You want it, don't leave it.  :)  We got out of there and went to Home Depot, got us an umbrella for our little glass top table and went home and set everything up and we're so proud of it!  We sure have enjoyed it this weekend.

Saturday, we got up early (again!) and went yard saleing.  This is only the second time we've done this and I think we've discovered a passion for both of us.  We love spending the time together, just jumping in the truck with a stack of one-dollar bills, our list of yard sales we want to check out and Mapquest on the phone.  We love it.  We got some really good stuff this time, too!  Here are just a few of the treasures we found --- a vintage wooden high chair for $10 that Larry's gonna refinish for hopefully some future use in our dining room, a pretty carpet runner for the hallway, some shelf brackets, a telescope for $5 (!), a Pyrex casserole dish (definitely NOT a hoarder!  Ha!), a pound of pecans that I put into a pie last night, a The Lord Is My Shepherd throw blanket that Tabbie Hoffman LOVES already and the main thing we went after, a vintage Scrabble game!  We found a 1953 edition for 50 cents!  On the way home, we found an end table and entertainment center on the side of the road and Larry loaded them up for his next project.

Since we got done before 1:00 (and we had some ones left!), we decided to go up to Smiley's Flea Market and look around.  My favorite find of the day was at Smiley's.  Right after the 2nd Annual Atlanta Pop Festival July 4th weekend, 1970, a Macon publishing company, Drinnon Inc., published a handful of pictorials about the festival and Larry and I stumbled upon this tiny little booth yesterday at Smiley's that had old campaign buttons, old issues of Easy Rider magazine, old coins, military patches and tiny little tomato plants for sale.  Larry's always on a quest for military patches so we stopped in there to see what he had.  The fact that he had a cover draped over his booth helped, too.  It was hot and shade was precious.  While Larry looked over the patches, I spotted five of those Pop Festival books!  I showed one to Larry and told him we HAD to get it.  He agreed and so we did.  Fest On The Fourth.  I love it!!  I can't stop looking at it.

Such awesome pictures!

We got some campaign buttons, some patches and a very old incense burner (top left in the picture with the book's cover) from him and promised to come back!  His cool (in more ways than one!) booth was right up our alley.  All groovy and stuff.  :)  We got a loaf of pumpernickel bread, an old wool Army blanket (still in the bag!) and a lady bug wind spinner for our backyard.  

Cute, ain't she?