Update on house offer

After a few counteroffers, we came to an agreement with the seller on the house---we close September 17th! We're going to become first time home owners!

A few interesting little bits of info

I keep forgetting to point out two things about this blog. First of all, the picture of the barn at the top is the horse barn across the street from our driveway, not just some picturesque bit of scenery (although it is that).

Second of all, there's web site on my list of links called Country Stencils. This is my sister-in-law's business. She sells beautiful sturdy tin stencils, stencilling supplies, and kits. Please check out her web site!

Big news!

Guess you folks thought I had dropped up the face of the earth. In fact I have been travelling back and forth three weekends in a row to the Atlanta metro area, where, as it so happens, we are going to be moving! Quite a change from our small town in rural VA, eh? However, we were not quite ready to move into the big city proper, so we are trying to buy a house in Conyers, a smaller town outside of Atlanta. It has a cute little downtown area called Olde Town, plus it has lots of suburban amenities like shopping and city water (we have had a well that has so much iron and sulfur in it that we can't drink the water for the last five years). And...curbside garbage pickup! Seriously, if you have never lived in a rural are and gone without, you have no idea what a huge deal it is not to have to give your garbage a lift several times a week. (Ask yourself how much you would enjoy having to put bags full of used cat litter in your car trunk, my friend----gross me out!)

Anyway, here are some pictures of Olde Town Conyers. It is an old railroad town, and you can see that they have preserved it very quaintly.

After living in a town with limited restaurants for the past five years, we are very excited about the prospect of having a nice coffeehouse, a Thai restaurant, and an Irich pub all on the same block!Conyers also has a cute little park downtown, and an artist's market on Saturdays.Plus a community theater, which my husband is excited about.Here is the house we made an offer on yesterday. Don't know if we will get it---the realtor was so pissed off by our lowball offer that she chewed me out about it, but as she said, she's required to present all offers.

We like it enough that we might come up on the price a little on a counter offer, but if not, there is another house we like---a little more modern, but better maintained and in a lake community--- that we wouldn't be too miserable settling for.

Travelling girl

Here is a little project I've been working on lately; there are two of them, and I am going to frame them for Halloween decorations. The other one has a black cat on it. I'll take another shot when it's done, but here is the work in progress:

Stopped at my mom's house yesterday on the way down to Georgia. She had a set of china that she inherited from her husband's stepmother (so, my stepdad's stepmom, if you can follow that) that she wants to give me. My mom has six sets of china, including a set of Havilland that she uses every day (she even takes it outside for picnics---as she said, "At my age, what am I saving it for?"). I said that she should wait until after we move, so she's going to pack them up for me until then. Here they are---sweet little flowers!

By the way, sorry these pictures aren't edited better, but I am on a computer at a hotel in Conyers, GA today. Conyers is a really cute little town; I should have some pictures for you soon!

Summer pleasures

We may have some big news soon---let's just say we are packing, because it looks like one way or another, we will be leaving our little cottage in the near future. Which means that our house is rather a mess right now, so it's hard to find pretty pictures to take! However, here are some things that may be of interest.

First of all, this year we are having a bumper crop of apples. We have three apple trees in our yard; two are pretty old and bedraggled, but the other one puts out a pretty good crop most years. This year, I don't know why, it is really loaded with apples, and they seem to be ripening a bit early as well. That means soon it will be applesauce canning time. Sadly, it looks like the heat has killed our grapes this year, so no grape jam.


Last week my mother-in-law came to visit. She loves yard sales and thrift stores and flea markets even more than we do, if that's possible, and always finds little treasures for us. She came back from Goodwill with this cute little brunch set for me. Isn't it adorable! Wouldn't those little cups be wonderful filled with mimosas? Mmmmm...

Finally, we took a quick trip down to Atlanta last weekend (more on that in a later post), and I added to my kitsch collection, getting the little teapot on the middle shelf from the Pfaltzgraff outlet store and the chicken soup tureen from Cracker Barrell. Also got some funny family stories, such as Clint being brave (or reckless) enough to stop at a Pfaltzgraff outlet store with me and my mom! We are both a bit obsessed with our dish patterns. Hers is Yorktowne and mine is Pistoulet.
As for the other two little teapots...the blue one I got earlier this summer at a rummage sale to benefit my son's school, and the one with pink flowers was my grandmothers. This picture reminds me that one of the neat things about the cottage we are now living in is that it still has the original vintage kitchen counters with chrome trim. They really wear like iron, I'll tell you.

The County Fair and Thrifting

Hello, everyone! I have been so inspired by all the cute blogs of creative and crafty designing women online that I decided to start a little online journal about goings on in our neck of the woods. We live in rural central Virginia, currently in a rented two bedroom farmhouse, although we are looking for a bigger place of our own.
My husband and I enjoy yard sales, church rummage sales, and thrift stores, and we also have a vegetable garden each year. We both love to cook and entertain. I enjoy home decorating and doing crafts projects (cross-stitching, needlepoint, and embrodery, as well as refurbishing old furniture and housewares with paint, etc.---for example, making DVD storage out of old drawers from a farmhouse kitchen). We have a very active three year-old boy who helps or hinders us variously in our hobbies.


Here is some cute stuff I found at a yard sale this Saturday. The little bundles are handmade gingham check curtains. The pictures are primitive oil paintings---they are so cute, and the big one was 75 cents and the little one was 25 cents! We love the one of the country church because it reminds us of the church in the mountains of North Carolina where my husband was baptized as a boy.

Last weekend I needed to get some work done on the computer, so Clint took Ian to the county fair to give me some peace and quiet. Ian absolutely loved the tractors! Clint had to bribe him with ice cream to get him away from them.