Puppy fever

As you all know, we have a new puppy at our house. Hank has managed to make all of us fall in love with him. Well daughter #1 got puppy fever, so we now have another new puppy in our lives. Bo doesnt live with us, but we love him the same. He visited yesterday and was not impressed with the new decor. But hes a dog and apparently hiney sniffing is funner.

One more....

Just another pic or two.

Time for change

My house has very high ceilings in the living room and kitchen. My living room has a large shelf at the top which i use to decorate and collect dust.  Ive had the same stuff up there for years so i decided it was time for a change.

Oops... forgot this........

This is Hank.  Or the Hankster.  Or "NO, Hank get out of there" or my favorite "Hank's been too quiet.... go look for poo!". 

He has nothing at all to do with Halloween, decorating or anything posh.  I'm only posting this because one: he's asleep and didn't know I had the camera on him and two: look at how cute he is!!!!!

 

And for all you sports fans, Hank now has a St. Louis Cardinal Hoodie that he wears to support the team.  I would post a pic, but there was an unfortunate incident with my phone, and let's just say my new one will be here later today.

 

Halloween in September. Yea, it's weird.

I love the holidays, but one of my favorite times to decorate is Fall/Halloween. I love the mums, pumpkins and all the spooky things you can buy.  Up until now, I felt that my girls were too young to do really scary decorations, but now that they are a bit older, I've changed my mind a bit.  Not that what I did is scary, but it's more Haloween-y than normal.  Typically I would do a standard FALL decoration, then closer to Halloween I would add more Halloween-y stuff (yes, Halloween-y) is a real word. But this year, I've decided to forego the fall and head straight into Halloween.  Here are some pics of my current front porch. I'm calling it "The Witches Lair".  Mainly because Lair sounds so ominous.  Its really more of a corner.... but who's counting?

This is the view walking up.  Good thing we have a cat on the way.... clearly we have a rat problemThis posh witch can decorate

 Posh witches have a busy schedule.  No time to organize or put things away~

 

Here we have a sign announcing she is out.  Despite the fact that her shoes, cloak and purse are all still here.... Thank you Daughter Number 2 for pointing that out!

These are her ingredience bottles.  Every witch needs a well stocked kitchen.

 

Side View.  Notice the window.  I needed something to add length and depth.  I have several old windows that I picked up from flea markets.  I hung it on existing hooks, because the Hubs didn't want me putting holes on the outside of the house.... something about safety and weakening the brick... anyway, so I improvised.

 

Here's her hat and book of potions.  She can't remember everything ya'all~

Here is her writing area. Obviously she has to have good penmanship.

 

After taking about six million pics, I managed to NOT get the small birdcage that is hanging by the window.  It will be the home of the new black crow when he arrives. 

 

I had fun with this, and tried to use existing things I had collected.  My goal was to spend as little as possible, and I will be selling many of these items when I'm done.  That's the joy of this job.... I get to recreate a LOT!

A Failure to Plan is a Plan to Fail. Or some crap like that .....

Hi Everyone!  We are speedy gonzolez approaching my favorite time of the year.  Fall.  I love the cooler weather, sweaters and boots, falling leaves, you know.... the normal stuff.  But I also love Halloween.  I love scary movies and creepy house decorations.  And I also love that Fall leads right into the Holiday Season, and who doesn't love the Holidays (Uh, yes, I'll take Christmas cookies for $400, Alex). 

Anyway, I'm also excited because I am going to redecorate my front porch.  I did a whole Spring/Summer poshy thing this year.  It was new, fun and I loved it.  But I have the attention span of a 7 week old puppy who has to potty, (and I have it on good authority, that said puppy has zero attention span....ever....) so I need to change things up a bit.

 

This is the current state of the porch.  Its a mix of older, shabby chic mixed with surviving house plants with some weird color scheme to add pizazz.  or not.  Anyway, it's definitely not "fallish", so I've been plotting (and by plotting, I mean stalking Pinterest) for some new ideas.  I have a few things I would like to try.  But the Hubs has restricted me to no power saws, so I will have to get creative.  Geez, one glue gun incident and you'd think I almost burned my fingers off. ok,  well yea I did almost burn my fingers off.... but that is so not the point.  Anyway, stay tuned for things to come. 

Halloween is coming soon!!!

Here at the Posh flea, we are getting ready for fall.

Fun

And this post has nothing to do with furniture, yard sales or flea markets.  Maybe fleas, but lets hope not!

Meet the newest addition to our family. This is Hank. He has stolen our hearts and doesnt care one bit about repurposing flea finds.  

Pinterest strikes again!

Pinterest strikes again.  This kids drawing table is made from kitchen cabinets.

Stencils are my new love.....

Stencils!!!!

Not a real post

Cute painted drawer!

Touche' spray paint... Touche'

I have a tale to tell.  Not a fairy tale, because those usually involve cute talking animals. No.  This is a cautionary report about being smarter than the furniture you are repurposing. 

The last few weeks have been very active in the Posh household.  I added a “posh corner” to our current booth, and I’ve actually sold a few things. My friend, we will call her “Paula” because that’s her name.  Paula says it classed up the joint.  I don’t know about classing anything up, but I can tell you that I may have moved up to Master Level in putting a lot of stuff in a small space.  It’s like real-life Tetris.

I’ve opened an Etsy store and managed to place items on it for sale without sobbing, throwing the laptop or hiring my teenager to do it for me.  I have yet to see any sales, but I’m working on being patient.  So someone go buy something, like NOW.  (I said I was working on it).

I’ve been to flea markets, yard sales, I ordered business cards and even bought a storage unit at an auction.  However, none of those experiences prepared me for last week. 

It’s rather humid in Poshfield these days, so on one of the cooler evenings last week, I decided to do a little Posh work in the garage.  This involved spray paint. Lots and lots of spray paint.  Now.  Before you get all “omg you vented the garage, right”, I’m not stupid.  Ok, not lick the frozen flag pole stupid - I did open both garage doors, had two fans going, and had my little blue mask, gloves and eye gear on.

However (and here’s where the cautionary part comes in), I underestimated the evil, malicious, sneaky, soul consuming fumes that are spray paint.  In retrospect, the London-like, pea soupy fog should have been a warning sign.  And when daughter number two came out and said “MOTHER!!!!” should have triggered a flag. But the big reveal was when I removed the mask to find red paint specks in its lining…. the inside lining….I should have known it wasn’t gonna be good. 

After an entire night of coughing and wheezing, I awoke to the worst, skull-splitting, eye-ball popping, oh- I- think- I- see –THE- light – and- I’m – cool – with - that headaches ever.  I was miserable. 

I did recover, and will live to spray paint again.  But I learned a valuable lesson.  Paint fumes cannot be trusted.  Neither can the little blue masks from Wal-Mart.  And fog is never good. I mean…. Have you ever seen a movie where something GOOD comes out of the fog?

So the lesson here is to never over-estimate your protective gear.  I myself have purchased a new stuff.  So if you drop by my house, and I’m painting, you may see this….

I’ve put it in pictorial timeline for your viewing pleasure.  I’m nice that way.

Here's a rendition of me.  Happy to work on Posh:

Then, a darkness fell:

Nothing good comes from fog.  EVER!

Artist rendering  of me, after a few paint fumed hours:

But, fear not.... lesson learned:

Fin

So there you have it folks.  Learn from my mistakes.  Or at least be smart enough not to put them on your blog. 

Just some pics...

Crackle paint!

Fireworks and Food....

Hello everyone!  Hope you had a wonderful Fourth of July weekend.  I took a small break to be with the family.  We ate a lot, shot off fireworks and ate some more. Four words…. Red velvet funnel cake.  That’s really all that’s necessary.  Yea.  I worked a bit on projects, but mostly relaxed. So I don’t have much to report. Ok, well a little, but we’ll get there in a minute…

Last weekend I went to my very first storage auction.  It was awesome.  My friend and I bought a bought a small unit.  It didn’t have much stuff in it, and we may (or may not) get our money back, but the experience was really good.  It’s pretty much like the t.v. show.  We saw lots of plastic containers, a HUGE (like the 6 foot high) picture of Al Pacino in a bathtub of bubbles and lots of big televisions and mattresses.

To my disappointment, I did not see anyone from the Storage Wars, nor did I see any of the Haunted Collector people.  Which was good…. Since we didn’t see any ghosts or find anything haunted either.  Always a good thing I suppose. 

I was hoping for a bible full of cash.  I found the bibles, but no cash.  Unless you count pennies and a dime or two. But it’s all cool, because we got like 68 cents back immediately, so there’s that. I’ll keep you up to date on how it goes with the sales of all the junk stuff.

I did take a big step this week.  I turned part of our current flea booth into a posh site. My friend Paula and I share a booth at a very traditional flea market.  So the goodies you find there are very diversified.  I wanted to see if items that I am working on would sell, so I filled a portion of the booth with posh items.  So we will see how things go with sales.  It’s a first step. 

I'm taking another step.  I'm opening an Etsy store.  I'm hoping to get some things in the shop there soon.  Stay tuned for updates there too.  Or better yet..... go buy stuff!!! :) 

I did take a little break over the long weekend, but I did some work.  Here are a few things I’m working on.

 

 Take a look in the Gallery for before and after pics of this chair.  I still have some final touches to do on it, but I wanted to post the pic. 

It was this or show you my garage.  Which is clean now.... or sorta clean now.

Work in progress.... not a "real" post

Hello fellow fleas.  I wanted to post a short update on what I've been up to.  Summer has definitely hit, and it's been too humid to do too much in the garage.  But here are a few things I've been working on.

This is flea market chair that I found.  It was in pretty good shape, but needed some updating. 

Normally I wouldn't post a pic like this until the project was finished.  However when I bought the chairs (there are two), I wasn't really sure what to do with them. After tearing them apart and cleaning them up... adding some paint, I'm really proud of the progress so far.  I have quite a bit of work left on them.  The chairs were not cared for very well, and need lots of attention.  But I'm progressing and so far so good.

Hope you have a wonderful evening!

Just me bein' all helpful and stuff......

Hello Posh Friends.  I trust you are all doing very delightful today.  I was able to work on several projects over the weekend.  And as I went from project to project., I found myself wishing someone had told me some things to watch out for...before I started.

Because I'm really courteous and stuff (shut up!), I thought I would share my experience and knowledge so that you can learn from my mistakes be thoroughly prepared:

• There are many types of glues for many different surfaces.  Each of those glues will stick your fingers together at some point.
• Glitter is the crack of the craft world.  Its addictive and makes you go a little nuts.
• Spray paint, much like a loaded gun, should never be pointed at your face when trying to see if it's clogged.
• It is not a good idea to have too many projects going at once.  This is advice that I do not follow, but you should. 
• Unless you want green spray paint in your hair, put it in a pony.
• I wrote once about the dangers of Pinterest, check this post out... but to summarize... Pinterest is evil. (ok, not really but it is addictive .... kinda like glitter).
• At some point, there will be unexplainable paint literally on every part of your body.  Don't try to figure it out.... its just best to accept it and move on.
• Fans are good when its hot.  However, fans and spray paint are not a good combo.
• While we are discussing spray paint, it will make your garage floor sticky and sometimes that makes your hubby a tad grumpy.
• If you spray paint in flip flops, your pedicure will look.... different.
• I like to listen to music while I work.  My neighbors now know I will never make the Voice auditions. But... my dance skills are off the charts yo!
• When your spouse comes out to the garage and there is a thick London-like fog of spray paint hovering in the air, you need to ventilate. 
• Your dog, when running through the garage, will step on or rub against the only wet paint object in the room.
• and finally.... hot glue guns are called HOT glue guns for a reason.

I hope you find these tips somewhat helpful.  Of course these are just things that I've overheard in Lowes.... I've never actually had anything of the sort occur. 

By the way, here are a few of the projects I worked on this weekend.  More pics to come later.

These are vases that I painted. 

 

I saw one of these at a flea market, and have been on the lookout for older lamp shades ever since.  This could be a decorative lamp shade or hung as a chandelier for a girls room.  Because the lamp shades today don't use as much metal, they are a bit hard to find.  However this was fun to decorate with feathers, toole, and bling.

 

Its a bit hard to see in this photo, but I got my decoupage on using a black and white theme.  I did this for my daughters room a few months ago, and really liked how it turned out.  I still have some trimming to do, but they are almost finished.

 

I hope everyone had a great weekend and didn't glue their fingers together.... twice.  I hear that's really embarrassing.