Why I Oughta...

We spent the weekend up in Michigan - and as usual - made a stop at the Great Lakes Antique Mall.  I really like the place because it doesn't have very much furniture and mostly focuses on 'smalls'.  There was a booth that still had some Christmas stuff up and had it marked at 50% off their list prices. The Mall is set up with a bunch of different booths with each one seemingly operated by a different vendor, so there is little room for negotiations.  The vendors of the booths aren't there in person typically. But, a 50% off Christmas sale?  I couldn't pass it up.  I saw this tall Santa planter and with a sub $10 sticker price, I had to bring him home.  He might be the tallest Santa we have now.  For less than five bucks, he'll be a great fit next to the rest of the vintage Santas.

Look at what I spotted at the Cracker Barrel?  A pretty tall faux chocolate bunny.  They've painted his eyeball, which is something I haven't done, but other than that they look a lot like the bunnies I've made in the past .  They wanted $19.99 for the large ones.  I have about $20 in the process to make three of them, so these guys have some healthy margins.  Granted....they're not using water putty to mold them as they're made of lightweight plastic, so they're probably even cheaper to produce. Is the faux chocolate bunny going to become a hot Easter-season item?

Here's the first bunny out of the mold.  After some drying and some Dremel-ing, we'll put a prime coat on this guy, then we'll have some fun painting him in a finish coat.  The Babe helped me make this one, so she wants to paint it her favorite color:  pink!

We caught a pretty amazing sunset at Rocky Gap Park over the weekend.  In between the moans out of the backseat complaining about why we're not leaving, we enjoyed a nice quiet moment of reflection.

I picked up a new mold from KHL Molds last week and started to make this year's bunnies.  I received a really sweet note from the owner of KHL Molds - and a special surprise - that I'll cover later this week. I've filled the mold already once with water putty and the cavity is a lot smaller than last year's and only requires one blend of material to fill the whole thing.  That means I can likely make *more* than I have in the past...

I found this vintage American Flyer "service kit" at a Naperville antique store last week. I didn't buy it, but for the right American Flyer collector, it seemed like a great pick-up.

I've been thinking about DIY'ing a shuffleboard table for the basement for a while and after doing a bit of research on the web, I went looking on Craigslist for something that would make a suitable playing surface.  Well, well, well.   Lookie what I found here .  Some re-usable bowling alley lane wood. Seems like 18 linear feet of that stuff would work just fine, wouldn't it?  Wonder if I can rent a truck that'll hold 18 feet?  And...wonder if I can convince Nat that this is a good idea?