Why I Oughta...

Continuing the series of items that 'got away' from a recent Estate Sale up in Wisconsin.  First there was the telephone chair .  Then Da original Mare primary poster .  Then the Snoopy bank from my childhood.  Today, it is this set of beautiful Christmas ornaments.  I've bought plenty of vintage glass Christmas ornaments from Estate Sales and Garage Sales over the years.  But they were almost always a deal.  Like $1 a piece.  As you can see in the photo above, this sale had a heckuva collection.  Some really nice ornaments.  But they were asking $5 a piece for each of them.  Too rich for me.  I took this photo on Friday and knowing that they cut the prices on Saturday, I went back.  And all of these were gone.  At 50% off, they're closer to being the right price for me.  But alas, they weren't meant to be.  Seems that how I value these is off from the market?  Good data point for when I come across more ornaments in the future.  Seems that $2.50 is the po

Back in June, I planted two kinds of pumpkin seeds in the far reaches of our backyard from the packages you see above:  Big Moon and First Prize Hybrid.  I seem to have failed to post about the seeds or seedlings to date in the [ garden dairy ].  But, today, that changes.   For the past week or two, I've noticed A LOT of flowers and quite a bit of bee activity.  Like they were drunk on pollen after hanging out in the various yellow flowers that these vines have put out.  Turns out...they were busy bees.  (get it?!?) It seems that our pumpkin vines have started to fruit.  Here's a look at the tiniest of pumpkins that you've ever seen: I don't know which of the two varieties this one is.  But, the more pressing matter is the race against the clock.  We have just a month and a half until this thing needs to be on our front porch.  Will it get there in time?  I have these pumpkin pedestals on hand that I hope to put into place as this (and others) grow i

One evening recently when I came home, the kids excitedly came up to me and couldn't contain their excitement about finding something in the backyard.  It was this bird's nest.  They found it in the middle of the grass, so it seems like it fell out of a tree.  There weren't any signs of this being inhabited - no shells or parts of shells - so I'm not sure if it is from this season or just a remnant of another season that was used by a bird family.  I scooped it up with a shovel and put it on this little side table.  The Bird - our middle child - was the most interested in it and we talked about building a nesting box/platform out of wood that we can hang in the yard.  Maybe we can place this on there and see if someone would use it?  Or maybe just encourage another family to inhabit it next season?  Based on a quick Google search, we're assuming that this is a Robin's nest .  And this page makes it seem like 're-use' of a nest happens, so if we put

Another day, another post of an Estate Sale item that got away.  This one, too, is from the Twin Lakes Estate Sale that I visited a few weeks ago.  First, I shared the photo of a telephone desk .  Then the Mayor Daley (first one) Primary campaign poster . Today, is this glass Snoopy bank.  It has a slot at the top for coins.  You can see in the background that this guy was a Peanuts collector.  He had a bunch of Peanuts stuff, but none of it was of interest to me except for this bank.  I have posted another Snoopy item that I picked up at a Goodwill - a Snoopy political glass . Why this bank?  Because we had one of these in my house when I was a kid.  I remember it well and remember that it didn't have a hole on the bottom to let any of they money out.  The only way to get dough out of this thing was to smash it.  One of my sisters used this and she stuck dollar bills in it, which gummed up everything even worse.  With the slot and *just* coins in there, you could kind of ti

Yesterday, I posted a photo of the telephone desk that "got away" from an Estate Sale in Twin Lakes, Wisconsin and mentioned that there were a few other items that I came across that I had to resist a pretty strong urge to buy.  The first one of these items that got away (hence the OTGA mention in the post title) is this "Good for Chicago" re-elect Mayor Richard J. Daley primary poster. Based on this story , this appears to be from Da Mare's 1975 primary where he trounced a 34-year-old Alderman named William Singer, a prosecutor named Edward Hanrahan and a black State Senator named Richard newhouse.  There was a smattering of political memorabilia at the Estate Sale with most of it being from Chicago politics, so I'm assuming that the family moved from Chicago at some point to the lake house in Twin Lakes.  Remember:   It is enough to enjoy the existence of things without possessing all of them.

For the past few years, I've been on the hunt for a telephone desk.  For those of you who aren't familiar with these telephone desks, you can see an example of one above.  Telephone desks come in various shapes and sizes, but the basics are a bench or chair with a small desk attached to them.  The most popular ones today seem to be mid-century modern ones with peg legs and sleek (at least more sleek than this example above) lines.  I came across this one at an Estate Sale up in Twin Lakes Wisconsin but as you can see from the title of this post, this one is marked as 'one that got away'.  They were asking $25, but I took this photo on Saturday, so it was 50% off.  $12.50 for a telephone desk is a fine deal, but since this isn't exactly what I've been looking for, I remembered my collecting mantra , breathed deeply and said to myself: It is enough to enjoy the existence of things without possessing all of them. I'd say that this is the third or fourth

Last October, I posted a photo of a trug of perennials that I dug out of a lot down the block ahead of their teardown and new build.  In that post , I mentioned that I *thought* that I had grabbed a hydrangea, but it was looking pretty dried out and rough.  And wasn't sure it was going to come back.  In that same batch, I grabbed some hostas and ferns.  Here's a post that I shared of the ferns that came back .  And here's the hostas .  Now, I have the final piece of the good-news puzzle:  what you see above is a healthy, flowering hydrangea that is emerging for it's first season in our yard.  I'm posting this here so I can reference it in the [ garden diary ] in the future.  This particular hydrangea has chartreuse-colored blooms and while short in stature is doing quite well without a lot of attention being paid to it during the hot Summer.  As it continues to put down it's roots this season, I'm expecting to have it get larger next season and f