For my Five on Friday - I'm giving homage to my week in reference to Clint Eastwood's movie, "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly" to make it 5, I'm adding The Funny and The Blessed. 1. The Good: My friend Terry referred a partial estate buy out to me. I was able to buy some really nice stuff. It was a good day of junking/hunting/picking. 2. The Bad: I was "junk drunk" off that pick and I guess I ran a stop sign....unfortunately, a cop just happen to be there.... 3. The Ugly: The weather, it's been raining here in Wisconsin like every day! 4. The Funny: My "intern" Shannon, is very healthy and runs marathons etc., well she wears a Fit Bit. The other day, she said, "we have been very active and had X number of steps." I had to laugh as, if you do what I do for a living, you know the lifting, shuffling, loading, up and down steps - it's actually a pretty demanding physical job. I have bruises and scars to prove it. Anyway, it was funny to think, if I do all this activity, why am I still fat? 5. The Blessed: I was able to spend the night at Anna's house in Waukesha and we went to the flea market in Elkhorn. It was nice to have some one on one mama daughter time with her. Another blessing was that my friend and her daughter came down to shop the flea too and I met up with them for a ride home. So, that's it...have a great weekend. For my fellow American friends, Happy 4th of July - May God Bless America! Blessings from Ringle, Wisconsin. Linked to: http://www.fastblog.es/2017/06/five-on-friday.html?showComment=1498828797897
I wanted to share a give away with my bloggers as well as my business Facebook page followers. One of the items of my partial estate buyout this week was a box set of several Parisian Prints linens. These are what we call "new, old stock" which is picker lingo that means, vintage or antique, but new and never used. The give away is for a Bicentennial themed linen dish towel, made by: Parisian Prints - All Linen - made in USA "Nothing Dries Like Linen!" (slogan) - I would agree.
If you like this and would like to try to win it, this is what you need to do: 1. Go over to my business Facebook page, link here: https://www.facebook.com/Town-Hall-Trinkets-LLC-729693193716630/ and like my page to enter to win. 2. If you don't have Facebook, just leave me a comment. If you are new to my blog, be sure to click "follow this blog." That's it. I will pick a winner on July 4th. Blessings from Ringle, Wisconsin.
Hello friends. I can't believe this is the last few days of June! I don't know about you, but I have been busy. I do love June, the flowers, strawberries, haying and baby chicks, it's probably one of my favorite months. As I mentioned, I hired someone to help me, Shannon. We have been working in organizing all kinds of boxes of inventory. When you buy out an estate, you take all the items many times the whole house. So, I had/have boxes with all kinds of other people's unwanted items mixed in with their good items I plan to resell. Every box is scavenger hunt. Each Wednesday, I have been setting up at a "Wheelin' & Dealin' Sale" at Jackie's Antique Mall, one of the shops I sell at. I've filled my booth there, at Once & Again, took a load to Goodwill, burned a pile and recycled a truck load. This has been my month - like I said, busy. With that said, I have 2 "It's all a Rave - Vintage Pop Up Sales" scheduled for July. The first one is July 1 at Once & Again Antiques - a "Price is Right - Vintage Pop Up" in their shop and on the side walk. The second one is July 22 "It's For 'Ewe' - Vintage Pop Up Sale" at my friend's new business venture "Ewe & Herb" which will be their commercial lamb production and a "pick your own type" herb farm. If you happen to live close or visiting Wisconsin, here it the facebook page link: https://www.facebook.com/itsapopup/
My renegade hens are at it again, lots of chicks popping up here and there and I LOVE it!
"Keep busy, but don't work too hard" Blessings from Ringle, Wisconsin.
For Five on Friday - I will show you my week. 4-H meeting, where one of our past members is now Fairest of the Fair and we had a health project on CPR. A panini I made with Wisconsin's very own top cheese - smoked gouda from: Mariecka's linked here: http://dickybirdsnest.blogspot.com/2017/03/top-3-cheese-in-united-states-2017.html
Weeds, herbs and flowers from my farm yard that I made into not only a beautiful bouquet, but a fragrant one as well with the mint. My van full of items I took to a "Weelin' & Dealin' Wednesday" sale. My "intern" and I did lots of digging, boxing and packing for this sale. Sweet, beautiful strawberries from my garden.
Have a good weekend everyone. I look forward to seeing the other Five on Friday blog posts. Blessings from Ringle, Wisconsin. Linked to: http://www.fastblog.es/
Walking around the farm yard and garden last night, I started picking pretty things and making a bouquet. I even added some herbs, grasses, "weeds" and strawberry leaf as a bow on the bottom.
Stop and pick some pretty things - smell them too!
O.K., so it's not just me. I had a sneaky suspicion that something was going on in blogland. It's been pretty quiet from some of my favorite bloggers. I read a post today from one that said, "I've been laying low." I couldn't have said it better! I haven't posted much on here either. I came off a big year of page views and some blog recognition - it's too hard to keep that up, seriously! So, I haven't...I did enjoy it all...but, blogging like that is a full time job! I have read this from bloggers over the years, but thought, that will never happen to me, I love writing and sharing. LOL I still do! Remember my word of the year? Embrace Well, I didn't know how much that would be my mantra and not necessarily for the good. For those who have been around awhile, I had to embrace the loss of 2 of my pets, friends really. Pumpkin our 18 year old barn cat and Martha my 8 year old hen. They each hold a special place in my heart. We laid them to rest in our little pet cemetery near the garden.
I still have a life goal of writing a book about Martha the Independent Hen. Lord willing I can do it. We have some other old friends here....so if I need to embrace I will. For the record, I'm picking a better word next year! I still have 6 months to hopefully embrace some successes...LOL. Blessings from Ringle, Wisconsin.
Five things that made me happy this week: 1. I found this vintage dress at Junk Jubilee in Des Moines, Iowa. I wore it to a community wide church service in Wittenberg. I was happy to find a vintage dress that fit me. (smile).
2. We had some very severe thunderstorms here in Wisconsin this week. Our 18 year old barn cat, Midnight, loves to lay on the porch all day. When it started to get dark, the wind blowing, I looked out the door and everything on the porch was blowing around - including Midnight. So, I brought her inside to weather the storm.
3. I went on an appointment to meet with an elderly couple who sold their farm and wanted advice on their personal property. After 3 hours of sharing and visiting, I realized this was again a "God" thing as we made connections of life experiences, mutual friends and values. When I returned with Al to help me pick up some larger items, we were greeted with..."Boy, do you have quite the woman." To which Al replies..."ya, quite the woman"...(thinking on all the loads of treasures I have at home I'm sure). Either way, I've teased him with that statement for the past 2 days! 4. We went on a day trip yesterday and stopped at a rummage sale on a back road, it was an Amish sale. There were cars and buggies in the yard. I smiled and said "good morning" to a group of little boys sitting on the back of their buggy...I was greeted with the same. Cute! 5. On our little trip, we passed a few things that caught our attention - after the last one, Al says, "I think we are in 'redneck's vile'" Oh how I laughed, he never says things like this. However, he was right, those things were redneckish! I hope each of you found plenty of things that made you happy this past week. Blessings from Ringle, Wisconsin. Linked to: http://www.fastblog.es/2017/06/five-photos-five-on-friday.html
I mentioned this in a previous post, but I have hired a summer intern for my business, Town Hall Trinkets, LLC. I was overwhelmed with the positive response from my family, friends and customers who wanted to "help" me fill this position. I had offers of "I'll work for free" even, silly people...(smile). For me, I wanted to work with someone who didn't really know me, my mess, my hoarding or even care about it...or want to buy it...some items I want to keep. I didn't want to try to make any excuses or impress someone I knew by cleaning up my mess or house before they were hired to help me. So, I chose to actually work with someone I didn't really know, Shannon. She recently moved to our area and had been to a sale or two of mine. Her "real job" is working for one of our school districts. She had the right availability that worked with my schedule for the summer. We started working together this week. I was so impressed with her attitude and work ethic. In all full disclosure, I showed her all the buildings and mess before we started - she didn't leave - haha. What I liked was, we just started and did it. Opened boxes, made new boxes of groups of items, organized tubs, made a garbage and burn pile and filled my van with inventory to take to a small flea market the next day. I packed it with the plan of, if I don't sell it at the flea, I will mark it and take it to one of my booths on Thursday. Either way, it wasn't coming back here. If we could do this same routine each week - we might actually get somewhere. I'm not sure though because, as we were working, I had a call for an estate sale. This is my problem, I just get to working on cleaning up my mess and I get a call to clean up someone else's mess (but that is more fun). Shannon also was very supportive. She would say, "is this something you want to sell?" I would look at it, sometimes it was only worth $.50 or had a chip or broken and I would say, "would you or someone buy that?" If it was a no - it went in the garbage, after a few hesitant tosses I said, "you know, the old Jacky would have fixed that or dug in that...(pile she swept off the floor...there were still buttons in there) she said, "you probably have a thousand(s) other buttons" - I do (wink, wink)! I "let it go" and as I did she cheered me on. I know I do this for my clients, but I had no idea how empowering those cheers were until they were used on me. So, "good job Jacky" you have begun to purge and clean out. Thanks Shannon for helping me.
Also, I bounced some of these things off my daughters. Anna, said something to me that I have quoted to myself at least 3 times this week...."Mom, you can NOT help everyone, you are running a business not a charity." BAM - it was what I need to hear. Thanks Anna. With that advice, I was able to say NO to some prospects that were not the right "fit" for me. In turn, I have freed up some time to work on my own stuff. We will see what the new referral turns up - if it's worth my time or not - because, right now, my time is worth more to me. Blessings from Ringle, Wisconsin.
