Official-(ish?) Announcement

When I broke my foot way back in August of 2012 (yes, August), I got stir crazy within a few days. For whatever reason, I decided that I'd focus on the Etsy shop/crafty things that I've always done & loved, but never had the time to give it 100%. It was something I could do from home for the most part, & at my own pace, so why the heck not, right?

Well...it's now Feb. of 2013. My foot hasn't healed, & has actually gotten worse as time has gone by. The one thing I've been doing well at the past 6 months is 'junking', 'auctioning', 'treasure hunting' & painting the heck out of old unloved furniture. Trying to make a 'lemons into lemonade' situation with my situation, I'm dedicating myself to this land of junk, treasure, paint, decorating, & far too many other ideas for one girl to have in her head.

In addition to my Etsy, I've got a 'booth' started at a 'new' place down near Murfreesboro, in College Grove, TN, the Henry Horton Highway Antique Mall. I'm doing 'custom' work/treasure hunting for people, & I'll (hopefully) be setting up a 2nd booth somewhere closer to Nashville at some point in the future. Everything from furniture to old rusty pie plates to turning old mirrors into chalkboards...if it's 'shabby chic', 'country chic', 'primitive', or a form of upcycling/repurposing, I'm on it!

I guess what I'm saying is-Hi, I'm Ginger. Middle Tennessee & the internet in general...come along with me on this new 'official' endeavor. If nothing else, I'll probably end up making you laugh one way or the other.

Day Two!

Yesterday I posted a couple of shots of a pair of mid-century side tables from my first 'project' of 2013. Well, they've now been fully painted & are so much more fun looking than what I started with! I'm going to lightly sand them, & then I'm going to distress the heck out of them so the 'shabby chic'/'cottage chic' look is complete!

Once I seal them & let them cure, they're going to be looking for a new home! Once they're ready to go they'll be for sale on my Etsy & my Facebook Business Page .

Happy Thursday, y'all!

First project of 2013!

Now that I am 'officially' out of my cast & I'm learning to walk again, I can *finally* get to work on all the furniture projects that have been calling out to me for the past 5 months. For my first 'project' of 2013, I decided giving a small pair of mid-century side tables a bit of love would be a good way to get started....

After mixing my chalk paint using Webster's Chalk Paint Powder (which is fab, by the way!), I pulled up my hair & got to paintin'...

After doing one coat of Behr's 'Glow', I sanded just a tiny bit over a couple sections that wanted to give me problems. I finished up the second coat a little bit ago, & this is what has been done so far! (Yes, I am going to paint the legs, probably first thing in the morning.)

So yay for starting the first project of 2013! 

This Week's Work In Progress...

Now that I'm able to get up & around a bit, I can finally start working on 'larger' projects. Cue me dragging out this antique mirror to work on.

Yes, the veneer on the front is messed up, but the 'bones' of the piece are too pretty to let the mirror die a slow death in somebody's attic. (If you have removed antique veneer before, you know what a pain in the butt it is. I'm a glutton for punishment, I guess.)

And now I'm off to start the slow process of lifting off the veneer...wood chisel, iron, & relevant accessories in tow!

Autumn Bunting...

Since I have acquired so much twine, & so much burlap type material, making some 'fall' or 'autumn' bunting seemed like a no brainer. 

I even made it without injuring myself! Woohoo, you go Ginger!

Now I just need to hang this up...but I think I'm going to wait & not try to climb anything with a giant cast on. It seems like a recipe for tumbling onto the floor in a very ungraceful way. 

A toolbox in the kitchen

See, this old wooden toolbox has been hiding in my garage since the middle of August. It came from the bottom of a super old, falling apart outbuilding on a farm outside Murfreesboro, TN. It was very, very, very dirty. So dirty that it's just been sitting in my garage taking up space & continuing to look like I should just throw the dern thing away.

While I was 'doing' things this morning, I figured I may as well clean the poor thing up some. I spent 40 minutes just trying to get surface grunge off this thing, but now it is (mostly) funk free....

Yeah...it's very sunny today. There was no spot in my garage that was 'sun free', so enjoy some free sunbeams. 

The toolbox doesn't know it yet, but it's going to become a cool centerpiece type thing for my kitchen table this week. Yes, an old toolbox filled with pine cones (from my baking pine cones post) & other 'autumn' type things totally 'works' in my kitchen. 

Shortly after cleaning this I cut myself on another piece...so all work has ceased for today, because nobody wants blood messing up their dirty old toolbox. 

Pine cones, assemble! Prepare to be put in the oven!

I've got a box of pine cones that have come into my life...and I need to make sure there are no creepy crawly things on them, & that the sap is less....sappy.

To the oven I go. I shall report back once I am done baking these little buggers.

The 127 sale door revamp-part 3!

Have you seen the door I fell in love with at the World's Longest Yard Sale back in August? If not, you can go check out part one and part two to get caught up.

Ok, now that you're caught up, let's continue on the door into a headboard saga. (These will be the last installment of said saga until my foot is done being broken, because as of right now the door is sitting in my garage calling out to me to hurry up & finish.)

After I'd scrubbed the heck out of it the first time around, I dragged it inside to dry some. If I didn't fear people thinking I'd finally lost all my marbles I'd have probably just left it outside, but I digress.

Here we go! After everything had dried out from the first round of scrubbing, it was time to go one more round. There were still a couple areas that hadn't become mold/funk free, so I had to remedy that!

Well, my plan was to remedy that, but nature had other ideas. It started pouring rain a couple minutes later, so I had to accept defeat for the day & pack my things back inside. 

So that's where I'm at. The door really, really, really wants me to finish up & let it live in my master bedroom as a headboard. (I'm sure of it!) Now if my foot would hurry up & stop being broken I could let it do so.

The 127 sale door revamp-part 2!

Scrub time! 

After cleaning off any obvious dirt, it was time to lug this thing outside & get to scrubbin. Wet down the wood, use wood cleaner/brightener, & a little bit of bleach, I went to town. Here's what I started with, right after I'd wet it down for the first round of scrubbing:

Obviously I was not in the mood for worrying about fashion, so you can laugh at my wonderfully clashing outfit if you'd like.

My BFF found it humorous that I was standing in my driveway scrubbing like my life depended on it, yet trying to make sure I wasn't going to break a nail while doing so & decided to snap some pics:

Scrubbing round 2? We'll get to that in a bit.

Remember the door I was so psyched about getting at the 127 sale last month?

These are photos of said door before I started working on it. I'm about halfway through scrubbing the heck out of it & then sealing it so that it can go ahead & become a headboard. I'm being super careful to not scrub off all the bits of paint that have clung to it over the past hundred years (that's part of why I fell in love with it in the first place!), but have to get all the mold/funk that has built up on it before I do a quick sanding over a couple of areas & then seal it. 

Obviously this project is on 'hold' at the moment...but dern it I'm gonna finish this one before the end of the month, one way or another!

Leave my shadow alone, it was sunny out that day! 

Sorry For Not Updating The Past Couple Weeks!

This summer is killin' me! Add in the heat waves that have been following me everywhere I go, & the travel that I do for my non-crafty/DIY jobs.....and we've got a slightly non-getting things done Ginger. After I do my trip to the Chicago area next week, it'll hopefully mean I can actually do things with the kick butt stuff that is simply screaming at me to get to work on it!

While I'm posting, though, I'd like to do my usual 'does anybody know of cool places to treasure hunt' question. I'm going to be in the general Chicago area, & anything from junk stores to Goodwill to places with architectural salvage are fair game in my little world. Hey, a girl can't help but ask.

Stay cool out there, y'all!

Ginger Rescues The Lonely Little Table

Remember when I went to Asheville, NC a few weeks ago? In between my photoshoots I had a bit of time to go treasure hunting, so I automatically decided the Habitat Restore as well as a couple Goodwills were on my priority list. The stock in these 2 particular chains is so varied that I honestly believe I could tour America going to nothing but Goodwill and the Habitat Restore and find everything a person could possibly need for their home. (It just takes a bit of digging sometimes!)

I fell in love with so many things at Habitat, I can't even begin to explain my love. It was a really, really nice store. Probably one of the best I've ever been to. If I had a Uhaul and unlimited cash I'd have probably almost cleared that store out. However...I'm a person on a mega-budget, so I got very, very selective...very quickly.

There were tons of mid-century tables, with all kinds of different details, finishes, and present physical condition. This little one caught my eye because of the details on the sides. After digging through the entire store to see if it had a mate, I conceded that it was all by its lonesome self. Picking it up, I marched toward the register & loaded my lonely friend into my car.

It is now sitting in my garage. Nowhere near as lonely as it used to be (part of the fabric bonanza landed on it), but not yet even fully cleaned off. I'm thinking some light tones, maybe a pale grey with a cool accent color to go along with it.....maybe. I've got to wait until it cools off a bit to even think about working on this, or I'll die of heat stroke trying to make old things new again. That doesn't do any good.

I am now in possession of tons of things to work on.

I will take pics & post them soon, I'm just exhausted today.

So excited to have all kinds of cool things to play with! (And thank you very, very much to the person that decided to let me have all of them.)

The Fabric Bonanza May Be The Death Of Me

As I mentioned in a post earlier in the week, I became the owner of almost 1000lbs of fabric, mostly in the form of remnants & scraps. I've got enough fabric for every project I can come up with for the next 5 years. Having such a high volume of material requires one major, major thing-storage. Storage that's actually organized. (I can't just throw all of it into a pile & box it up, that's not my style.) However, I'm totally stuck on what I should do with all of it. 


I'm asking you, dear readers, for suggestions on what the heck I should do to with all this stuff. Bonus points for DIY/repurposing suggestions!

When An Ad On Craigslist Says 'Free Fabric'....

I'm the kind of girl that combs through the 'free' section of Craigslist on multiple occasions each day. Sometimes the good stuff is gone so fast that the ad seems to disappear before I can even email/call about getting more information about whatever is being advertised, so when I saw an ad for 'FREE FABRIC' a little bit ago, I emailed instantaneously.


The fact that I got an email back 5 minutes later with more info made me slightly giddy. I always, always  need fabric for different projects, & I am not the kind of girl to argue with free. Even if only 50% of the stuff they had was decent it was FREE, so I hopped in the car & made my way over to the address I was given.


When I got to the location I nearly choked to death. The ad failed to mention that there was damn near half a warehouse full of boxed and bagged up fabric. Remnants, rolls, scraps, trims....everything a person could ever even think about needing for crafting/art projects. I only had one problem-I had to take entire boxes, picking through things wasn't allowed. And I had to take at least 10 boxes. 10 very, very large boxes. Boxes I could fit myself inside.

I am now the proud owner of almost 1000lbs of fabric. I'm pretty sure it's more fabric than I could even think of using in the next few years, but I'm up for suggestions as to how to utilize all of this stuff in some way.

Lesson here? When an ad on Craigslist says 'FREE FABRIC', sometimes you end up with way, way, way than you bargained for...

Ginger Versus The Giant Dresser

This poor dresser had been beaten all to heck & was having a bad day when I picked it up. When I say I picked it up, I mean that literally. For the record it's larger than it looks in this picture, & is solid, heavy wood. Managing to get it in & out of my van by myself was...challenging, to say the least. I'm sure there were neighbors peering out their windows chuckling at my attempts to unload this thing without damaging it more than it already was. 

BUT! Once I finally got it unloaded & into the workspace in my garage (See  the paint 'mishaps' on the concrete? Those happen on occasion...but at least you know I'm really doing all this stuff on my own!) I realized I like it far more than I had originally. 

I'm probably going to spend at least a week or so going over different ideas in my mind about what I am going to do to this thing....in the meantime the score is currently Ginger: 1, Giant Dresser: 0.