This Is What Keeps Me REALLY Busy...

The biggest reason I don't blog as often as I should is that I'm a full-time teacher. And while I'm off for several weeks in the summer, that is also the season for estate sales and getting ready for The Summer Market.

School starts next week and I am changing grade levels and buildings, moving from 8th grade to 5th. I am so excited (and ready!) for this change. This summer I started creating a school Pinterest board and looking for ideas to spruce up my new classroom. I found a great website that offered several different themes. They were very cute, but I knew I didn't want an animal theme, or anything too cutesy or too primary colored. Scrolling through the options I came towards the bottom of the list and saw the theme VINTAGE PINK CHIC. Are you kidding me??!! THAT is a theme right up my alley! This was the theme for me. So for the past few weeks my aunt, my mother and I have been putting it all together. It looks fabulous and I'm so happy with my space now. Here is a before shot of what I walked into:

And here is what it looks like now:

LOVE the tables and I'm so glad I was able to trade with another teacher who prefers desks.  And the aqua chairs look so much better than the original navy chairs in this room with this color scheme.  I had to move all the chairs myself, but it was worth it!

Here are a few closeups.  My shelves with cute grey Target bins and the pretty labels:

My word wall which will soon be filled up!

This ugly school issued bookshelf, which I made cute with bulletin board border! Thanks, Pinterest, for the idea!

Each student table has a cute little vintage silver-plate tray with pencils, glue, and a flower:

To the side of my desk is a tissue holder with bling and a $5 estate sale champagne bucket filled with dried flowers:

Because I have tables and no desks with storage, I picked up these cute little three drawer carts from IKEA.  Bless my husband for spray painting ALL SEVEN of them white.  They were black.  Which is not part of my color scheme ;-)

 And my desk area, because it's important for teachers to have their own space!

I'm so happy with my pretty space!

Summer Market Show

This year's Summer Market was my best show ever.  It helped that the weather was beautiful and was very heavily promoted.  It has grown over the years and I'm so proud to be a part of it.  Dealer fees go to the Girls Give Back charity, which is a wonderful local charity.

I bought a new white tent this year which I found very useful, as well as much better looking than my old blue tent.  This new tent also had side walls which helped overnight.

Check out my beautiful shower curtain with vintage handkerchiefs sewn on.  I'm SO HAPPY it sold.  It didn't sell last year so I was ecstatic when a woman fell in love with it and is putting it in her new cottage:

On Facebook I asked friends if I should keep these bird knobs on this dresser or change to glass knobs.  The vast majority voted for glass knobs, but I really liked the birds (which you probably can't see in this picture unless you enlarge).  I must have a good instinct because I kept the birds on and the dresser sold!

Another big piece that sold was this beautiful old dresser I finished in ASCP duck egg blue; always a popular color it didn't sell till the last day, but it sold!

I was so glad that I decided not to string aprons on the top of the tent and instead displayed them on this vintage drying rack.  Quite a few sold!  I'm so glad I'm not the only one who loves aprons :-)

Lastly, having these vintage golf club bottle openers out in front of the booth really stopped traffic.  Almost everyone stopped to comment on them and I did sell out!

I'm looking forward to another successful show next summer!

Jane Eyre Collection

Check out this beautiful new collection from Jeanne Oliver:

I ordered the beautiful bag above as soon as the sale went live because I knew it would sell out quickly.  Jeanne is having a giveaway for the collection now.  Go enter! But I hope I win :-)

The Summer Market Projects

Bad blogger, I know.  I've been WAY too busy getting ready for The Summer Market.  And then immediately after that, it's time to get ready to go back to school.  I have not finished all the videos for Jeanne Oliver's business course, but I'm hoping to sometime next month.

Below are a few of the items I've been working on to sell at The Summer Market, which is in two short weeks!

Vintage hand-stamped spreaders, which were a big seller at BAYarts last Christmas:

Vintage Map key chains :

I know, you've already seen the above items.  Here's a new one that I am predicting will be a big seller.  Vintage golf club bottle openers:

I will post my furniture pics next week.

Growing A Business

One of these days I'm going to learn to balance my time better to work a full time job while trying to grow my little side business of creating and crafting.  Until then, I'm content to learn from those who have very successfully grown their own business.  I took Jeanne Oliver's Creatively Made Business last year and it did give me some great ideas.  Now, it's time for Creatively Made Business 2.0

I'm looking forward to taking this course and learning from all of these talented women!

spring?

Like most of the country we have experienced a BRUTAL winter.  My husband pointed out yesterday (while we were getting another 4 inches of snow) that I hadn't changed the wreath on the front door.  I had decided that as long as it was still "winter" that I would leave my tulle wreath with ice skates.  After all, it has truly been ice skating weather!

  So, I decided maybe he's right.  Maybe spring is just waiting for me to embrace it! So, okay, put the spring wreath up today.

Take that, winter!  And, I also splurged and purchased a really cute spring bag.  I'm ready.

happy valentines day

Valentine's Day has always been a special day for me as it also happens to be my birthday.  I like to make the claim that this is why I am so lovable ;)

Happy day of love...

image from the always fabulous graphics fairy