Jaelou For You

7:57 pm ... ish

2010-01-28T19:46:00.000-08:00

It was {{almost}} 7:57pm.

Water for tea was boiling.

Mom was in the kitchen reading.

Dad was in his room listening to music or watching a movie, not sure which.

Emmy was waiting for me to get done taking pictures so we could get back to...

...Playing games at pbskids.org . :D

Happy Birthday to Me

2008-05-27T09:49:00.000-07:00

I turned 21 this weekend. I'm old now. That's me (in my dress that I got from Coldwater Creek's online outlet for not $119, but about $10), miss Emily Kay, and the husband. We went to dinner at Printworks Bistro (their webpage) because it makes me feel fancy. It's also the one time a year that I can make everyone go to a restaurant that they all hate. We came home for cake, icecream and presents... And look what I got...

If you don't know what that is, you should go see this. And I did not get just one, I got 2. Because my aunt loves me. And I think I'm borderline stalker of the Nester. No, not stalker, just big fan/advocate.

Then me, my bestest (Dusti), and my sister got dolled up for a night out. My sister being the one in the middle. The rest must never be spoken of. It was my 21st. :o) Just kidding.

PS - I got bangs. I think they're cute.
PPS - I will post decorating stuff when I'm not lazy or working at one of my two jobs. Which will be Wednesday.

Cabinet Makeover & Mistreatments

2008-05-14T10:04:00.000-07:00

My mom has been wanting to paint her china cabinet in her kitchen black forever. She has shown me so many blogs reaffirming her need to paint this. It turned out great. This is a before picture. See the ugly hardware. That drawer had a pull, but I took this picture right after it had been taken off. Now, the after.

New hardware. It looks really good with her table, which I should've taken a picture of, but oh well. She's going to leave the doors off and she already has pretty cream dishes displayed on the shelves. I know she's going to be checking my blog every hour for comments on her china cabinet, so let her know how you like it!

She used American Accents paint from Lowe's, Fast Drying Latex, Smooth Semi-Gloss Finish, Semi-Gloss Black.

But wait! There's more! I also mistreated her windows, ala The Nester. (I feel like I need to put the registered trademark symbol behind "mistreat" and "The Nester". But it's not a registered trademark. And I'm too lazy to look up the alt+ code to do it. )

The coloring/lighting is AWFUL in this picture but I don't have any photo editing software handy. So picture it just like this, but 100x better. I got each strip of fabric for 10 cents. A furniture store was going out of business and selling their fabric swatches. As I dug through the boxes I thought about how fun it would be to be a decorator pick out whatever fabric you wanted. *sigh* Then I tacked them up with upholstry tacks bought at Lowe's. And finished it by hot glue-ing Christopher Lowell trim from Joann's on the bottom. It was fun. Except the part where everyone but me thinks they are slanting down and makes me redo them 500 times. Grrrrrr...

This is another view of her living room but before the trim was glued on here. We moved the red leather chair from the bedroom to out here. It ties in the curtains a lot.

Have a great day & thanks for stopping by!

Lots of Stufffff

2008-04-29T16:48:00.000-07:00

Look at all the stuff! A black side table. An apothecary jar... or whatever those things are called. A cool vase thing - that is going to be painted black... or white. A couple of silver trays. A white tray. A cake stand. Red high heels - woo hoo... okay they were $9 but they were brand new! 2 crosses. A brass chandelier to be experimented on in painting - any advice? A cute lil birdhouse. Some Mammy Aunt Jemima things for my mother in law. Cuz she likes stuff like that. A white window. An screen door frame of some sort. And finally if you haven't noticed all ready... the find of the week... the antique fan. Guess how much it was...

Another look...

A closer look... Have you guessed yet?

I saw the fan. I found the man selling it. I said, "How much for that fan over there?" He says, "Oh. Umm it doesn't work..." Hahah YAY! I said, "Oh... okay..." He says, "I don't know... $5?" Nonchalantly I say, "Oh... hmmm" He says, "Well, when you turn it on, you can hear the motor running so it could be probably be fixed." I said, "Oh okay." Then I ran back to the fan and snatched that bad boy up.

At an antique store a few weeks ago, they were selling fans for $50 and up! And those had NO hope of ever working again. Sweet! Isn't it awesome? I gave it to my aunt because she's the bestest.

The end.

I promise to post today

2008-04-29T06:30:00.000-07:00

Dear Amy (possibly the only person who reads my blog),

I promise I will write about all the awesome things I have found in the last week or so... this evening. Prepare yourself :)

Sincerely,

Me

As Promised

2008-04-05T09:23:00.001-07:00

Finds of the Morning:

2 wood picture frames (to be painted white)...............................................$3 ea

1 shabby chic chandeleer.................. $5

1 Toile Pitcher.................................. $2

1 Robin's Egg Blue Candle Holder.... $1

1 Wire Basket (to be painted black).. $4

Plus an armload of Banana Republic, brand new condition, clothes I grabbed for a dollar a piece. I'll have to tell what I do with those later this week... And 50 cents for the first season of Sex in the City!

Yard Sale Ettiquitte

1. Please have proper signage! A piece of copier paper scribbled on with pencil does not work. Duh.

2. Please open at 7 or 8am. Opening at 9am is just laziness! And DO NOT rope off your driveway and guard your sale looking at your watch until the opening time. I will leave because that is dumb. And here's a hint to you bargain hunters - the times I have waited were never worth it!

3. Similarly, I can clearly see if you are still puting out your boxes but I can get the jist of it. Please don't have a heart attack about me looking in your unpacked boxes! It's not hurting anything. Either a) I might find some things I'd like to buy or b) I'll leave without ever looking at them! There are lots of sales people. I'm not waiting for yours.

4. Do not sell stuff that should be put out on the curb. There's good bric-a-brac and there is bad bric-a-brac. As our crew walks away from your sale, I will drop an egg or two in your driveway, depending on the ickyness of your crap. Okay, just kidding. But we always talk about doing it and we just might one day, so watch out.

5. I understand that people have emergencies, but hopefully there are not so many emergencies to account for all of the cancelled yard sales. If it is perfectly sunny out and I'm looking at your house and it's the same address that's in the paper and there's no sale and you weren't hugging the toilet all night, shame on you! (This may also call for the eggs...) At least put out a sign so we don't check back 30 min. later!

And I have a little annecdote for you... At a house today that was in the $700,000+ range, my favorite yard-salin' two year old found herself a tiny dog figurine. This was also the sale with the above pictured candle holder. Emily Kay was holding the dog and I asked her, "Do you want the dog?" And the lady having the sale rushes over and says to her, "Do you have a quarter?" Emily Kay smartly answers, "No, I have a doggy." So I shopped around and found the candleholder. As I was paying, Emily Kay headed back to the car with the rest of our crew and I said, "Here's a dollar for the candle holder and a qua--"

The lady interupts me. "Hold on!" She runs down the driveway yelling, "Did she like the dog?! Is she getting the dog?!"

Seriously. She was chasing the two year old for twenty-five cents. And if she wasn't being such a ding dong worrying about a 2 year old thief, she would have seen me holding $1.25 and heard me finish my sentence.

Again, this was in the million dollar neighborhood. Whatever lady. Oh yeah.... and here's Emily Kay with her treasure.

Why I have not updated

2008-04-03T04:44:00.000-07:00

March 22nd I had my own garage sale, which was disappointing. It was Easter weekend, which never does good for garage sales.

But we had a great Easter Sunday. How sweet is this?

Then last Saturday, it looked promising - lots of ads, then it was cold and raining after going to only a handful of sales!

So this week has to be better! I'm ready to find good stuff!

I'll have to take pics of my yard sale crew this week in our 6:30am Saturday morning glory. And I'll have to start sharing with you the Rules of Yard Sales. There are rules that we have come up with over the last 10 or 15 years for people who have yard sales, as well as shoppers - you have to have something to talk about in the car!

So be prepared for a big yard sale post!!! Rain date 4/12/08.... just kidding.

Yard Sale Finds!

2008-03-15T12:14:00.000-07:00

The weather was beautiful and I got some good stuff! Yay!

I got this strange owl picture that I'm not sure if I'm going to keep or not. I'd have to find a 8x10 frame and possibly a mat for it... and that sounds really complicated. I might just keep it for a while in a drawer. It's kind of cool though. And it was a dollar.

A cute little bird from Tozai Home (which I didn't know about until today) and a great glass vase with mossy filler stuff. I'm very excited about that. Both items came to $7.

A kitchy pair of cat pot-holders. A pyrex bowl. I don't remember how much they were. Not much. I also got a cute office organizer thing and toys for Emily Kay of course.

Unfortunately I had to miss the sales last week due to my beach trip, which was fun of course. But still :) And next week I think I'm going to have to have my own sale. Yucky.

A Day with Emily Kay

2008-03-05T05:20:00.000-08:00

Like I said, I have a two year old named Emily Kay. She is very sassy and has the most perfect personality, although I may be partial.

Yesterday I got to spend the day with her because my child care (my mom, hehe) was sick. We woke up early and I wanted to go downtown to some antique stores, but I didn't even think about it being about 3 hours before they would even open.

So we ended up at the library. It was the first time Emily Kay has ever been to one and since she loves books, I knew she'd love it. I told her when we got there the rules - that you have to be quiet, stay with me, and if you take a book you have to put it back where you got it before you get a new one.

We read some Max & Ruby books, a Franklin book, and any book that had a moon or a dog on the cover.

I know she's just a little blur, excuse the cell phone picture... but then again, that's kind of what she looks like in real life too.

I also went to Lowe's and got a bunch of stuff to plant in the yard. I'm going to have to wait until next month to plant the seeds, I think, but I went ahead and planted Blackberry Bush yesterday. I think it sounds really impressive but it looks so pitiful. It looks like a stick about the size of a pencil, stuck in the ground. Hopefully something will come of that. We'll see.

I'm really excited about having a yard! I just moved out of my nasty apartment to a cute little house with a fenced yard. I will definately post pics of my new house as soon as it looks like more than a bunch of piled up furniture and boxes. And it is a rental, so I'm just going to have to get over the icky green/peach color scheme outside. Oh well!

Have a good day!

Preseason 2008

2008-03-03T10:11:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Jaelou For You!

When I was in middle school, Jaelou is what I decided would be my brand name. If I was ever to have a store or a clothing line or anything, I would call it Jaelou - pronounced Jay Loo, but much fancier looking. Short for Jessica Louise - that's me!

I love all things crafty (as in arts and crafts) & cottage-y & girly.

One of my favorite hobbies is going to yard sales. After sleeping in on Saturdays all winter, last weekend I was able to finally go. There were about 10 advertised that sounded pretty good. I wouldn't say the season has begun yet, but it's definately almost time!

Here are finds of the week:

Here you can see 3 vintage beveled glass frames. I'm going to remove the poor falling apart butterflies and probably paint the frames, but I was really excited about the glass. You can also see the corner of a really cute deck of Hearts cards with illutstrated animals on them from the 1960's. I actually got 3 different decks - this one, an Old Maid deck, and a Canasta deck. No cards were missing from any of the decks! Old people take such good care of their things!!!

In this picture you can see a cross-stitch that I'm going to hang in my hallway after I paint the frame white. And I found this plate with flowers on it and you can also see the other 2 decks of cards.

In addition to what I have pictures of I got Emily Kay, my 2 year old, a Pound Puppies coloring book from the 80's and a perfect condition See-n-Say from the 80's, and she *loves* them. My mom got a really thick, old mirror to hang and 3 men's ties. And I got a bunch of tupperware-type stuff.

But get this - ALL of this was for $4 at one yard sale! How cool is that?

If by any chance any one familiar with the Wilmington, NC area reads this by this weekend I'd really appreciate any hot tips on cool shopping/sight seeing in the area. Thanks so much!