Cheap solar pool heater...and it really works!!!

Last summer, we hardly used our pool (15'x30') because it was just too cold! This summer, my boys went online and did some research and decided to try to make a homemade solar pool heater. They bought PVC pipe, a sheet of treated plywood, some PVC elbows and connectors and this is what they made.

Within two days of hooking it up, the temperature was at 80 degrees!!! The whole project cost around $100-now that's a bargain compared to how much a heater would cost if you were to go out and buy one! They thought of painting the pipes black, but so far, they are working really well the way they are!

Warren's Greatest Garage Sale...

Today and tomorrow is "Warren's Greatest Garage Sale" located in the parking structure at Warren's City Hall. Admission was just $1, and parking was free. There were four of us on this treasure adventure, Chicken's Auntie, my youngest son Eric, my DH, and me. I'm glad we went early, it was really getting steamy outside when we left and there really wasn't a breeze inside the parking structure.

 This is where we entered. We paid our $1 admission and got our hands stamped with a red bingo stamper-that by the way-doesn't wash off very easily!

It was really hard to get a shot that didn't have too many people in it-the place was packed and getting more packed as the morning went by.

The Farmer's Market was also going on at the same time. 

This is where we grabbed a quick lunch-very pricey, but since there really wasn't much to be had...and we were just about starving...not gourmet, but not bad.

 Drove by this and thought the sign was neat.

 Not bad for a quarter each!

 Fifty cents each-to go in my flower bed.

The last bowl in my second set.

It was a FUN day!!! Just an appeteaser for next weekend's Michigan Antiques Festival in Midland! Auntie and I have been soo looking forward to it and it is FINALLY almost here! If you are in the area, you should check it out-there will be around 1,000 vendors-great food-entertainment-a classic car show/swap meet-and kettle corn!!!

While today was a nice little prince of a day, yesterday's garage sales were a total frog! I found absolutely nothing-while DH found a bench grinder ($1-and it works!), and a Dewalt circular saw with case and extra blade (it works too!).

Saw lots of neat things today-makes up for yesterday! What did you find this weekend? 

Now I'm off to slather on the sunscreen and float away the rest of the day in the pool!
Hope you enjoy your long weekend!  

What can you get for a quarter these days???

A vintage Christmas tablecloth!!!

It had a few orange-ish stains on it and it soaked for a few days in Oxy Clean and now you can barely see them! You actually have to really look to see them-a quarter well spent! :)

I won!!

About a week ago, I read a post on Jill Ruth & Co. about her very first giveaway. She was doing it to spread the word about a precious little 4 year old boy named Garrison who has significant hearing loss and is in need of hearing aids, but his family’s insurance doesn’t cover much of the costs.

Jill heard about Garrison through her friend Rachel at Two Dog Pond, who is creating these awesome pendants and selling them to raise money to help Garrison’s parents raise the much needed funds to get him the hearing aids he needs.

The front side of the pendants have just one word on them. One says Blessed and the one I won says Loved. On the backsides are scripture references. Blessed is Acts 20:35 (“It is more blessed to give than to receive”), and Loved is John 13:34 (“A new command I give you, love one another as I have loved you, so you must love one another”).

Photos borrowed from Jill Ruth & Co.

What a blessing it was for me to get this in the mail yesterday! What an awesome reminder…1. To remember Garrison and his family and pray for them every time I see this pendant. 2. To remember to love others like Christ has loved us. 3. A reminder that I too am loved. I have it hanging from my mirror in my car so every time I am driving around and see it I will remember those three things.

Thank you so much Jill!

If you would like to purchase one of both of these pendants to help little Garrison, you can visit Rachel at Two Dog Pond and purchase them for $12 each.

Upcoming BIG Sales...

This Sunday and Monday is Warren's Greatest Garage Sale!  It is held in the City Hall Parking Structure from 10-5. It has been a few years since I've been, when I went it was still being held in Grosse Pointe (it moved to Warren about 5 years ago).

Royal Oak is also holding its annual parking structure garage sale on Saturday, July 17 and 18 from 9:30-6.

These sales are held inside the parking structures, with vendors set up on all the levels. There is a  minimal admission, and tons of fun to be had!

The Midland Antiques & Collectibles Festival is coming up in just a little over 2 weeks!!! It seems like forever since we went last September!! Chicken's Auntie and I have been anxiously waiting and counting down the days! Over 1000 vendors with all kinds of stuff!  It is held outside at the Midland State Fairgrounds.

Check out their websites for more information-hope to see you there!!!

Can it get any more crazy around here???

I haven’t been spending much time online the past couple of weeks, because our schedule around here has gotten incredibly crazy!! Starting with P.T. three times a week at 7 am then work, a bunch of errands, segment 2 driver’s ed for Eric, Adam finishing his first year of college and then taking nursing assistant classes, softball games, dentist appointments, a doctor appointment, a baby shower, a wedding shower, housework, opening the pool, picking up chicks, quail hatching….sigh-I get tired just typing it all!!!

After this week it slows down a little, but we pick up a few graduation parties, and who knows what else!

We had a 4^th quail hatch, but sadly number 2 is no longer with us. We didn’t expect it to live since it couldn’t even stand up by itself, it kept flopping over-poor thing! Number 4 doesn’t look very promising either. I guess the ratio of the quail that actually survive once they hatch isn’t very good.

We’re having a hard time regulating the heat for the chicken chicks-our little heat lamp keeps bringing it up to 110 degrees! We are hoping that the set up we have now will work and will still keep them warm enough without getting too hot.

Adding to everything else, our beloved dog Maddie (a sweet and super smart black lab retriever mix) whom we adopted from Animal Aid because she was abandoned isn’t doing very well. I am taking her to the vet tomorrow. We don’t know for sure how old she is, but we’ve had her for 9 years so we are just devastated that she is hurting and having so much trouble getting around. She was actually crying last night after she came inside and her legs were all shaky. I can’t let myself think about what this could mean…

I won’t be able to go treasure hunting this Friday either…I’ll be busy visiting my cousin and getting some help learning some tricks and tips for working faster and better with Adobe CS4!

Hope things in your life are a bit more calm and a lot less stressful than they have been around here! Hope you get a chance to get out and find some one of a kind treasures this weekend!!!

Happy Treasure Hunting!

Chicks are popping up all over!

During the night last night, two more quail hatched! One isn't doing so well, it can't seem to stay on its feet. It keeps flopping over. The other one is strutting all over the cage. There is one more egg in the incubator...it's due to hatch in 4 days.



I got a call from the feed store that his order of chicks all came in today, so after school we stopped off and picked up a dozen cheepers. Boy are they noisy! It was funny because as he and the shop owner were picking them out of the bin, to put in the box to take home, the leghorns kept jumping out of the box and running all over the shop! Finally he got a handle on them (and a lid on the box) and we brought them home.

They are funny to watch! They walk all over each other! They won't last long in the brooder box he has-they will outgrow it in probably a week!

New Addition to the Coop...

My youngest son has been raising quail for almost a year now. He also has one guinea hen (one has gone on to greener pastures), and two little chicks. He will be getting a dozen more chicks next week. He is getting 4 Red Stars, 4 Araucannas and 4 Leghorns. They are all supposed to be good layers. We should end up with blue, brown and white eggs.

Today one of the quail eggs he has been incubating hatched!!! It is the tiniest little thing and pretty wobbly on its feet-it keeps toppling over. There are 3 more in the incubator that could start hatching as early as tomorrow!

Another Successful Saturday...

Yesterday was a good day for sales-despite the weather. It has been rainy, and muggy and gray for most of the past two weeks. Today is the first day in a while that has totally blue skies.

It seems that Saturday mornings have become treasure hunting days for my DH and me. We get up whenever we happen to wake up (no alarm clocks for us on Saturday mornings), and head out at a leisurely pace. I know some think that you have to hit the garage sale road early to find the best items, but I've been successful and unsuccessful with finding treasures at all times of the day.  Just  because you were the first to arrive at a sale doesn't always mean you will find that one in a million treasure. I've found those on the last day of a sale in the last hours, and at anytime in between.

A book I recently checked out from the library called "Garage Sale Gourmet" gives a lot of good advice for beginning garage salers, and some extra tips or reminders for others who have been enjoying garage sales for a while.It is a quick easy read, and the parts that you feel that you have a pretty good handle on, you can skip over. I would recommend it.

Yesterdays finds were interesting... since my DH does a lot of woodworking, he saw on an episode of New Yankee Workshop a wood steamer made by using a burner from a turkey frying unit. He was thrilled to find the whole set, the burner stand and big pot with lid for $10. So we can try fried turkey and use the pot, or he can use it to steam wood with an old well worn pot that he already has.

He also got some "how to" books on plumbing and household repair for a quarter each. That is how I found the book on old pen and ink drawings of Christmas (reproduced) from the mid to late 1800's. At other sales, I found green bamboo tie down stakes (50) and a red bottle (for my flower garden bottle-scape from the magazine 100 Ideas Flea Market Style), a tall galvanized, skinny bucket, a divided pyrex snowflake casserole dish, a glass holder with 6 glasses, and a green fondue pot with skewers that look to have never been used.

Here is the galvanized bucket I got last Friday at a garage sale in the middle of the day-I've added a spike and some purple wave petunias and plan to add in some other vines when I get a chance to get back to the nursery.

This was my prize for winning Baby Shower Bingo at a shower I went to after all of the sales on Saturday.

What kinds of treasures did you find this weekend? I love to hear about all the fun things you find! So if you have a minute, leave a comment about what fun things you brought home this weekend!!

Oh, I almost forgot!!! Remember the 1863 Civil War game I got at a garage sale for $1 as a gift for my brother-in-law? I looked it up on Kovel's today and they placed a value of $65!

Happy Treasure Hunting!!

My Friday just flew by!!

My day started at 5:30am. Drove Eric to school by 6:55, P.T. (physical torture) at 7:00, garage sales at 9:30! I made a pretty good dent in visiting the sales in my hometown-it seemed like the most I had to drive between sales was 1-2 miles. There were sales EVERYWHERE!!!

A couple of the sales I stopped at, I got to visit with people I knew. One sale was a fundraiser sale with all the money raised going to P.E.O. (philanthropic educational organization), focusing on promoting educational opportunities for women. This is what I bought...

This is a beveled edge mirror-don't care for the frame-maybe I can talk hubby into making a nicer one in his woodshop...if not, I can always paint it...$4 for both.

Stopped at several more sales and ran a couple errands...

 Got this game (appears to be intact) for my brother-in-law-who is crazy about the Civil War-he participates in re-enactments all over the place several times a year ($1).

Got this little beauty for ten cents!!! I forgot to mention vintage ornaments on my summer sales wish list. This one can join the others in here...

I hope to fill it to the top with all kinds of bright vintage ornaments.

  I also paid a visit to a local consignment store where I found this!!!

I had a 15% off coupon so it was even more exciting!!

This was from a couple of weeks ago, I just forgot to show you. I got it at a church rummage sale for a quarter.

I also picked up a vintage Christmas tablecloth for a quarter, but it is soaking in Oxy-clean--it had a bunch of stains. I figure for a quarter, I'll give it a try, and if the stains come out-yay! I got a great deal. If they don't, no big deal.

Before I knew it, it was time to pick up Eric at school. On the way home, he called to see if his chicks were in, but they aren't coming in until Monday, and Wednesday. He's getting 12 (3 Red Stars, 3 Aracanna's,  and 3 Leghorns). He talked me into taking him to the feed store to look at the chicks, and we ended up bringing these two little ladies home. He was so excited-it was like Christmas morning! Now, we have to figure out how to integrate them with his quail and guinea hen...when they are old enough, of course.

Did you get out and visit any sales today? Did you get any treasures? I missed my treasure hunting buddy Chicken's Auntie today...she's busy with family this weekend-her youngest is graduating from college!!!

It's raining again, so that means no one is coming over for sand volleyball tonight. The last 3 Friday's have had stinky weather-I hope it's not a repeat of last summer's Friday nights!

Hope you have a GREAT weekend!!! Happy Treasure Hunting!!

What are you reading this weekend?

I just picked up these two gems from the library-and can't wait to read them! If you've been reading my blog for a while, you know I have a serious addiction to Fiesta and Garage Sales. So what could be better than getting two books all about the things I love?!?! I'll let you know if they are worth the read when I'm done!

What's on your reading list? Anything fun?

Tomorrow looks like it's going to be a GREAT sale day! There were 168 sales listed in our local paper and an interesting looking estate sale on estatesales.net. So many sales....so little time!

Summertime Treasures Wish List…

This summer, while I am out hitting the garage sales, flea markets, estate sales, rummage sales and auctions, I will be keeping my eyes open for the following things…

            ~Chartreuse Fiesta 15” and 12” Trays

            ~Chartreuse Fiesta Millennium I Vase

            ~Plum Fiesta Vases (all but the bud vase)

            ~Vintage Fiesta Relish Tray with inserts

            ~Vintage Kitchen Kraft Stacking Refrigerator Dishes

            ~Amethyst Depression Glass

            ~A Glass Pyrex Turkey Baster (with original box)

            ~Bright Vintage Table Linens

            ~An Antique Oak Secretary with Side Cupboard

            ~Fostoria American Cake Plates (both round and square)
            ~Fostoria Punch bowl & Mayo Set

            ~Bright Vintage Dish Towels

            ~Vintage Homer Laughlin Harlequin Dishes

            ~ Vintage Ladies Hankies

            ~Vintage Fiesta Mixing Bowl Set

            ~Vintage Pyrex Turquoise Mixing Bowl Set

            ~Vintage Fire King Dot or Tulip Mixing Bowl Set

            ~Vintage Christmas Ornaments

           

And anything else that I haven’t thought of yet that just happens to catch my eye! ;)

What  kinds of things are on your Treasure Seeking wish list? I'm always curious to know the kinds of things people collect, so please leave a comment with your lists-I'd LOVE to read them!!

Finally Got the Right Magazine!

A few posts ago, I was trying to figure out which magazine my friend Deb showed me with the article about the guy who collects sun purple bottles and how he displayed the bottles tipped up on green dowel rods poked into the ground in and around his hostas.

It wasn't Flea Market Style, it was 100 Ideas Flea Market Style by Better Homes and Gardens.

 Can't wait to try this!