Is summer really over?

Greetings one and all.  Yes, we are still here :)

It has been a strange summer for the two of us.  We have had some changes here that have altered our time together, our listings and blogging posts.

Mary got a full time job (finally) so our time has been together has been limited.

When she has her days off, we do get out and hunt for treasures together or intend to go shopping and end up going fishing :)  We have got the hang of taking the fish off the hooks rather well.

Summer just went so fast this year.

Our garden was a great producer this year of tomatoes so we did get a chance to make homemade pasta sauce for both of our freezers but we did not get to any canning this year. 

We had peppers, cucumbers, green beans, radishes, eggplant, herbs and of course tomatoes!  Currently the spinach is up.

We are hoping once Mary gets her set schedule we will be able to get back into our usual routine
of shopping, playing, listing, blogging and laughing at silly things. 

Hoping everyone had a wonderful summer, a relaxing fall and are looking forward to the upcoming holidays.  

Keep smiling, it is contagious  :)

Live, Love and Giggle

Cathy and Mary

Easter Memories

As Easter is upon us were thinking of our childhoods and how similar yet different they were being over 350 miles apart.

Cathy's Easter:
Mom would always take me out the week before Easter to find a beautiful new dress, patent leather shoes (white), lacy white socks and an Easter bonnet.  When under the age of 8 or so I also had little white gloves.
It was my favorite dress up time of the year!

Sunday morning my Mother would make sure everyone was dressed nicely for church and Dad would have an Easter corsage for my Mother that he had picked up the day before and hid in the refrigerator. She dressed beautifully for the special Sunday service.

After church we'd go home and change into play clothes because Mom was going to cook and we needed to be outside playing and out of the way :)

When we were called in, we dressed up again and the "good dishes",fine silver, and Grandma's etched water glasses were on the table with flowers and candles.  Mom would bring out a beautiful ham that Dad would carve.  All home made side dishes and fresh veggies on our plates and a prayer before we started our meal.

My brother and I clear the table and do the dishes and then on to the egg hunt with real colored eggs hidden in the yard. No plastics.  Off we would go to find the eggs and when we came in we had a small basket with a large solid chocolate bunny.  Thinking back of those memories warms my heart as the first part of the day was about celebrating the true meaning of Easter.  The second part of the day was the family all together. No friends, no phone, just family.

My Mother was very sentimental about family which is why she would bring out her heirloom dishes to bring her memories to the Easter table.  That is probably where I got the vintage bug from :)

Mary's Easter:

One of my earliest Easter memories was coloring Easter eggs.  All the little dishes filled with different colors of dye. Being somewhat picky about how I decorated my eggs it could be a challenge sometimes to create something that I loved.  My mom loved to color eggs, and hers always came out so pretty. That I have to admit I was always a little disappointed in the way mine came out. But my mom would make over each egg we did, as if they were all perfect treasures. They were displayed on our dining room table for all to see, along with a beautiful purple Hyacinth.  I still love the scent of Hyacinth, it brings back that memory of childhood.

We always got new church clothes around Easter, to wear on the special day.  I loved the new Spring dress, with the gentle pastels, or flowers, usually paired with little white gloves and matching patent leather shoes.  Sometimes with a sweater or white shawl because of weather.

Our Easter day would start off with running down the stairs to see what Peter Cottontail had left in our basket overnight.  My brother and I had our favorite, candies in our baskets, with plenty of chocolate and jelly beans.  We were allowed a couple pieces before breakfast, but only a couple.  Then it was off to church services.

After church we would come home and get out of our good clothes, while my father would go pick up my great-grandmother to spend the day with us.  My mother and grandmother would cook up a storm in the kitchen, and my brother and I would play outside most of the afternoon, until dinner was ready.  We did not always have an Easter Egg Hunt, but on those occasions when the weather cooperated, we had a blast looking for those colored eggs in the tall grass, that had not yet seen a lawn mower.

Our Easter meal was a more casual affair.  We always began our meal with a prayer and grateful hearts. We used our everyday plates and cups. With exception of the Jadite bowl, that we always had slaw in.  My mother made the best homemade slaw and always served it in the same bowl, which belonged to my great-grandmother.  That bowl now has a place of honor on my Hoosier that was my great-grandmother's.

May your Easter be filled with a grateful heart, family, love and laughter!

Live, Love and Giggle

The Twins

We are sorry but we are having technical difficulties........

We were to appear on The CraftStar live show this week to talk about the Treasure Hunt we had where we had hid an item in our shop for no cost and no cost for shipping. It was a freebie. And we had a happy winner!

It got near the time to plug in and we usually use the IPad for these live shows and for some reason my IPad was blocking our link to the live show.

I raced to the laptop, plugged it in and it took forever to load and it would not let us get to the link either which put us in panic mode.

We raced to the back room where my desktop pc is and tried to plug in the camera which the wire is too short so it was teetering on the edge of my monitor and we were trying to find the jack for the earbuds we needed to use. By now the show is 15 minutes running and all they can see is the top of Mary's head and my back room.   I am plugging the earbuds into every port and we still can't hear anyone, but apparently they could hear us.  We were unaware until we realized they muted us because we were laughing so hard.

Finally after the show was 3/4 over we had to find a way to communicate with them. They obviously could tell we had issues.  Technology can be wonderful but to communicate this time we had to do it the old fashioned way.........pen and paper.  This was our sign.........  :)

Embarrassing? Yes         Annoying?  Yes          Fixed? Yes         Another Adventure?  Yes

Live, Love and Giggle!  A lot!

We made a mess in the kitchen today.....but oh so worth it!

Tears of joy?

More garlic!

measuring spoon

spices!

Time to simmer

Cathy's half minus the one for dinner

We had a great time cooking together today. Mary had tears from the onions, and Cathy goofing around like she is eating the garlic.   We now have quick meals in the freezer for the busier days.  We were going to try to can this in jars in the pressure canner, but we ran out of time today.  Next time.  We will let you know if we blow up the kitchen :)

We had talked about a bumper crop of tomatoes this year and even though the garden isn't in yet, we are dreaming of making sauce from our own tomatoes.  The deer got them last year, so the fence is going up.  

Can you tell we have Spring fever yet?   

Live, Love and Giggle Often :)

Our First Crafting Project Together.......thank goodness we had COFFEE

We have completed what we started out to do which was yet another adventure!  We had some odd pieces of glassware, plates, tons of buttons.  As we laid it all out on the table we started thinking which pieces would go with what to make something pretty.  After our first day of rearranging the pieces again and again we got 2 or 3 we thought were perfect.

Day 2 we went shopping for some marine grade epoxy glue, silicone and PVC elbows.  As we opened the glue and tried to squeeze it out, we had such a hard time getting the one side to come out and blend. We made a bigger hole in the container, squeezed, used a pipe wrench to squeeze it, Cathy stomped on it, stood on it and then with a razor knife sliced the whole side open (and wished she hadn't).  What an awful smell.  Mary claimed it reminded her of elephant dung from the zoo.

A sit down coffee break and butter cake. Done.

Day 3 we went back to the store for more epoxy, this time choosing one for outdoors as well. Back home we went and opened in, put it on a paper plate to mix.......and we were in another part of the zoo.......the monkey house :)  We did use that one and after it dried there was no odor so with that and silicone we continued on.

A sit down coffee break and butter cake.

Day 4 we were cranking right along however we started noticing we needed more pieces so off to the resale we went.  Our favorite shop owner greeted us as always knowing we were going to load up a cart.  Found some sweet accents but not quite enough so we hit one more store on the way home.

A sit down coffee break and english muffins.

Day 5 back at it again and were rolling right along.  We need more buttons, we need more glass stones, we need more COFFEE!

A sit down coffee break and jelly beans.

Day 6 we went outside and took photos of our goodies and both felt pleased.  We had laughed so hard all week it was almost a relief to be done so our stomach muscles could rest :)  We did some listings and then...a sit down coffee break and some Necco candy.

Day 7............We need to go shopping!  We grabbed our go cups of coffee and drove off in search of treasure.

Live, Love and Giggle often :)

Our project is coming along nicely, or so we thought :)

We actually got a good early start today which seem to be unusual as of late.
Coffee ready, music on, space heater going so off into the basement (dungeon) to get to work.

As we started putting together our creations we were feeling pretty good about things.We dumped the stinky glue and the new glue smells a little better, more like the monkey house than the elephant house. So no more elephant dung for us lol.
Cathy was adding the finishing touch on a piece which was a wooden bird with metal feet.
Well, the feet would not fit into the piece so she decided to take the feet off. Well, she broke the feet off and half of the bird as well.  Hence the sad photo.
That led us to look around the table and realize we were running out of glass options and needed to make another run to our favorite shop.

Our favorite thrift store is a friendly store called Twice As Nice, where everything we buy goes to a charity that supports families.  And we know how important family is to us so we shop there almost weekly.  We have gotten to know the owner pretty well, and he is getting used to the quirky twin thing we have going. So today was pretty typical for us, crawling around on the floor to locate the special items that no one else sees on the lower shelves.  We found a lot of items that we thought would fit into our plans for creating the new items.  Mary spotted a little accent item, and then lost track of where it was when she got distracted by something Cathy said.  So as she is frantically searching again for it, Cathy says "What are you looking for", so I said it was a little butterfly thing.  Cathy says "Oh you mean this" she had of course picked up the very item I was looking for.  Which of course sent us into gales of laughter, no wonder I could not find it, she was holding it among other items.

We finally get up to the front to pay for our items, and the owner greets us with "How are you two today"  and we both responded at the same time "We are good how are you".  Naturally we are all laughing at this point, and he says can you do that again. We are like "ummm no" at the same time lol.  We don't do it on purpose, it happens randomly, without thought or planning of any kind.  It is that strange ability that we seem to have that causes us to speak the same thing, pick up coffee cups at the same time, just to name a few.

We are so blessed to be the best of friends, and sisters (twins of the heart).  We don't consider our business Twins Treasure Trove to be work.  Every day is another day for us to share, bond, and create more memories.

So Live, Love and Giggle

The Twins
Mary and Cathy

Winter has forced us to play indoors..........

  The weather has been chilly as it has been everywhere, darn Polar Vortex!

This has kept us indoors and cabin fever has set in so we decided to gather all of our unused pieces of glassware and start a new project.

As our coffee was brewing,  we set up the big folding table in the basement which was once covered almost to the ceiling in vintage clothing.  We set all of the pieces of glassware on the table, turned on Pandora and the wheels of creation were starting to turn slowly.

  We wanted to find out which glue would be the best for this project,  so we had purchased Marine epoxy glue which is water resistant.  We cut off the top of the glue and tried to put in on a paper plate to mix it and the brown side was hard as a rock.  We even tried a giant crescent wrench to get that side to move.  Finally we got a little bit of it out after Cathy was stomping it on the floor :) 

  As we mixed it and started to put in on the place we realized it had a horrible odor.  We thought we had transported ourselves to the elephant house at the zoo.  It was like we were wading in elephant dung!  I'm sure the glue will hold fine and the smell will go away, but WOW, what a shocker, :)

Once we scrape off our boots, we will be back to let you know how our latest adventure is progressing.

Stay tuned for more fun and giggles with the twins.

Live Love and Giggle
The Twins
Mary and Cathy

Planning for Spring!

 

 We are sitting inside looking at the snow covered tundra, thinking of all the things we want to do when Spring arrives.

  We have been planning out what to plant this year as last years garden was decimated by the deer.
We love the daily visitors to the yard, but had very little bounty left after they were done mowing down the tomatoes, peppers, green beans, yellow beans, even onions. The only thing they wouldn't touch was the accidental gourds we thought were cucumbers when they were planted.  So first..........a fence.

  We would love to hear your tips on keeping deer out of the gardens. Please and thank you!

  Cathy received a pressure canner and 2 boxes of jars for Christmas so as we wait for winter's exit we will be canning pasta sauce with meat.  Hoping for a bumper crop of home grown tomatoes this year since we have the new equipment.  New experience so we will let you know if we blew up the kitchen or not. :)

  We also are anxiously awaiting the garage sale/yard sale/flea market season as we have been unable to travel very far to find treasures.  We are no match for the ice that has covered the roads.  Ice wins every time!

  Wondering what you are dreaming of for upcoming Springtime?  Drop us a line. We'd love to know.  In the meantime, stay safe, stay warm, live, love and giggle.

Share us with your friends :)



 

What Were We Thinking?!

  Cathy's son who still lives near Chicago told us that his neighbor was having a garage sale and sent her a few pictures of the table.   All of the items were vintage, they had been this gentleman's mothers things.  The gentleman had racks and racks of clothing in his home.  His mother was a traveler and loved to buy clothing.  He did not know what to do with all of the clothing in his house.

  We offered to purchase the clothing based on what we had seen in the photos of the garage sale, and the gentleman agreed.

  Cathy's husband drove up to Chicago and visited some friends and family since that is where Cathy and her husband moved from in July.  He then rented the trailer and he, our sons, daughter-in-law and Grandsons all loaded up the trailer and the back of the SUV.  He then drove back to Southern Illinois where Mary, her son and Cathy awaited his arrival.  He is such a good sport!

  We were so excited thinking of all of the clothes and how we would list them.  We even bought a form to put the clothing on to photograph.

  When we opened the back of the trailer there were bags upon bags of clothes, coats on hangers, skirts and dresses on hangers and our jaws dropped!

  So much work to do!  We started sorting which took days and ended up with about 22 bags to donate.  Still we had tons of clothes.  We could not imagine owning that much clothing, even both of us combined.

  We started washing what was washable and using Dryell on the dry clean items.  Yes, some we ruined (Cathy did anyway) lol.  Then on to ironing and photographing.  Cathy had an iron that was very vintage and very heavy so she went out and got a new lightweight iron.  Ironing is just not her thing!

  This all started right before Thanksgiving and all are not listed as of yet.  Even working on it every day has been a challenge.  Some items went in the washer just fine, and came out with hems that came loose, lace that fell off, or a stain that just would not come out.  Even on a gentle cycle.  Those items we salvaged the buttons to sell but kick ourselves for not thinking of the buttons sooner in the 22 bags we donated!

  So as excited as we were about the whole idea, it has been decided that we will never buy sight unseen again. Such a learning experience.  It has become a bit of a joke between us now.

  We've tried on some of the clothing and hats and imagined where they were worn. Was it Italy, Japan, a special dinner, church, or a wedding?  We realized vintage clothing sizes are not the same as today's sizing standards because that dress certainly should have fit LOL.  So this was our learning adventure without a doubt which is where we've use the words "what were we thinking?"

      Every day is an adventure of one kind or another. Embrace it.   Live, love and giggle!

Traveling for Treasures

  We decided we needed to try a new area for hunting treasures.  We thought it would be fun
to go to Paducah Kentucky which is about 2 hours away.  It was raining that day, but we were not deterred by that fact and we were determined to hunt treasure.

  We grabbed our go cups of coffee and drove and drove it seemed and when we got to Paducah, we were expecting one or two exits. Well there were four!  We had no map, just addresses we had taken from the internet for resale shops.
Cathy's husband decided to be our chauffeur that day and as many U-turns as we made, he was very patient.  We would stop at a gas station and they would tell us to get back on the highway and go down 2 more exits to find the store.  After that store we stopped at another gas station and got the same answer.........keep driving. We drove and drove.

We made it to some of the stores and decided we needed to refuel so we stopped for lunch and more coffee of course.

We found a really large resale shop and thought this was the one we would find treasures in......well we found not even one treasure! :(

So after hitting 6 resale shops and not finding 3 of the shops on our list, we decided to head back home.  We were disappointed at being gone for 8 hours and not finding a thing, but we sure did have some laughs. 

We have found that we find the best treasures in the most unexpected places, not the planned trips that we make.  But the biggest treasure of all, is not in finding the best item of the day, it is the day itself.  For the biggest treasure of all, are the moments that we are together, the memories that we make, and our love as sisters.

Live, Love and Giggle

The Twins