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

The Twins Go To The Post Office

  We started off our day early on Saturday morning  with a super strong brew of coffee. We had been surprised with several large orders the night before and had to get everything ready to go.  It would not be our usual fun day of shopping on this day.  We were all about getting our orders packed and ready to go.

   Since we specialize in vintage glass, this is no simple task.  We can't just put our items in a box with a little stuffing and send it off.   Everything we ship has to be bubble wrapped to the max, and carefully packed to make sure that they get to their new homes in good condition  We always think to ourselves that the items made it all this time through the years, we would feel terrible if they broke during shipping.  We use a lot of bubble wrap and packing, and this particular day was no exception.  We finally saw the light at the end of the bubble wrap tube around 11:00 am.  We had been wrapping and packing since about 8:00 working together to get all the orders packed, weighed and labeled for shipment.  It was finally time to go. We carried everything out to the car, loaded it up, got our coffee and got ready to roll.

  We headed off to the post office, happy with the way our morning was going.  We parked close up front and start unloading the car.  We were each juggling three boxes and they are definitely not light as glassware is quite heavy. lol.  As we were walking to the front door we notice through the front window that the counter area is blocked off.

THEY WERE CLOSED!

  How can this be!?  We had hurried as fast as we possibly could.  They are supposed to be open till noon on Sat, or well we thought they were.  They locked their doors at exactly 11:00 am. on Saturday.

 We sadly made our way with our boxes back to the car and gently put them back in.  Now what the heck are we gonna do?  We settled back into the car and start trying to figure out what we are going to do.  We have deadlines which are mostly self imposed of course. We like our orders to go out the next day if at all possible.

 We headed off thinking maybe another Post Office would be open in another town, however we live in a rather rural area so they all close at the same time.  The post office in the town Mary lives in  is actually open only until 10:30am.  We then remembered seeing Cathy's postal gal on her road earlier, in fact we waved hello to her on our way to her post office.  So the light went on in our heads that we could find her on her route and ask her, beg her to take our packages to go out.

  We headed down toward Cathy's house and passed her street.  About a mile down is the next street and so we thought we would catch her down the winding road.  As we passed  each road we looked down to see if we could see her car and finally low and behold she was in a cul-de-sac.  We had her cornered :)    Cathy got out of the car and explained what had happened and the postal gal said she would be happy to take our packages..........but her car was filled to the brim.

  She rearranged her whole car to fit in our 6 big boxes and we felt terrible because she barely had room to sit in her own car to drive.  It reminded us of Santa's sleigh filled with toys.  She went on her way and we sat back with a sigh of relief. Kudos to our post office delivery gal!  A little gift at Christmas will express our happiness.

  To celebrate our adventure we went to a local restaurant and had a nice hearty bowl of beef vegetable soup and a good hot cup of coffee, some conversation and some laughs.

  We now have the post office hours on the refrigerator.  We have become more wise since this experience.  All in all, just having the soup, coffee and sister time was worth every minute!