Doodle Bug: Shoveling, Shlepping, & Shopping.

Today is the first day of Buffalo's March Occasional Sale, and it's a good one! I've been working this week trying to finish up a few big projects for the store, and this morning I took in the last two things. Phew! It feels good to have a full booth, and I even had time to check out a few of the other stores in town. We have such a creative little nook here, and it is so neat to see what everyone is doing. So, here is a summary of my day, a day in Buffalo, Minnesota!

To start, I had to get out of the driveway...and get the snow out of the back of the truck. This is the life of a girl in the upper midwest without a garage :)

This is me and my buddy, the $5 garage sale shovel, scooping out the back of the truck. Gas is wayyy to pricey for me to haul around a bunch of freeloading snow! I could probably buy a cabinet knob for what it might cost me...and you know how much I like knobs.

Even better than shoveling snow?

I got to use 4 wheel drive to get out of the driveway. Be very, very jealous.

Aaaanyway...on to the fun things of life. First, I stopped in to the bank and called my Mom! (Sorry, no pictures of a deposit slip, I don't love you all that much). Then, I hopped on over to Now & Again to drop off a barnwood-framed mirror that the hubby and I just finished! I found the mirror at a thrift store for only a few bucks, took the mirror out of the old frame and framed it up in this great old barn wood, which we got from Family H (Remember them? They gave me the box from This post and the bench from This post? They get a gold star for "giving of great junk"). Of course, by "I framed it up," I mean that JOE framed it up--he's so good.

Here is another little spot in the store, again you see the giant pear. It's making the rounds.

After dropping off the mirror, I wanted to stop in to some of the other occasional sales in town. For those who aren't from around here, Occasional Weekend is a local phenomenon. This town (and now a few other surrounding towns) has many little stores that are only open one weekend a month. It started with the original occasional store, Second Hand Rose, and has grown from there.

I hadn't been in Second Hand Rose in a long time, so I thought I would stop in. I saw some beautiful things. Here are a few of my favorites.

This is a really cute dresser for someone who loves color!

Beautiful iron pedestal bowl.

I see these pulleys on American Pickers (Raise your hands for the Iowa boys!!) and online from designers all the time, but they are so expensive! We're lucky to have such a great source for vintage finds, and they have great prices here, too!

This dresser has a great, unique color. And it was sold, good for them!

I'm glad you can't see me right now, because I'm drooling over this pendant light...and pretty much everything else. What a beautiful vignette. Maybe I should have just bought it all, but Joe and I just started Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University, so it's a little early to be breaking budget :)

I went to a few other stores, but didn't see anything that screamed "TAKE ME HOME!" until I saw these little guys at Atelier.

They're plant markers, aren't they adorable??? Such a beautiful idea, and the person making them has just the right touch of craftsmanship-meets-whimsy. I wonder if she takes custom orders, so that me and my must-have-a-zillion-kinds-of-heirloom-tomatoes self could get some with the tomato breeds' names. Hmmm...
What's that? You wonder what an heirloom tomato is? (Cue Joe groaning in the background because he thinks it's ridiculous how much I love these things). An heirloom tomato is a tomato breed that is generally 50 years old or older. They have all different kinds, my favorite so far being the Gold Medal from Seed Savers Exchange. Here's a baby I grew last summer:

Yum. I miss tomatoes this time of year.
Oh! Speaking of veggies and gardening, here's a quick update on the pepper plants that are in my Kitchen Window Garden. If you remember, when I finished planting, it looked like this:

Well, I had planted small, hot peppers in half of the jars, and chives in the others. Too bad for me, only one (count it) One chive came up. And I don't mean one jar of chives, no I mean one chive. One. Flippin'. Seed. *spit, spit* So I transplanted the extra pepper plants (I planted three seeds in each jar) into the empty jars, and filled them all up. About a month ago, they looked like this!