Tuesday, September 30, 2014

How To Make a Vintage Spoon Holder

For Tony's birthday last spring I had ordered him a special vintage stamped spoon.  You can read about it here.  Tony's been using his spoon when he eats his cereal or oatmeal, but given my track record for letting silverware slip down the garbage disposal, he was afraid I'd accidentally grind it up.  So last week he handed me his spoon and asked me to come up with a way for him to safely display it in his room.   Hmmm......



I went and dug thru my box of old picture frames and found a thick one that coincidentally didn't have any glass.  Then I grabbed 2 beat up pieces of wood from my stash pile and cut them to fit the back of the frame.  I just traced around the frame and cut the wood to size.  I gave the wood a quick coat of stain and once it dried I nailed them to the back of the picture frame....


Last week at a garage sale I had picked up these cute little numbers and letters inside metal rings, so I chose the number 4 for Tony's birthdate ...


And wrote his name using some of the letters, holding them in place with spiked nails.   Then I used an old staple to attach the spoon to the wood.  I love the wood grain, don't you?


It made for a quick and easy project.  Tony was thrilled with how it turned out.  It has a masculine feel to it, don't you think?  It's hanging on the wall in his bedroom and his precious spoon is safe from his mother who tends to get a little fast and loose with the garbage disposal.

 
Linking up with....

Monday, September 29, 2014

Estate Sale Finds 9-29-14

It was really slim pickings this weekend and I didn't get much, but I'll share what I did find.

A brand new set of cookie cutters, still in their original packaging, a silver butter dish with a glass insert, an adorable Snoopy ornament, vintage green kitchen utensil, 2 copper cookie cutters and an old package of bottle pourers, never opened...


A new candle and 6 copper tins.....


A 3 bowl set of Vintage Pyrex.....


And my favorite finds - 2 Audubon prints from 1937.   These are in excellent condition and will go well with the Audubon print I found over the summer.



 I think I'll paint and distress the frames a little and they will get hung someplace in the house.



That's all I got!  I didn't have a lot of time for picking this weekend, but something is better than nothing.  A couple things will be used in upcoming crafts, some are destined for my Etsy shop and a couple of things I'm keeping.  I can't wait to smell that candle. 
 
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Saturday, September 27, 2014

Delaney's Surplus Art Park

When we were up in Wisconsin to go hiking and geocaching at  Devil's Lake State Park,  the rain sort of ruined our plans.  So after a late Plan B lunch and a break in the weather, we drove over to do a geocache called Dr. Evermore & Lady Eleanor.  This geocache has almost 200 favorite points, so we knew we had to stop and grab it.

Hidden behind Delaney's Surplus store and salvage yard, you walk around to the rear of the building and enter another world.  Everywhere you look are objects covered with rust, and sculptures created out of every imaginable item.  Come along and take a peek at this magical world.....



 I loved the old phone booth in the background....


Carnival rides, old cars, trucks, tractors, tools, tables, trains, tires, even things that I had no idea what they even were could be found here....



This unique art park has some of the coolest sculptures I've ever seen.  Robots, animals, and insects are created out of rusty old tools, tire spokes and rims, musical instruments, sheets of metal and thing-a-ma-bobs....




Wouldn't this be a great place for a night cache or a haunted night tour??




Cute little insects made out of old propellers....


An ostrich??


Aren't these great?  I would love to see the artist creating these things....


There were hundreds of assorted musical instruments that were used to create different things.  It was mind boggling.  Tubas, saxophone's and bugles in particular.  The bugles were my favorite and there were dozens of them.  I should have bought one to take home.


Stairway to heaven????

Huge guitar made out of musical instruments....


I see an eagle.  What do you see?


Old Tommy Bartlett's tour bus that is being used as an office.  We stopped in and said hello to the woman who owns the place.  She knows about the geocache hidden here and wished us luck in finding it....

Louie said he remembered seeing this art park on an episode of Antique Archeology.  I bet those junkers had a high time going through here looking for things....




So I guess one man's junk truly is another man's treasure and beauty really is in the eye of the beholder.  Oh yeah, we found the geocache too and I gave this cache another well deserved favorites point.  We'd have never found this place if we didn't go geocaching which is just another fine example of the cool things you'll come across if you take up this hobby.

The art park is located behind Delaney's Surplus in Freedom, Wisconsin.  It's free to anyone but is located in a fenced area on private property behind the store.  From the cache page the hours of access are:

Open 9AM to 5PM, Mon, Thur, Fri, & Sat...Sunday Noon to 5PM CLOSED Tuesday and Wednesday.

Anyone can visit the park, so you don't have to be a geocacher to do so.  And while you're there, check out the store. 

Thursday, September 25, 2014

Hiking at Devil's Lake State Park

I've been wanting to take a drive up to Devil's Lake State Park for the longest time.  I used to go camping and snow skiing up there when I was in college and I haven't been back in about 25 years.  Devil's Lake is located outside Baraboo, Wisconsin and is situated along the Ice Age Trail.  It's a beautiful area with miles of hiking trails leading to landmarks known as Balanced Rock, Devil's Doorway, Elephant Rock, and Croc Rock.  Since it's a 2 1/2 hour drive from home, we wanted to make a day of it.  We got up early, checked the weather forecast for the area, which predicted clear skies, cool temperatures and a 40% chance of evening showers.  We figured we'd be out of there by 6:00 pm, so we were good to go. 



After stopping for a hearty breakfast, we detoured into Lodi, Wisconsin to grab a couple of geocaches and drive past a cabin we used to rent before our kids were born.  The cabin we used to rent has been torn down, the bait shop and the grocery store we used to go to are closed, and the main restaurant is being enlarged and remodeled.  Chablis and Louie sat on a bench while he told her the story of the huge walleye he caught there.



We headed on down the road and waited for the ferry to take us across the Wisconsin River.   The last time we were on the ferry Chablis was only 3 years old....


I had forgotten that this was near the Gibraltar Segment of the Ice Age Trail and I reminded Louie of when we hiked to the top of Gibraltar Rock almost 3 years ago to the day.  How weird is that?

 
As we headed across the river I noticed the dark clouds rolling in and the strong and steady chop of the water.  That wasn't looking too good!
 



Once we crossed the river we stopped at Goette Road Bridge to find a quick geocache.  This bridge is Wisconsin's earliest known single vault, stone arch railroad bridge....

 
 
From there we were only 5 minutes away from Devil's Lake.  We pulled into the state park expecting to see a line of cars, but we were pleasantly surprised to see only 3 cars in line to pay for entrance.  We were thrilled to be able to park less than a block away from the trailhead to Balanced Rock, which was the first stop on our ambitious hiking plan for the day.  We planned on doing the trail to Balanced Rock and then continuing on from there to 3 more points of interest along the same trail.   After that we were going to drive around to the north end of the lake and attempt 2 more different trails, grabbing geocaches along the way while we hiked and explored.  We passed this rock on the way to the base of the first trail....
 

Ahead we could see the base of the mountain and a huge pile of rock....


 ...and the rock trail leading upwards....


There's somewhat of a rock path leading through the boulders, but you still have to carefully pick and choose your steps along the way.  After about 500 feet I was thankful we had thought to grab the hiking poles...

Did I mention that Louie really doesn't like heights????

 
There was a steady stream of people going both up and down the trail.  The trail is quite narrow and anytime we met someone, we had to step back and carefully let people slip past.
 


Chablis and I were having a great time climbing around on the rocks.  I wish I could say the same for Louie.  Poor guy just was not enjoying it all that much.


Chablis found a cute little cave to sit inside.  We sat and took a break and drank some water.  I should probably mention that right about that time it started to drizzle.  Apparently the storm front that wasn't supposed to come through until that evening had decided to arrive a bit early.

 
 
We kept climbing but believe me, I was cursing the rain because the rocks were getting extremely wet and slippery.


And every time we reached a summit and thought we had reached Balanced Rock, another summit loomed above....

Right around this time Louie decided he was going to sit and wait for us.  The rain was making the trails too slippery and he wasn't taking any chances on taking a fall.  We left him underneath a tree and continued on, promising to call him on the cell phone if we decided to continue on once we reached Balanced Rock.  That's Devil's Lake in the distance.

 
By now I was getting aggravated because of the rain.  I was so disappointed because I knew our carefully planned day was going to end shortly.  These are not the types of trails to safely do when it's raining.  In my frustration I missed the turnoff for Balanced Rock and ended up climbing too high.  Just by chance I happened to turn around and caught sight of Balanced Rock below us to the south.  Crap!
 

Chablis and I turned around and started climbing back down where I finally saw the sign I had missed earlier.  I was not a happy camper.


We scrambled over the rocks and finally reached our destination.   There were 5 people waiting to take a photo with the rock and by the time we took our shots, there were 30 people standing and waiting behind us.  There were people everywhere. 




We took a couple more photos and then headed back down the trail to find Louie.  Unfortunately, by then the rain really started to come down.  We reluctantly decided to call it quits and once we got back to the car we headed out of the park, trying to decide on our plan B.

Plan B involved a late lunch at Pokey's Smoke on the Water where we had some great BBQ sandwiches with home made baked beans and got to watch some of the Wisconsin football game on a big screen TV.  Look at the adorable smoker they were using out in front....


 



Fortified, but still aggravated about the rain, we decided to swing around and take a look for a geocache we had heard about.  It had almost 200 favorite points, and we figured we could at least safely do this geocache in the rain, so off we went.  But more about that coming up next.
 
 

In the meantime, I hope to get back up to Devil's Lake sometime soon and do some more hiking since we missed so much on the trip.  I just wish it wasn't so far of a drive because I'm determined to get back there and hike more of the trails and find those geocaches.
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