A Sunny Afternoon Off.....

Hello ! Helloooo !

I clocked off of work at noon as I sometimes like to do. Somehow, working only till noon almost feels like having a whole day off. I have Thursday afternoon off this week too...Yay!

I had previously decided I wanted to visit a couple of used book stores I had never been too. I nearly planned one trip last night, avoiding the super highway and still figuring out how to get there, but by bedtime, I had talked myself out of that one. Funny, because it prompted me for a while to gather some things to sell there, old tapes and CDs and the such and that led me to go through another box of old stuff that might have some textured things I could use to make collage paper designs. I never meant to spend that kind of time on it all and especially by bedtime a few hours later when I changed my mind about going. LOL D'oh!

By morning I had decided to go to a closer used book store and thought the plan was in stone, but before I could get off, even at noon, I got some crazy work that took a long time to unscramble and in the unscrambling time, I became annoyed. That caused me not to be so keen on going to the second store either.

I told myself "I'm NOT going!" .... however, after I did about 30 minutes prep for some other stuff at my art table, I found that I wanted to get out of here for a while and I still had my desire to go treasure hunting for things I might use for collage fodder. Fodder, that's a funny word, right.... anyway.

I did go out and I'll tell more about that below. When I got back home though, it was 70'ish degrees here and such a sweet sunny day, so before I carried my treasures in the house, I walked around the back yard snapping a few photos.

Everything is not in full bloom here, but soon more and more blossoms will show up. The Yellow Bell bushes have sprung their yellow blossoms. They are not full yet, but around here, my Uncle could get clip happy any day and decide the bushes need trimming, no matter that they are blooming .....so I feast my eyes while I can and hope he leaves them alone for a while.

The Bradford Pears are starting to let their white blooms open too. Very soon the tree tops will be totally covered with wide open blooms where it will nearly look like they are laden with snow.

I took two photos of my Troll sitting on a tree shelf and both of them turned out blurry, which I didn't see till I got in the house, so this is the less blurry of the two. Yes, I know I didn't have to post either one of them, but I wanted him here, so here he is.

That tree has the neatest knots.

My old wind spinners sure have had a workout in the past few weeks. I love to see them when they are spinning. There is a red bicycle one in the background at the fence, but it didn't show up that well.

Here's another one. After I took a photo of the top of it, I pulled it up out of the ground and carried it around to the front of the house to put in the front Azalea bed that will be nearly bare this spring since they were butchered at the wrong time of year. It was too far out in the yard anyway. When I planted the spinners, they were all between the Bradford Pear trees, behind the grass line so they wouldn't interfere with the yard being mowed, but my 80something year old Uncle who owns this house I am in has the beginnings of dementia and for some reason, he moves them about now and then. I never know when I look out the kitchen window each morning, where they will be in the yard. I find humor in it. I'm just glad he hasn't made them disappear completely.

One more photo of the sun flare through the trees and wer'e back to the afternoon trip.

I had decided to go to the local Good Will. I had only been once. A few years back a nice new building went up in our small town and there it was, we now had our own Good Will store. I used to go a lot when I lived in the next town over. Since it was on the high dollar side of town, it was always packed with good stuff. The only time though that I had gone to this new one, I was not impressed and thought I wouldn't go back, but it had been a while and although I wanted to go out, I didn't want to spend half the time driving somewhere.

I was mostly looking for things I could use in my collage art, like I said, but even though I was going to look, I had very low expectations, hardly any expectations actually. I pulled into where the store was and decided they must be closed as the lot was empty, no cars. Then I got to the front and saw a big sign that they had moved. I took down the address and googled the location. It was on the same road, about a mile away on the other side, so off I went.

To my happy surprise, I did find a few things I could use. The Lewis & Clark book had maps of course and other photos of handwritten notes and some other interesting stuff and of course the Atlas is full of maps, so I should never need more map paper.... ever. LOL

I also found this Thesaurus. I was hoping for an old dictionary, but there wasn't one. That's ok, one day I will come across an old one cheap, I'm just sure of it. The book of verse I could use as well, but I'm totally interested in reading all of that one. I'll use pages I don't like. LOL !!!

Maps in the Atlas.....

Writing from the Lewis & Clark book. There are more types and hand drawings of different things. Lots to choose from.

One more thing that made me extremely happy was finding these old dress patterns. They were just randomly laying among some home decor. I had asked Mom recently if she had any she had not thrown out years ago and she did not and I also asked one of my sisters and of course she did not have any either. You can still buy patterns I think, but I didn't want to pay today's prices for things I will tear up and glue around. I know it sounds silly, but I really wanted some. There were 5 packs for $1 each so I bought them all. I tried to leave two there, but I just couldn't make myself. I won't need any more of this ever either....LOL

This photo shows some of the pattern paper.

Those are funny things for treasures, aren't they? I found another couple of things that weren't paper. I'll show them later, but it wasn't much more. A couple of the books were a little bit heavy and I came out with nearly more than I could carry well in my arms. All of it for around $13!!

It was fun and I was happy with what I found, especially when I wasn't expecting to find a single thing I could use. So much for what I KNOW.... right??

Ok, that 's about it for today.

Hope your week has started off well.

Love you!

Jacey