Friday, June 01, 2012

Bits of Goings On

So I haven't posted in a couple of days, and I bet you're thinking, Yep, there she went, livin' that life of freedom and leisure she's been looking forward to; laid up on the daybed on the back porch with bags of snacks and a good book, or done told the boys "Adios, Amigos!" and hit the road to see the world.

That would be, Not.

I still have yet to sleep past 8 o'clock in the morning, and I'm still doing the same kind of things I did before: taking care of a sick kid - Kevin came down with a sinus issue on Monday,  fixing on the house, scanning my old family photos, and working on my de-cluttering project.

On Wednesday I needed to go to the store, so I put some coupon/sale deals together while I was going.
I made $3.86 by 'buying' these things:


I did the deal twice, then spent the profit on some other sale items, making them an even better deal.

I also decided this week I would tackle my toy collection, specifically my Fisher Price Little People toy collection.

I've looked at these for months wondering how I was ever going to be able to part with any of it. Little People are a big, BIG part of my childhood. Some old toys I can say, well, blah, I don't really care too much for that, but not Little People.




This week I decided I was ready to make a compromise. I could keep one set....or maybe two, or...however many...anyway, I could at least start by selling/trading off some extras and odds and ends I knew I had.

I would really like to have found a Trader's club or something, but I didn't find anything when I google'd...just a bunch of people trying to sell this stuff for waaayyyy too much money.

I figure I could under-price mine and sell them off, but that won't earn me enough money to be able to buy the pieces I need to complete the set(s) I want to keep.

In the meantime, I've been online checking out This Old Toy.com and grouping sets together and inventorying what I have and what I'm missing.

My Fire Station is woefully incomplete:


My School is my most complete (large) set, only missing a couple of things: a tray and some letters/numbers:


The guys finally one of the two new windows for Ryan's bedroom installed (while I stood by nervous and fretting and worrying about J on a ladder two stories up).


I hate and despise this job, but until we get all the windows replaced, we can't put on the vinyl siding, and we seriously, badly need vinyl siding. (Then again, the house looks like poor white trash lives in it, which I think protects us from thieves and robbers, because as many times as we've gone off, our place hasn't been bothered, where as I know of several people whose homes have been robbed in broad daylight while they were gone to work.)


I took this picture of Ryan's old iron bed (previously belonging to my great-grandparents)(with my little-girl Sears bedspread) in front of the old window because that's how I grew up. We didn't have central heat or air, and in the summer we'd sleep with the windows open.


Unfortunately those old windows were in just too awful a shape, most of them didn't even open anymore, not to mention not a bit energy efficient.
Don't worry, though, I'm keeping the old windows for DIY and crafty projects!

And another project I've been working on here and there, as long as it holds my interest, is scanning/digitizing my family's old photos. I got both my Grandmothers' old photo albums and have been working on scanning the old photos so that everyone can have a copy.
I already did the photos of immediate family, I work slower on the photos of the more extended family that we don't really know.

As part of my genealogy stuff, I have a family facebook group where I post tidbits as I find them and obits and such, and other people find the page and post their info, looking for connections.
So a few days ago a lady found us and posted her father's name, and it turned out her father was my grandfather's brother. One of his close brothers. He had several brothers, but some were a lot older, and some a lot younger, and they just weren't that close.
This brother and him were close, and both joined the Navy, and moved with their families to Florida for awhile (their family stayed, mine moved back).

I knew I had several pictures of her Mom & Dad and her older brother and sister, so I spent awhile scanning them for her.


This is one of my favorite pictures of the family, because it shows a loving family.  Not that my other family isn't loving, but in most of the other pictures the people are posing, stiff, not that comfortable, and the picture doesn't show what this one does to me.

Specifically look at Dad's hands entwined with baby boy's. Mom is up against Dad, but has hands on her boys. Big brother has his hand casually draped over little brother's shoulder as if it were a natural occurrence.

It's just such a shame how people used to didn't value pictures or take care of them any better than they did :(

Oh, and I nearly forgot, I scored 10 free pallets from Freecycle yesterday for some future pallet crafts:


2 comments:

Unknown said...

WOW you have been busy. I am jealous of your little people...I never had them growing up and always wanted them. They (though the modern version) are one of the sets of our kids' toys that I am keeping as "grandma" toys.

Melissa said...

You can't hardly go wrong hanging onto Little People sets. Either the kids will enjoy them, or a collector will :)

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