Furniture, Thayer & Dear Crossing Finds

There's this family run furniture store in Highland (about 7 miles away), it's probably been there for 100 years and it's really the only game in town if you want some new furniture with free delivery. Their prices are really low ... I mean ridiculously low so they aren't taking advantage of the lack of competition. It's like this ... the family lives in the house next door and when someone drives up they can get up from watching The Price Is Right and walk over to the furniture store. The store is packed ..... you have to literally crawl over furniture to get to other parts of the store .... they make use of every square inch. So we bought a couch, the most comfortable recliner I've ever sat in and an old round (with 2 leafs) scratched up knotty pine table that we're now using for our eating table until we find something better. So here's a photo of the part of the "living room" that has the new furniture .... you may notice the dogs $500 bean bag on the right side of the photo ... maybe they'll stay off of the couch ..... sure :)



The walls look bare now but that won't be for long. Yesterday the epoxy resin finished curing on the table I made. This was really fun to make ..... I banged it up, scratched it, gouged it and carved into it before using Watco Danish Oil on it. I built some stick legs to attach the top to a base, wound hemp rope around it, mod podged the picture of the elephants onto it and the poured epoxy resin over it. I think I'm a resin freak .... I love that stuff! It's even more fun to watch Lea resin something .... she hasn't quite grasped the concept of it being very sticky, quick to harden and permanent, it's hard for me to help get her unstuck when I'm peeing my pants laughing. So here's my funky little table ....





Seems about every 4-6 months I do something to cause great pain to my lower back which often lasts a couple of weeks. That happened yesterday so now I'm a bit of a gimp for a while .... probably a good thing to slow down a bit but the pain really sucks and I have to sleep on my side with a pillow between my knees .... I hate that. So anyway we ran out of booze ..... again .... and had to make a trip across the border today. Thayer Missouri is a really old town and one of these days I'll spend some time photographing it but for now here's a 7,000 sq. ft. building that's for sale across the street from the booze store ..... I would love to have this place and set up shop .....



So we can't go to Thayer and not stop at the Dear Crossing on the way home. I was specifically looking for a long narrow horizontal sign ......

Nope ....


Hmmmm .... gotta bike .... Nope ....


Really liked the chairs .... maybe next time ....


So here's what we did get today ....

A glass that we'll use on our craft table to hold brushes .... oh BTW ... we ordered in all our silk dying supplies from Dharma last week .... tons of dye and bottles and lots of different silk sizes so we'll be building frames this week and dying this weekend. We're going to be steam setting the silk instead of using the chemical fixative ... now we have to find a newspaper that will sell us unused newsprint ....



And a really kinda unusual glass napkin holder .... the photo doesn't do it justice ....


At first I was attracted to these because of the ornate metal 5x7 frames and the $2.00 price tag .... but I also love the elephant and giraffe so they will stay just as they are ....





Same for this 8x10 wooden frame for $3.49 ..... loved the frame but now I love the image in it ....



Lea found this old Velvetta cheese box



And I grabbed this old tobacco box



Lea picked up a couple of these 40's glass blocks ....



And my favorite find today was this Machu Picchu clock ....



Which goes perfectly here ..... :)



So that's about it for today .... it's almost happy hour and Lea's down on the grass with her video camera shooting the hundreds of beautiful Dragon Flies who have been feeding in the backyard every afternoon for the past week. They are so big and docile, when we're floating on the river they land on your feet and hands and it's awesome to just look at them so close. So hopefully she will get some good footage and I can post that but for now here she is with Millie filming ....