Short-Story-Long!

John and I hit the yard sales fast and furiously this past weekend, and came away with the bounty of fun!  However, before we did that, we took advantage of our rented U-Haul to make a run to the county dump to drop off a large pile of debris and revolting dead furniture (old mattresses/box springs/broken mirrors) that had been "illegally dumped" on our property upstate. I was ticked about the illegal dumping, I'll tell you what! I wanted to track them down and point out that I was seven months pregnant and had no business lugging their filthy mattresses to the dump because they couldn't be sodded to do it themselves. John and I had a brief day-dream about using the serial # on their dumped computer box to hunt them down, but then we realized we weren't CSI tech gurus and learning how to be one was definitely going to take more time than loading it all into our rented U-Haul and driving into town... so we begrudgingly did the latter, while secretly channeling our inner Gil Grisoms.

The silver lining to this story is that while we were at the dump, we encountered a man throwing away a bunch of teeny, tiny children's chairs... Like mini-mini-versions of the chairs we used to have in grade school. And because I'm essentially a hoarder at heart, I casually sauntered over and said, "Excuse me. Are you throwing those away?" with my sweetest, biggest blue-eyed smile. "Go ahead and take them if you'd like them" the fella said. I enthusiastically picked up one to show John, and after he confirmed that these were well worth adding to my collection of stuff-I-got-for-free, went over to pick up the rest of the set. Sadly, I was a moment too late-- as I showed up, the chairs were launched into the air on a direct course to the giant dumpster. "Nooooooooooooooo!" I cried, in slow-motion, but to no avail. Their fate was sealed. Into the dumpster they went, and no amount of dismay could coax them back out (or anyone in after them...) I gracefully resigned myself to one cute tiny chair (rather than trying to whine John into a dumpster full of discarded filth) and brought it home for a quick and easy rehabilitation.

Easy as ONE-TWO-THREE... I taped some magazine pages over the seat and back rest, and then got to sprayin'. I happen to have cans and cans of meadow-green spray paint (Valspar's Leafy Rise) because you never know when you're going to want to make something green. Lickity-split, my junk-yard-child's-chair was transformed!

I was so enthused that I elected to spray paint the rest of my yard-sale finds in the same Leafy Rise. I know that might sound a little batty (or at least over-zealous), but they were headed for lots of different spots in the house, and I love having that cohesive theme from room to room. This theory applies to laundry hampers and retro fans as well, as you'll see in later postings... : )