The 50 by Fifty Challenge!

Welcome to the official kickoff of the Just Bee 'n Me 50 by Fifty Challenge! A few weeks ago as my 49th birthday was approaching I had an idea...what if I used my blog to chronicle a personal year-long 50 pound weight loss challenge that would culminate on my 50th birthday in 2011...? After thinking about it and praying about it, I decided to take the plunge and go public with my weight loss journey. I started something called "Weigh in Wednesday" way back in 2005 when I started my blog, but the effort fell apart during that very difficult/divorce year and I dropped it. So, here I am again...ready and willing to share this new adventure with you!

I have much more to lose than 50 lbs., to be sure, but I know from MANY years of losing and re-gaining weight that it is best to stick to realistic, attainable and maintainable goals. SO...one pound a week for a year...can I do it? On my own steam and with my own "will power"...not likely if history repeats itself, but with the Lord's help and guidance, you bet!!

To keep this real and to provide a proper record of the journey, I will be posting a weight loss ticker at the top of my posts, which I will update weekly after I weigh on Fridays (to be known here as '50 by Fifty Friday"). In addition, my hubby took a full length "Before" photo of me at my birthday party on Saturday and I'm sharing it here. I'm hoping that the follow-up "After" photo a year from now will show a 50 (or more?) pounds lighter me. (I may also share some in-progress photos along the way as appropriate)...

In addition to sharing my progress, I plan to share some highs and lows, challenges and victories, and lessons learned from my weight loss experience which I hope will be a help and encouragement to anyone who may be on or who is contemplating being on their own weight loss journey. I will be using the Weight Watcher's points plan as my "diet" (lifestyle change) as I have LOTS of materials, booklets, etc from them from the MANY years of on-and-off participation in their program. As a money saving step, I will not be joining and attending a weekly meeting, but instead will make my "50 by Fifty Friday" posts my "meeting" with all of you, my new accountability partners...

So, here goes! I would appreciate your prayers dear friends as I know they will play a key role in my success. Also, I'm not asking anyone to share this on their blog like we sometimes do for giveaways (although you can), but I would LOVE it if you would become a Just Bee 'n Me "follower" if you aren't already, and also please add Just Bee 'n Me to your blogroll pretty please so more people will hopefully make it by here and be encouraged...  I'm also working on a Just Bee 'n Me banner for posting on your sidebar if you so desire...I hope to have it ready by next week. THANK YOU in advance for sharing this journey with me!!!

"Roll your works upon the Lord [commit and trust them wholly to Him; He will cause your thoughts to become agreeable to His will, and] so shall your plans be established and succeed."

Proverbs 16:3 (Amplified)

Shop Stuff, and a Birthday...

(click any photo to enlarge)

I hope y'all don't get tired of my shop photos...we change the look there on a fairly regular basis and I always want to be able to share it with you...  It's where all my decorating mojo goes these days...and a LOT of my time. I used to take a fair amount of photos of my treasure hunting finds, but now there seems to be little time for that, so the only way I have to show them to you is for you to see them in the shop all cleaned up and ready to sell...

Occasionally however, I do sneak a "before" photo like I did here with the makings of a coordinated set of serving items...it's just a pile of thrift store plates and glass here...

...but I turned it into these tiered serving pieces...

I am going to make a concerted effort to take more before shots...because who doesn't love befores and afters...?

Meanwhile, here's a look at the Easter-themed area in the back section of our space...

Here's a peek at the sweet little Easter display of "Pass-it-On" cards from Universal that I mentioned in a previous post. This is the first time that Universal has featured an entire collection of my artwork in a dedicated display! I love the way it came out! I also have the Mother's Day and "You are Special" collections ready to add to the shop right after Easter. I'm so glad to have the opportunity to share these little seeds of faith with our customers at Whispering Willow!

A few more snaps from the Easter section...

This is something I want to do more of in the shop...put together moderately-priced complementary gift items grouped into a gift container and sold as a single item...

We moved the wicker shelf from the desk to the table and added a few Springy-Eastery items...

...and we added a shabby metal shelf to the desk to replace the wicker shelf...from this angle on the left, you can also see a bit more of the cute English washstand with the marble top and transferware tile backsplash that my parents bought at an antique sale recently...it's holding the serving pieces I shared earlier...

Thanks for hanging with me for that little tour. The town where our shop resides (Tomball, TX) is hosting a 3 day German Heritage Festival today, Saturday and Sunday. 150,000 folks are expected to attend over the 3 days (yikes!). From what I've heard from the other vendors, we have a crazy few days ahead of us at the shop. We'll keep the shop open late hours to coincide with the festival and the carvival which is right across the street from us. Mom and I will work the 5 - 10 shift tonight...we took the Friday shift because my birthday is tomorrow (more on that in a minute...)

It should be an interesting weekend...I hope we sell a bunch!! It be great for you Houston-based folks to stop by...it should be a lot of fun!

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Yep, my birthday is tomorrow...I'll be 49! Whew...where did the years go...? I have a fun birthday-related announcement to share with all of you...It has to do with beginning my 50th year and what I hope to do in that year. I'll do that on Sunday, so I hope you'll stop back by!

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"All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be."

Psalm 139:16

(His) Timing is Everything

Welcome Spring 2010! You wouldn't know it was here by the Arctic blast that just came through here yesterday and turned it back to "Winter" (well, it got into the 30's again last night, which is wintery enough for me). But by the calendar, Spring arrived yesterday, whether or not the weather forecast, the endless white of a snow filled yard, or the icy cold blast of wind begs to differ...

Timetables, schedules, clocks, and calendars are useful for us humans for a host of reasons, but God doesn't work on our time schedules. Oh, how often we wish He would! But, He sees the big picture and works from His perfect plan and knows precisely when to do what needs to be done for His greatest glory and our greatest blessing...

How many times have I given up in the darkest night, just before the glorious dawn was about to break...? How many times have I rushed ahead to do something, vainly trying to "help" God accomplish His promise for me...? (ask Sarah and Abraham how that worked out for them!) As hard as it may be a times, we simply must learn to trust...to walk by faith and not by sight...

So, no matter what you see from your window today, tune your heart to the song of Spring by faith and belt out a glorious hymn of praise to the Lord for His wonderful, perfect timing! The birdsong and blossoms will join with you soon enough!

Have a glorious week by faith dear friend!

"For we walk by faith, not by sight."

2 Cornthians 5:7 (NKJV)

Farmer John

With warmer, glorious sunny days upon us, my sweet hero of a hubby set out yesterday to plant a small veggie garden on our property. Planting a bean in a dixie cup in elementary school is about the extent of my personal experience with veggie gardening, so thankfully hubby (or Farmer John as I now call him) has planted a row or two in his day...

We went with seedlings from the local feed store, plus a package of watermelon seeds. We bought corn, zucchini, snap beans, bell peppers, and cucumbers to start out...

I'm looking forward to learning about this whole veggie gardening thing...I think I've heard that there's watering and weeding involved...right? Boy, I'm glad I'm not in charge of this project! I will, however, be making some cute little signs to show what's growing on each row...oh, and I'll probably get a cute straw hat too! Yep this gardening thing is gonna be fun! :o)

Hope that your weekend was full of YOUR kind of fun!

"The Lord will guide you continually,giving you water when you are dry and restoring your strength. You will be like a well-watered garden,like an ever-flowing spring."

Isaiah 58:11

Shopkeeping Update: Busy Week!

Hello friends! Sorry to have been away for a week...but after our bust at Canton, we have more than made up for it in the past week with some great local junking, glorious weather (perfect for furniture painting and lots of garage sales), and lots of prep work for new items to go in the shop. It was a very busy and productive week!

Here are some new photos from the shop...we just completed these updates Sunday...

(click any photo to enlarge)

One thing we are continuing to do is to bring in more merchandise based on my illustration work. I ordered several sets of notecards from my CafePress store, divided them into sets of 5, and tied them together with coordinating ribbon, then placed them around the shop. Here are a few sets...

I LOVE finding fun red and green kitchen goodies...this sweet strawberry cookie jar is from an estate sale and the cherry salt & pepper shakers are from an incredible liquidation sale put on by a couple that were regular dealers at Round Top that are now getting out of the junk business. You junkers would LOVE digging through their huge warehouse and storage containers FULL of antiques and collectibles...so FUN! They are holding this sale daily until everything is gone

...I'm sure we will go back...

These cute glass apple-shaped bowls were at a great thrift store that we discovered a couple of weeks ago...

Love how these vintage stainless butter knives look nested in this old lid-less teapot...

We used this cute expandable yellow peg rack we found last week to fill an empty spot on the wall...and hung an embroidered apron and crocheted runner on it. The fun chicken mold was found at a sale several weeks ago - it seems right at home in this spot...

Who doesn't love a freebie? This old Anchor Hocking juice bottle was among about 4 bags of FREE stuff we scored on Saturday. We headed to a storage warehouse sale at about 2:00 in the afternoon only to find that everyone was already packing up. The folks at this one particular storage unit had a number of boxes still out and they told us (begged us really) to take anything we wanted - no charge! They were sick of dealing with it all. Well, that was REALLY fun to dig through...in coming days I'll be showing you more of our scores from that encounter...

I've had this rocking chair for years and finally decided to sell it (we just don't have room for it). I paired it with this cute yellow rose crocheted throw that I found back in '08 for $2.00. Wow, someone worked so hard on this...I love rescuing this kind of handiwork...

Here's another freebie - this sweet creamy-yellow provencial desk was being carted to the curbside at the end of a garage sale to be thrown away...we just happened to drive up a they were putting it, as well as two perfectly good end tables, out to the street. Can't stand to see perfectly good furniture thrown away...

We added this little wicker etagere for height and additional display space. It was $5.00 and a medium brown color when we found it at a garage sale a few weeks ago. We finally had good weather this past week and were able to spray paint it heirloom white...

This is a terrible photo because the sun was so bright behind it, but it gives you a glimpse of this adorable little vintage (or vintage-inspired) shaving/wash stand. This was a $4.00 find, and I was thrilled to find out that the big Homer Laughlin floral wash basin I already had fit it perfectly....

Here is a fun little cloche I made using a pink teacup ornament for the topper, an inverted candle holder for the cloche, a one-off Homer Laughlin salad plate, and a little glass candle stick...

The round table and chairs that we had at the far end of our space sold on Saturday, so the sweet gals that were working at the shop kindly moved the Duncan Phyfe into its place and redid the tabletop...they did a great job...

This is an example of what you can do with an odd number of

glass dessert dishes...I placed these on a long, narrow mirror to provide holders for sugar packets, toothpicks, etc, but it would be perfect for condiments too, or for Q-tips and cotton balls, etc on a vanity...

Even though the rose on this sweet little Lefton egg cup is patially broken off, it is still really pretty...

I've shown this handmade cloche before, but this time its housing a beautiful vintage Radnor floral bone china bouquet sitting in an etched glass dessert dish...

Thanks for hanging in there through all those photos! I feel sometimes like I'm constantly in catch-up mode and instead of pacing my posts every couple of days or so, I cram a whole week or so worth of news into one LONG post. Well, I'm so grateful that you haven't given up on me and that you've kept coming here even though I don't post as often as I'd like! Thank you for that!! But I still hope to do better and be a more regular, steady blogger...

I am very excited about a soon upcoming post where I will show you my Easter, Mother's Day, and "You are Special" collections at Universal Designs...I have ordered some of the items wholesale to sell in the shop and am eagerly awaiting their arrival!! Can't WAIT to see them in person myself and to show you guys! It is so neat to see all these things that I have been working on for so long now finally come to fruition...God is so good, and I am so very blessed!

Have a glorious rest-of-the-week friends!!

"May he grant your heart’s desires and make all your plans succeed."

Psalm 20:4

Canton...or Bust?

Oh, how I WISH I had something awesome to share with you about our Canton trip...I really wish I did. But sadly, I must report that our trip was a bust...

We started out Thursday morning with such bright-eyed enthusiasm. It was a gorgeous, sunny (though windy and chilly) day, and we had the most pleasant 3+ hour drive to Canton. We drove to our CUTE, cozy clean private cottage where we would be spending the night, and I'm sad to say that the cottage ended up being the highlight of our trip...EVERYTHING went downhill from there...

It was already past 2:00 in the afternoon by the time we made it to the Trade Day grounds. We headed straight for the "rust and dust" area - a large open air section consisting of row after row of vendor spaces with open tables filled with lots of glorious junk...dusty china and glassware, rusty architectural features, piles of mis-matched costume jewelry, boxes and boxes of old photos and postcards, and LOTS of chippy old furniture. It was a junkers paradise...until I started seeing the trend in the pricing. At table after table, vendor after vendor, I saw the same thing over and over...hyper-inflation. Seems as though now everyone is much more savvy about the worth of collectibles/junk than in the past and it really showed up in their pricing. It is so surreal to hear a rough and rugged, rumpled East Texas good-ole-boy saying things like "that there's McCoy (or Fenton, red transferware, Fiesta, whatever), and I caint let that go fer less 'n twenty".  And it was the same thing time after time, booth after booth. I was so disappointed. Don't get me wrong, if you are buying for your own home, you could find some pretty decent prices, but if you are a dealer, trying to buy for resale in an already tight market, it was not a pretty picture.

For the next couple of hours we wandered through most of the open air area vainly hoping for at least one or two vendors with true bargains, but no luck. We were all numb from the cold and wind, and weary from the fruitless search, plus vendors were starting to close up shop for the day, so we headed for the car. We drove all around the perimeter of the grounds, making a plan for where we would go on Friday, had a delicious burger at the famous Dairy Palace, and headed to the cottage...

And then came the rain. When we made the decision to go to Canton, we knew, because of previous weekend commitments, that we would only be able to go Thursday and Friday (which under the best of circumstances is nowhere near long enough to properly shop Canton). So when I checked weather.com at the time I made the cottage reservations and saw a chance for rain on Friday, I just had to hope against hope that the fickle Texas weather would swing in our favor. It did not. We woke up to thick, gray, cold misty rain and a high temperature of 40...brrrrrr. But we were not going to be deterred. We went to some of the newer, easy to access on foot indoor venues to see if there were any bargains to be had, but alas, not so. We even drove by the rustier, dustier open air "animal" section where they sell everything from kittens to donkeys, and were dismayed to see the few junk tables they had covered with tarps. Bummer... We knew because of the weather, our general weariness, and our limited time and budget that we wouldn't be able to walk through all the really cool indoor venues where they have glorious displays in beautiful, more permanent "shops". So we just had to skip those for this trip...and even though I probably wouldn't have bought anything from them for resale, it is always inspiring to see the trends and the creativity there.

But even now we had one slim hope that the day wouldn't be a complete loss. I remembered from our trip in '08 that all along Hwy 19 (the main road leading to Canton), there were tons of garage sales and small flea markets/junk venues that spring up on Canton weekend. So after we left Canton and made the trek down 19 toward home, we strained in vain at every small town to see a garage sale sign, an open road-side junk store, anything....but there were none. The further south we drove, the rain was letting up and we hoped anew that the signs would be showing up, but it never happened. There was not ONE garage sale along the entire route....unbelievable...

Finally, out of desperation for a cheap junk fix, we stopped at a rough little thrift store in Trinity, and we were so happy to see things marked $.50 and $1.00...our kind of prices. We got a few little things...nothing really worth taking a photo of, and felt at least a little better...

SO, I have no wonderful photos to share....just a sad tale of bad timing, hyped-prices, and lousy weather. Of course, Saturday and Sunday were glorious sunny days that made it into the 60s...but it was too late for us...

That's OK though. We still managed to do a lot of laughing and enjoyed each other's company very much. We found a great place to stay which we will return to again for sure. And we learned some valuable lessons about the state of junk at Canton...

But hope springs eternal - we will live to junk another day!

"And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose."

Romans 8:28