My daughter and I have spent the last few Saturdays wandering around downtown Fulton, MO - a historic small town about 10 miles from where we live and also the town where I work. We are kind of hooked on browsing the antique stores and second hand shops. There are so many interesting things to look at and some things that are practically brand new which you can pick up for next to nothing. I have spent less than $30 since we've been doing this and here's what I've picked up....

-3 pair of jeans for my daughter - $3 each = $9
-a beautiful BIG basket with swinging handles(Longaberger style quality, different brand) - $8
- Rosette pastry irons - $4
- antique pressing iron - $5
- All Recipe's cookbook(brand new condition) - $3.00

I think I was able to find a lot - for not a lot of money!

Here is the antique iron that I bought. It was covered in rust and filthy, but I've learned that sometimes you have to add a little elbow grease to get some of these used items looking like new. I covered it in cooking oil, let it soak in and then scrubbed and scrubbed it with steel wool. Now it looks like new!



The Rosette Pastry irons that we picked up were mostly for my daughter. Although I definitely enjoyed them myself :)

The first time I made Rosettes I was in 7th grade Home-Ec class. I told my daughter about it and since she had never heard of nor tasted Rosettes, she wanted to try to make them. We whipped up a batch of batter from a recipe I found online and got to work....we ended up with waaaayyyyy more than we could eat, but they sure were tasty!! We both ate our fill and ended up throwing the rest away the next day because they were soggy, but it was fun making them.

Here's what they looked like.


Proof of something fun you can find in a second hand store :)

The Simple Things

Around my house, animals are just part of our life. From the decor of our den(wildlife theme) to the 4(yes I said FOUR) dogs that we have, something is always going on that involves animals. We love watching the different kinds of wildlife that seem to be attracted to our yard too - especially the squirrels because they are so entertaining.

Last fall we had some old dead hollow branches cut out of the tree next to our house. After the branches were cut down and we started cleaning up the branches we found more than just old branches and twigs laying on the ground.

We also found TWO SQUIRREL TAILS!!!!

Apparently there were two squirrels hiding in the branch that needed to be cut down and we didn't know it!!! The next day our squirrels were running around with 1/2 their tails missing - we felt so terrible!!! They seemed to be fine, but we thought they looked so silly with their stubby tails!!

My hubby felt bad that we had cut down their home, so he started looking for a new home for them. He found a cool looking house for them made out of an old tire - sounds strange but it actually looked like it would make a great house for them.

After he hung it in the tree, they didn't go near it. We were disappointed because we figured that since they lost their home, they would leave.

I guess that wasn't the case because just a few weeks ago,

THIS is what we saw coming out of the house....
A BABY SQUIRREL

...actually there were THREE of them. It was so fun to watch them climb out of the house a little at a time and learn how to hang on climb the branches. Before we knew it they were chasing each other round and round and jumping from branch to branch. They were so cute!!

Sometimes it's the Simple things in life that bring us so much pleasure!! God sure has created some wonderful things for us to enjoy!