Work Party!

Wow - I had all these big ideas about posting my crazy finds each day here at Dad's house. Apparently that didn't really go as planned so I guess I'd better do some catching up!

So, here's what I did on Thursday:

Yep - that's me, kneepads and all, putting down adhesive so we could lay new carpet in the spare room. Definitely didn't learn those "life skills" at Willamette...

Here's Thursday's random find:
That's a quart-size bag of ash from Mt. St. Helens' 1980 eruption. The ash blew all the way over to Western Montana was about an inch deep around my parent's house. Dad went outside the day after the eruption and gathered up ash in Seal-a-Meal bags and sent it to members of the family around the country. This is his last bag. I put it on Ebay to see what would happen, and there are actually people bidding on it! I didn't even know what category you'd list it in so I picked "unusual." I can't wait to try to ship this - who knows what the USPS will think when I'm sending a bag of nondescript powder through the mail! Oh brother.

Here's what I did on Friday:
That's Dad's front porch. The yard is littered with the boxes and newspaper that his Whiskey Bottle collection had been packed in. I knew I needed to put it all on ebay so I had to unpack it all, and spread it out on the porch so I could figure out what I was working with. This will give you some idea:
See ALL those bottles? You can't even see them all in that picture! I didn't count (after the matchbooks I just couldn't bring myself to do any more tallying than necessary). My guess is that there are 100-125 bottles there. They all had to be sorted out by maker, and whether they were part of a series or collection, etc. Then I snapped pictures of everything, made an inventory sheet, looked them all up in the handy-dandy "Kovels' Bottles Price List 12th Edition" (God Bless you, Kovell. You saved my hide!), posted them on ebay, and boxed them up for shipping. Here's the finished stack:

We spent Saturday having a garage sale with some family friends and unloading a fair amount of furniture and miscellaneous household items. Hooray!

Saturday evening we had a visitor in the front yard:Dad lives on 5 acres near a river so there are all sorts of deer and pheasants wandering through all the time. He has several fruit trees in the front yard and the deer have developed quite a taste for his apples. There are usually 5-7 deer out there on any given evening! I think I've made them mad, though. Since I've been working in the front yard for the last few evenings they haven't been brave enough to sneak past me for apples. A couple of the does just stand and the fence and huff at me until I throw apples over to them. Good grief - the deer are training me to fetch! Anyway, when I finally cleared out my project Saturday night, this little guy crept in for a snack.

And, finally, a scenery shot to end my post. This is the view of the Sawtooth mountains from Dad's place.
Do you feel caught up? All sorts of excitement around here...carpet adhesive, 28-year-old ash, and people waiting on the deer hand and foot. Today's project will be getting all the china, stemware, and cut glass on ebay. I sure I hope I don't get the shakes!