getting away - part one

this was our first flea market stop at Renninger's. apparently people like to get there at 5am as we were told to bring flashlights. we opted to get up at 6am and get there after our coffee stop. it was a true antique market, not a flea market with lots of junk for cheap. we made a few purchases there, but not many. this little doggie, Wolfgang, was strapped around his owner in a sheet. Wolfgang is 14 years old and loves the attention he receives when he is out. later at another antique store, we had the pleasure of bumping into Wolfgang again. you should see the ride he gets to cruise around in!

This was the best place we stopped, Schupp's flea market. i think it was an old campground at one time. very cute and quaint.

well after much coordinating and arranging for extra help for Tucker, we managed to get away for an overnight away from home. jeff and i haven't been away together in over a year and a half. it's just too hard too coordinate with help and if dillon has things going on, etc. so this time, i put it on the calendar, arranged the help (telling them no one could have the day off) and telling dillon that he had to be here with no plans to tend to the animals. we drove 2 hours away to Adamstown, Pennsylvania, "antique captiol of the world" - so they boast! there were so many antique stores, they weren't kidding! some of them i found very pricey and others were reasonable and willing to work with you a little bit. we also went to a couple of flea markets. but they were true antiques and very expensive. accidently we found this other flea market that was more our style and the prices were great. we ended up buying a couple of birdhouses made by a Mennonite couple that the seller was proud to tell us that the houses had a roof made from "german siding". we weren't sure what exactly that meant, but the roofs are tin and this gorgeous green color. good enough! we also got this really cool mini saw horse/bench thingy that i will most likely be using in my shows for display. there was another vendor who had these awesome display things, but rudely told me "they aren't for sale" (like he had to tell people that all day - okay, so put NFS on them and be done with it!) this morning we got up really early and hit Renninger's flea market. it was cool, but very pricey and lots of dishes and glassware - not my favorite thing to look at. at Renninger's i bought 2 boxes of vintage valentine's day cards that i thought i would use next year. i also got 2 bigger frozen charlotte heads and an awesome old "doll purse". i got a box of vintage fabric squares (think "inchie-ish") that someone started for some project, but never finished. i thought they'd be great charms for some project. we also got an awesome box full of very old children's blocks. i like to use them with my cworky dolls. the next flea market we hit was "Stoudt's". It was not very exciting at all. hardly any vendors and was very expensive. i did find a few little bisque dolls (with movable arms) and i did manage to get a pretty fair price on them. i will use them in jewelry pieces. next we hit another flea market called, Shupp's. i really liked this one. the location looked like an old campground. it had tents everywhere where the vendors set up. it was deeply wooded and quite charming to walk around in. although here and there it had these random wooden carvings that i couldn't quite figure out (like 3 dogs, a dragon, a friar, John Lennon in a "sgt. pepper's costume" (Huh?). here i got some cool old drawers, 25 tins type photos for next to nothing and some great keys. also (and this is so unlike me) - my friend, Kim, will be pleased, i bought some deer antlers. i thought i would hang my vintage hats on them, but then jeff had the suggestion of using them in my show booth to hang jewerly. like that i dea! finally we hit a few more antique stores where i found 4 awesome green crackley shutters and a beautiful old green wooden highchair. enjoy the pics!

this is what our car looked like when we were on our way home!

Hope for Oklahoma

A couple of my cool facebook friends (the Heather's) ran a really cool auction a couple of weeks ago to raise funds for victims in Oklahoma, following the hurricane. With all the items donated and then auctioned, they were able to raise almost $9000! how amazing is that. I donated 3 pieces myself. 

Well the girls are starting round 2 tomorrow. I am donating this piece that I have called, Angel of Hope. The auction takes place on this page and you bid under the photo of the item you are interested in. You have to have a paypal address to bid. Visit their and like their page here. 

"Angel of Hope":

Angel of Hope is a mixed media hanging piece, measuring 12" long and 7.5" wide. She is made up a variety of objects because she represents the disentanglement of life after a hurricane comes through. Her feet are old spoons. I imagined finding them on the ground in the rubble afterwards. Her body is an Altoid tin and can be opened to view the inside, which contains a small painting, meant to illustrate the wounded voice to all that have lost so much. She has been soldered and her head (and old vintage bisque Charlotte doll part) has been anchored down with a screw. This screw now holds her together; much like the support offered by Hope for Oklahoma. ~kecia deveney

german dolls

I am sure that some of you have heard about the guy who digs up the bisque dolls from an old doll factory. is it an urban legend, a myth or what? well, i will tell, you that it is a fact. i recently got to purchase some of these percious dolls and they arrived from Germany yesterday. I had heard about this guy a few times and found it very fascinating. recently he had some dolls listed on ebay so i was looking at them. he sells in nice size lots and they bidding wars wage on with these dolls. i have never bid on them before and hadn't planned on doing so, until my husband sat down at the computer and said, "what are those"? he loved the story and got so into that he had me bid on them. now i hate bidding wars , just not my thing, but he kept egging me on to outbid, outbid! so needless to say, i won some dolls. i am thrilled with them. they are so cool and interesting. after winning the dolls, i contacted the seller and asked him to tell me more about how he gets the dolls, where he is from, could i blog about him, did he have photos, etc. (probably thought i was a nut!) So "Thomas the mole" emailed me some pictures and then told me a little about himself.

he is 45 years old and calls his family his 2 dogs (susi and strolch), 2 kitties (krumel and felix) and 6 bunnies (paul, paula, heinz, kurt, otto & oskar). apparently susi and strolch love to go on digs with him. Thomas lives in a small German town called Xanten. He use to work in a factory before he started earning a living digging up dolls. one a month, he drives 510km to a town called Thuringia where he and a good friend will dig for about 10 days or so before heading back home with their treasures. the Charlotta dolls that he digs up are from the time arround 1880-1920, and they are dug out on the area of the old Kister Doll Factoty. I've very much enjoyed my communications with Thomas and appreciate him supporting my enthusiam with photos and personal information about himself!

i will be selling a few of the dolls in my etsy shop, so feel free to inquire about them if you are interested in some before i get them listed.

flea market finds - closeups

Here is a wedding photo from the 7 large vintage photos i got for $10. the clothes are so beautiful. i also got this bride bisque doll for $6 and the wedding couple for $1

So we leave in 3 days for the cruise. the car is coming for us at 4am - ugh! that will be a long day with the flight and all. it will be nice to finally get on the boat. i still have to go to the bank and turn in all the change we've been saving for about 6 months. it took FOREVER to get it out of the glass jar (a huge vintage jar, which was really heavy) and then i had to sort it because my husband wants all the wheat pennies and certain state quarters. (i just sorted, i am not going through all those coins!) later me and dillon will run them over to the bank and get dollars for them. my guess is there is about $360 in coins there. i'll let you know the total later. i should have done a contest on this, because the jar was FULL!