NYC, Renegade, and New House Photo Dump...

A seriously huge amount of stuff has taken place over the last week.  Since we chatted last, I've been a tourist in New York City, been a vendor at the Renegade Craft Show in Brooklyn, decided to restructure HOUSE 54 a bit to make it easier for a one-woman-show (more on that at a later date), and closed on our new house.  So here's the photo dump of all that...   

Manhattan from across the East River in the park where Renegade was. 

Wicked sweet paint job on a building, I think somewhere in the East Village, but I honestly don't have a clue which point we were at in our wandering when we found this.

Friends building!  I know, I have a sickness for this show.  I'm aware of my issue.  But of all the times I've been to NYC, I've never taken the time to go see this "landmark."  So this time I made it a priority stop.  I'm pretty thrilled that I did too, because it was in an area that I hadn't explored on any of my prior trips, and it was really a pretty nice place.  I found the Bond No. 9 shop on my way there, which I hadn't planned on visiting, but decided to go in anyway and play with all of their NYC-inspired perfumes.  I came away with a few samples that I'm pretty crazy in love with.  I also met up with my husband's cousin, and did some tourist-y stuff.  She showed me Grand Central, and some other nifty places.  Then we made our way to Flower Power, which was the only other must-see on my list.  I'd really love to go back to when I had more time to browse, because it was INCREDIBLE!!!  I wanted to make lotions and potions out of just about every single thing they had in their store.  

And then there was Renegade... 

The massive sea of people and close to 300 vendors, all enduring 90-degree temps.  Thankfully, I shared my booth space with a really super cool lady, named Erica Bello.  She makes incredible jewelry, and was wicked fun to hang out with for the weekend.

 My display 

And then yesterday we bought a house...  This house!!!

No inside pics yet.  I was so overwhelmed by the smell in there, that I really didn't even think to get out my camera.  The place was a foreclosure (basically the only reason that we were able to afford a place like this on this much acreage), and the folks who owned it before us let their pets (including allegedly ferrets) run loose in the house, and use it as their personal potty.  So it pretty much smells like a giant hamster cage.  First order of business will be to tear out every single scrap of carpeting.  BUT!... 

...This is the view from the back porch.  Holy moly, I could seriously sit there and look at that for every second of the rest of my life, and not get sick of it.  After spending the weekend prior in the sweltering heat of an urban jungle, I have an even more majorly huge appreciation for wide open spaces.  

And it has a barn! 

With piglet pens!  OK, yes, I realize that those are horse stalls, but I can't, in good conscience eat a horse, now can I?

So that's that for now.  We'll be there again on Monday ripping out stinky carpets.  So I'll try to remember to take some before pictures of each room then.

Thanks for stopping by,

~Lindsey

Busy little bee...

SOOOOOO much is happening right now.  It's all fantastic stuff, but it's all happening at once, and making my head spin a little bit trying to give everything the attention it deserves.

~Next Wednesday the Farmers' Market begins for the season.  I'm so happy to finally get to be face to face with so many happy, smiling customers again.  I've missed you all over the Winter!

~The day after opening day of the farmers market, I'll be packing up all the inventory I've been building over the last few weeks and heading off to Brooklyn for the Renegade Craft Fair.  Pretty stoked to be taking myself on a little mini vacay to NYC, but it's not exactly coming at an opportune time to be leaving home for several days.  Because...

~We're right in the thick of trying to buy a house.  We found our dream piece of property with our not-so-dream-but-not-all-together-awful house on it, and we're trying really hard to make it work.  But it's a foreclosure, now owned by and out-of-state bank, and it requires some serious diligence on my part to get the necessary hoops jumped through.  Getting local people matched up with non-local people, and making this deal work out for us is proving to be a serious challenge.  This, Folks, is why I still bank at the same bank where I opened my first account with a jar of change when I was 9 years old.  I can walk in there, speak to a human, who knows my name and I know hers, and usually before any transactions take place she asks me how my kids are.

~So I'm also trying to get all the little miscellaneous projects done on our current house.  Even if our deal doesn't go through on the house we're tying to get right now, we're still going to keep looking.  So, eventually our current house will need to go on the market to avoid having to pay 2 mortgages for any great length of time (yikes!).  All those little no-big-deal projects that were started without a deadline to finish... Those all add up and become a bigger deal when faced with finishing them all at once.

~Somewhere in the midst of all of that, I should probably throw a birthday party of some sort for The Baby (Holy crap!  Where the heck did a year go?!).

~And yesterday I got an email from the manager of another farmers market, asking me if I'd like to be a vendor.  Yes Please!

So... not one, but TWO farmers markets this season, PLUS Renegade, PLUS buying a house, selling a house, and some fantastically cute kiddos that deserve my attention as well...   I believe I'll now treat myself to another cup of coffee (or 12), and be thrilled with the fact that all of my "problems" are pretty great.


Thanks for stopping by,
-Lindsey  

Wide open spaces...

I'm about half way through this book, and the more I read, the more I dream.  The same thing happened when I read The Dirty Life.  Hubby and I have been pretty firmly on board with the grow-your-own-food movement for quite some time now.  It doesn't mean that we don't still get take-out, but it means that we think more about what we're eating, and how it got to our plates.  And it plays a huge part in our search for a new home.  The property we have now is the perfect size for urban farming.  It's just right for growing veggies and raising chickens.  But we want a massive garden, more chickens, lots of fruit trees, bees, some berry bushes, a couple pigs, and maybe even a cow.  I also want to be able to start growing a lot of the ingredients I'm using in my products, instead of having to buy them from other people.  So the search is on for a new, slightly less urban, and quite a bit bigger, but not unmanageable for 2 people, homesteading property.  Shouldn't be too hard to find, right?  Vermont is known for its picturesque, rolling farmland.  Meadows dotted with black and white cows are what sell postcards that no one even mails anymore.  But this land doesn't come up for sale very often.  And when it does, it's usually thousands of acres, and being sold with the entire working farm.  This is not only way more than Hubby and I can handle on our own, but it usually puts the price tag somewhere around a small mansion in the Beverly Hills.
A different photo of this place was pictured in one of my previous posts, and I just discovered, is up for sale... for the bargain tag of 2.9 million.  Folks, that's a whole boatload more lotion and perfume to sell.

So this afternoon we're supposed to be going to take a look at a property that's quite a bit smaller than the one in the photo, but larger than the one we have right now, and most importantly, nowhere even remotely close to the million dollar price range.  Fingers painfully tightly crossed right now that it works out...


Thanks for stopping by,
-Lindsey

Short hair. I need it...

Ugh.  I just can't...

Every single time.  I tell myself I'll grow my hair out, and have pretty beachy waves, and everything will be blissful.  It's true to a point.  If I did manage to get my hair past my shoulders, then I'd actually have pretty epic hair.  It's one of the very few features on my bod that I can confidently say rocks pretty hard.  But I just can't function as soon as it starts touching my neck on a hot day.  I've made it farther right now than I have in years.  It's past my chin, and long enough for a pitiful ponytail.  So that's what happens with it every single day now.  It gets all pinned up off my face and off my neck, and ripped out of my forehead by the endless pulling from bobby pins.  What's the freaking point?!  Seriously, some chick somewhere is screaming at me right now, because she spends hours a day trying to get her hair to do that effortless (ironically) undone, natural wave look, and mine does that on it's own when it's long, and i'm going to do this to it...

2 weeks from now, I'll have a date with my hairdresser, and the ballance of the Universe can be restored.  My husband can have his wife back, instead of this wacko that goes all Jim-Carrey-floppy-freak-out every time her hair touches her neck.  And, as a mega added bonus, the baby will no longer be able to grab chunks of my hair while riding in the Ergo.  Sold.  Done.  Game over.  Locks be gone!


Thanks for stopping by,
-Lindsey