Cheap Dork

(photo by PACOBP)

I'm a dork. A cheap dork. We went to El Rastro this weekend. It's said to be Europe's largest flea market. It started in the middle ages and has over 3500 stalls.

(photo by subcomandanta)

It's open year round every Sunday morning. You can buy just about anything there. Lots of imported stuff from India & Africa. Cheaply made tourist crap-ola. Second-hand junque. The old stuff is what catches my eye.

(photo by ma vie en rouge)

Here comes the part where I'm a cheap dork. I was Specifically looking for a vintage seltzer bottle because I'd seen them there before, and I've seen them all over blogland in photos of Paris flea markets that people drool over. AND I think they look cool.

(photo from Buenos Aires San Telmo flea market by fakeamerica)

So I find a guy in one of the side plazas that is selling a bunch of old stuff. While Vino is asking him about some really old Italian daggers (expensive, but cool!) I spy a crate of 6 seltzer bottles, one of them blue with 8 sides. It looked almost exactly like this one from Ruby Lane except that the writing was in Spanish. I would post the photo, but it's copyrighted. If the link is no longer active when you read this, just know that it is VERY COOL, and originally $125, on sale for $95. Our friend who brought a camera with her had no battery left, so I don't even have proof of the one I found. None of these are even my photos that I'm posting. Loser.

So we ask the guy how much and he says 15 Euros, which is around $21. I was prepared to pay 10 Euros, but the guy wouldn't budge. So we walked away. Apparently he wasn't desperate to sell that day because he couldn't have cared less. And we kept walking. Now I'm wishing I hadn't been so cheap.

(photo by mazingerin)

We're moving back to the States for a couple of years - this week. That was my last chance for a while. One of these days I'm going to learn some type of lesson from this...

Create...Breathe

I have this friend, Miss Lynn. She is ridiculously creative. When I was home for Christmas, I told her that the world (well, me for sure) needed her to start a blog or an etsy shop or something. She said that she's not a computer person and would rather just make stuff with paper, notions & junque. But, happy day! I don't think she's started a shop, but I just found out today that she has a blog! Her blog name is Create...Breathe, which is the name of her crafty business.


She sells at craft shows and stuff like that, but not online yet (that I know of). Check out her blog and leave her a comment. She's a sweetie pie. I can't wait to see her this summer!

My Handy Man

I'm one of those girls who is lucky enough to have a multi-talented fella. It seems like he's pretty good at most of the things he tries. He cooks & cleans, makes videos, cycles, runs, trains people to do stuff, re-mixes benign music & voice-overs into cool hip-hop beats, and he can throw a pretty good punch, whether it be wii boxing or real-life martial arts. Oh, and he can break up fights in Madrid & subdue the drunken aggressor. But that's for another story.

Recently he disappeared for a few hours into the workshop to make something that would make organizing the equipment for the ministry we work with MUCH easier. He had already organized & labeled the entire equipment storage room, but still had to contend with heavy & awkwardly shaped "C-Stands". They're the things used on a video shoot that hold reflectors & pretty much else you would need to hold in one place. Using a router & some scrap wood, this is what he came up with:


He routed out the shape of the handles...


so that each stand would fit perfectly.


He also used some big nails to hang other pieces of the stands.


I, for one, think it's an ingenious solution. Before, the C-Stands lived in a corner on the floor. Difficult to get to, messy, unorganized. Now with one glance, you know how many we have, where they are, and where they go when you're finished with them.

People, you don't always need to make things difficult or expensive. He didn't go out and buy anything special for this project. Scrap wood. That's what he used. Granted, this is not a public place, so it's not painted pretty or anything, but that doesn't matter. Effective storage can be cheap or free if you use your noggin. What do you have lurking in your garage/shop that can be made or re-purposed into useful storage or organization? Be creative!