On March 9, 2009, Lulu started on her 4,567,098^th mission in life.  And after only a week, her cankles are sore already…

No boundaries, people.  No Boundaries.

One of my most favorite bloggers, Leigh, over at Tales from Bloggeritaville, has started a new type of “show and tell,” if you will—Thrifty Thursday.  Basically, if you stumble upon an awesome buy at a garage sale, thrift store, or even Target and you want to tell it to the internets, then do it!  But be sure to head over to Leigh’s blog and link up so that other’s playing along can see your crazy deal, too!  Go here to check out the details because Lulu is not a very good at ’splainin things.

So, for my inaugural Thrifty Thursday post, I must make a confession—I am a thrift store junkie.  And until I started looking around the house for items to photograph for this post, I didn’t realize what kind of out-of-control junkie I really am.  And I’ve also realized that I have a mad obsession for chairs.  Probably because I like to sit.  A lot.  Either that, or I’m really scared that someone will not have a place to sit in my house. 

This particular chair, I found at one of my most favorite junk stores ever—the aptly named, My Favorite Place, in the Antique Row area of Chamblee.  I recovered the fabric on the seat, and park my butt on it when I’m whittling away my time on the laptop (which, by the way, sits atop the French Provincial desk that I found at the same place)…

And because one French Provincial chair in the bedroom just won’t do, I bought another and recovered it in the same fabric…

For the kitchen, I found this cute school-desk type chair that was painted a cream-color and distressed. I made the green cushion with my ridiculous sewing skills…

This chair also sits in the kitchen, and was once owned by my Aunt Patty Cake.  She was so kind to give it to me when she moved to the more tropical region of the U.S.  Pink flamingos are more the style down there.  The pillow I bought from a thrift store close to my home…

And just to add more chairs to the mix in my kitchen, I picked up these three bar stools at Ally’s Attic in Lawrenceville right after we moved into our house.  I was extremely lucky to find counter top-high bar stools that matched my cabinets.  Usually, bar stools come bar-height, and my counter is not bar-height…  

I picked up this chair at another local thrift shop, and it sits in my dining room as an extra chair.  I had planned on recovering the seat, but seeing that I’ve had the chair for about 4 years now, it ain’t gonna happen.  Lulu is just lazy that way…

These chairs were bought as a set with my dining room table at Biggar Antiques on Antique Row in Chamblee…

I recovered the seat in this little chair with a brown, burlap-type fabric to match my office décor.  The hand-embroidered, zebra pillow came from another one of my favorite shops, Queen of Hearts Antiques, in Buford…

This vanity chair and rocking chair is part of a bedroom set that came from GR’s mother, and was once owned by his grandmother.  I also recovered the seats in these chairs to match the guest bedroom décor.  Lulu is obviously big on recovering seats…

This little, spindle-chair is another hand-me-down from my Aunt Patty Cake, and it sits in another corner of the guest room.  Note to self:  Do something with the unsightly cord.

And finally, another gift from my Aunt Patty Cake (she loves me!) is an antique sewing chair that I will be using in the scrapbooking room that I am currently putting together upstairs (more on that next week)…

The chair has a secret compartment for storing something, although I’m not quite sure what.  It’s kind of like a James Bond chair.  Or not…

And there you have it, people.  Yet another one of Lulu’s collections…

Three years ago, I bought some snow boots on clearance at The Mark (a.k.a Wal-Mark—which is how my mom actually pronounces it) and put them away in my closet in anticipation of our next snow fall.  I waited very patiently to wear those boots.  And sadly, each time I entered my closet, the blue boots would stare at me and laugh, “What kind of idiot buys snow boots in Georgia?”

But, Lulu held out hope and praised Jim Cantore each time he even hinted at a wintry mix.  But finally, on Sunday?  My $10.98 paid off!  The boots emerged (tags still intact)…

They were full of dust and indignation…

And then I put them on and laughed at them! 

I hope that they froze their rubber-soled, knobby asses off in the four inches of beautiful, white snow that we received…

Coincidences are strange things. 

Back in October when my friend, T-Nut, and I traveled to Germany, we decided to have dinner one evening at a restaurant in the guest house where we were staying.  There was to be a Bavarian Oompa band playing that night, and we wanted to immerse ourselves in the culture as much as possible.  Even if as-much-as-possible meant wearing a dirndl to dinner.  Which T-Nut most certainly did.  She had bought the dress earlier that day at a German tracht store, and damned if she wasn’t going to try to blend her Ecuardorian heritage into a German Fräulein.  Not even if I rolled my eyes at her and cursed under my breath. 

Anyhow, upon entering the small restaurant, the German men playing in the band took an immediate interest in Fräulein T-Nut.  She was wearing tract, after all.  When they finished their final set, four of the bandmembers came over to our table, promptly took the seats around us, and asked us where we were from…talking in very broken English.  And T-Nut, in her very broken German accent (notice I said, accent…because she thinks that Germans can understand English better if you speak it with a German accent…true story) begins a conversation with the band leader, Franz, and I begin a conversation with another band member, Rupert, and then Thomas and Christian join right in.  We are officilly Oompa Band groupies. 

Franz is mesmerized by T-Nut in her drindl, and we all sit and talk and drink German beer for a couple of hours learning more about their lives, how their Oompa band is very popular and well-known in all of Bavaria, about the beauty of T-Nut’s eyes, about the Maria Gern region of Germany, about our lives in the U.S., and again about the beauty of T-Nut’s eyes.  I like to call this little portion of our evening, Dirndl-gate.  Finally, the conversation comes to an end when it is announced that the guys must get up at 5am the next morning to go slaughter pigs or work in the salt mines or something of that nature.  Truly, they were very nice guys and it was nice to be able to have some casual conversation with some regional folk. 

Are you still with me, people?  Because now comes the anti-climatic coincidental part.

My most favorite show in the world is The Amazing Race.  Being on that show is a little dream of mine that will never come to fruition.  Anyhow, last Sunday evening, I’m watching the show.  Contestants were traveling to Munich on this particular episode, and I was so excited to see some familiar scenes and to yell at the people for being such dumb-asses for getting lost leaving the airport by car.  The roads are so well-marked there!  So, off they go by car to the region of Berchtesgaden where we had our dinner that night in Octoaber.  And not to get into the specifics or lingo of the show, but one of the “road blocks” that the contestants had to participate in was a type of Bavarian pie-throwing contest.  Long story short, guess which Oompa band was playing the music for this contest?  It was Franz.  And his band.  Oh, yeah.

Pretty awesome coincidence, right?  I mean, what are the chances that we would meet a small Oompa band from this tiny town in Germany, and then months later happen to tune in to American television and see them?  I promptly sent Franz an e-mail from T-Nut and myself (he had given us his band’s Web site address through which I was able to contact him), and he replied that the show was filmed shortly after we left, and that he was amazed that we saw him on television.  He wasn’t even sure if the show would be aired!  I’m glad that we got the chance to tell him.

So, there you have it, y’all.  My enthralling German co-inky-dink.