Latest Nest Finds

Here's some of our latest finds.  Since it's been awhile since we've posted, many of these have already sold.  We are busy getting some new pieces ready.  We are having so much fun with our hobby turned business.  Our "Nest" is truly blessed!

Our frames are very popular and we love this dresser

Take a guess at what the box used to house?  It's bees!

We took this window that was missing a pane and made it into yet another chalkboard!  We replaced the missing pane with cork!

This writing desk turned out great.  We used gray and old white on this.

Love this distressed candlestick!

Don't you love the frame and this gorgeous oil painting?

I put a high price tag on this, hoping it wouldn't sell... but it did.

"Aged" cheese box

Found this great army locker to hold signs and put a high price tag on it - GONE!

We bought the birdie for .25 and got the mirror out of the trash.  Not so shabby now, are they?

I love our banners!  We are having fun with them!

If you're in the Birmingham area, come vising our nest!

Awesome Stain Remover

Only 3 more Saturdays without SEC college football!   In the state of Alabama, we are proud of our football!!  In the last 2 years the National Champions and Heisman winner have hailed from here.  No other state can lay claim to that.  We are die-hard Alabama fans and love our Crimson Tide!

Here I am at Bryant Denney Stadium "posing" right after Mark Ingram got the Heisman.  In fact, Coach Saban was supposed to be here for the event we were at, but instead was in New York for all the Heisman hoopla.

Here's Jocelyn, my daughter-in-law and me.

Don't be jealous, but we got a tour of the locker room.  On the way out of the tunnel to the field, all the players jump up and touch this.  My son, Brandon, did a great job making it look like I touched it too!

With that said, I have a great opportunity for all my Birmingham peeps!  A former Alabama player, who played for Bear Bryant on yet another national championship team, needs our help to launch a product of his into even more sales.  Below is what Steve Dean, has to say and it's where you can help.

"We have been given a fantastic opportunity to do a test “Road Show” sale event at the Hoover Costco store (Galleria/Patton Creek) on Aug 25 – Aug 28 (Thur – Sun).  Costco will be selling our ESPRO SPORTS CLEANER Gallon Bottle and 32 oz Spray Bottle as a co-pack for $14.99.  That is a tremendous price ($30 value) on a great product.

 

If you are not familiar with the product, check out our website (www.esproclean.com).  It is not only the best athletic uniform cleaner on the planet (used by over 70 colleges and several pro teams, including Alabama) but it works great on everything you can imagine (carpet, car upholstery, furniture, food stains, blood stains, you name it).  Read the testimonials on the website to see how passionate people are about the product.

 

Thank you in advance for helping to make this a successful event for us."

Steve is a great guy.  He coached Brandon in Little League.  Wish we had this product back then.  I tried bleach once, but when it didn't work on all the grass stains and red mud, I just had to be satisfied that at least the stains were clean!

Hope you'll go by and get some (or order online)!  Tell them "The Not So Empty Nest" sent you!

80th Vintage Birthday Party!

We just threw an 80th birthday party for my in-laws, Dick & Peggy.  Thanks to Peyton, a young 20-something year old friend, we copied her vintage theme.  It was so easy and fun to do with mason jars, a photo booth and candy table.  Everyone had a great time.  We weren't sure if the older party goers would enjoy taking pictures, but as you can see, they definitely got into it and our photo booth was a big hit!

Outside, we used this "vintage" bike to direct party goers!

One of the biggest hits of the day was our photo booth.  Isn't this a cute banner?

These were our centerpieces.  We put a baby picture of each of them in a mason jar and added some hydrangeas.  Don't you love the vintage microphone too?

Notice the chalkboard?  We used these to let everyone know what we were serving.

We had candy invented in the 1930s.  UMMM!

Since our party was from 2-4 on a Sunday, we opted for cupcakes and bite-size Texas sheet cake.  Don't you love the camera?  It was fun doing a vintage birthday.  It could work for any age.

We also had fritos (Peggy's favorite snack) and a yummy dip.  My son's collection of vintage cameras (that we got at garage sales for about $2 each) added just the right touch.

The banners were so cute!

Some of the party goers!  We probably had between 150-200 guests!

Aren't they cute?  Two of these ladies are in their 80s!!  Don't they look fabulous?

We had the guests write messages or just their names, and this sign revealed an unsolved mystery.  My father-in-law is a die-hard Alabama football fan and many Sundays he would find Auburn souvenirs in his pulpit.  They were signed by "The Ultimate Eagle" aka our rival.  After 25 years, he finally revealed his identity!

Aren't they cute as a button?  Love those vintage suspenders!

 

These are some of the grandkids.  Dick & Peggy have 17 grandchildren and 12 greats with 2 more on the way!

This is me, Debbie and the hubs, Rick.

Has anyone else that has turned 50 had the urge to commit a crime?

Here's Tiff & her hubs, Steven.  It just occurred to me, we really need to get some good pics done.

Here's my in-laws, the party honorees.  My father-in-law preached that morning and was still going strong!  By the way, I wrote their sign for them...

A good time was had by all.  One of the party goers who is well into her 80s said it was the best time she had in a long time and she felt like the party was for her!  Young and old, we all had fun!

Back to School and it's Chalkboards Galore!

We added some new items to our space.

We added even MORE chalkboards!  We sell these like crazy!  Did you ever get the job to "clean the erasers" at school?  That was one of my favorite jobs.  You got to go outside and you got to beat them against the building.  I would take my dear sweet time too...  Nowadays, they use more dry erase and high tech stuff, so they are just missing out on that good 'ole chalk dust flying around.

Before we added these to the shop, we used some of these chalkboards for "props" at a vintage 80th birthday party for my in-laws.  I'll post about that later, but take a look at some of the cute pieces we have right now.

Here's 3 chalkboards along with a sweet little bird we helped out.  Chalkboards are fun to greet company with, have a reminder list going or to put an encouraging verse on it.

Here's a sneak peek of the birthday party.  These are my in-laws.  They both turn 80 within a month!

This came from Pier One and was originally black. Well, we didn't get it from Pier One - we got it at a garage sale.

 In addition to selling the chalkboards, they add warmth to our space.  We are always on the look out for treasures to be turned into chalkboards.  This one was from a friend that was moving.  There's an oil painting under there (that's probably worth $10,000) that was already covered up with stain.  So we didn't feel bad about adding our own flair.  It's really lightweight.

We used this cute 5x7 frame at our vintage party.

Even a cheap "silver" tray bought for .25 gets a makeover.

We bought this little bird for a quarter and brought him up to date.  He's so much happier now!

The round chalkboard is from one of Tiff's friends.  All we did to this was change the verse.  Look at those cute banners.  We recycled them from the vintage birthday party.

This is a little 3 shelf cabinet (only about 12" tall).  We're loving this yellow color too.  It can brighten up any room.

Look how great some Old White paint and rubbing it off, made this Plain Jane black lamp a knockout.

Here's some more yellow.  That poor little apple/potato peeler has been in our booth way too long.  It retails for $20 and we have it for $10.  Get it to make some curly fries!

These are adorable!!!  We turned these wooden frames into a chalkboard frame to hold your child's art.  My 30 year old did these pictures.  I'm a proud Mom!

We have 2 of these gorgeous 8x10 frames.

I think this frames holds 2 5x7 pictures.  Fabulous!

These repurposed frames will save you tons of "Is this sweet or unsweet".  You can use them as place cards too...

This is a cool army trunk we found.  We are using it to hold all our frames and chalkboards.  We priced it high so we can keep it around for awhile.  We made it look really old!  It has a divided shelf inside.  We have it open to hold our stash.  I would show you a picture, but my battery died too soon.

And here you have it - "the not so empty nest" week 9!

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