Our Prairie Home: Beverly Hillbillies MEETS Wizard of Oz

Good morning, y'all!

Whew! What a crazy exciting couple of days!

When God moves...

He moves BIG!

(More on that at a later today. Keep an eye on my FB page!)

But we know this, right?

So... I left you on FB on Wednesday with the teaser that my afternoon had gotten A LOT more exciting and that Scott was watching out for me, as usual.

And yes he did!

AUCTION TIME!

YAY!

So, we spend the evening racking up on some awesome stuff with lots o' potential.

I always have the best time with Scott at auctions and its such a fun thing that we do TOGETHER. Believe me when I say we needed something like this YEARS ago. :) (No, going to sporting events for our kids didn't count. This is something we do as a couple, not as parents, so its a whole lot more fun. ;) )

So... I'll share our finds and then I'll get to the

Beverly Hillbillies meets Wizard of Oz part.

Warning: Most horrid pictures ever.

Due to the circumstances of the unloading, I did not have time to take pics until the next morning, when everything was squished into the shop.

Okay...

First up...

The one of my most favorite finds of the night.

Check out those legs.

NICE!

It needs A LOT of work, but who cares!

LOOK. AT. THOSE. LEGS!

The feet... Well, we'll replace those. ;)

And who knows with as cool as it is, we may just keep it!

(Although the Furniture Nazi might not agree. LOL!)

And how's this for a cute little side table?

And for me... A tri-fold screen to stage in front of.

Just needs a little paint love:

A table from a shop that just screams industrial to me.

KEEPER!

And with a $4.00 price tag, how could Scott tell me no? LOL!

Two of these chairs:

Modern Table:

I love the curvy legs.

Not pictured, because it was still in the back seat of Scott's truck, is the top that fits onto the top of the table. Wonderful glass center that has a floral motif in white. It removes and acts as a serving tray.

It already has two coats of paint. :)

Another oak table with great feet.

We dickered over even bidding on it, since we have one just like it, but the price was right, so there ya go.

A beautiful dresser with mirror...

The mirror is still in the back seat of Scott's truck, as well.

LOVE this piece!

Drop leaf sofa table.

Its going to make someone a great little prim farm table.

And these two chairs and the story behind them...

I usually don't share how much I pay for stuff, but since I'm going to have someone re-upholster them for me since that is DEFINITELY NOT my forte, I just have to tell you the story behind these two.

So... I tell Scott if the chairs go cheap, I want them.

I get a big fat N-O.

Well, I'm not deterred and I tell him, if they go cheap, bid.

"No."

Well, everyone who knows us, knows I'm the competitive one.

Needless to say, I do not get to hold the auction number. And I recognize that this is a good thing because when I bid on something, it becomes a competition and I WILL win. Not a great thing if you're trying to make a profit. LOL!! So, Scott holds the number and I generally will turn my back on the auctioneer if its something I really want and will just watch Scott while he's bidding. He will usually look at me to see if I want to keep going, but I block everything else out and only focus on the number and the piece, not the other person bidding. I know, I'm hilarious, right? At least I recognize this about myself though. LOL!

So, in this instance, Scott was giving me the negative on the chairs, but I wanted them. "Look passed what they are. Button tuft is awesome. BID on the CHAIRS."

"No."

So....

Yeah...

Obviously I got the chairs.

How?

The auctioneer gets to one of the chairs and starts the bid,

"$25... $20... $15... $10... $ 5... $2.50... $1.00..."

I look at Scott.

"No."

"Can I get $1.00?"

I look at Scott.

"No. No chairs. They're too much work."

At this point I'm starting to bounce on the balls of my feet and I'm looking between the auctioneer and Scott.

"No, Laura."

"Get the chairs, Scott."

"Seriously?"

"Yes!"

And then the auctioneer says, "$1.00 for the pair!"

Scott says, "Don't do it."

"Can I get a dollar for the pair? Come on folks!"

My hand was up before he even finished the sentence.

ROTF!

"Can I get $2.50? No takers? SOLD! #302!"

Good thing the auctioneer had our number memorized, huh?

BAH HA HA HA HA

Scott looks at me and says, "You have GOT to be kidding me."

But he's kind of laughing.

To which I replied, "Seriously? A $10 round formica table with 4 pleather chairs because YOU were the first bidder???? Wanna go there?"

"Its a good table!"

"No. It. Is. Not."

Finally he just shakes and laughed, "Okay. You win."

We DO have a fun time together, even when we might disagree over a piece. And it always makes a good story. LOL!!
And when I'm done with them, I don't think he'll question me about chairs again. HA HA HA!

I mean, c'mon...

He bought this:

There is NO veneer on the top.

NONE.

The middle right drawer sticks terribly and I'm pretty sure the middle piece between the drawers is warped.

After the bear that this BUFFET was to re-do,

I was not seeing potential here.

Scott, however, is starting to get some vision when it comes to furniture. "I'm going to have a granite slab put on the top."

Ooooooo! Great idea! I'll give him all the credit for that one! ;)

And finally... My most exciting purchase of the night.

The one that had me dancing a little jig of victory and falling asleep thinking of the possibilities:

Oh yeah...

CARD CATALOGUE, BABY!

And its MINE! YAY! Picture French Linen layered over Graphite... Or maybe for some bang - Emperor's Silk. I don't know. She'll have to tell me what she wants. But I am so STOKED over this purchase! I couldn't believe it when I saw it!

Thank you, dear!

So... After this horribly long blog post...

Are you still reading?

If you are, WOW!

You're awesome!

That takes commitment!

:)

Here's the
Beverly Hillbillies MEETS Wizard of Oz part,
(in case you skipped all the other boring auction parts LOL)
which will make this post even LONGER.

So, we come out of the auction and the sky to west is dark.

I mean, D-A-R-K, dark.

The younger three were with my nephew at home, Ian was with us, and Greyson was at youth group at church, which is basically nothing but a steel machine shed-type building.

We start loading quick.

My arms and legs were screaming by the time we got the last piece into the trailer.

Piled in.

You know... Beverly Hillbilly Style.

Its an open-topped trailer.

And that's when we felt the first rain drops.

By the time I made it to the door of Scott's truck,
it was full-fledged raining.

He quickly gets into the driver's seat and smart guy that he is, makes a bee-line for the car wash that's at the front of the parking lot to the west. He pulls all the way through and forward, so the trailer is protected.

He grabs a towel, hops out, and runs back into the car wash to wipe things off.
(That would be totally a waste of time later.)

Meanwhile, me being the east coaster who totally still freaks out over storms, was watching the sky.

The rain stops.

Its dead calm.

I hop out of the truck.

"Ummm... Scott?"

Nothing.

"Scott?"

"Hmmmmm???"

"Scott!"

"What???!!!"

Me: "Look. At. The. Sky."

Well, he's used to my paranoia when it comes to summer storms, so he didn't stop what he was doing.

"Scott. Seriously. Come look at the sky. It looks funny."

Ian: "Hey, Dad! This is COOL!"

So, he takes his sweet time moseying out of the car wash and looks.

"Oh."

Me: "Yeah."

Him: "Get Ian and let's go."

So, we start walking back to where the auction was, keeping an eye on it.

If you don't live out in the midwest, you have never seen truly
freaky weird cloud formations.

And this was truly terrifying.

(At least to me.)

Scott of course, is manly, and totally taking it in stride.

Everyone that was left at the auction was standing in front of the building looking up.

You know, because everyone is crazy stupid like that.

A large lighter gray cloud was pushing forward, larger, uglier, and faster than anything I've ever seen.

And the sky is just churning.

Bubbling.

Really. You just can't make this stuff up.

Right over the top of us.

We had made it to the middle of the parking lot when the first strong gust of icy cold air hit.

I mean, it was cold enough to give me goose bumps.

The temperature must have dropped 30 degrees.

And we were still more than halfway away from the building.

I grabbed Ian's hand (which he quickly snatched away because its not cool to be 11 and hold your mom's hand) and tell him to run.

I'm sure we made a picture.

So, we take off running to the building, which is basically an old Walmart they had converted to a convention center that is rented out for auctions, wedding receptions, etc.

Needless to say...

No basement.

I tell a lady that is standing there,
"I'm not from here so this really freaks me out."

And she says (making me feel soooo much better),
"I'm from here and this really freaks me outs."

Great.

And then someone says they've cleared out the Butler County Fair because there was a funnel cloud sited in Allison.

Which is directly northeast of my house.

Where my nephew and children are.

Slight panic at that point.

Even though intellectually, I KNOW tornadoes move northeast, so it was on the other side of them.

Call home.

Everyone is fine.

Everything is fine.

Good.

"Get the basement door open. I love you. Bye."

Look to the east.

Where Greyson is.

Where the nastiest looking part is.

And know there is not a THING I can do about it.

Say repetitious prayers in my head, while Scott and Ian go around the back of the building to watch the increasingly ugly clouds.

Ignoring me telling them NOT to, of course.

Because they're guys and they have to see if they SEE anything.

And the wind is just blowing.

And yet there's still a group of us gathered outside underneath the overhang just watching the wind bounce the flag pole at McDonald's around like its a ping pong paddle.

You know, because that's what we do out here.

Thankfully after about 10 minutes, the worst passes and we're all fine.

Obviously, because I'm here blogging right?

LOL!

But on the way home on the radio, as my stuff is getting completely soaked by the following downpour (because we couldn't just sit in the car wash all night with the kids at home), we hear on the radio of roof damage to houses, barns with part of their roofs missing, and large trees uprooted.

90 mph straight-line winds.

Just north of the town of Waverly.

Where we were.

Just five to ten miles north of where Greyson was.

Thank God, for answered prayers!

So, Scott is pretty busy with tree work for storm damage.

My stuff was hastily off-loaded into the shop in the pouring rain (which promptly ceased to a trickle AFTER everything was inside. Go figure.) and now my shop looks like this: