thrift store finds: keep oregon green!

It must have been over a year ago now that I was invited to a yard sale thrown by the family of someone I knew from high school. There were a lot of cool things to look at, but in the end, I chose a large wooden crate (will feature in an upcoming post), a salad spinner (as a back-up for the one my kiddo was obsessed with at the time), and this laminated vintage Keep Oregon Green print.

These prints were once used as placemats in various Oregon restaurants, but my laminated version was kept in pristine condition. I think I paid three dollars for mine (but I found one site trying to garner $250 for one. Yikes!).

The print finally made it onto the wall earlier this month after I finished repainting the kitchen. By coincidence, the illustrator, Hugh Hayes, died at the end of June; his 99th birthday is tomorrow, August 1.

Much of Southern Oregon is consumed in smoke and wildfire right now. My fellas and I are up out of the smoke where we are in the state, but other family and friends can't see past their back fences, and the air quality is listed as hazardous, unhealthy, or worse.

A good reminder to keep Oregon (and everywhere else!) green.

Hugh Hayes also illustrated various images of Smokey the Bear. When Smokey says "Only YOU can prevent forest fires," he means it; as many as 95 percent of wildland fires in the United States are caused by humans.  (Image credit)

You can download your own copy of the Keep Oregon Green image PDF here, courtesy of the Salem Statesman Journal, the Hayes family, and Keep Oregon Green.

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Junkin' Joe at the Cottage Market

rusty robot "vintage" door sign diy

This post was my recent project audition for "So You Think You're Crafty" and guess what? I was lucky enough to make it into the regular competition phase. To all of the amazing competitors I was up against, well done. I hope I'm up to the challenge of meeting the bar you've all raised. The weekly competition is anonymous and starts in January; I'll let you know when the voting starts for the first round!

I don’t know about you, but I have pin boards full of so many projects over on Pinterest that I’m sure I’ll never get to all of them in this lifetime. I’m gonna have to start farming stuff out. You busy? ;)

One recent love that I’ve been pinning (over and over and over again) is vintage signage. I love old typography, vintage graphics, and weathered finishes. When my love of vintage signs recently dovetailed with my need for a fireplace fix-up, I ended up picking up a pair of vintage army green sheet metal panels from Bring (the local re-building store) for 50 cents each . . . and then, because I tend to eyeball things rather than measuring them, I had a whole panel leftover.

I decided to make my sweet kiddo a sign to go above the door of his room with the leftover panel. Since he’s two and a complete nut for robots,  his room is now labeled a “ROBOTICS LAB". He loves it! In fact, the rest of the afternoon he was sing-songing "robotics lab" over and over again and dancing by the door of his room. Win!

I hope you like my kiddo's rusty robot sign as much as we do! I'll consider it high praise if you sing about it later.

I have a second, similar project I'll be posting soon. In that post, I'll go into more detail about each of the steps, but I hope this photo collage tutorial will help you get started if you're someone who just needs a little push in the right direction. Basically, start with a surface that's a little gritty and old,  paint, then roughen it up and help it rust!