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I’ve been a very bad blogger, I know. But there are reasons. I was writing. I was junking. I was baby-sitting Molly. I took a trip. But I’m back now, and I’ve missed you and hope you missed me. To make it up to you, I’ll tell you about my very junky weekend.

Extended weekend, really. We went out to Scott’s Antique Market Thursday, roamed around and had a jolly old time. I picked up a wicker-wrapped bottle for my booth at Seaside Sisters on Tybee–or maybe for me. Also a trio of vintage German seashell prints. And some sea fans–again for me. I am changing out my living room for a spring/summer beachy feel.

On Friday, after writing a little, off I went again, this time with junk posse member Jinxie, for a couple of estate sales. The first one was in Buckhead, and run by one of our favorite dealers, Vicki. I scored a great shabby chic aqua painted potting table–which will go to Seaside Sisters. Also a funky little upholstered loveseat, for $20, which will probably stay here until I figure out where she is headed. And I scored a pink Pyrex casserole dish, sans lid, but it’ll be perfect for the booth. At the next sale, run by another favorite dealer, Myrtice, I found a sweet pinwheel quilt in decent condition, and a funky vintage turquoise bowling shirt–it has “Gloria” embroidered over the breast pocket. I’d keep it for myself, except Gloria was apparently a six four, the little bee-yatch.

And then, I met two more friends and we journeyed back down to Scott’s. Again. I know, it was a junk overdose. We had a splendid time catching up, and I snagged some more excellent treasures for the booth, including a vintage flamingo-painted mirror with mirrored frame–those always sell in a snap, and a pair of funky porcelain parrots, which would make adorable lamps. And a pair of beachy pastel lime green and pink needlepoint pillows. Am a sucker for needlepoint.

That should be enough junk for any normal being–but I never claimed to be normal. Back out again I went this morning, with Katie, for a neighborhood-wide sale a couple miles away. Small wicker table, cute wooden Paris bistro set–the chairs are rickety, but I think Mr. MKA can fix. And then–I spotted a Sanford & Son look-alike truck cruising slowly down the street–its bed piled high with junk scavenged from the streetwide clean-up campaign. I flagged down the elderly driver and asked if he’d like to sell the two AWESOME red, chippy vintage wrought iron armchairs perched perilously on the top of his towering stack. “Sure,” he said. “I was just taking them to the scrapyard.” For $10 they were mine–and now they belong to posse member Susie, who was looking for the very thing.

Ah, spring. Doncha just love it?

P.S. As I was starting to leave home to head off to North Carolina for my writer’s retreat, Katie pulled up and mentioned that she’d spied a yard sale just down the block. I went, I saw, I found a great antique wicker desk and a pair of cute boudoir lamps. And then, on the way to Southern Pines, I stopped in at Old Tyme Market antiques outside Charlotte. And I snagged a great beachy aqua quilt and a vintage tin litho sandpail. See? It was just that kind of weekend.

We had a lil’ shindig at Seaside Sisters on Tybee Island today. Three years ago, Seaside Susan opened the shop in just one storefront of the Sundance Shopping Center on Highway 80. Over the next few years, the business grew, and so did her ambition to make it the best little shop on the island. Today was the big reveal. She pulled out all the stops–hired a makeup artist to give makeovers–I got one! Magazine stylist Liz Demos–whose work has been published in many national magazines–like Southern Living and Better Homes and Gardens, gave a demonstration of how to make gorgeous table settings with what you have on hand, and yours truly had a “junk from my trunk” show. I also read a couple selections from SUMMER RENTAL. As we say here in the South, a good time was had by all. A fan from Canada even dropped by with her beautiful black and chocolate labs–they are search and rescue dogs who do border patrol and anti-terrorist work on our border. You just never know who’s gonna turn up on Tybee. If you missed the party today–don’t worry! This is Tybee, the party just keeps goin’ and goin’…

Sometimes, when I speak to a book club, they’re kind enough to give me a little gift–usually it’s a nice aromatherapy candle, note cards, chocolate (always a winner)like that. But when I spoke to my friend Martha’s book club in Atlanta a couple weeks ago, she gave me the best book club bribe/gift ever. An antique upholstered bench. Martha assured me that if I didn’t take the bench, which was a family piece, she was going to have it hauled off to Goodwill. Couldn’t let that happen now, could I? If you look past the dirty, rotting upholstery fabric and the old, alligatored black varnish on the wood frame, she’s an adorable little bench, with her sexy curved legs and sweet scalloped apron. And a useful size, to boot.
The bench rode around in the back of my car until this past weekend. Finally, Saturday, I decided to tackle that sucker. I found a nice Robert Allen cream twill fabric on sale at Hancock’s and grabbed a yard-and-a-half of it–which was probably double what I needed, and also purchased some (on sale) gimp braid as trimming. I deconstructed the upholstery, removing the filthy old fabric on top, the equally filthy padding (one layer of which consisted of straw!) and the also rotting scrim on the underside of the top. I set the bench up outside and using Formby’s Refinisher and three different grades of steel wool, I stripped off the old blackened varnish. In its place, I rubbed in a coat of Briwax in a finish color called Tudor. And then came the hard part.
Upholstery. Ugh! I’ve stapled my share of dining room seat cushions in the past, but the bench, with its padded top, was a much bigger challenge than it seemed like it should be.

I finally had to call in the heavy guns–i.e. Mr. Mary Kay. We managed to replace the scrim with some muslin I had in my fabric stash, and then we covered the old padding with more of the same muslin, stapling everything in place with the electric staple gun. On to the upholstered top. We measured. I cut. We measured, I trimmed.We stapled, and then unstapled. The corners of the bench nearly undid us. Turns out we probably should have put some additional batting in there. Finally, I made the decision it was “good enough for government work.” As a final touch, I hot-glued a ribbon of gimp braid to cover up the staples.

The finished product isn’t exactly professional quality. I may still attempt to make a fitted slipcover to protect that snowy linen top. Here she is auditioning for a spot in the sun-room, where I like to sit and write on sunny days–like today.

But in the meantime, it’s done! And from now on, I’ll be expecting antique furniture hand-outs at all my book club appearances.

I never set out to become a vendor of vintage and antique finds. As newlyweds, my husband and I lived in Savannah, and our tiny little attic apartment was sparsely furnished with cast-off pieces my mother, a real estate agent, had squirrelled away from houses she’d sold. We were living on my pitiful salary as a newspaper reporter and banking Mr. Mary Kay’s, because we knew he would be going back to school for an engineering degree. So I started junking in Savannah, going to estate sales and junk shops on Saturday mornings, scooping up little treasures that appealed.I made friends with dealers I met along the way, and they gave me hints about antiques and vintage stuff, and I got hooked. In a bad way. When we moved to Atlanta I continued my junking habits. At one point, when Katie was a baby, I attended an auction in our neighborhood on a weekly basis, taking her along in her stroller while I indulged in what was becoming a passion. Dealers befriended me, and I learned a little more. The dealers running estate sales came to know me, and eventually, one of them asked me if I was a dealer. “Not a dealer, just a user,” I said. Raising an eyebrow, she replied sadly, “yeah, that’s how we all get started.” It only took me about 30 years to finally admit my addiction, and take a booth to sell my vintage wares at Seaside Sisters on Tybee Island. Three years into it, I still love “piddling around” with old stuff. People always ask me why I don’t rent a space in an antique mall in Atlanta, where, after all, we live full-time. And I tell ’em–because if I did that, I’d never write another book. I’d just piddle away all my time playing with junk. This way, I junk in “moderation”–hah! Try telling that to Mr. Mary Kay. We go down to The Breeze Inn around once a month–except during the summer, when the house stays rented, and that’s when I re-stock my booth at Seaside Sisters. One of the best things about junking is when you can finally manage to practice what I’ve come to call “catch and release.” I really never buy anything I don’t love, and I very rarely buy anything incredibly rare or pricey. So I’ve gotten a little promiscuous with my junking. I’ll buy something, take it home, live with it a few weeks or months or years even, and then, eventually, when the infatuation wears off, I’ll rotate it down to my booth and hope that somebody else will fall in love too. Because then, I’ll have money to spend on my next great love affair.

Yesterday was a fine day to indulge my love of vintage, strolling around Scott’s Antique Market. A beautiful sunny day, and the place was packed to the rafters. I strolled and munched–tiny little cinnamon donuts! I ran into old friends and laughed and chatted with dealers. And I bought a few things. Scouting around the outdoor vendors at the South building, I ran into a man who’d bought out an estate in Columbus, Georgia.

Little League jersey

The deceased had been a Little League coach for many, many years, and the dealer had a great pile of vintage ’50s kid’s baseball shirts and pants. Not the yucky polyester baseball jerseys Boomerange Boy wore during his 18 years of baseball, but the good stuff, wonderful, heavy cotton flannel uniforms, with real machine embroidery for the team sponsors, and real ground-in Georgia red clay. I had to bring a couple of those home with me!

Popcorn megaphone

The coach must have run the concession stand at his ballpark, because he’d left behind a huge stash of old waxed cardboard soft drink cups, and popcorn containers that can become a megaphone when the popcorn’s gone. And he was a Shriner too, because there was also a stack of vintage circus posters.

Circus poster

Ah, winter. No better time to find yourself a snug place to hideaway and read. I’m one of those people who always have at least one book going at any time, and now, with the Kindle Mr. Mary Kay gave me for Christmas, the possibilities for new books seem endless. So, what have I been reading these past few months? Just finished the ARE (advanced reader’s edition) for my friend Patti Callahan Henry’s new book, Coming Up for Air. I think it’s her first set outside of the South Carolina Low Country, with a theme of lost love and family secrets, and I know her readers are going to love it. Not due out til September, but you can pre-order here. I do love a big, juicy biography, and this fall was fascinated by Jane Levy’s ambitious and revealing The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America’s Childhood. Susan Elizabeth Phillips is always on my auto-buy list, so I bought Call Me Irresistible the day it was released last week,and gobbled it right up. Last summer when I was staying in Nag’s Head, writing Summer Rental , I discovered the work of Elinor Lipman. Can I just tell you that she is my new book crush? I loved all her books, including And Then She Found Me, (which was made into a meh movie with Helen Hunt and Bette Midler), but if I could only recommend one it would be, hands down, The Family Man. Funny, droll, heart-warming, this is a book about acceptance and forgiveness and late-blooming love. How I wish I had written this book! Another day while I was writing away at the Nag’s Head library, I discovered the Regency Romances of Eloisa James. I hadn’t read a Regency since my teen years, but what a delight it was to find Eloisa–who is, in real life, a Harvard and Yale educated Shakespearean scholar who teaches creative writing at Fordham. Don’t be shy about those “clinch” covers, either. After all, if the guys can buy all those thrillers with submarines, stealth bombers, guns and knives, why can’t a girl buy a book with a bare-chested hunk on the cover? Just sayin’…I flew through her Desperate Duchesses series, and then last week, downloaded her eNovella, Storming The Castle. Great fun. I got to meet Eloisa at a romance convention last summer, and through her was introduced to the steamy Regency Romances of Lisa Kleypas, which I actually listened to on audio. Have mercy! What else have I been reading? Oh, you know. A little Michael Connelly, The Reversal–awesome, as always. Some old Jennifer Crusie re-issues,if you’ve never read Crazy For You, or Tell Me Lies, boy, are you missing out. I received Nora Ephron’s, I Remember Nothing for our book club Christmas swap, and I love Nora, so that’s next on my TBR stack. And then there’s a new novel getting a lot of buzz, The Weird Sisters, that I’d like to read. And my pal Laura Lippman has a new Tess Monaghan mystery novella called The Girl in the Green Raincoat. By the time I finish those, that should bring us to March, when oh happy day, we will have both the movie of Connelly’s Lincoln Lawyer, and his next Mickey Haller mystery. Oh yeah, and I’m supposed to be writing a new book of my own. Details.

I brake for dead people’s stuff

Did you miss me? Hard to believe I went nearly three weeks without posting here. I missed blogging and connecting with readers, but the holiday season was so wild, this seems like my first chance to catch up. I’m down at Tybee, holed up at The Breeze Inn, working on the next book, or as writers say, WIP (that’s work in progress). The secret code name is Project Ex. But since I exceeded my ten page writing goal Friday, I got to do a little junking on Saturday. Savannah was where I cut my estate sale junking teeth, and when I saw the Craigslist ad for an estate sale for a 90-year-old prominent Savannahian, in Ardsley Park–primo junking territory, no way was I going to miss out. I set my alarm for 6 a.m., and hit the ground running, Diet Coke in one hand, giant tote bag in the other. By 6:45 I was rolling through the drive-thru at Krispy-Kreme, and by 7 a.m. I was pulling up to the stately old home where the sale was being held. Eight or nine stalwart dealers were already lined up outside, huddled in the pre-dawn chill, sipping coffee and discussing their latest scores. One guy even brought his own portable propane heater to ward off the cold! Now that’s a first. What next? Porta-potties? Wouldn’t that be awesome?

The early morning line-up–and their propane heater

The dealer gang included my friend Liz Demos, who used to own my favorite Savannah shop, At Home Vintage General. These days, Liz sells through a booth at a new antique mall called Steal Magnolias, in midtown Savannah, but mostly she stays busy as a much-in-demand wedding planner, magazine and ad photo stylist and designer. This gal has flair to spare! Unfortunately, we like the same kinds of stuff, and unfortunately, she was in line ahead of me, but since the house was so huge, there was plenty of vintage junk for all, so no problem-o.

Dining room packed with antiques

When the doors opened shortly before 8 a.m., we rushed inside. This was the kind of sale junkers dream of–a house packed full of decades and decades worth of treasures. The furniture, silver, crystal and china were the real deal. That portrait of Robert E. Lee in the dining room was priced at $18,000! Upstairs there was a magnificent rice-carved mahogany four-poster with it’s own pull-out steps, I think it was $4,000. The high-ceilinged old rooms had once been elegant, but the whole house was painted a dingy green, giving the effect that you were under-water.

General Lee presides over the sale

I had myself a grand time, browsing and ogling. In the end, I managed to fill my tote for a grand total of $69. My biggest expenditure was a covered ironstone vegetable tureen for $20. I also bought a candlewick spread with a sprightly design of pink tulips for $2, a red vintage straw hat with a saucy red rose, some ironstone butter pats, a never-used pin the tail on the donkey game, a never used tartan wool lap blanket from Scotland, a tin tole tray, and a silver-plated bevelled hand mirror. True to my deep-seated need for vintage linens, I also succumbed to a flat sheet with pretty crocheted trim for $2, but I did manage to tear myself away from the wonderland of embroidered and monogrammed damask tablecloths and napkins and pillowcases.

Couldn’t resist this vintage hat

My bag o’ treasures

After the sale I met up with Liz and my pal Diane Kaufman, who owns Mermaid Cottage Vacation Rentals. Diane and her crew manage The Breeze Inn, and she has established her first off-beach beachhead with the tiniest, most adorable little cottage in downtown Savannah, which she has been re-doing. Can’t wait to take pics of the finished project to share with you. We managed a quick dash through a promising new antique mall on Wright Square, and an even quicker dash through Habersham Antiques before I had to scoot back to Tybee to have lunch with new friends Beth and Carla, who’d lured me into lunching with them because they’d very sweetly scored me some vintage glass Christmas ornaments. What can I say? I’ll lunch for junk any day.

New friends Beth and Carla

After lunch I told myself I needed to go grocery shopping at Publix, on Wilmington Island. That’s what I told myself. Somehow, I ended up at the Goodwill. Now, I never find anything at that Goodwill. My friend Polly furnishes her whole booth at Seaside Sisters with Goodwill treasures, but I have never once found anything even remotely attractive there. But yesterday, I walked to the back of the store, and there it was–shining like a nugget of gold in a heap of sad, fugly ’80s cast-offs. A vintage rattan sofa! In decent condition! With sad, fugly Herculon plaid cushions! For $39.99! I could not rip the tag off that puppy fast enough. Marched myself up to the cash register and staked my claim in a loud voice.

Gem of a vintage sofa in the landfill of fugly

Then I went back to fondle and fawn and photograph said sofa. And I noticed a pair of vintage mahogany bookcases. They were unpriced, so I marched back to the front to inquire. “Oh those? They’re $9.99 apiece.” Oh those? They are so mine now.

Couldn’t pass up this promising pair

And then, to put the cherry on my sundae–the cashier looked me over and asked if I might qualify for the senior citizen discount. Let me just say that when I got that nasty AARP card in the mail after a certain birthday, I ripped it up in a huff. I don’t ask for discounts at the grocery or the movies. But at the Goodwill? For 10 percent off? Hell to the yeah. Today I must commandeer a truck to pick up my stuff. And get some fabric for those sofa cushions. And hide the sofa in the garage at the Breeze, while the cushions get recovered. Shh. Do NOT tell Mr. Mary Kay. Oh yeah, time to get back to writing again.

With Christmas right around the corner, I got a special gift this month from my friend Jay Powell at Digi Ronin Games.

It turns out that the casual game “Mary Kay Andrews: The Fixer Upper” is now available in Target stores! Up until now, the game was available only as a PC-download, sold online on various gaming sites. But now you can buy the PC-version in your local Target. It’s even in a snazzy box designed to look just like the book cover–perfect for gift giving if you have some MKA fans on your list. Cool, right?

But that’s not all.

Jay has also gotten a Mac-based version of the game approved by the gods at Apple. So now all of you iPad users can play the game too!

Well, it is better to give than to receive as they say. Having received this good news—along with a bunch of boxed copies of the game AND some free digital download codes for both the PC and Mac versions of the game—now I get to give these out to my loyal fans. Oh how I love to play Santa!

Enter to win your free download or a boxed copy of the game by visiting my Facebook page. Leave a comment letting us know what books you are giving as gifts this year. And at the end of your note, be sure to mention whether you are on a PC or a Mac. We’ll select winners at random from all the entries and contact the lucky winners next week, just in time for Christmas.

Merry Christmas to us all and good luck everyone!

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Vintage silver and gold glass grapes and silver candlesticks

Whew! Did you hear that giant sigh of relief? That was me, happy to have nearly all my Christmas decorating completed. And yes, there are still another half dozen bins of stuff down in the basement. After having two different homes on our neighborhood’s Christmas tour three different times, we (and by we I mean I) have accumulated a lot of holiday decorations. A veritable buttload, my husband would say. When your house is on a Christmas tour, you find yourself putting Christmas trees in the claw-foot tub in your son’s bathroom (2008), and your husband’s office (2008). You find yourself painting your office walls only hours before the tour begins (2000). You sweet-talk your girlfriend and her daughter into wallpapering your bathroom the night before the tour. (1996). And of course, you buy miles of garland and enough lights to string halfway around the world. Why? You rationalize that you are doing this for the betterment of mankind. But really, if you’re me, you can’t not. If you’re me, you fervently believe that anything worth doing is worth overdoing. But this year, we are not, thankfully, on tour. So I’ve simplified. Bwahahahahaha. Who am I kidding? I thought I’d share pix of some of my Christmas collections. Unlike most people, my collections are not numbered, signed, or dated. There is no Christmas Spode in my cupboards, no Christmas villages on a tabletop. Nor are there any artisan-made velvet Santas. I like all these things, but they do not speak to me. What speaks to me are old dime-store decorations. Brush trees from Woolworth’s. Plastic Santa candy containers from Kresge’s. Honeycomb snowmen from stores that haven’t existed since the ’60s. For years and years, I’ve picked up my kitschy little cuties at estate sales and the occasional dealer, especially when I’m junking in the Midwest. Some of my vintage treasures still have their yellowed original price stickers or grease-pencilled prices pencilled on the bottom. Hmm. When was the last time you found anything for 19 cents? Me neither, but these guys remind me of those simpler, cheesier days.



Vintage (mostly) snowmen snuggle up in the secretary.



I love looking at vintage Christmas collectibles on blogs and at antique shows, but I only add to my own collections when I find things on the cheap. The thrill of the hunt, you know. And I love arranging everything around the house once the bins have been brought up from the basement. I put on my Sinatra, Crosby and Nat King Cole Christmas CDs, and light an aromatherapy candle and commence to putter. I line up the brush trees, some of them shedding their glitter and rusted branches like their real-life counterpart in the living room, on the shelves of the Welsh cupboard in the dining room.

Vintage brush trees sprout among the transferware

The snowmen have found a home in the glass-front secretary in the living room, and the Santas and elves are always perched on top of my collection of vintage picnic baskets, thermoses and breadboxes in the old pine armoire. This year, with Miss Molly toddling around, it’s good to be able to gently close the armoire doors to keep busy fingers away.

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Santas and elves congregate on picnic tins and thermoses.

Little lost lambs mingle with plastic reindeer



This year, the lambs, most of which were probably orphaned from old nativity sets, decided to herd up with the plastic reindeer on a silver tray on top of the mahogany chest by the sofa. But other years, they’ve paraded across the mantle. I’m hoping the lambs won’t ridicule the reindeer for their missing antlers, or for being so woefully out of scale, compared to the sheep.





Santa mugs and jug lined up on kitchen windowsill

The Santa mug collection got its start because my grandmother had some at her house when I was very young. My sister Susie and I pieced a set together after finding boxes of them at a florist shop. The ones pictured here are actually tiny nut-cup sized, but I’ve also got the cocoa-sized ones on another windowsill.

Christmas boxes seated by the fireplace…for now

Some years I don’t add a single piece to my collections. But this year I picked up a couple of these holiday gift boxes. Some years I get really lucky and find vintage Christmas decorations inside the old gift boxes, a rare twofer. My favorite recent find is the box I got for fifty cents. On one side is a large-lettered label. ELF HATS. I seem to remember that the elf hats were in shreds.

Brush tree and mercury-glass ornaments

Because every year the holidays seem to get busier, I always try to fit in some down time, an afternoon or evening when we turn down the lamps, light the tree, loll on the sofa with a glass of wine, and watch an old Christmas movie. Sometimes, Katie will agree to share my ritual of watching White Christmas. I try to savor these moments, and not think about the day AFTER Christmas, when Mr. Mary Kay will start tapping his toe and demanding that I pack up that buttload of stuff, piece by piece, tissue by tissue, so it can go back down to the basement again until next year. Sigh.