Avon, Farm Auctions, Dealing Antiques and Sewing; Oh My!

Boy howdy, am I ever busy! I decided awhile back to become an Avon Lady.  Seriously, isn't that the best?  My mother, rest her soul, LOVED Avon from as far back as I can remember. I mean I still picture the pink bathroom in our house on Perry Court in Sycamore and the Avon bottle of bubble bath shaped like a poodle, also pink, that sat on the corner of the bathtub.  Over the years, I opened many, many, many small Avon boxes to reveal a new set of earrings or a necklace.  The quilted bag I take back and forth to the cottage was an Avon gift a few years back.

Since her death, though, Avon has ceased and one day I decided to jump on the website and the next thing I knew, I became a consultant and at this point, I am my best Avon customer, but it always starts out that way, right?  Now that I've gone through 2 campaigns and earned a few customers, the newness has worn off and I must sit down to business and figure out the tax and stuff and the paper trail of running a business.  I am the creative brain, so this stuff is not fun but necessary.

Interested in Avon?  Check me out at jjacky.avonrepresentative.com.

In the meantime of gussying myself up as the Avon Lady, I'm also getting into gear for the summer farm auction season.  The first farm auction that I'm traveling to is this Saturday about a 3 hour drive.  There have been others this year, but the weather looks like it will cooperate and my husband has the day off, so hey, how about that?

I have been busy listing items left over from last year's farm auctions, so Etsy has become a popular place.  But almost the best of all, the sewing machine and I have become friends again.  The last 2 years have been busy and things got put on the back burner and my machine and I just haven't merged much. With the reorganization of my office / sewing room, I'm in the saddle once again.

Firstly, I needed to finish up some pending projects that I started and wanted to finish and then I got down to business and made a new shelf tuck or as some call a bowl ornie.

A few blog posts back I mentioned the 1925 Kansas Farmer advertisement I turned into fabric from Spoonflower.  The lady with her chicken and chicks is that advertisement that I sewed into pink and white feed sack.

What's so incredibly special about this feed sack is that it retains part of the advertising that was once on all feed sacks.  Ladies would purchase the feed and go home to soak off the writing so that the fabric could go into clothing and quilts.

It's just pretty amazing this is still intact.  Only a bit of it was on the feed sack and it reads, "Best Poultry" and has a picture of a cow and pig.

I filled with polyester fiberfill and added a vintage piece of lace to the side.  If you're interested, this piece is listed in my Etsy shop.

So between Avon, farm auctions, selling antiques and sewing, I also have to think ahead to the bountiful amount of yard work our lake cottage will be needing before Memorial Day.  I love being busy!  At the end of the day, my head hits the pillow and I'm magically swept away into dreamland and I wouldn't change a thing!