I was so excited when my friend Jennifer Hauck posted the big news that she was opening an occasional sale this month called House of J in Superior, WI.

An occasional sale, for those of you not familiar, is one in which the store is only open a limited number of days per month - usually just one weekend. The other three weekends the shop owner devotes to hitting other sales pulling together new items and new displays for the next open weekend, repurposing items into brand new uses, even painting and reupholstering furniture, so that each time you visit, it is like going into a brand new store.

I am quite fond of occasional sales. I've been a frequent customer at the sales in Buffalo, Carver, and even Lindstrom when we lived up there.  

Jennifer is one of those incredibly creative people that makes you wish you could just absorb some of her creativity by being in the same room with her.  We met when our girls were just babies, and I was always so impressed that she looked like she came off the cover of the latest fashion magazine, despite having a limited budget at the time.

I loved visiting her and seeing what new ideas she had for making her house a "home." I remember the adorable little valance dancing across her kitchen window that she said she spied on a skirt on a clearance rack, and which she then magically transformed into her window treatment.

Hers was the first home I had ever seen with a room in which one wall was painted dark red.  You could see this wall through the front picture window as you drove by, and it just made you want to come inside and see the rest of the room (which was decorated very chic!).

She always had lots of beautiful photographs of her kids framed in all kinds of unusual ways, and her way of repurposing common objects into household art astounded me.

I knew when she announced her newest creative endeavor that she would be putting together a wonderful store. Her pictures here, posted on House of J's Facebook page, teased me regarding what was to come.

I wasn't disappointed.  A small crowd had gathered outside the store when it opened, and a flood of shoppers quickly filled the space inside. I was impressed with the variety and quantity of goods in a range of prices (something for every wallet!), and Jennifer's artistic eye could be seen in everything from the chic prints gracing the reupholstered furniture to the local artist's work displayed on the walls.

I found a few items for myself and could have taken a lot more home with me had I not been driving the little Civic.

If you're lucky enough to find yourself in the neighborhood of Superior, WI this summer, I hope that you'll check her calendar (posted on her website - link above) and pop in when her shop is open. 

Tell her I sent ya. And give her a big hug from me.

Are you a fan of occasional sales?  If so, which ones do you frequent most often?

(Top two pics by me; all the rest by Jennifer Hauck from House of J's Facebook page.)

It's rainy, cold and dreary here today.  Just what I hoped for on a late-April "spring" day. 

Not.

Instead of shearing alpacas this weekend with our friends at Kinney Valley Alpacas, working hard and laughing until we cry, due to the inclement weather, we are staying home, crying.

{insert sad faces here}

OK, we're not really crying.

But I am taking solace for my disappointment in several ways.

a) I'm currently sitting at my favorite local coffee shop, The Mocha Monkey, in Waconia, sipping a "Lucky Monkey" and thinking about what a Lucky Monkey I am, despite the weather and missing  my friends and a whole mess of flying fleece. I have my little rented 2-acre farm, 5 alpacas (#6 due in August!), 3 cats and 15 peeps. Life is good.

b) We have a freshly made, gourmet-chocolate-cheesecake made by my my sweetie in the freezer, that was meant for the folks at the shearing party. If things get too desperate around here this weekend, that baby's coming OUT.  Shearing party be damned!  (But don't tell Justin!)

c) I discovered a new blog a couple of nights ago, while doing a Google image search for chickens.  Turns out there is a young writer named Jenna Woginrich living in Washington County, NY who is running her own homestead, Cold Antler Farm, and who has already authored two books on homesteading - Chick Days, a subject near and dear to my heart, about raising chickens, from eggs to adults, and Made from Scratch, Discovering the Pleasures of a Handmade Life.

I ordered both of her books yesterday.  Yippee!!

Who among us hasn't had some version of the Farmgirl (or Farmer) dream at some time in our lives? Who has bustled along noisy city streets and not longed for a peaceful acre to call their own? Who has tended seedlings in a window-sill garden, or canned fresh produce from the farmer's market, or picked out their own pumpkin straight off the vine in a farmer's field?

If you have Farmgirl dreams in your heart, and some time to dream and read this dreary weekend, I hope you'll check out Jenna's blog, which chronicles her journey from farmgirl-wannabe living in the city, to certified Farmgirl (or Farmer, if you prefer that title Jenna!).

Jenna lights the way for all of us who are still striving towards our own Farmgirl dreams, wherever we may live. 

Happy Friday!

I am addicted to the Instagr.am ap on my iPhone.

Now granted, my phone doesn't take the best pics.  It is an older model.  Most of the pics look blurry when seen any larger than on the screen of my phone, like when I'm viewing an RSS feed of my farm photos in large detail.  But now and then, a photo like the one above comes out, and I am just a little bit amazed.

I did apply a filter to the image of Zoey, above.  I forget which one.  It's not important.

What's important is that the ap is a) easy to use and b) fun.  You can "follow" other Instagr.am users just like you can follow people on Twitter.  By doing so, their pics (and yours) will show up in your Feed (like a Facebook News Feed). You can "like" another person's photos, and even add comments.

The Popular tab will show you photos that have been "liked" enough times to get them into the popular stream (how many "likes" does this entail?  Who knows!).  From there you may even find new fave photographers to follow.

From your Profile tab, you can find friends, invite friends, and even search images in Instagram by names and tags (thus all the words you see proceeded by the # sign).  You can even watch an RSS feed of photos by keyword (or hash tags - those words preceded by the # sign you see in the comments) on your desktop web browser.

(To do this, click on my "farm photos" link above. Copy the URL and replace the word "aspendancealpacas"with whatever keyword you'd like to view pictures of - cats, kittens, flowers, whatever).

Other websites are now springing up to take advantage of the many possible uses for Instagr.am photos, from widgets to stickers to photos and more.  To find more fun ways to use Instagr.am, check out Photojojo's post. 

I wanted to add a widget to this blog that would display my latest Instagram photos and Photojojo's post directed me to Snapfinch, which quickly and easily allowed me to do just that. After logging in (I did so using my existing Facebook account) I went to the Extras tab and put in my Instagram username, changed the photo layout to 2x2, changed the background color to black (000000) and copied the code into my Blog>Design>Add a Gadget>HTML, gave it a title and pasted in the code. Wallah! Easy peasy!

Are you addicted to Instagram too?  My username is "aspendance."  Feel free to look me up, and let me know if you're on there so I can follow your photo stream too!

Happy clicking!

(Image from here.)

I'd like to introduce you to one of my new favorite blogs, Chickens in the Road. It's written by Suzanne McMinn, who lives on a 40-acre farm in West Virginia with a plethora of animals including chickens, goats, sheep, a cow, dogs and cats.

She also writes about cooking, gardening, and making stuff from scratch. It's a really cool blog, and was even a finalist for Best Photography of a Weblog on the 2011 Bloggies Awards.

If you love farms, or the country, or just want to enjoy a bit of vicarious farm-life, I hope you will check it out.

Happy Friday!