Buckets and Bolts & Easy Things for YOU! to Do

Sometimes it's easier to make up things for you to do, not I.

A few weekends ago the Prince and I visited Baby and Pete and the Murderess in Raleigh, where they're living, for the moment.

The Murderess

 
Raleigh is primarily a place of fried foods.  Here we have the 1853 Grille at the Raleigh Flea where they serve fried twinkies, fried hohos, bloom 'n fried onions, funnel cakes, fried candy bars, and (as opposed to simply fried) DEEP fried pecan pie. 

Breakfast one morning was fried chicken topped with fried eggs with fried churros on the side.

The Lovely Pete Chows Down

Raleigh is also a place of great inspiration, though since our '89 Mustang melted earlier this summer, I find just about anywhere other then here inspirational. 

That flea market was particularly good, to return to the theme of this post -- Easy Things for YOU! to Do.

You will notice the bucket at the top of this post. The word SEASIDE is embossed on it, which is pleasurable as I have not been to the shore yet this summer in part because of the car, but let's not get into that again.  I cast NO BLAME!



The bucket was abandoned on our front porch a few days ago. We do not know by whom, or why, although I suppose we've become known as a repository for junk; as likely to take things out of the dump as place them there.


It (the bucket)  reminded me of a display above a storefront in downtown Raleigh:

What we have here is a series of galvanized buckets hammered up high and low and stuffed with petunias that drip a fringe along the roofline.  Brilliant, I thought and think. You -- and I mean YOU can do this!

 Following our bucket motif, here we have a copper nail bin, a relic from a hardware store. This would make a cool planter -- you'd simply add dirt and plants-pale green potato vine would be smashing against the copper--and voila!

 

Building on a favorite theme, objects that provide color in the garden when there's no color to be had, a flea market chair (or a pair) with a watering can on the seat.

To give you more ideas, and so I don't have to move from my chair, I will now recolor them in Photoshop.

You can also create a little uplift with...

Again, Photoshop assists in a demonstration of how perky this would look in a woodland scene.

As fall approaches and you're rooting about for something to do beside the fireside, here's a thought: You can roll pieces of crepe paper into roses and attach little stems and leaves -- you can probably get the supplies at a craft store. And, I'm thinking, you can mass them in a toilet tank. Or in the bowl, if the toilet is not in use, or broken, as these things sometimes are.

They do this in New Orleans, sort of. I guess it's the French influence, which I don't mind saying, since I don't think there's a single person of the French persuasion reading this blog.