I just got home from a whirlwind trip to Bellingham. Flew up on Thursday night (late) to help my mom get her house ready to sell and flew back on Sunday night. I am exhausted! But it was a great trip! We got so much done (Jo Dallas & Kathy Rutan came out to help) but, I will tell you more about that later….

Welcome to Lynn’s Latest #00004

Thursday, May 23rdnd, 2024
Volume V Issue 00004

In design news, Susan and I have two new clients! We spent a morning this month at a client’s home in Oakview. Here are BEFORE pictures of the two rooms we are designing. We should be out there in the next few weeks zhuzhing it up!

Then this past Tuesday, Susan and I visited another client’s home in Oxnard. Both are very different design projects and we can’t wait to tackle them both! Here are BEFORE pics of the two rooms we will be designing.

Here is a link to learn more about our design service. And actually purchase a consult!

Time for an eBay score! I bought this flatware last summer at a sale that Theresa Meurs was doing at Assumption Church. I paid $15 and just sold these two teaspoons for $50. The same buyer bought a few pieces more for a grand total of $142.50. Score!

If you want to check out the original listing, you can do so here.

Speaking of Theresa Meurs she will be running the estate sale at my mom’s house to help us liquidate before my mom’s big move. This is soooooo the right move for my mom at 87 years of age…she needs to be closer to her family!

To prepare for Theresa coming in, I flew up to edit the clothing as that is the first thing that will be sold. My mom had about 1,500 clothing items listed on eBay. First up, was asking my kids, Kiki’s kids and anyone else what they wanted from her eBay store. We got the lists and Jo Dallas pulled it all. Kathy Rutan packed up the box and then I could end those listings. Exciting!

After I left, Theresa and Stan came to my mom’s home this past Tuesday and started staging for the private clothing sale. Here is a glimpse of what it looks like. Over 2,000 items. If anyone in the Bellingham area is interested, please reach out.

Jo, Kathy and I also helped my mom edit her closet. We got rid of a ton of stuff and even colorized it. It looks sooooooo amazing! I am just bummed I did NOT take a before picture. Here are the after photos. This is really happening and I am so happy for my mom for her next chapter.

I was out to dinner with Hous, Emma and Larrisa for Mother’s day and Houston was talking about the 1st third of his life and it was really interesting for me to hear. I am in my third 3rd and am looking forward to what it brings…not sure what my mom would call this time in her life, but I would call it EXCITING!

My mom obviously has enough clothes to wear a different outfit to each and every breakfast, lunch and dinner when she moves into the Townhouse (Independent Living) here in Ventura. She is going to have sooooo much fun!

So my trip to Bellingham was not all work and no play. I actually went out both Friday and Saturday nights with high school friends and had a blast. Friday night, I had set up a mini reunion with a bunch of my girlfriends and one guy, Kurt Lunde, because he has this amazing barn where we are going to hold our next “official” reunion and I needed him there to plan. I also asked him to invite any other guys from our class. Turns out he only had two guys in his phone, Ricky & Dennis, and both were unable to attend…LOL.

Kurt got to be BMOC that night and during our dinner he even said “How many cheerleaders are at the table?” and when they raised their hands he said “I am finally popular”….hahahahaha!

Here we are at dinner and here is a photo of us in Kurt’s barn at the after party for our reunion last summer….do you see why we needed him there at our dinner on Friday night? LOL…in addition, he is a really great guy!

BTW, these are some of my BEST high school friends…it was such a treat for me to see them. From left to right, Marlene Gallman, Melanie Souve (bestie who now lives in Colorado), me, Kathy Rutan (another bestie), Leslie Arntzen (6th grade bestie), Kurt Lunde (duh!), Stacey Davis (from Olympia), Vicki Cratzenburg (from Shelton) and Jo Dallas (current bestie up from Olympia)….LOL I guess you could say they are all besties!

Funny story, in high school I bought six tiny gold and diamond rings at my grandma’s antique & jewelry store to give to my best friends. I knew that I had given one to Kathy Rutan and Jodi Cadman, but couldn’t remember the rest of the girls.

I showed it around the table and Marlene says “I got one!” and Melanie my best friend said “I did NOT”. She was pissed. It was kind of funny, all through dinner she made fun of me and acted hurt that she didn’t get one.

Here is what they look like and I just found it recently when I was cleaning out my office. If anyone knows where I can get one, please let me know…I WILL be sending Melanie one soon.

Melanie really was my best friend from high school as she was co-maid of honor with my sister in my wedding. Ironically, two days ago on May 21st it was 30 years ago that I got married at St. James Presbyterian Church in Bellingham. Guess which one is Melanie and which one is my sister.

Back to present day Bellingham, after dinner some of us headed out to The Beach at Birch Bay to dance. It was a fun night!

The next night I met another high school friend for Martinis at the Loft. It used to be called Bay Cafe and my sister and I went there a lot and my brother even worked there back in the day. It was another fun, but late night!

By the time I got back to my mom’s house in the early morning hours, she had locked me out. Not fun!

In between all of my socializing, I also helped my mom to list some of her personal antiques on eBay. This vase is a Thomas Webb that my grandmother brought over from England in the 1960’s. It is up at auction and here is a link to check it out.

Oh my! I forgot to tell you about my plane trip home this past Thursday night. I was seated to a couple that didn’t speak English…I am guessing Eastern European, but the flight attendants thought they were from South America.

In any event they were ALL OVER one another from the second they sat down. They never stopped making out and were basically having sex.

Instead of the flight attendants saying anything to them, they came to save me and moved me to a new seat. Once in the new seat, they said that they had NEVER seen anything like it. They gave me and my new TAME seatmates free drinks. LOL. I did manage to get a photo of the perpetrators. Scary!

Here I am with the flight attendants, Lynnette & Gwendolyn, who saved me!

Time for another one of my eBay scores. These awesome drapery tiebacks I got from my grandma and was always going to use them in my home. Never got around to it and decided to list them on eBay. Sold for my asking price of $289.99! Here is a link if you want to check them out.

Before I forget, I was going to tell you more about my friend Pam’s amazing 60th birthday party! I invited Marc Kettles to go with me, but apparently I didn’t really invite him. Check out our text exchange. Hahaha. Marc & Pam went to high school together so I thought that maybe he would get invited.

I thought I had invited him and he thought I just told him about it and that Sandy was my plus one! LOL. I had told him several weeks prior that Sandy had also been invited, but he forgot.

When he said “Have fun” I thought well, that is quite the way to turn down the invitation.

Two days later at Fit Buddha, Sandy says to Marc, “I am bummed you are not going with us to Pam’s Party” and he was like “She never invited me”.

Sandy calls me and says, “You need to invite him again.” So I went back and reread the texts and she was right!

After all that drama, he was able to go! He came to my house at 3:30 to get ready and brought flowers. After we both got ready, we had a cocktail with my mom and we were cracking up because it was like we were going to prom! My mom even took pics of us 🙂

We ended up having a blast at the party! We ate a wonderful dinner, danced and celebrated Pam’s birthday!

I made Pam a few photo collages from our younger days for her gift. After college, I lived with my fellow USC friends, Juliette and Lisa in a 3 Bedroom in Brentwood. Lisa eventually moved out to get married and Juliette and I put an ad in the Daily Breeze looking for a roommate.

We were reminiscing about that at the party and Pamela (who was going to Pepperdine at the time) said we were the harshest interviewers. Hahaha. Anyway, the rest is history and Pam, Juliette and I lived together for quite a few years. Pam even met her future husband Cliff during that time driving down PCH.

They called us the “Blonde, the Brunette and the Redhead”. Those were some fun days! Oh the trouble we got into…Here is a photo of her gifts and she liked them!

It has been a fun couple of weeks! The first day at my mom’s while we were working on packing up her personal stuff, there was a knock at the door and my mom was like, “Do you know who that is?” No!

I opened the door and it was an old elementary school friend of my mom’s and her daughter. My mom and Alice Sweet used to roller skate together back in junior high up in Ferndale. They got a kick out of reminiscing, but I was cracking the whip and it was time to get back to work.

Let’s chat about the store a bit. The vignettes have never looked so good…if you ask me! The store is open, breezy and ready for customers. Please, please, please let all of your friends, relatives, neighbors and acquaintances know that we are still OPEN and would love to see some customers. Store hours are….

Weds-Sat 11-5
Sun 11-3

Also, something that I have never talked about in my newsletters is that we have a 24 hour take home approval program! What this means is that you can pay for an item, just let us know that it is ON APPROVAL, we will write that on your receipt and you have 24 hours to decide if it works. If not when you bring it back, you will receive a full refund.