Spring Snow

Just when you thought it was safe to put away the winter clothes, you wake up to this:
And you realize that it's still March, and we're not out of the woods yet. Boo! March and April are technically the wettest months here in Denver, and we typically get about 12" of snow in March in an average year. This is actually the first snow we've had all month, so I guess I shouldn't complain. Talk about a rude awakening, though!

Even though it's wintry outside, Spring is in full force in my house. Just want to share one of my favorite new Easter decorations this year:
This is all covered by my tall glass cloche but I had to remove it for photographing. The big bunny is from Hobby Lobby and although he looks pretty convincingly like you could take a big bite out of his ears, he's actually ceramic. I put him on the slate platter that came with my cloche. The platter is covered with a doily and a scattering of foil-covered chocolate eggs. The large eggs are floral picks with the wires removed, and are also from Hobby Lobby. I'm all about the colored foil in my decorating this year.

I finally finished up an Easter craft I've been working on for at least a week now. These eggs are featured in the April 2007 Martha and as soon as I saw them, I knew I could make them:
Martha used real blown-out eggs but I think that's just silly when I could get papier mache eggs cheap at the craft store. The only other supplies needed were Mod Podge and canceled postage stamps, both of which I had in my stash. I was too lazy to make one of Martha's egg drying rigs so I was only able to glue one side of the egg at a time, which is why it took me a week to get them finished! If you want to try them, be aware that you are putting a flat item (the stamp) onto a round surface (the egg) so the stamps aren't going to fit smoothly. I had to use my fingers and really smooth the stamps down after they were saturated with the glue. The end result is that your egg will have a somewhat bumpy finish, but if you look close at the magazine photograph you can tell that Martha's eggs were bumpy too, so I don't consider that a failure!

Now that those eggs are done, the next project is --dun-dun-dun!-- the infamous pipecleaner chicks and baskets. I'm a little nervous, but I'm going to give it a whirl anyway! I'll be sure to report back, success or no.

Reunited (and it feels so good)

In my post yesterday about the package Rebecca sent to me, I hinted that there was another goodie that needed its own post, and here it is! You may recall that a few weeks ago I went on a thrifting binge and found the Hazel-Atlas sugar bowl shown on the right. A few days after I posted that photo, Rebecca emailed me and said that she thought she might have the matching creamer. She was right; it was a match, and she very kindly offered to send it to me so that the matching set could be together again at last! Don't they just look happy to be side by side once more? I think so. In Rebecca's words, "We're better than Match.com!"

Who knew the Easter Bunny used the USPS?

I got a fun little package full of *goodness* from Miss Rebecca on Saturday! She sent a darling little crocheted duckie just for Maren, ribbon for the stash (remind me to show you my ribbon holders some time), a cute little pen, an Easter bunny rubber stamp, a fabulous piece of fabric that I simply adore, a Gooseberry Patch recipe book,and a set of tiny painted eggs that are just itching to be hung on some little branches! She also sent one other goodie but it's so cool it deserves its own post. :) Thanks, Rebecca!

Thank you all for the sweet birthday and well wishes for Miss Maren. I went to get her out of her crib this morning and noticed that her left eye was almost completely swollen shut! Immediately I worried that the pink eye had come back with a vengeance, even though it seemed to have cleared up. I got her in to see the doctor and her opinion was that it was actually an allergic reaction of some type, rather than an infection like pink eye. I have no idea what Maren could have reacted to but I've been giving her Benadryl to see if I can get the swelling down. Maren doesn't seem to be bothered by it one bit, which is a relief! Now if I can just get her cough and runny nose cleared up, we'll be set.

I was hoping to make a field trip to Hammond's Candies this afternoon to get some of these yummies, but by the time Maren woke up from her nap and ate lunch we couldn't have made it in time. I think instead we'll go first thing in the morning. I'm trying to watch how much junk I eat so I'll have to exercise massive restraint, but I'm also hoping to pick up some pretty candies for the Vintage Kitchen and Pink & Green swaps that I'm doing. I'll report back with my loot tomorrow!

Happy Happy Birthday, Baby

Maren at TWO:

-is still small for her age, at 26 lbs and 36”

-favorite foods: black olives, dill pickles, and cheese

-loves to watch Elmo and Barney

-won’t let me put anything in her hair so it’s always a mess

-loves to be outside

-can identify the colors blue, purple, pink, white, black

-will not eat mashed potatoes

-has big beautiful blue eyes and golden curls

-loves bubbles and balloons

-gives sweet kisses

-will not listen to me. At all.

-is independent, headstrong, persistent, fearless

-receives speech therapy once a week

-likes to sing about the monkeys jumping on the bed

-has to be safety-pinned into her pajamas and duct-taped into her diapers

-loves our dog, Bronco

-has brought immeasurable joy to so many people in the two short years she's been on this Earth

-is the absolute light of our lives!

(p.s. This is actually one day late--her birthday was Saturday--don't tell, okay?)

Things around here have been a little rough the past few days. Maren came down with pinkeye last Thursday in conjunction with a nasty cold and cough. She's still sick, although her eyes look much better and her fever finally broke on Sunday. Like it is with many of us, when Maren is sick she is in a terrible mood so I've been dealing with an uncharacteristically crabby, whiny and clingy toddler--and it's about to make me lose my mind! I am SO ready to have my happy, pleasant little girl back. Oy. My parents called Monday evening to check on us and I must have sounded really desperate, because my sweet Dad immediately offered to fly here this weekend to give me a little break. I took him up on the offer and I'm excited to see him.

I haven't had a chance to get to the pipe cleaner critters yet. I had a couple of projects on the docket before them, which included making a couple of little bun-buns inspired by this one and getting my Easter decorations out. I'm working on the decorations right now so hopefully tomorrow night I'll break out the Rit and my mega-pack of pipe cleaners and go to town.

The pictures in this post are of a neat tin I bought a week ago at Cost Plus World Market. They always have the neatest imported holiday candy! This wonderful German tin is just larger than half a sheet of paper and the front scene is all embossed and beautifully detailed. The second picture is of the chocolate bars inside. They are too pretty to eat! Love the chickie and the little bunny couple snuggling under the toadstool. Too sweet!

Pipe cleaners, check

It took trips to 3 different craft stores, but I think I now have everything I need to begin construction on a flock of Martha's pipe cleaner chicks and a bushel of little pink baskets. Now I just have to hope that the dying process will yield similar results to the magazine photos. I bought the extra large package of white pipe cleaners just in case I mess up on a few (or a lot). Unfortunately, my crafting time is limited to Maren's nap time and bed time hours, which there just aren't quite enough of if you ask me. I'll post my results when I get them. Hopefully they'll be worth sharing!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Martha's minions have done it again

Images from the April 2007 issue of Martha. Could you just die? Look at those wee pipe cleaner--oh, sorry, chenille stem-- chickies and baskets and pompom bunnies! They are approximately the cutest thing evah and I am headed to JoAnn's tonight to see if I can find the materials. If you're like me and wondered why your craft store never has lovely pastel-colored pipe cleaners, it's because they've used white stems and colored them with Rit dye. I have precisely no use for a passel of pipe cleaner baskets or a flock of chenille chicks, but I don't care! I must make them. Martha made me do it.

The Goblet of Fire has spoken #2

Natasha left a comment asking what the heck the Goblet of Fire is...here it is, Natasha! It's a feature of the 4th Harry Potter book. Last time I did a drawing I had my DH choose the name out of a bowl, which he referred to as "the Goblet of Fire". So there you go. :)

Instead of a real Goblet of Fire I had a little helper draw the names for the Easter card winners. I'll let the pictures tell the story:









Congratulations to luckie duckies Dana, Jane and Rebecca! Dana and Jane, please send me your addresses to fraulein_h at hotmail dot com and I will send your cards out tomorrow! Thanks for playing!

Strange things are afoot at the Circle K

Although these photos would seem to indicate otherwise, we did not have pink skies today here in Colorado, nor did Maren suddenly sprout antennae out of the top of her head.

Bad tree placement is my fault, but I have no explanation for the magenta heavens. Freaky.

Easter Giveaway!

I promise that my house is not still decorated for Christmas! I'm sharing this photo because I want to give you a little backstory for my Easter Blog Giveaway.

This unusual piece of furniture resides in my front room, right as you come in the house. It is kind of out of place (okay, Husband, A LOT out of place) and I know that it will eventually have to be evicted when I finally get some real furniture in the room. But for now, this is the only place for it. I've never really figured out how to best utilize the shelves on top, although I had grand plans of a black & white photo gallery of some type that have since fallen by the wayside. At Christmas I display the cards we get in the mail and for Valentine's I use it to display my vintage Valentines. Those four great big drawers on the bottom are really handy; currently they hold most of my eBay junk that's waiting to be listed.

What is it? Well, that, my friends, is an old wooden greeting card display. I bought it off of Craig's List in July 2005. The man I bought it from had purchased the entire contents of an old drugstore in a tiny town in Missouri. I mean, the entire contents. The story was something like this: a man and his wife ran the drugstore from at least the 1960s on, probably earlier. The man got sick sometime in the late 70s or early 80s or so and the store was closed up, with things still on the shelves and everything. I"m a little hazy on the details, but you get the idea. The guy who sold me the card display purchased the whole store, lock, stock and barrel and had to drive to Missouri and bring it all back here to Colorado. He and his partner took what they wanted (the jukebox, the old soda machines, the soda fountain) and then were selling the rest piecemeal on eBay and Craig's List.

When I saw this listing on Craig's List, I think I nearly passed out! Included in the price was the entire contents of the display as they had found it. The guys delivered it to my house and unloaded boxes and boxes and boxes of old cards, wrapping paper, and other paper goods. It was truly like Christmas in July! Over the next few weeks, I got to go through all of those boxes of treasure! I threw away a lot because it was damaged from having sat for 30 years but I kept quite a bit as well with the idea of keeping some and selling some.

I haven't been as on top of it as I would like so I actually haven't sold anything except for 2 Rainbow Brite Advent calendars last Christmas. I attempted to sell some lots of Easter cards last year but had no luck, and in researching prices to get them ready to sell this year I have found that they won't bring much. Therefore, I'd rather just give them to people who I know would enjoy them than go to all the work of listing them for just a few bucks.

So that LONG story brings me to the Easter Giveaway! I have 3 packets of Easter cards (10-15 in each) that I would like to share with some of you, my dear blog readers. If you would like to be in the running to receive one of the packets, just leave a comment on this post! I'll put them all in the Goblet of Fire and we'll see who it spits out. :) I'm posting this late Tuesday night so let's say you have until noon M.S.T. on Thursday to get your comment in. I'll post on Friday who the three lucky duckies are and get them in the mail to you A.S.A.P.

Have you seen this blog? I only found it last week, when I was looking at the February Tie One On and saw this totally adorable ruffled apron and had to know who'd made that little cutie! Lucky for us, she posted the instructions for the darling apron here. You should definitely check out the rest of her blog, as it's full of great stuff! Today's super-cute button flowers, for instance. I definitely want to make some, and I bet you will too!

The chair is another thrift find from last weekend. My dad talked me into it, but at $6.99 he didn't have to do much convincing! Okay, it's ugly now--but you just wait! Once I change out that hideous fabric on the seat and get rid of the equally frightening paint job on the backrest, it'll look great. Look at the cute little claw feet, even!

One of my wonderful friends called me last night and offered to have Maren over this morning for a few hours so that I could have a little bit of time to myself. She has a daughter who is just about 2 months older than Maren so the girls played and ran around like crazy! I didn't do anything particularly fun, just ran some errands, but every mom knows you can get errands done a whole lot faster by yourself! And since I got all that done this morning, we're going to take a walk and enjoy the beautiful spring weather!

Hot date

Last night I went on a hot date with....myself. You may recall that my usual Dream Date (husband) is out of town for a long while, so that leaves me on my own. I decided on Tuesday that I would get a babysitter for last night just so that I could GET OUT OF THE HOUSE by myself for a few hours. Is it wrong to admit that I totally had been looking forward to 6:00 pm last night (when I picked up the sitter) all week? I didn't go far, just out to the local shopping center to do a little shopping; an activity that would be made torturous for all involved if I'd taken Maren along. It was a successful trip: 3 pairs of new shoes, a few new lacy-frillies, and dinner without having to clean up after anyone but myself! I was home by 9:30 pm since all the shops close at 9:00 but it was 2.5 hours of heaven. Well worth the price of the babysitter! I think I'll be doing the same thing next weekend as well. Maybe I'll take myself out to a movie.

Last weekend I found out that a local thrift does 50% off most things in the store every Saturday morning. It's not a thrift I usually visit because I find the prices to be a little high, but 50% off makes it completely worth it! Here are some of my finds this morning: 1) Making Memories magnet handle set. This company makes neat little rubber stamp alphabets that have magnets on the back, so this is the handle and metal plates that you use to put the stamps on. 2) Old Bingo cards from a very old Bingo game. These are for art projects. I have lots so I'll probably be sharing the wealth in swap and goodie packages for a while! 3) Very old Goody Magic Reader. This nifty little thing is a box with a lid that opens up at a 90 degree angle. Inside the top lid is a sheet of mirrored plastic and included are a whole bunch of cards that have a question on the top and then the answer is printed below, but it is upside down. The trick is you read the question, then put it up to the mirror to see the answer reflected back correctly. It really is charming! The date I found on it is 1929. This could be a fun little art project, as I think you could print up your own cards and manipulate the text in Word so it prints out backwards or upside down or whatever. A fun little find!

Maren loves to watch Sesame Street but her favorite part of the show is by far the "Elmo's World" segment at the end. Lately when it's over, she has been asking me for "More Lala?" I found these Elmo DVDs so now she can have precisely that! The other one is for me: The complete first season of Pee-Wee's Playhouse, and it was only $3.50! That one has me crazy excited. I loved that show when I was a kid and I can't wait to watch it all over again!

And now it's time for bed. I have to go change all the clocks in the house before I head upstairs. In the next few days I have more thrift finds to share (mostly from last weekend...I bought a lot!) and a little Easter blog giveaway! Have a good night, and don't forget to SPRING FORWARD!

Think Pink

You may recall Maren's affinity for pink high heels, as seen here. Her Grammie Bunnie saw those photos and decided she needed some shoes closer to her size and managed to find these little pink lovelies! They're still a little big for Maren but that doesn't slow her down one bit. The 5-year-old in me secretly squealed when I saw these; if I'd had shoes like this when I was little, my poor mom would have had a tough time getting them off of me. Ever. Winter snows be damned, these would most certainly have been my every-day shoes. The fabric underneath is a vintage hankie, found this past weekend for about $.50.


Also found this weekend was this adorable dress for Maren. It's from Lord & Taylor and it's in great condition, with smocking and little pink roses across the front. A perfect spring/summer dress for church. And the shoes are a perfect match! Serendipity! :)

Thrift find: hankie pillow

This sweet little pillow appears to be made from two child-sized hankies, stitched together. Could be a repro, I don't know, but either way it's charming! Just 50 cents on my thrift spree last week.

Maren woke up this morning at 5:55 a.m. Ugh. We had planned to attend playgroup at 10:30 but she got put down for a nap instead, and I believe I'm headed for a nap as well. ~yawn~

Enabler alert

Have you seen these super-cute dishes at Target? It's hard to tell from the photo, but they are a beautiful aqua color and the circles are raised. This is the dinner plate, but I also saw salad plates, mugs, and cereal bowls to match. They come in this aqua, pink, yellow and spring green--perfect spring colors! They're in the $1 spot in the front of the store, but these are actually $2.50 for a set of two (still a deal and a half as far as I'm concerned). If you want them, you had better hustle on down to your local Tar-jhay, because they were nearly gone when I bought these and since they're a special item they won't be restocked. So get going!

I can see!

Thank you all so very much for your well wishes and prayers for my Lasik surgery. You are all so sweet and I appreciated them very much!

My surgery went fine and my eyes are doing great! I won't lie to you--that surgery was pretty uncomfortable. I will say that I'm sure a lot of that had to do with the fact that I was really scared and therefore very tense, and things are always more uncomfortable when your body is stiff as a board and you're gritting your teeth so hard your jaw hurts! I was given an Ativan to help relax me but for whatever reason, I didn't get it until about 5-7 minutes before I went into surgery, so it didn't exactly have time to kick in. After my surgery I went home and slept for about 3.5 hours (guess the pill finally worked) and after that I felt much better, and since then I've been just fine.

I'm not seeing 20/20 yet but there is still some swelling so hopefully when that goes down my vision will sharpen up. I look a little freaky right now because I have what look like big red blood clots in my eyes from where the suction device caused my blood vessels to break. Coupled with the fact that I'm not allowed to wear eye makeup for a week, I'm no beauty queen. I've been curling my eyelashes but I'm not sure it's really fooling anybody!

While my parents were here this weekend, I went on an enthusiastic thrifting spree. I hadn't been thrifting for several weeks and it was fun to shop with my dad, who shares my love of the thrill of the hunt, as it were. I bought lots of fun stuff but I'll spread it out over my posts this week. Here are just a few finds to get started. I especially love the little glass jar in the front left. It's shape matches some neat old Hazel Atlas jars I found a while ago but it isn't marked. I also love the yellow Hazel Atlas Platonite sugar bowl at the front right. I think it would be cute with some bright flowers poking out of the top. More thrift finds to come!

D-Day

I leave in 20 minutes to go to the eye surgeon to have my LASIK done. I will freely admit that I'm nervous and have been praying a whole lot over the past few days! When I come home I have to lay down with my eyes closed for basically the rest of the night, which I'm really not looking forward to. How very boring. Anyway, think good thoughts for me and hopefully I'll be back tomorrow to report with brand-new eyes!

By George

Back again with another one of the Weekend Posts That Didn't Happen. You may or may not recall that I purchased some vinyl lettering phrases for my wall from a company called Uppercase Living. I put the first one up but had a devil of a time getting it to work, and I was nervous as I still had one phrase remaining. Well, I finally got around to it right before Quin left and here is the result. It was still every bit as difficult to apply as the first one, but at least this time I knew it was going to be a pain in the butt so I was prepared! My family room is done with a little bit of Americana (being an Army wife will do that to you!) so I thought this was appropriate. The painting is Prayer at Valley Forge by Arnold Friberg and was my graduation gift to Quin back before we were even married.

I got a hot tip on some Simply Shabby Chic bedding being on 75% off clearance at Target so I headed down this morning for a look. I have been looking for a new duvet for our bed but since we have a King they are all way out of my price range, and I don't want to spend so much on a set that I feel like I have to have it for 10 years to justify the cost. To my delight, I found this King duvet with matching shams marked down to about $25.00 and a cute green and white striped bed skirt for about $13.00. I also found a sweet little throw pillow for about $6.25; it's one I've had my eye on for months and months now but was just to cheap to buy at full price. The duvet just happens to perfectly match my existing sheets, and I'm excited to have a bed skirt! We've been without one since we bought our bed 2.5 years ago, and I'm tired of looking at the ugly box springs.

They're all in the wash right now and I'll have my mom help me get the bed skirt on when she's here this weekend, as lifting a king-size mattress and spreading a bed skirt underneath is way more than I can manage on my own. I do need to get some king-size pillows to put in the shams, but I'll look at JoAnn's so I can use a 40% off coupon; since they're just for show I don't care if they're the cheap kind. The floral print is kind of girly but hopefully Quin won't mind too much. Plus since I got a great deal I don't have to feel absolutely married to them. That was definitely worth braving the snow! I also heard that the Global Bazaar line is 75% off, but my store had nothing left but a few throw pillows. I didn't have my eye on anything particular, but for 75% off I'm always willing to look!

A thrifter's lament

Well, then. I thought I was being super clever when I set up three blog entries to post while I was gone this weekend. Actually, I just posted a photo to three blank posts and saved them as drafts, figuring that I could fill in the text at my leisure and thereby not go another six days between posts. However, Blogger pulled a fast one on me and when I tried to type in those saved draft entries, all my text was blue and underlined and I couldn't do anything to the photos or they completely disappeared. Hmph. So I was forced to go six days between blog entries again, but it wasn't for lack of trying.

I made a quick run to a thrift last week before I left and found this great coat for Maren. Unless she hits an incredible growth spurt it will be a good four years until she can wear it, as it's a size 6 but it's beautifully made and for $7.50 I couldn't pass it up. A navy wool Sunday coat will always be in style, and I have plenty of room in the back of the closet. As I was checking out, the lady that runs the thrift shop mentioned it had been her daughter's coat (it's a consignment thrift on base) and she was just tickled to see me buying it. She was glad to know it was going to a good home where it would be appreciated!

Haven't done any other thrifting lately, other than an utterly disappointing trip to Saver's before Quin left. Time was that I never left that store empty-handed, but now that seems to be the norm. I'm not sure if there was a change in management or if their donations have drastically declined, but the shelves seem to be perpetually empty. The store itself has gotten increasingly dirty and prices have gone up. Their patterns used to be $.29 each, the cheapest I could find anywhere and they always had just scads of them. In fact, I've bought most of my vintage patterns there. On this most recent trip, there were probably fewer than two dozen patterns (mostly ugly 1980s clothes) and they were all marked $.69. I foresee my trips to that store becoming more and more infrequent until I just don't bother anymore. Bummer. :(

And now, after that lament: a gratuitous cute baby picture!