My in-laws were able to make a quick visit to share in the occasion. The Mister's father was a Major in the Air Force and so he used one of his old rank pins on The Mister's beret, which was a nice touch.Here are your random numbers:
5
Timestamp: 2009-03-10 21:35:49 UTC
Comment #5 was left by the lovely Barbara! Barbara's blog Oodles & Oodles is one of my favorite reads, for both her witty commentary and great photos of fun vintage stuff. Congratulations, Barbara!
In other news, I don't think I'm alone in blogland in saying that I have the Spring Fever something fierce! I shouldn't complain because we've had an unseasonably mild winter here (although we did wake to snow this morning) but nonetheless, I'm ready to break out the bunnies and chicks and pastel colors STAT. I'm making myself wait another week or two because otherwise I'll be sick of the mess by the first week of April, but to tide myself over I picked up these gorgeous pink and white tulips at the grocery store last week. The bouquet was big enough to fill both my favorite Lu-ray pitcher from Sarah:
and the fab jadeite repro pitcher I got last spring. I love the combination of the pink & soft green, don't you?
I'm hosting book club at my house tonight (we're discussing Three Cups of Tea, a fabulous book that I highly recommend) and I had planned to make these cute treats that I found on a friend's blog. I opted to make homemade caramel instead of using the store-bought squares but darn it all, I overcooked it! Sheesh. I should have paid attention to my instincts and taken it off the heat earlier but I stubbornly cooked it to the recommended temperature and was left with a scorched, brittle mess. I don't have the ingredients to make another batch and I'm too lazy to run to the store for square caramels, so we'll be having brownies instead. :) I do still want to make the pops, but those will have to wait for another day (and until I can chisel the current mess out of my saucepan).
I love to look at the photo and identify all the things I have in my kitchen: the red Krispy Kan, bowls of beaded fruit, stacks of printed tablecloths and dishtowels, green wooden-handled utensils, a red plaid metal picnic basket. There are also a few things in the photo I'd love to add to my collection, like the little chicky egg cups and the scotty dog light switch cover.
The instructor said that Maren 1) didn't want to stop and 2) wanted "to go FAST!"...not a big surprise there! She's aways been a daredevil. After her lesson we stopped for lunch and then mommy and daddy got suited up as well to ski for the remainder of the day.
Suffice it to say, Maren's first run with us was also her last. Although she'd done great with her lesson, by the time we finally got going after lunch she was very tired and turned into that kid...the one you see throwing a huge tantrum and carrying on, the one that makes you think "I'm glad that's not my kid!" Just getting from where the lift dropped us over to the start of the hill was a 30-minute ordeal in which Maren was alternately sobbing, throwing herself dramatically into the snow, popping off her left ski, going boneless, and repeatedly expressing her fervent wish to go back to the hotel. Oh man, it was BAD, but there was nothing to do at that point but get down the mountain. I had to snowplow the whole way down with her between my skis, resulting in both my lower back and my knees feeling like they were en fuego.
Sunday morning we visited Glenwood Springs' namesake, the famous Hot Springs pool, which has been in use since the 1890s. I remember visiting when I was a child more than 20 years ago and not being terribly impressed with the salty-tasting hot water, neither of which are desirable for a kid unless they're accompanied by a beach to play upon. I'm old enough now that I'd rather be in warm water than cool so I appreciated it much more, especially on a chilly March day!
The big pool is kept between 90-93 degrees and is like stepping into a lukewarm bath. The pool itself is enormous--easily the largest pool I've ever visited and probably one of the largest in the world (it's over two city blocks long!). The therapy pool is kept at 104 degrees and has neat old-school coin-operated chairs that give 5 minutes of bubbles for only a quarter. The warm mineral water felt so good on our joints that were sore from the skiing fiasco the day before. It did seem a bit funny that we were skiing one day and then swimming outdoors fewer than 24 hours later!
It was a fun weekend and I'd encourage my local friends to plan a visit!
In the button category, I did find one that had these cute flower buttons. They were definitely worth 99¢!
I scored in the vintage category as well! I almost passed this one by because it wasn't wool but at the last second the vintage tag inside caught my eye. There was no size on the tag but it looked small, so I figured I would just resell it.
Once I got it home, on a whim I decided to try it on and to my extreme surprise, it fits! Thank goodness for a nice stretchy knit. I can fasten the belt, as long as I don't plan on doing any breathing or moving while wearing the sweater so that's going to have to be fixed. It really is tiny--I could barely fasten it around my size 6 dress form for the photo.
Here's a close-up of the poodle detail. The leash and mouth are made of red rattail satin cord, the knots feel like wool and the eye is a faceted metal bead. There are also vintage metal buttons to fasten the neck in back, although they look very tarnished so they may be replaced. I'm picturing this with a black pencil skirt, and maybe a pair of Laurie's fab glasses--what do you think?
The dresses are beautiful--simple cotton shifts decorated with lovely hand embroidery and crocheted hems. (click on the photos to see the details) I'm not precisely sure of their age but I know they were made without buttons--a special pin was used at the back to hold them together. My mom found these at a garage sale several years ago and I think she paid at most 25¢ for each one--it might even have been 10¢. Either way, they were a total steal. 
To make the valance, all she did was purchase a white wooden curtain rod and slide it through the arms of the dresses--easy as pie! There is already a heavy wooden blind on the window to block the light so the valance is purely decorative, and I love how light and airy it looks! Wouldn't this be such a cute idea for a little girl's or a baby's room?
I know we're two days past Valentine's now but I did want to show the one and only thing I've crafted in the past three weeks. My mom and I saw some cute garlands in a boutique for around $35 each and we knew we could do them ourselves for much cheaper. We were right--we already had everything we needed! So nice to do a project without having to run to the craft store first.
First, I found a few vintage postcard images from this awesome Flickr group. Next, I resized them and printed them out onto matte white cardstock. I just guessed on the size, making sure to get the approximately even (the original files were different sizes). Next, we ran them through the Xyron and adhered them to sheets of chipboard. We covered the backs with pages torn from a very old dictionary just to make them a bit more finished.
We punched holes in the top corners using a Crop-a-dile, then embellished the edges with sparkly red pipe cleaners, which we glued on using Zip Dry glue. We tried a few other glues (hot glue, tacky glue) but the Zip Dry was perfect because it dries quickly and is a bit thicker in consistency so it didn't run all over. As a final touch we embellished the images using a glue pen and some sparkly iridescent glitter. I tied mine together with pink Martha Stewart seam binding ribbon.
It was an easy craft with satisfying results, perfect for a gloomy day and not so involved that we couldn't visit while we glued. This garland could easily be adapted for any holiday you can find vintage postcard images for, which thanks to Flickr should be just about any of them! I don't normally decorate for St. Patrick's day but I think I have some sparkly green pipe cleaners kicking around my craft room, so maybe I need to make a St. Patty's garland just for fun!
Our V-day was nice, even though we weren't feeling well. We beat the crowds by going out for sushi on Friday night, the Mister brought me an enormous, gorgeous bouquet of flowers and Maren got a balloon that is bigger than she is.
Now that I have a bit more energy I'm hoping to get back to doing something interesting enough to blog about! Until then, take a look back at the cute thing I received for last President's Day. It's still one of my top 5 favorite things I've ever received in a swap!
You can see why I love it, right? The perfect shade of pink, the jaunty hat and bow, the spaghetti fur, and best of all, the black cat-eye glasses with rhinestones! Pure 1950s perfection. She even has her original Napco foil label.
I image that vendor just dumped the unsold merchandise from his booth at the thrift and took the tax write-off. It was priced higher than I like to pay at the thrift but still a fraction of the asking price at the antique mall. And I think that after all those months of admiring it, it was meant to be! Thrift seredipity, if you will.
Pinky the Poodle Planter joins Pinky the Poodle Pincushion, another thrifted treasure that has a place of honor on my desk. Pink Poodle Perfection!
These gorgeous paintings (really, mixed-media pieces if you want to be precise) were made by my dear friend Jodi. I first saw them several months ago when Jodi posted about some of her work being displayed at a local shop against a red wall. Normally I'm not much of a yellow person but the combination of the yellows, blacks and grays against that red was just so striking that I've never forgotten it! I have similar red walls in my front room so I knew that they would look right at home here too.
I love an instant gratification craft! Fun, easy, and pretty results.
To keep the cards together, I punched a hole in the corner and will thread them onto one of those big binder rings from the office supply store. I had the brilliant idea to clamp the whole stack together and use my electric drill to go through all the cards at once so the holes would be in the same place on each one. Great idea in theory, but in practice it didn't work so well. I suspect that I used the incorrect drill bit for the job, as it chewed up the paper around the edges of the hole. I had to go back through and repunch each card by hand, which is exactly what I had been trying to avoid in the first place! Oh well, now I know better.
I'm looking forward to this little project for 2009! I'm subscribed to Emily's blog via Bloglines so every Monday when her new topic pops up, it will be easy for me to just grab a card and write my answer and string it on the binder ring. I'm still thinking about other journaling ideas I can implement, like making a journaling jar or writing monthly letters to Maren. If you're looking for a fun and different journaling idea for you or your family, check out what my cute friend Angie just did with her family!
The irony isn't lost on me. I'm really disappointed that yet another of the magazines I love is biting the dust. I've read that with the problems in the home-buying industry, ad revenue for so-called "shelter" magazines is way down, which is the reason that Country Home's publisher gave it the ax--not lack of subscribers.
My first thrifted quilt! It's no gorgeous feed-sack beauty like the kind that seem to leap into Sarah's path, but red and white polka-dots are more my speed anyway.
I don't think it's particularly old, but I like it. The backing fabric cracks me up because it doesn't match at all--that must have been a stash-busting maneuver by the quilt's maker. I do quite like the pink and green, even if it totally clashes with the red and blue on the front.
I also picked up this fun vintage barbecue-themed tablecloth. Love the bright colors! Thrifting bright vintage fabrics is perfect antidote for dreary January skies, isn't it?
And the mushroom love continues at my house, this time with a trio of cute fungi. The ribbon was just procured from the $1 bins at Michael's and the vintage embroidered pillowcase and silver and bone ring are both in my etsy shop right now! For more mushroom love, check out Laurie's recent post.
Happy 2009! The Christmas decor is finally down--whew! It took me three whole days and halfway through day two I was really hoping that the Clean-Up Fairy might make an appearance and spare me the rest. I persevered, and was rewarded with an empty house and a storage room where I can once again see the floor. Normally in January I put up my "winter" decor--glittery snowflakes, a gorgeous Wendy Addison glittery Winter banner, etc. but for right now I'm just enjoying the emptiness.
When I was in Utah over Christmas I visited a favorite antique mall and did a bit of shopping. I've read of other bloggers who buy vintage hats just to take apart for the old millinery flowers but I've never found a hat that was inexpensive enough to make that worthwhile--until this trip, when I found THE HAT. I should have taken a 'before' photo, but imagine a small net cap (6.5" diameter) absolutely covered in every conceivable type of millinery flower. Now, I'll never be accused of being too subtle--I generally think a smidge over the top is just about right--but the woman who wore this cap must have looked ridiculous with such a concoction on her head! There's over the top and then there's whoa, and this hat defintely fell into the latter category.
Lucky for me, I saw the swan under this ugly duckling of a chapeau! I bought it for the princely sum of $5 and just spent the last 3o minutes rescuing almost 40 millinery flower lovelies from the clutches of the most horrid glue I've yet to encounter. I have to wonder if this hat was a homemade affair, because I can't imagine any milliner worth her hatpins would abuse a bottle of glue and a pile of flowers in such a manner. After the first ripped flower I got wise and used my trusty heat gun to melt the glue so that I could pull the flowers apart from the hat and each other.
There's still quite a bit of that heinous glue stuck to the back of each flower but I'm optimistic that I can find ways to use them so the glue won't show. I'm love my little vintage flower garden and I'd like to thank the lady who, 50 years ago, put every flower she could get her hands on onto one hat. I'm much obliged to her!
Those are my Christmas cards, still unsent. I did get a few out on Christmas Eve, but the rest of them I wrote this morning. Nothing like a bit of procrastination, eh? One year I actually did send New Year's cards; I have a neat rubber stamp of an hourglass and I use sparkly colored glitter for this sand. This year, I'm just late! When I addressed the envelopes back in early December I purposely put the stamps on them, so that I knew I couldn't just shove them back in the box until next year. See, I know my weaknesses.
This is a little ornament I made for my friend Shara. The Santa is a vintage gummed package seal and the back is a vintage Dennison label and lots of twinkly silver German glass glitter. The bead on the bottom is from an old earring. I'm pleased with how it turned out and I hope Shara likes it too! Once I clear the mounds of Christmas crap off my desk and get some glass ordered, I'm hoping to make some Valentine pieces. On one hand I hate to put away all of my vintage Christmas pretties but on the other--as I expected--I'm just ready for the mess to be gone. From the slew of organizing post around blogland, I know I'm not the only one!
