Yay! My first Etsy sale!

I was so excited when I got notification that I had my first Etsy sale. I had the whole thing wrapped up and mailed in about an hour. I felt a little unprepared to be honest. I had my padded envelopes, gift boxes and freebies all ready....but were the all in one place? Uh, no....but nevertheless, I was able to get them together in short order.
I've been a big fan of Etsy for a number of years and have spent countless happy hours perusing listings and I've bought a lot, too.
Check out my shop here

Joyeux Noel

I bought this Christmas postcard a couple of years ago from a French woman in San Francisco. I wish I could remember just now the name of her shop and will post it here later if I can find it. She and her husband travel to France a couple of times a year and bring back lots of fantastic French ephemera such as old maps, letters, postcards and really cool old garden furniture and the like.
Here is the front and back of the card which has no date. I am going on the assumption it is from the early 20th century.
Sorry it didn't scan very well. There is a silvery metallic haze on it and maybe that has something to do with it.

Crazy Idea: Now I Can Relax

I worked for about six weeks straight getting ready for the big craft show at the Clarkston, Washington High School which was last Saturday. About a week before the show I felt like I was ready, what a miracle! Then I got an idea for a new style of bracelet and pendant so I was in fever-pitch all that next week after all.
The show was great. About 11:00 in the morning I remember looking up from talking to people and all I could see was a sea of people, packed so tightly they could hardly walk from one booth to the next.
I had a run on all my things that had an initial "K" and sold them all out. I got several orders so I spent yesterday getting those finished and will deliver them this weekend.
I thought maybe I could settle back and "do nothing" (how do you do that???) but The Husby has been patiently waiting for me for weeks to help him edit a book he has been writing. FYI, this is a lot harder than it might sound. We're almost halfway through but he wants to get it to the publisher pronto so he can get copies made for our family and friends for Christmas gifts.
Pictured is one of my craft projects in progress. Making them always brings to mind being in grade school. I have to get my paper, scissors, and glue all together. These little banners always sell really well and I should make more but to be honest, they are just a tad bit labor intesive.
Got my Etsy store up and running yesterday .... yay! Finally! A million thanks to my daughter for pinning me down to do it after about a year of procrastination. She helped me a ton with the logistics of getting it started and gave me lots of tips!

One of the best blogs ever!

I ran across this blog yesterday and had a mini panic attack....that's because my first thought was I wouldn't be able to download all the FREE images before they somehow disappeared or something wild like that! Visit the Graphics Fairy here
I promise, you will love this blog.

Where Has the Time Gone?

It seems like I have been away from home all Autumn but that's not really so. I went to see my daughter in California over Labor Day and prompty came down with the flu. Just as I was about to recover from that, I went to see my Sissy in North Dakota and my mother in Montana in September. I caught something else on that trip which is still lingering.
When I came back home I worked like crazy on charm bracelets which I will have at the Pride of Clarkston Fine Arts Department 19th Annual Craft Fair 2009. This is a great craft show at the high school in Clarkston, Washington. I was there last year and sold a bunch of stuff.
I took a little breather and went back to California. It was so beautiful there. I miss living there so much, I can't tell you. We went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium the night before Halloween and had so much fun. They hosted a Halloween party for members that night. They had stations set up for trick or treaters, face painters, adult beverages and a huge dance. I estimate that only about 20% of the attendees were not in costume.
And ta-daaah...drum roll....no more procrastination on the Etsy store. My daughter helped me start setting it up and I've been working on it some since I got back home. I don't know why I stress about stuff like this but everytime I worked on one of the sections I had to walk away for a little while and do some dusting, laundry or other housecleaning. It helps me think. I have no idea how this helps but it does. I will post the link to my Etsy store when I get that first item listed! yay!

Envy Booklet

My daughter attended Creative Escape in Arizona a few weeks ago and took a class one day from Tim Holtz and they made the absolutest cutest books ever. I was so envious I decided I had to build one of my own. Because I thought I was leaving tomorrow for an extended trip to visit family, I didn't think I had time to place an order and receive it from Scraplovers
So I went downtown to a local scrapbooking store that I won't name and even though the owner claimed she had some of the elements for the book, she just didn't want to look for them. She had recently moved her store and the items I wanted were in the back room. I totally get that she was really, really tired after the move and all, but even when I said I could come back this week for the items, she then changed her story and said she used to have them and didn't think she had them anymore. All righty, then.
Anyway, here is my version of Tim's Holtz's book and if you are interested in doing one, email me and I'll send you a list of stuff you need and dimensions. I had everything I needed here in my studio already.

I have a thing about doors....

We took a few days out of our two week vacation in Kosovo to drive north into Serbia and visit Novi Sad. What a place! We had been told many times by friends how beautiful it is and how the architecture is so different from Kosovo and southern Serbia where everything has a Turkish influence. They were right. The Vojvodina area is very much of the Austro-Hungarian elements.
This is just one of the doors I photographed in Novi Sad the day we were leaving. I don't know how I almost missed it as it was only about a half block down the street from our hotel. But I didn't see it until we were driving away.
I just have a thing about doors and windows. I don't know why.

Does this make me a Foodie?

Every now and then I have to post something about a new dish I made, some wildly exotic ingredient I just discovered, or a new restaurant. But nothing compares to the food I enjoyed in the Balkans.
Last month The Husby and I went back to Kosovo to visit old friends and discovered upon going into downtown Pristina that our favorite restaurant, Bella Vista, had closed sometime in the last two years. We were so unhappy! We decided to go to Agora which is only a couple of doors down from where Bella Vista used to be. Turns out their Shop Salad was just as good.
Allow me to tell you about a surprisingly simple salad that is so delicious it makes your heart melt. It is only chopped up tomatoes and cucumbers and some kind of white goat cheese that is a little salty. I spent a considerable amount of time while I lived in Kosovo trying to exactly replicate that salad at home. It was only a short time before I left the country that I found out what kind of cheese to buy. Unfortunately, I don't remember exactly what it is but I could find out. Even more unfortunate is the fact that that cheese does not exist in America. Even if it did, there isn't a garden grown tomato that comes close to the taste of the ones in Kosovo. I have no idea where these tomatoes came from as I never saw fields of tomatoes being grown there for commercial use. Many local people had a few tomato plants in their gardens for their own use. So I believe the tomatoes were trucked in from Macedonia or Montenegro. At any rate, the taste was heavenly. It is no coincidence, I believe, that the Serbian word for tomato is "paradajz" (pronounced like paradise). Think of the best all time tomato you ever tasted and then take that times a thousand. Then you get an idea.
Notice the pizza, too. Again, the best! The only suggestion I could make on the pizzas there is to throw on a few more olives. The olives there are killer. We used to buy packages of some really wonderful black olives that came from Turkey. Never mind the fabulous green olives we used to get from Serbia and Greece.
I have to stop now. I'm working up a little tear in my eye.

Major Jackpot

This weekend was the best yardsaling I've had all summer. If I had found nothing else besides these playing cards, it would have been all worthwhile. I don't know exactly what kind of card game these cards are for but they don't have suits, they go up to the number 15 and there are no face cards. I almost looked over them as they were in a plastic baggie and there was a piece of paper inside that obscured what was really inside. When I picked them up to get a good look I was just about beside myself because they are so cool! Turns out there are 150 of these cards and what did I pay for such a treasure you might ask? ha ha Twenty five cents!!!! Yard sale finds rarely get better than this. This is just a thousand times better than your average yard sale stuff.
These are going in the ephemera packs I am building and they are just perfect for the smaller size packs I am doing for Etsy.

Molly Dill

This is a collage thingy I have been working on for awhile now. I want it to be just right so it's not progressing very fast. The photo is of my great grandmother Molly Dill who was born in 1859 in Hardin County, Tennessee. Supposedly the photo was made on the day of her wedding at the courthouse in Savannah, Tennessee in June 1876. The expression on her face makes me wonder if she was happy she was getting married. From everything I heard my mother say about my great grandfather he was a very kind man so I don't think she was worried about how he might treat her. I think maybe she wears the look of someone who never had any choices in her life up to that point. She didn't know who her father was, her mother was dirt poor and then when she was about 7 years old her mother married a widower with two small children. For reasons no one knows, Molly was farmed out to another family and her mother and new family lived in a house a short distance away. My mother quoted my grandmother as saying that Molly never once mentioned her mother. She moved to Texas from Tennessee in 1880and took one of her young half-sisters with her and from what I can tell, she never looked back. She and my great grandfather eventually had twelve children, the first one which died in infancy. It seems she had a lot of heartaches early in her life but she obviously forged a new life with her own large family and I like to think that she was happy.

More ephemera packs on the way to ScrapLovers

Here's just one of a dozen more collage ephemera packs I am mailing to ScrapLovers in beautiful downtown Willow Glen, California. These are a lot of fun to assemble and I hope whoever buys them has as much fun making something wonderful from all the goodies inside.

Silver Lining

A couple of weeks ago I went to a yard sale and because it was fairly late in the morning it was well picked over. On one table was an old crusty box and inside were about 100 pieces of silverplated knives, forks and spoons. Only trouble was, they were all black with tarnish. It was obvious they had not seen the light of day in probably 30 or forty years. Almost against my better judgement I paid two whole whopping dollars for the entire box, took them home and started in with the polishing cream. It didn't take many before I decided to try out a method of removing tarnish I had never tried. It involves boiling water, adding baking soda and soaking. It wasn't perfect but at least it removed the top layer of tarnish and made it easier to get it off with Wright's Silver Cream. Let me just say this about Wright's: it is not the same formula I remember from years ago. While the newer formulation works really well, it doesn't work half as well as it used to.
Here you can see what a lot of it looked before, during the soaking method and then after being polished. Not bad, but a lot of work!

Homage to my Grandmother

The peaches I bought for this cobbler were a little marginal, I thought when I bought them, but they turned out to be great. I took some little online quiz the other day that asked what smell brought back good memories. Immediately I thought, "peaches". I helped my grandmother more than a few times to peel the peaches for cobbler. And the one I made the other night was right up there with hers, and I say that in all modesty.
My grandmother made the best of just about everything: chicken and dumplings, fresh black eyed peas, fried okra, fried chicken, rolls, biscuits, corn bread, bread pudding, homemade ice cream, ah...the list goes on and on. And her pies? Unspeakably delicious. She made a pineapple chess pie that all my relatives fought over at the family reunion. And then there was that peach cobbler. Probably my favorite.
Since I can't seem to duplicate the wonderfulness of her homemade vanilla ice cream I buy Breyer's Natural Vanilla and that is about as close as you can get to what hers tasted like. She didn't really have a recipe that was written down. It was all in her head. I asked her how she made it and she said, "You start with a custard...." She had several recipes like that; her banana pudding, the coconut cream pie...you started with a custard. I never really got the hang of the custard thing, though, try as I might. Sometimes it comes out pretty good, but it's always just a little off. She just had a special touch.

The Day Complete with Joys Replete

I bought this ragged old map at a yard sale a few days ago and was surprised to discover when I got it home that it was a map of North Dakota, ca. 1904. I moved to Williston, North Dakota in 1959, and arrived the same night that Buddy Holly died in a plane crash. He himself was enroute to Fargo, North Dakota that night. I have a very vivid memory of us arriving late at night in our 1957 Buick station wagon. My little brother and sister were asleep in the back seat with me, and my older sister was sitting between my parents in front. I remember looking out the window in awe of the northern lights and thought that I was in the land of Eskimos. My second grade class had been studying Eskimos just a week or so before we moved from Texas and my teacher had told me that I might see northern lights in North Dakota. Sure enough, I did, however, I was a little disappointed upon finding out I was still a long haul from any igloos or Eskimos.
The next day the moving van arrived and we went to our new house while the moving men carried in all our furniture. My sister invited an old friend over to see her. We had lived in Williston briefly back in 1952 during the first big oil boom in the area so my parents and sister already knew a few people. That was when I found out about Buddy, because my sister and her friend were talking about it.
The next day my Dad took me to enroll me in Central School. I had dreaded that moment, being the "new girl". But the kids were really great. I noticed right off that I was about to freeze because the coat I had was not warm enough for North Dakota winters, plus I didn't have any snow boots. After school that day my Dad picked me up and took me to a shoe store next to the Piggly Wiggly and bought me a pair of red boots. My joy knew no bounds. Red boots! One of the best moments of my life. Funny how the simplest of things could make you so happy when you're a kid.

Game Plan

Here are a couple of boxes of game pieces that I have found at yard sales. I used to kind of ignore boxes of games at sales and then I actually opened a few and said to myself, "Now wait a minute..." I include at least one domino plus a few other random pieces in all my ephemera packs. The dominos are great for stamping with Staz On or you can free-hand a design with Copic pens (my latest obsession, I might add).
And how about the wooden cigar box? A friend who had a cigar shop gave that to me years ago. And no, they didn't come from Cuba. The company that made the cigars was in Little Havana, USA, wherever that is.

Yes I Did

I downloaded some photos this morning and discovered that I did take a photo of one of the ephemera packs I sent to Scraplovers. And I put together another one yesterday so here they are.

Collage Ephemera Packs

This is a small package of little tags, faux stamps and the like that I made and will be putting on Etsy. I also just shipped ten large packages of ephemera to Scraplovers@A Work of Heart in San Jose (my candy store!). Like a goof, I forgot to take photos before I shipped them off. But they were chock full of vintage papers, maps, ledgers, foreign dictionary pages, sheet music, old algebra and shorthand pages, scraps of ribbon, ric-rac, dominoes and other game pieces. I like to put together things that I used to always be on the look out for. Out of frustration,I started collecting all that and the next thing I knew, my studio was bulging at the seams. So I save some of it for myself and the rest goes to California.
When I first started collecting old maps and things, I hated to tear them up, but then I thought, "What am I going to do? Hang onto these forever?" And I knew I could never make enough collages the rest of my life to use everything, so I just ripped and tore, and, you know...it's kind of fun.
This morning I was up bright and early for yard sales, and as per usual, the first one I hit was a disappointment. But the next one was more like it. The guy who was selling had two old sheds full of old rusted and grimy stuff...usually the kind of thing I like to jump right into the middle of. But apparently the roof had leaked in one building because all the boxes were falling apart and were black from mildew. But I scored a cigar box full of old receipts, ancient Christmas cards and letters that weren't in too bad shape. And what do you know? There is an old 1904 map of North Dakota in all this. I didn't even realize it was from North Dakota until I got it home and the piece that was facing up had Williams County on it. Seems like some kind of weird karma as I have just this week been contacted on Facebook by several old classmates from my high school in North Dakota. Whenever something like this happens, I always like to think that it's a "sign" or something. But it's probably just a coincidence.
And yes, I'm aware that I ended a couple of sentences with prepositions.

When in danger, when in doubt....

....run in circles, scream and shout.
A little over a week ago my leetle one-eyed jack, Buster, developed some kind of illness that has yet to be determined. He sneezed continuously, wheezed, coughed and gagged until he was weak. Off to our trusty veterinarian we went and after much probing, prodding and poking, they couldn't find anything but admitted they didn't have an endoscope and that's what was needed to really take a good look around. After a couple of days of him not getting any better, in spite of antibiotics and an anti-inflammatory drug, we took him back. Then they decided that he must have inhaled cheatgrass up one nostril. The suggested we call WSU School of Veterinary Science clinic. After two calls and leaving messages and they have NEVER called me back, we started calling other veterinarians in the area and found one that does have an endoscope. So we took him to them, and same thing, they couldn't find anything. But the good news is that The Bustmeister seems to be about a thousand times better than he was a week ago. He still sneezes on occasion, but he appears to be feeling great. He's back to his old self, playing, running around the yard, eating and just being himself. Big relief. Here's a fairly recent photo of him that was taken after he had his eye removed a couple of months ago. I was going to post a photo of him post-op but looking back on it, it's kind of scary what with all the swelling and stitches going on.

After Much Procrastination

I am finally busying myself on opening an Etsy store. I only said that a year ago, and in pure procrastinator style, I figured out about a hundred reasons that I just didn't get around to it. Here's a bracelet I made today that may or may not go for sale on Etsy.

Staying in touch with my inner child....

Heh heh.
It's never too late for a happy childhood.

The End of May

Kimi's Bracelet

Okay, this is the one I finished for Kimi today. I'm kind of unhappy about the fact that I ran out of 10 mm jumprings to attach the charms. I had to use 12 mm ones. I have 8 mm jumprings, too, but they are too small. They will slide over the ball chain by themselves, but not when attached to a charm...they are just a hair too small. Drat.

The Center of the Universe as We Know It

You probably weren't aware of this, but the very center of the universe is in Trstenik, Croatia. Seriously.

Losing It

I used to have a really bad habit of losing things like keys, wallets, purses, jewelry, gloves and so on. I developed kind of a weird sense about whether something was lost to me forever. I got to where I wouldn't really get upset if I "felt" that I would get it back. Things found their way back to me in strange ways sometimes.
One time I drove to a town that was just a little bit bigger than the one I lived in because it had a better grocery store. I got almost all the way back home when I realized I had left my purse at the store. Because The Husby had paid for the groceries I didn't notice. This was in the days before cell phones so what to do but turn around and drive back. I walked back into the store and there was my purse in the bell peppers right where I had left it.
Stuff like that happened all the time. Another time I was on a drive on National Forest land and alongside the road was a yellow piece of fabric or something. For some reason it looked really familiar. I stopped, backed up and it was one of my daughter's baby quilts that her great grandmother had made. I never did find out how it got way out in the woods so many miles from our home. But I was glad I found it. I never even knew it was missing until I found it.
The best story doesn't really involve anything I lost. The Husby lost his wedding ring one day a couple of days before Christmas years and years ago. Because it had snowed he thought he must have lost it when he was shoveling snow in our driveway. A day or so later all the snow melted and we looked but we couldn't find the ring. He turned his gloves and pockets inside out and we searched the house, but we could not find that ring.
Fast forward almost six months later. It was one of the last days of the school year and my daughter was sitting in her English class when she glanced at the boy across the aisle from her. He was wearing a ring that looked exactly like my husband's wedding ring. She mentioned it that night and The Husby called this boy the next day and met with him and sure enough, it was his ring! He asked how he got it and he said his brother worked as a waiter at a place where my husband had attended a meeting the night before the snowstorm. Turns out he lost it there and didn't notice until the next day. The waiter/brother hadn't bothered to turn in it at the restaurant where he worked and eventually gave it to my daughter's classmate. The Husby gave the boy $20 for being honest with him and got his ring back.

Trivia You Can Live Without

No one has ever tagged me to share unimportant snippets of information about myself so I'm doing it on my own. Here, in no particular order of relevance, are some basic truths about me.

I was born in Texas. I only went to school there until 2nd grade. I remember that the class had to sing "The Eyes of Texas Are Upon You" right after we recited the Pledge of Allegiance. Texans are very big on Texas.

Then my family moved to North Dakota. Trust me on this: it is America's counterpart to Siberia. The kids made fun of me because of my funny accent and my new teacher informed me that the word aunt was pronounced awnt. She told me that an ant crawls on the ground. I'm terribly conflicted to this day about how to pronounce that word. Especially since my mother always called her aunts aint so and so.

I have lived in 9 different states in my life. California was the best. By far.

I lived in Kosovo for almost two years.

I used to be really, really afraid of spiders. I would kill them with oven cleaner (which works really well, by the way) or a Dallas telephone directory. I got over it when one crawled into my shoe. When I put it on I was sure I felt something wiggle. I was sure it had to be a spider. I threw off the shoe, took several deep breaths, retrieved the shoe and tried to shake it out. I wouldn't look because I was positive that if there was a spider in there, it would jump out on my face. So I put the shoe back on and felt the same thing. This time the spider came out when I shook the shoe. After that I realized that feeling a spider on me wasn't the absolute worst thing that could ever happen in life. I almost reversed myself on that, however, years later when I saw something out of the corner of my eye in my long hair and sure enough, it was a spider....a black widow!!!
I still hate tarantulas. They are in a class by themselves.

I am not afraid of snakes. I don't like them, mind you, but I don't jump out of my skin at the sight of one. I have even picked up little ones and let them slither around on my arm.

I also used to be wildly afraid of flying. I would hardly sleep for days before I had to take a trip on a plane. Then I discovered the great benefit of Valium. Ah, better living with modern pharmaceuticals! I have flown so much over the past 10 years that I can sometimes forego the Valium. I still get nervous when there is a lot of turbulence, but I'm not gripping the arm of the seat. Or calling out, "Mommy!"

I was a librarian once for about three years.

I was a deputy sheriff for about six years.

I was a 911 dispatcher for 14 years. A little unsolicited advice here on this one, just in case you, the reader, might be contemplating going to work as a 911 dispatcher...this job is terribly unhealthy. I went into this job kinda skinny and naive, I came out on the other end with enormously high blood pressure, I was overweight, and had a bona fide sleep disorder. My sleeping was so out of whack I figured it would take two years to sleep normally after I finally resigned. The good news is, it only took about a month.

My favorite place to eat in the US is Aqui in Willow Glen, a wonderful neighborhood in San Jose, California. I have eaten in restaurants from The Four Seasons in San Francisco to some little cafe in Joseph, Oregon where the waitress made a case for Elvis being alive. So I think I am qualified to make a good assessment of where to eat. Aqui is it.
As for my favorite place to eat in the world....that one is a lot more difficult. It probably has to be this great restaurant in Nis, Serbia that is so out of the way you can walk by it and not realize it is there. And I don't remember the name of it. But I know how to find it again. Runners up would be Marshall Tito's in Skopje, Macedonia, Ciao in Caglavica, Kosovo, and....oh, the list is too long.

I have a thing about paper. The way it feels, the way it smells and I have this other whole thing about pens and pencils. When there is just the right drag of ink or graphite over the right kind of paper....oh, it's just so...what's the word? Heaven, I guess.

New Charm Bracelet

I am making another bracelet like this for my great-niece Kimi who just graduated from nursing school.
Why, what a coincidence, I just happened to place this one on a map of my favorite places in the whole wide world.

My latest mini obsession

My daughter warned me that Copic Sketch markers can be very addictive and sure enough, they are. I baked up another bunch of Sculpey and Fimo charms a few days ago and have been happily coloring them ever since. I have to tell you that the Sculpey charms have a little more dull finish than the ones shown here, which are Fimo. The ones shown in a previous post are the Sculpey ones. I already mentioned it, but I ordered a few more colors from Chris at Scrap Lovers in San Jose and I can hardly wait to get them so I can experiment even more. It occurred to me today that these remind me a little of scrimshaw.
On a related note, I have to confess that the Sculpey and Fimo are from a stash that I have had for over a decade. What is this stuff made from anyway? Neither one is even remotely dried out. The Fimo has always been difficult to get pliable enough to roll out but a passing decade plus has not made it any worse. And the Sculpey package had been previously opened, was not been sealed up in any way and it is just like brand new. I think it is weird on one level but on another I am happy so I didn't have to go rushing around trying to find some new. Finding anything in the realm of arts or crafts supplies around here in the area where I live. sigh
God, I miss California.

Yard Sale Find

The Husby and I went to a huge yard sale last weekend and I had just about given up finding anything good when I came across a big box of jewelry findings. A lot of it was not so hot, but there was a little package of these great vintage looking beadcaps that I just knew would be perfect with some little glass marbles I've had for several years. I thought they worked so well that now I am on a quest to find more bead caps like these. If you look closely you can see that these have the little bale(?) attached to the top which makes them perfect for the little marbles, given that they don't have a hole drilled through them.
I found the glass marbles at Smith & Hawken in Los Gatos, California a number of years ago and bought a big scoop of them. They had a big bin of these for awhile then I never saw them again. They kind of have a silver finish to them but you can still see through them. These two have tarnished but they look kind of old this way so I didn't try to clean them up.

I Heart Copic Pens

I've been fiddling around with an ancient package of Fimo that I had stashed away and came up with these. The best part of making these, however, was discovering ways to use my new Copic sketch pens. Now that they're pretty much my favorite pens I ordered some new ones from Chris at Scraplovers A Work of Heart in beautiful Willow Glen, in San Jose, California. If you are EVER in the Bay area, it is definitely worth the time to go to this fabulous store. It isn't a big store but it is packed with just the best and the newest paper art supplies you could ever wish for under one roof. Not only is Chris super nice, but she really has a vast knowledge of how to use all the products she stocks. And there are always classes, swaps, events and the like there all the time. Can't get to California? See her website http://store.scraplovers.com/.
Seriously, it is "A Thousand Times Better" than any other store I've ever been to. As Kenny Bania used to always say on Seinfeld, "It's the best, Jerry!"

Tiny Bubbles

I'm back to making charm bracelets again so I've been putting together these little glass bubbles to attach. They're a bit of work but fun to make, anyway. I need to get these out to the Flower House (the name of my outside studio) and solder them.

Grandma Olive's lilac

Even though I have a beautiful lilac in my yard that sports the biggest clusters of dark purple florettes you've ever seen, this diminuative white lilac is my favorite. It not only has the most heavenly smell, I think it is just beautiful. The Husby and I dug this out of his grandmother's yard about 25 years ago. It didn't do much for years. Oh, it grew but never put on a lot of flowers. Last year I trimmed it way back and this year I have many more flowers on it than I remember ever seeing.
I think that another reason I love this one so much is just knowing that someone else cared for it once. Since I won't always live here I think I am going to devise some type of little metal box to attach to it so someone else can open it up years from now and maybe read about its origins. Maybe they won't care at all, but you never know. I will enclose a little slip of paper to say that this came from a little house in Deary, Idaho and was attended by Olive Wilson Thomas, daughter of Scot and Canadian immigrants.
Genealogy is another one of my loves. Years ago I worked in a library where the local genealogy society met once a month. At the time I thought I would go crazy if one more person regaled me with a story about his great great uncle Phineas who had run a still in the mountains of Tennessee. Now it is I who will go on and on about ancient relatives to anyone who will listen. sigh

Just a little something I made

This was fun to put together. Just your average memory wire strung with beads, then wrapped with fine gold wire, add a few other little beads on that wire, attach two charms and a clasp. This helped pass a very rainy afternoon so it qualifies as "a thousand times better" than just lying around watching soap operas or something.
Which brings me to confess a secret guilty pleasure. It's kind of akin to having a box of Godiva chocolates stashed away to be indulged in when you're home alone. I told my daughter this a few months ago and she groaned, "Aaaahhh." This is my big secret: I have been a HUGE fan of "The Young and the Restless" since the very first day it started, back in 1973. I was home from work that week because my daughter had the chicken pox and couldn't be in day care. So while she slept I took in this new soap opera that had been hyped for weeks. One character, Katherine Chancellor, has been there since the first year and she is now 80 years old. She has been played by Jeanne Cooper for the entire 36 years. A normal person would never have lived to be 80 if they had endured everything she has over the years. This "daytime drama" as they are called now, has been the BEST blend of sex, alcoholism, murders, love-hate relationships, power, amnesia (which seems to be a common theme in soap operas)etc., etc.
So the secret is out. I don't care. I love it.
And I'm naming this bracelet "Katherine" in honor of dear "Mrs. C" as she is sometimes called on the show.

It's the little things

I love flowers in the bud stage when they are just on the verge of bursting out. This lilac cluster will be a good 8 to 10 inches long when it is in full flower but there's something about it at this stage. All those little buds look like a little package waiting to be opened.

Passion for Paris

I think if a person has ever been to Paris, the memory always stays. Other grand cities come and go but Paris is forever.
I have a lot of memories of my visit to Paris in the spring of 2002 that swirl all around in my brain but this is the one I remember vividly: We were up in the Eiffel Tower as the sun was getting low and the city was bathed in the most wonderful golden light. As it started to get darker, one by one, the lights of Paris started to come up and for just a short time the fading sunlight and the twinkling lights competed with each other. It was a moment, let me tell you.

From last year's garden

I was poking around in my garden the other day and lamenting that I had not done much clean up last autumn. But then I found a few of these little treasures: the skeletonized remnants of some tomatillos. Cool, huh?

And then there was the issue of the carpet

Okay, I promise to get off this but I had to post photos of the carpet. A little back story first: the entire week we were attending the aforementioned meeting, men were working inside this um, lodge, replacing carpet. Apparently there was a small fire inside last November and the sprinkler system activated and soaked everything leaving the 37 year old carpet (yes, it had never been replaced) to molder away all winter. I could take this opportunity to launch into an entire separate post about the air quality inside the bunker they held our meeting in but I digress.
The polka dot carpet was from the ladies' room and this other, what's the word?, patterned carpet is what they laid inside the entire building. I was just a little amazed that they had the opportunity to update this relic of a building and this is what was chosen. In describing it to my daughter I told her it looked just like the flocked wallpaper that was in the hallway of an apartment we lived in back in surprise! 1972!
I assume that they are not taking out the old tufted Naugahyde fronted bar or conversation pit, either. Too bad the fire didn't spread just a little more.

What I Promised

I finally downloaded new photos so here are the sharper pics of the ladies' room that I was so enthralled with a month ago. I have to say, time has not blunted my fascination with this place. There were about 30 attendees at the week long meeting that took place in this place, which I found out was built in 1972. The funny thing about this place was everytime we had a break women would go inside and for just a second one or two women would lose stride and blink really hard as if they had just seen it for the first time. It caught you by surprise over and over.

Better Late than Never

Well, I've been sort of busy. Doing super secret government business. Seriously. I had to take an oath, honest to gosh, never to reveal, blah blah blah.
But anyway, I re-read my last post and thought to myself I should have not belabored my gloom and focused more on the recent trip I took to California. First,I went to see my Sissy who has been staying in Oceanside. We HAD A BALL. We attended a farmers market and street fair one day, bought all kinds of great Mediterranean food and coconut pancakes which were the bomb. And we ate at various taquerias I don't know how many times. Let me just say the carnitas were fabulous. We visited my nephew who has this amazing pergola going on at his house just outside his bedroom. Lots of incredible exotic plants, hanging baskets and the like. And he is very fussy about how the colors all go together. He and my sister frequent the nurseries in the area a lot in his quest for the perfect plants.
And we went to the beach. Several times. What a world away from the cold and grayness I had been experiencing. And we shopped. We went to Encinitas one day and went to several of the most amazing places. At Gardenology we by chance met Deirdra Doan, a doll artist who has a great blog: http://www.deirdradoan.blogspot.com/
I hated to leave but from there I went to visit my daughter and her family in the Bay area. I had a layover in Los Angeles where I poked around in a couple of bookstores and was aghast to discover that the town I live in right now is written about in "Don't Go There!" by Peter Greenberg. I shouldn't really say I was aghast because it really comes as no surpise. My town STINKS! And that's just the beginning of why it is listed along with such other dubious places as Bhopal, India and Chernobyl. Lovely. Just lovely.
Had a blast at my daughter's, too. I hadn't been to the Monterey Bay Aquarium in years and we went one night and it is just wonderful. My granddaughter is quite the expert about all things "fishy". Wouldn't surprise me a bit if she becomes a marine biologist someday.
Got back home just in time to greet The Bustmeister as he got out of the kitty hospital. Poor thing, he had to have his left eye removed. He has been blind in that eye ever since I got him but lately I could tell that it was looking different and I wondered if he was in pain. He was just a perfect little patient while recovering. He didn't scratch at his stitches or anything. He seems to feel so much better and insists on a lot of "play time" with us.
More later. I've been experimenting with Acey brand Apoxie Sculpt I bought in San Jose. The jury is still out on this stuff. See a related article on it in Spring 2009issue of Belle Armoire Jewelry. Let me just say this if you have been thinking about trying this out. Buy the white kind if you are going try to replicate what you see in the magazine.

And what to my wondering eyes should appear?

What has my life become that I am so depressed by March that the only thing I can get excited about is the possibility that garage sale season could be beginning soon? And then there is this: I just about killed myself because I didn't have my camera with me yesterday and I had to use my cell phone to capture this full-on rhapsody of color, kitsch, and retro verve in all its glory.
I had to attend a meeting yesterday at one of those old timey lodges where the secret handshake is akin to spreading ones fingers in the region of the head to simulate some antlered animal related to deer. Or something like that...you know what I'm talking about, right?
Well, a full remodel is taking place there and I can't belabor enough the point that this should have been done at least two decades ago. But no matter, because if it had I would have been deprived of this spectacle in the Ladies' Room. I swear, the ghosts of many a beehive haired woman powdering her nose lives in this place. Imagine also the many ashtrays that I'm sure bedecked the countertop, replete with mounds of lipstick stained cigarette butts.
I have to go back next week and I'll take my good camera so you can appreciate the pattern in the carpet and wallpaper. I just hope they don't start demolishing it before I can get back.

Does it mean something?

Having been cocooned in a shroud of gray and brown the past two months, I'm finally emerging and getting a few things accomplished. Thought I would share this from a little outing The Husby and I took a few weeks ago. We had a sunny weekend which brightened my mood and we took a drive about 25 miles from our home along the Snake River. I took photos of some petroglyphs at a place called Buffalo Eddy. It is believed that they are about 4,500 years old. I am only posting one of the photos but there are many more of these figures to be seen. No one really knows for sure if there is a message here or what. Some experts think they depict day to day activities, hunting and so on. I think it would be funny if it was just something as mundane as a shopping list.

The Art of Procrastination

I finally took my Christmas tree down yesterday. This represents progress as I have been known to wait until almost Easter to do it in past years. I have used a lot of excuses to justify keeping it prominently displayed after New Year's. The first one is Orthodox Christmas which is on January 7 and then there's my birthday and then there's my wedding anniversary. And then this year I used the fact that I didn't get it decorated until a week before Christmas, as if that gave me an extension of sorts. Most of them are fairly weak excuses but here's the deal: I love my Christmas tree. It's an odd color combination: lots of vintage silver tinsel garlands, white, gold, silver, copper and robin's egg blue ornaments, plus clear glass icicles and snowflakes. It works for me.
I have no New Year's resolutions other than to keep up my blog, get my Etsy store operational and sleep in late more often.
At the moment, I have no new completed pieces of anything. I worked really hard on my two craft shows before Christmas and I'm just getting back to playing in my studio. The weather has been so foggy I have felt a little gray myself.
Ah, but the sun is coming out.