Puppy Love in Progress

Here's a sneak peek at some of the pretties I'm putting together for Karla's Puppy Love tag swap. I'm going very pink and gold with this one. I hope your weekend is a creative one.

A Good Weekend

What makes a good weekend? For me, it starts on Friday night listening to my son do color for a college hockey game on a far-away Minnesota radio station that streams over the internet and into my laptop, which was literally on my lap so I could hear every word. (This is when I really love technology!) Then on Saturday, having a few hours to myself to visit an antique show, a thrift store and a couple of craft stores. I guess I wasn't in a spendy mood because I didn't come home with much, but I did find a vintage trade card that will be the inspiration for my tags for Karla's Puppy Love Swap and that made me happy. Perhaps the sweetest part was Sunday morning, lounging in bed for awhile with a cup of coffee and all these beautiful magazines from Somerset. I have had a weakness for magazines since I was a kid (anyone remember Jack & Jill?), but I don't think any publisher has consisently awed me the way Somerset has. The new Somerset In Love is so pretty and I can't wait to see Marie. Eventually, I pulled myself out of bed and started working on those tags because you just can't read these magazines for long without being inspired to go make something beautiful yourself.

Light the Lamp

During a recent visit to a thrift store, which had been squeezed between other family errands, one of my teenage sons said, "Look, Mom," and pointed to a high shelf. He had spotted a pair of lamps with figurines that looked just like the people in the toile patterns I love. The man was missing a hand, but the woman appeared intact down to the tiny, sculpted roses in her apron.

At first glance, I thought the lamb's leg was broken, but it was just tucked under. The figurine and base certainly needed some cleaning, but the price was so right!

I spent about an hour cleaning the lamp with a damp terry dish towel and Q-tips. (Some old things have a patina, but others are just plain dirty!) It cleaned up beautifully--no permanent stains, just a lot of dust. I found a silky shade for $7.99 at Tuesday Morning, and for safety's sake, I will probably rewire it. I've heard it's a pretty simple DIY project with a kit from the hardware store, so I may even try it myself this time instead of asking my husband to to it.

In hockey, when you "light the lamp" it means you scored. For those of you who don't have a family of hockey players like I do, the phrase comes from the red light behind the net that is lit up when a goal is scored. I think I should be able to borrow that phrase for this vintage score, don't you?

Here's to 2009!

Wishing all of you a wonderful new year...filled with the old!

A Holiday Table Project

I found a number of these small metal wreaths at an antiques and collectibles market the Saturday after Thanksgiving. No one was quite sure what their original purpose had been. I loved their white-washed gold, and I puchased five, immediately knowing how I would use them. The day before had been a holiday for me and instead of spending the early morning hours among shoppers, I had lounged in bed with a cup of coffee, watching HGTV Christmas decorating specials. It seemed that every holiday vignette had the chairs decorated as beautifully as the tabletop, and this was my inspiration when I saw the wreaths.

I gathered sparkly ribbon, a cream-colored cardstock and a damask print scrapbook paper, alphabet stamps from a vintage set, gold metallic ink, gold DMC thread and a circle die cutter. I punched out cardstock circles, stamped them with each family member's initial, and glued them to the scrapbook paper circles. I rubbed the edges over the gold stamp pad to gild them. I puched a hole in the circles with a large needle, threaded them and brought that thread up through the ribbon and knotted it. The metallic thread did not hold the knots well, so I put a drop of glue on each knot to secure it. The wreaths were suspended by the ribbon. I tied the ribbon into a bow and kept it from slipping when the chairs were moved by placing a small peel-and-stick glue dot underneath.

The wreath place markers were a pretty new addition to our holiday table, and even the three guys admired them!

It's Christmastime!

Happy Holidays!

Long Time Gone

My poor

blog has

been sorely

neglected

of late because

somehow, in this terrible

economy, I have been blessed with a full-time job. For the first time in nearly 20 years, I am not a stay-at-home mom or a mom with a part-time job chosen to fit around her children's schedules, but a full-time, salaried employee with all the responsibilities that go with that, and it has been a bit overwhelming. Between the 40+ hours a week, the need to play catch-up with my computer skills after hours, and to find a professional wardrobe, many other things have been pushed into the background, including my blog. I am back to blogging, however, and I will learn to balance everything as so many others do. Gone are my thrift store Wednesdays, but I will never completely abandon the vintage treasure hunt. I found this rusty tin and Czechoslovakian bracelet for a couple of dollars each at a great new Goodwill store.

This elegantly chippy Italian magazine holder was a curbside find. It will make a nice place for scrapbook paper or perhaps all those wonderful Somerset publications that keep appearing at my bookstore. The first issue of Where Women Create was stunning and inspiring. Congratualtions to everyone who had a hand in creating it, and to everyone who was featured there.

And, I did take a minute or two to drape Madame with a beribboned lace piece that someone must have begun putting together as part of a camisole or nightgown, but never finished. It was stuffed in a $2 bag of lace at a thrift store. I think this bit of frippery makes her look more like a Mademoiselle, don't you? I also picked up the latest issue of Artful Blogging and was so happy to see Tiffany's Show Me Your Form featured there. I had a great time participating in that blog challenge. And now I'm off with my real life dress form, my daugher, who has a fitting for a dress she will be modeling in a charity fashion show.