Indulge Your Shelf

My sunflowers have finally shown their beautiful faces! The butterflies like them, too! And, my colorful new Moo business cards have arrived. I love them even more than I thought I would.  The colors are so vivid and bright! The other day, just for fun, I did a quick re-styling of my favorite bird needlepoint pillow in fall purples.  I love it!

This tiny chick patch was so cheerful, he had to come home with me, and cost just pennies.  (That fun old "sale" tag came with him!) You can never have enough old seam binding, in my opinion, especially in this fun lime color! Found at an estate sale: a little manicure case, a huge roll of vintage seam binding in a pleasing neutral color, an old box of thread, and a little metal tape measure from Germany. This little embroidered "case" hides... lots of old safety pins on crochet-edged felt! A cute set of samplers. Finally: something I saw at a thrift store this weekend, but didn't buy: It's one of those exercise things that "shakes" away the pounds!  What a conversation piece that would be! I can't wait to see what everyone else has found on their thrift store forays; I'm linking up with: Southern Hospitality Thrift Share Monday at Apron Thrift Girl Click on the links for more thrifted treasures!

Well, imagine my surprise in finding that the story that I remembered so fondly from my preschool days was not Henny Penny but The Little Red Hen , instead!  Luckily, I found it on Project Gutenberg so I may read it online, and you can, too!  Along with amazing original sketches, to boot! Even better, you can download it to your Kindle!  I had a birthday this past weekend, and my wonderful husband and son surprised me with my current heart's desire: an Ipod Touch!  Of course, the first thing I downloaded wasn't music, but this Jane Austen application , instead -- all of her books!  Now I'm going to download The Little Red Hen , as it's free from Project Gutenberg !   I also took some time to burn 80 or so songs from my CDs to listen to on it.  I love my new little toy! Every year on my birthday weekend we have a local festival at Rock Ledge Ranch Historic Site ; this year, as always, I attended with my friend Cathy.  We had such fun!...

I have had a real run on thrifting beautiful old papers lately! This is an "April Showers" perfume box I was delighted to find a little story book of Henny Penny for 50 cents; it was always my favorite story when I was very young! Beautiful old postcards... I needed these because I used up so much of my supply in the paper crafting I did for Silver Bella swaps! In the background, those purple and blue flowers are part of the design of paper party place mats by Hallmark.  The sheet music is from WWI and was just a quarter at an estate sale liquidation store I finally ventured into! At the same store, I found these great, unused apothecary labels! Such cool art nouveau images... Why did it take me so long to visit this store? I just can't seem to get enough of red ephemera lately; here, some Scottie dog pinochle cards, an old ledger (full!), and some theater ads from 1960 on heavy card stock. Some notebooks, which I can't seem to resist nowadays.  T...

Even though it's been unseasonably warm around these parts lately, I can still feel fall in the air, can you? It's time to restock my handmade store with winter items, including this fun, completely-ephemera album: Just looking at it makes me crave pumpkins and spice! I'm running away from the change of seasons, though.  I just don't want to let go of summer. If you want to see the album and all its pages -- or even make it your own! -- here it is . My favorite crafting spot (the dining room table) is full once more, but now with a different assortment of crafty mess.  I've moved on to making the 12 "three inchy" embellishments for another of my Silver Bella swaps.  I so wish I could show you what I've worked up!  It will have to wait until November, though. I've also been mounting buttons on "trays" as they're called; this because at last month's meeting, my club challenged me to get started doing so.  This entail...

I have a confession to make: I love office products.  Paper.  Folders.  Binders.  The delicious feeling of organizing things.  Making them look pretty and in their place.  I have a pile of empty notebooks and journals -- some I've made, and others that I've purchased because they looked like the perfect vessels for my thoughts and lists and notes. They pile up because I just can't bring myself to open them and write in them, sometimes.  I keep saving them for that "perfect" subject. When I heard a couple of years ago about Keri Smith 's book, Wreck this Journal , I knew it was going to be right up my alley.  She produced this blank journal, with different instructions on ways to fill it for each day, to get people like me to break out of this holding pattern of hesitation and just start creating . As I said, I've known for a long time I wanted to do this project -- but imagine my surprise this summer when my 13 year old son Ben saw me holdi...