Indulge Your Shelf

In honor of the Colorado State Button Show and Sale taking place in Denver this weekend -- April 6 and 7 -- I'm re-running this article from when I attended the 2010 show .  I hope you enjoy it! On the first day (Saturday) that the Colorado State Button Show is open to the public, they hold workshops on different aspects of button collecting.  I attended one, which was about the different kinds of shanks you find in glass buttons.  (The shank is the piece with the hole that you sew to the fabric; two holed buttons that lay on the fabric directly without a shank are called "sew throughs".)  If you can identify the button's shank it helps to date the older buttons.  It was a very interesting talk, given by the sister of a member of the Colorado State club who had traveled from Minnesota to speak and attend the show.  She knew  every thing. When you're not attending the workshops, you get to go and view all the trays that were entered and judged in...

Here's the second garden chair I put together the other day. This one was literally a $1 chair I bought at a garage sale. It used to have a cane seat but that was gone when I got it. Here's how I did it (clockwise from top left photo - click on the photo for a closer view): First I cleaned the chair with Orange Glo wood cleaner. When it was clean I realized how pretty and still in great shape it was; I decided right then that I wasn't going to drive nails into it or paint it like I did my last one. You can still make a lovely decoration, for indoors or out, without making any permanent changes. Next I took a nice round grapevine wreath and used wire to attach it to the chair through the holes that already existed from the caning. Then, I took a silverplate bowl that I had mosaic'd and attached it over the wreath. It worked out well because the bowl was already pierced around the edges so I could put the wire through it and then through the wreath. The bowl...

Have you ever seen "Enchanted April"? It's a  wonderful  film and one of my favorites. This movie has it all - beautiful cinematography, to-die-for atmosphere, amazing costumes, superb acting... It received a couple of Golden Globes and was nominated for, but did not win, a few Academy Awards as well. The film is about two married women, Lottie and Rose, unknown to each other, who are living dreary lives in early 20th century England. They see an ad in the newspaper to rent a villa in Italy for the month of April and hatch a plot to do the unthinkable, and something out of character for both of them, when they rent the villa for a girl's getaway.  One of the most empathy-inspiring moments near the beginning of the film is when Lottie stops in the pouring rain to record an expenditure in a small tiny notebook her frugal husband has given her for that purpose. I thought of Lottie when I found this little red notebook at an antique show I went to yesterday -- and I ...

Happy Easter! I'm re-running this post from Easter 2009 -- when we had an impromptu snow storm on Easter morn.  I hope that you enjoy it! The fact that we live at the foot of Pikes Peak makes our weather very extreme and quite unpredictable at times. I used a technique I'd learned in a poetry class I took recently where you juxtapose the order of words. I think it makes the poetry a bit lighter and playful. What do you think? So We Decided to Love our Peak by Laurie Jackson The mountain made the sky forget it’s April, and Easter, a day for sun Down snowflakes dropped, thick and wet, as up we woke, prepared for fun “Oh no – snow!” we out loud moaned our yesterday memories clear and bright We grumpy groused and crabby groaned that the weather could change over so night Mother smiled – she wasn’t worried She had, of course, a plan in mind So down we piped and up she hurried To indoor hide hunt eggs to find ...