One Of My Classes For Handmade Greeting Cards

Hi everyone!
 Lori, here - and I just wanted to share these cards that I designed.
My ladies like to have them be pretty easy and we usually finish in a couple hours.

I do a crafting class every month or so where some of my friends (or anyone else who is interested!)  pay a fee to come and create greeting cards from little "kits" I have put together.

You can usually select another sentiment, if you wish to make something other than a birthday card (for instance).
 I try to always have a masculine option for the fellas!!!

We always have fun, and they leave with some handmade cards to give or send.
It's a win-win!

New Face For A Calico Critter

I have written before about these cute vintage  Puss In Boots Calico Critters. 
Back in that post, my first photo was of the two I saw at a local thrift store. They were not for sale.
I went into that same thrift store a while back and this one poor kitty had basically been relegated to the back room toy corner.
 I got him for $1.00.
He needed a new face, and now he has one:

 I do realize his eyes look rather "mask-like", maybe a bit like a raccoon, but I had to come up with something, since the green eyes alone were much too small.
He has his own personality, don't you think??
This is how he looked when I bought him:

I was determined to fix him up with things I already had on hand, and the only eyes I had simply weren't large enough to look quite right, so I had to make something extra to back them with:

The photo below shows how the original faces look on these vintage Critters.
I suppose my new guy could use a large bow, as well, but I wasn't able to re-create that - at least not yet.

I have a number of these Calico Critters now, since I actually I came across two more of them at another local thrift store about a year ago.
They have been known to go pretty high on eBay in the past, so when I found TWO for only $2.00 each, I scooped them up!
And then Lori just found me another one last weekend at a church sale!
I don't even have that many pairs of boots!

But they're kind of cute to have around........

What's Penny Wearing? #121 What I Wore 38 Years Ago Today

On this date in 1977, a very dear old friend of mine got married.
I was honored to be one of her bridesmaids, and I came across the dress I wore at her wedding in my cedar chest recently:

A floaty, flowery dress in a lightweight fabric.

You know, I had pretty much forgotten what it even looked like, and I think it's very pretty.

Oh, how I wish I had - or, at least even recalled - which pattern these dresses were made from.
 I'd surely have loved to have been able to include a picture of it in this post.

 I pulled it out of my cedar chest and pressed it, put it on Penny, and it looks every bit as good as it did on that special day.

Another full-length view:

 Nice and light, perfect for a hot summer day in the California foothills, all those years ago.

And on the very same date seventeen years later?
Twenty-one years ago today?
Well that was the day I got married.
In the photo below, you can see what I was wearing on our wedding  day:

A very old-fashioned outfit - all in white cotton, which included an antique petticoat as my skirt  - was the only thing that would do for me!
I wanted my shoes to fit right in as well, so they also needed to be white.  Little satin rosebuds and white satin laces to wrap around my ankle were added.
 The pink roses were to match my bouquet.

Here is a picture of my bouquet (sorry for the poor quality, it's a close-up photo of a photo),
 but I think you can at least how pretty it was:

We did everything as inexpensively as possible, because we wanted to have extra money to use on our honeymoon at Walt Disney World instead.
Other than my attire, the only things I really cared about were a nice bouquet and a scrumptious and beautiful cake!
And we DID freeze the top layer and eat it on our first anniversary and it was just as good a year later, I'm very happy to say.

Hoping for Rainbows

Good morning. Tina here. 

The weatherman says we might be getting some rain.

We could use a bit of rain.  

We had a couple of drops (literally) a couple of days ago.

It smelled good, that herbal scent you get when dried weeds become wet.

I am hoping for a rainbow.

I want the sky to cry and the land to rejoice.

Come soar overhead, lovely colors of light.

Put To Good Use

I found this wooden quilt rack at a thrift store last week.

It didn't look too great, but I brought it home and painted it white:

And then I took it down to the shop where I rent a space, and I put it to good use, as you can see below:

I do have some vintage quilts that I am thinking about selling, but for now it holds an assortment of linens that were previously housed in a drawer.
 Now they are visible to shoppers.

When I was taking pictures of it, I also got a few other snapshots of my displays and shelves, showing many of the items I have for sale:

(If you see anything you're interested in, let me know!
You can e-mail me by clicking on "Heidi Ann" under "Contributors" over in the right margin of this blog.)
I don't do a lot of painting, and whenever I get a project finished, it feels really good, you know.
And when I tell you that I slapped a coat of white paint on that display rack, I mean it quite literally!
I'm not the best painter in the world, but it'll do.
It's serving it's purpose, and it looks better than it did when I found it!

Pinkie and Blue Boy: Framed (With apologies to Gainsborough and Lawrence...)

I've had these needlepoint depictions of the two famous paintings for a while. I actually received them from Nikki over at "The Hunt For Vintage" blog, when I won a giveaway on her blog back in the summer of of 2008.

I have been searching high and low since then for frames that would be suitable for the pair.
Nothing was ever quite right - or there would be only one.
Obviously, I needed two.

My search finally yielded some results.
A few weeks ago, I found a pair of matching oval-shaped wooden frames at a thrift store that I thought would work:

Admittedly, I did have to cut them down a bit more than I'd have really liked, in order to get them to fit,
but still and all, I think they look pretty good, now that they are finished:

With apologies to Thomas Gainsborough (The Blue Boy) and Thomas Lawrence (Pinkie), truly  - for it is true  that these "needlepointed" versions of their beautiful and famous works of art do certainly suffer a good deal in the translation to stitchery! Naturally, it would have been impossible to capture all of the details and nuances.
Certainly, though, they are still recognizable.
So, there's that.
And it really WAS difficult to find the right frames - so I'm happy!

Vintage Wallpaper Books, Part One

I got lucky and found some wonderful old wallpaper books at the Habitat For Humanity ReStore.
I'm just going to do a series of posts in which I share some photos of some of the lovely patterns of vintage wallpaper they hold.
We'll start out with four different colorways of the same pattern:

And then a couple with pink roses:

Two colorways in the next two photos:

Next we have dogwood (I love these) in five different colors!

That'll do it for today and my first installment.
Hope you enjoyed seeing them!

Mr. Jolly's Sidewalk Market In August

"Oh, dear! It's hot!", says Mr. Jolly - and he's got that right!
 It's August , and here in northern California anyway - it's hot.
Good thing he has his handkerchief with which to wipe his brow.
It also happens to be Saturday, which means we will be going to our Farmer's Market down the street - the closest thing we have around here to rival Mr. Jolly's Sidewalk Market.
It looks as though he even has something for the birds to eat:

 And that dear little orange kitty who is always around, too, of course.
Gotta keep those kitties fed!
This gentleman, below, is just strolling along wondering what his wife is going to fix for dinner. ( I hope he helps her out once in a while?!)
I spy melons, corn, lemons, carrots, cucumbers or zucchini, and peaches.
We just might come home with a few of those ourselves!

(From Mr. Jolly's Sidewalk Market, a book written and illustrated by Laura Jean Allen.)