Retro Ribbon

The very first job I ever had was wrapping Christmas gifts for a women's clothing boutique. Throughout the year the store's signature gift wrap consisted of pink foil paper, burgundy Sasheen ribbon, and an embossed silver medallion seal. No bow, just the silver seal. At Christmastime however, the packages were allowed to have bows. The shop owner, who was almost eighty at the time, was very particular about all aspects of her business and the business of gift wrapping was no exception. For Christmas packages, beautiful deep aqua colored foil took the place of the normal pink and handmade bows were the order of the day.
Most of the bows we made were the pom pom style.
But if the customers were coming back for their gifts later and time permitted, we would make different styles like these...
I liked the way these last two styles looked, but they were tricky to complete. They were the type that I would start making and then have to start all over again from the beginning because of my persistent OCD issue with symmetry.
Seeing these spools of vintage ribbon at the flea market reminded me of all of those afternoons of after school bow making. So of course they had to come home with me.

Happy July 4th!

Hope you and yours have a wonderful weekend!

Fourth of July Favorites

When I was a kid KTLA always had a Twilight Zone marathon on the 4th of July. I watched that show at 1:00 pm every weekday of summer anyway, but to have a whole day of back to back shows was even better. Thankfully the Sci-Fi Channel continues that tradition. Having Twilight Zone on, even as background noise, is forever linked to July in my memory.
Same drill with Wimbledon. I watched Wimbledon every July for as far back as I can remember. Flipping back and forth between it and Twilight Zone of course. I only liked Men's Singles though. My tennis crushes were Bjorn Borg, Ivan Lendl, and Pete Sampras. Ahh...dreamy Pete Sampras. Oh, and to watch the Queen award shiny silver cups and platters to the victors was the icing on the cake. Royals and Pete Sampras!
Oh yes, and the quintessential family barbecue. I love the smell of propane in the morning.
And the Fourth just isn't the Fourth without homemade ice cream. Growing up we had an old hand crank ice cream maker. My mom would cover the top with a towel and have me sit on it while my brother turned the handle. Geeze, it must have taken forever to make that gallon freezer, but it was the BEST ice cream ever! We finally bought an electric machine so the dream could live on without so much elbow grease.
And of course I love fireworks! This picture is special because it shows my absolute favorite color combination...pink and green! When I was little I had a Spirograph with neon color pins for drawing. The pink pin was my favorite to doodle with, along with the green for overlapping designs. When I saw these same color fireworks displayed together for the first time I thought they looked just like my Spirograph drawings from home. They have been my favorite ever since.

Crepe Paper Creation

About a month ago I showed you this wonderful vintage crepe paper I bought. Here is how I put some of it to use. The image I used in the center is from Carol's fabulous blog, Raised in Cotton. She was so generous to post several old time photos for her readers to use. I think the piece still needs something though...perhaps some stars, a well chosen word or lettering.
Maybe just more glitter...Yes, more glitter. Everything is better with more glitter.

Paradise Lost

When we purchased our home one of the main features that attracted us to it was the mature landscaping. Our front yard contains several shady pecan trees and a couple of bearing plum trees. The back yard has pine, almond, apricot, and pear trees as well as a beautiful grape arbor. With all of this abundance you might think we could set up shop at the local farmer's market, but not so. We have The Interlopers to thank for that.
Allow me to introduce Exhibit A... aka the ravenous squirrel. I think he's eating one of the pecans left over from fall, but only because he has the deemed that the grapes in the first photo are not ready yet. Last year so many grapes went missing that I was sure these fellows had started their own winery.
The fruit trees and grape vines aren't the only all you can eat venues on the property. It seems as though pine cones from the Ponderosa pines are a delicacy too. It's odd though, apparently it's okay to eat these when they are still green. I think things would be alright if we just had two squirrels to contend with, but these guys are only a fraction of the day shift. The rest of the crew partied too much last night drinking wine, so they were all a little late getting on site today.
You would think that having a dog would deter some of this pilfering. Not the case here. We think the squirrel syndicate is pushing a few extra pecans Maggie's way so that she will turn a blind eye to their larceny. Nice try girl, but we're on to you.

That's what we get for having a literal chow hound on sentry duty.

Dog Day Afternoon

Long before I was born my father had a collection of various porcelain dogs. That may sound like an odd thing for a man to collect, but my dad was a pack rat by nature (See, I came by that trait honorably) and he always loved dogs. So this collection made perfect sense to me. I think that he had inherited some of them from my grandmother and I'm sure the rest he received as gifts. There were mama dogs that had matching pups by their sides, dogs that were linked together with thin chains starting with the largest and then graduating down in size. Poodles, Scotties, Terriers...all kinds of dogs, years and years worth of dogs. At least that's what I have been told, for you see I never actually saw any of them.

The story is that my oldest brother loaded the whole collection into a cardboard box without permission and took them to school for show and tell. The dogs made it all the way to school, lasted throughout the day there, survived the walk home from school, only to be accidentally dropped and smashed to oblivion right at the doorstep as my brother entered. AAUGHH!!! It was one of those days that lives on in family infamy, you know one of those events that gets replayed for the next forty years. And here I am, bringing up the subject again...

I'm telling you this essentially because I too love collecting little "doggities." I guess it's in the genes. To be in my collection dogs must meet this criteria: They have to be quirky...
They have to be cute...
They have to be unique...
They have to be lovable.

I guess requiring them to be shatterproof might be unrealistic.

Shopkeeping

Happy Wednesday everyone! Hope you are having a great week. Just wanted to let you know that I updated my shop over at Charm School Jewels with some fun new charm bracelets for summer. Those of you who receive my newsletter probably already know this, so my apologies for being a Repeat Rita. If your name is Rita, no offense. I have an uncontrollable urge to use alliteration wherever and whenever possible. Same song second verse, should get better but it just gets worse! Bear with me people.

Ployvore Adore

For any of you who would like to spend more time on the internet, I just discovered the most wonderful place to do so. Ployvore. It's fabulous! You can create your own little collages right online with their images, and you don't even have to get out the scissors or glue stick. Now that sounds like that would save lots of time, right? WRONG! I just wiled away an hour (very conservative estimate) creating the set shown above. Between playing with Ployvore and the appointment with my retail therapist ,Etsy, no laundry is getting done. Guess everybody around here will be getting a new package of seat covers when I go to Target. Because of course, there is always ample time to go to Target.

Happy Monday!

Pillow Talk

Hello dear friends, hope you all have had a wonderful week. I am in the process of sprucing up my patio. The weather has been over 100 degrees everyday this week, so I have been waiting until the evening to do my decorating. These pillows are my find of the week! They were on sale at Hobby Lobby for half price, and I was able to get all three for what you might pay for just one teeny tiny decorative pillow.

This is a close up of the embellishment in the center of each pillow. I think they have a very Double D Ranchwear feel to them. No comparison in price though! The long rectangular one was only $7!!! That's right folks, you read that correctly.

This is one of the swings on the porch. I have four all together, so I am thinking about doing each one differently but having them complement each other. I just have this black and white toile wrapped around the cushion while I am experimenting. I like to change the fabric up every other year. Heaven forbid that things should get boring! I have never used these colors outdoors, but I'm liking it. A little punch of pink here and there, or even orange when autumn rolls around might be fun too.

Now don't think I'm going to leave these lovely pillows out day and night. If I did that the squirrels that use my backyard like a frat house would have a heyday! Ooh, I just checked the thermometer and it's currently a balmy 95 degrees in the shade. I better get out there and start froufing. Happy decorating to you my dears!

All Olivia, All the Time

My two, soon to be three, year old daughter has only one book on her summer reading list...Olivia. Everyday, all day...Olivia plain and simple. She's only had this book for two weeks but has already "read" it countless times. After playing with other toys or being gone from the house for awhile, she will look up and ask quizzically, "Where's my 'Livia' book?"
During my wee one's swimming lesson the instructor had her stretch out by the side of the pool to practice the floating technique prior to having her do it in the water. While getting into position she informed her teacher (in true Olivia fashion) that she had to "bask in the sun." Is she brilliant or just highly suggestible? I'm going with brilliant of course! Gotta run, someone is looking for her "Livia" book again, and I didn't even hide it this time. Happy Day!