It's a new day, a great day, a birthday.......

So vacation at the Oregon coast starts on Sunday......and my head will be hitting this pillow (my very favorite) to read these.....

and this.....a new book that looks promising......I'm all about a mystery.

and getting familiar with this little beauty.....my favorite birthday present. Who wouldn't want the new ipad? I can't think of anyone....it's my favorite new thing. I will admit, I cried when I opened it! I can't wait to see what it can do.....hope you all have a great week, we'll have a great time at the Oregon coast!

A sacred obsession.......

So it's no secret to those who know me well that I LOVE antique hymn books, the one above is my newest one. I try not to pay more that $5 per book. How sweet that Pearl Clements and May Clements signed their names in this one.And look how Mary Etta Clements put a line under her name with a ruler! Too cute.I actually do use these in my artwork, nothing like an original hymn page to spice up your work. My favorite book is this Ira D. Sankey book called "Sacred Songs and Solos". The fonts and pages are beautiful, if you ever see one of these I highly recommend you pick it up, as long as the price is right. They can be found on ebay sometimes. I used pages from this book to line my hutch in my dining room.

So what are you obsessing about today?

We've been as busy as beavers!!!!!

The making of the raspberry jam!!!! My dd has been pestering me for quite some time now to make some raspberry jam, it's her favorite. So last week we went out to our favorite farm stand and bought our berries and everything else we would need for this endeavor. And we had such a blast making jam. She loved it.

If you are anywhere near fresh berries I highly recommend this activity, especially if you have little ones at home! It's a really fun experience you can do together, not to mention the fact that when it's freezing outside this winter, you can go to your freezer and pull out some "summer in a jar". That's our name for it anyway :).

The picture above is dd in Florence (no, not Florence, Italy...I wish!) but Florence Oregon. Dh had the brilliant idea yesterday to go to the coast since it was going to be so hot here. It was perfect at the coast and we had so much fun walking around Old Town, buying peanut brittle and ice cream cones. Then we went to dinner at this funky diner-type place that dd absolutely loved! They had cars inside the restaurant (real cars!) that you could eat in and she got her dinner in a paper car. See it above? The honey was from a farm stand that we stopped at on the way home that had all kinds of goodies but we were mostly interested in the fresh honey that they harvest right there on their farm. We even got to see some bees...
all in all, a perfect day.
Hope you all enjoyed your summer weekend as much as we did!

Some sweet new storage finds for my studio.....trunks and drawers (sounds like a post about underwear!)

I love this doll trunk I found at St. Vinnies! The sweet label says "Like the big ones we make for Mother". How cute is that? And because it only measures 20" long and 10" tall, there's plenty of room for it in my room ( well, kinda, I am starting to run out of room!) Better get dh to add on for me :).
I'm certain the reason this cutie was in there for a whole week or so without selling is because most people just walked by it and didn't bother to open it up to check out the inside, a mistake I'll never make again after my Dr. bag debacle with Melanie! If they had opened up this beauty and merchandised it with some awesome old linens I'm sure it would have sold on the first day, but I'm glad they didn't!

Then today while running all over tarnation trying to find canning lids (come on people, stock your shelves!!) dd and I stopped in at a new Goodwill and look what was in there....these uber cool Singer sewing machine drawers! This is a fairly small piece too so no problem.....and they'll hold lots of stuff.
I admit I bought them for the hardware.....very cool.
Well, off to make some raspberry jam, then take dd to her swim lesson! It's HOT today, hope it's pleasant where you are.
Cheers,
Gail

And the winner of the spool doll is............!!!!!

Drumroll please.............the winner is recycledrita. Please send me your info so I can get your spool girl out to you asap!  Thanks so much for everyone who participated, I really do appreciate the blog love! What a fantastic party it was and congratulations to all 3 winners! I do wish I was one of them but there's always next year, right?
I hope you're all having a great summer, we leave for our annual beach vacation in 1 1/2 weeks and it can't come too soon for me! Can't wait for those ocean breezes.....
Hugs,
Gail

Such a lucky, lucky girl....

First of all, I need to say what a generous community the blog world is! But then you all know that. I've entered lots of giveaways, I've even been lucky enough to win a few.

Here are my latest winnings......from lovely Rhonda at a little bit french, look at this goodness! The cutest ledger packet ever, stuffed with great ephemera (french, of course!)

I'll have so much fun creating with all this paper goodness..if you haven't been to Rhonda's blog yet, well you just need to hurry over there! She has another giveaway posted today (she does them every Friday!) and I've been lucky enough to win twice, that's right, twice! She also has the most beautiful Etsy shop, you can link to it right from her blog.
Rhonda, I can't thank you enough!

The second bit of beautiful goodness I won was from Shari at plays with paper. Just get a load of how the box was decorated....so gorgeous! I won this beautiful Alice in Wonderland necklace that she made.
What? Couldn't believe my luck at winning this, I'm wearing it right now....it's just beyond beautiful!
You must check out her lovely blog and also her shop, promise you won't be disappointed...
O.K., I'll be back on Monday with a fun makeover, have a lovely weekend all!!!!

A little makeover.....

I don't normally do makeovers on my blog, mostly because I always forget to take the "before" picture.

Dumb, I know.......
Well, this time I remembered! Last week I was in the thrift and saw these two little dress forms, but had no cash....oh well.

A few days later I went back to see if they were still there.....and they were so I snatched them up. Then I wandered and saw this cool wicker hamper/storage box. It was the perfect size for my dd's bedroom to hold toys or whatever. But I didn't care for the fabric on the top...way too shiny. So I changed it to the vintage barkcloth above...better.
Then I took all the tacky black and gold stuff off the larger of the two dress forms and was pleased with how rustic it looked underneath, all I added was a french stamp. Oh, and a bit of decorative adhesive tape. Now she looks tres chic :).
There are my little makeovers for this week so far. It's supposed to get into the 90's here this week..yikes, be careful what you wish for, right? Hope you're all staying cool, we're gonna go slip n' slide later!
Woohoo! Gotta love summer........

Happy July Fourth!!!!

Happy 4th of July! We had a great day today....my daughter climbed into bed with me around 8:00 and requested aebleskiver's for breakfast. If you haven't had them before you're missing out!
Then I requested that we drive to a Lavender Farm that had an ad in our newspaper...love lavender! We had a fun drive through the country out there, then came home and made hamburgers on the grill.
And our weather was perfect.
Tomorrow is a big day for our dd, she wanted to become an altar server at our church and tomorrow is her first time! She gets to be the Cross bearer, light the candles, etc. Very exciting.....then we'll have a barbeque at home and do some fireworks. I do hope you all have a great July 4th, one of my favorite holidays.
Let's give thanks to all the brave people who make our freedom possible.........God Bless You All!!!!!