This One's for The Ladies

The back story for those of you who don't know me IRL--I'm usually at the Pacific International quilt show this weekend hanging out with friends I only see once a year.  (Hi ladies, I miss you!) We arrive from all corners of the West and descend on two wonderful people (Hi, Lin! Hi, Liz!) who host us year after year and make us believe that we're actually welcome.  We're gullible that way.

Instead I'm at home (it happens to all of us at some time or other) having a regular vanilla weekend instead of the usual yearly wild and crazy craft-and-spending marathon with the group nicknamed "The Ladies" once upon a time by twins too young to go with us.

Or it would be vanilla if I hadn't decided to pull up my big girl panties and create a crafty weekend on my own.  It might not be quite as wild (okay, it's not even close but I'll get more sleep),  still I'm doing my best to get my money's worth from my debit card and spend-spend-spend as fast as I can.  


Hey, I have an extra fifteen bucks that I would have spent on admission to PIQF.  Money which would have been well spent to find my favorite merchant vendors conveniently located all under one roof for my spending pleasure.  Number two, I'm not undertaking an eight-hour roundtrip so my gas bill is practically nonexistent and there are plenty of good local places that will be happy to take my money.  It's perfect weather and the yard sales here this weekend are A-Maz-Ing! Lastly, school gets out about two seconds before Christmas so I might as well do a bit of early holiday shopping too.  See?  Spend-spend-spend!


Our tradition is to gather at the end of the day and share our booty.  You'd think that we'd know what everyone bought after being in the same places all day but there are LOTS of us and each of us inevitably produces a surprise or two during show-and-tell. I'm not physically there to participate, but thanks to the Blogosphere I'm sharing my goodies with them (and with you).   

Get ready for Show-and-Tell. The numbers?  They're a good idea that wasn't so good and I'm too lazy to redo the collage.  So just please ignore the man behind the curtain them. 

First up, frames.  They've been popping up in garage sales, thrift stores and dumpsters practically begging me to take them.  Gold ones for paintings (minus the liner soon).

I love the floral duvet in the guest room--it makes a lovely stand in for an actual bit of art.  And can there be too much aqua in one's life?  I think not.

Fancy and gold.  And I know exactly the watercolor that's going in there.

(Think clematis in full bloom.)

Some frames have already been repainted to match the new look of the laundry room.

Some are waiting for a makeover.

And some are every bit as ugly as they look here.

Thank heavens for the transformative powers of paint.

I've never before seen a terra cotta frame--a bit of added shine and my sleepy cherub will have a new home in this curbside surprise.

One person's trash, my free treasure.

Have I mentioned how much I love roadkill?

Free works for me.

I would have grabbed this tool chest just for the hardware!

 

With this old chocolate advertisement transferred using CitraSolv (if I can find any) on top

  it should be irresistible.  Graphics Fairy, I love you.

Moving on...
I'll be Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz for Halloween.  Ruby slippers are hard to come by I found, but I this sparkle paint on a pair of Mary Janes from GW should fool anyone.

I tuck a pair in every coat I own--cold hands at recess are not fun.

  Not to alarm anyone but winter is only nine weeks away. (Not that you SoCal and Arizona gals know anything about that!)

I used my 40% off coupon at Michaels.

Christmas is only ten weeks away (feel free to panic).   Glitter is essential to holiday survival. I have plenty of plans for this spray-on glitter.  

(Hey, KC, I found Santa! Yeah, THAT Santa.  Maybe the stocking will make it down to your place this year.)

As long as Christmas was on my mind, I picked up these place card holders for Casa Encantada's rather majestic dining table.

I won't be there to enjoy the Albuquerque festivities, but I know the recipient will love the red color.

These knobs match two I already have. 

2+2=a cute new look for the vintage sewing cabinet at a thrifty price.

Have your imagination add greenish water, a pale rubbery worm and a spooky label from The Graphics Fairy...

and I'll have a creepy lab specimen for the Halloween display.

I used two coupons on the Michaels run and came away with this lovely clutched in my thrifty little hand.

Spend-spend-spend is good.  Save-save-save is even better!

My forty cents a yard red rickrack may be my favorite buy today.

Because it's gonna make my redwork tea towel even cuter.

(Somebody in the Bay Area better be taking photos so I get to see some of your loot.  I'm not naming any names. )

(Jen?)
 

There's still one quilt shop and two fabric stores I haven't visited yet and my debit card is still working. The weekend is young and I'm just getting started!

Wishing I was there,

Rosy

It's that time of year, with warm sunny days and cool nights--my roses love this weather. All the colors seems more intense. Any pink rose now seems

in tone. But as the weather cools (there was snow high on the ridge this morning) I know winter can't be far behind and I get

as I bid farewell to my lovelies' last blooms.

The east side of the Sierra may not exactly be subtroppical or we'd be able to grow

but our summer's all the more welcome as we soak up the sun.  Summer is truly the

in Reno's four seasons.

We know there's an

lurking somewhere in our future but for now the

of our Indian summer is welcome.

So fare-thee-well, my flower friends; remember that it's never too early to plan for springtime!
I've enjoyed visiting you all at our weekly

Happily,

.

My Guideposts - Week77

This is true love — you think this happens every day?

~William Goldman

Today is the anniversary of the day we met.  I believe in true love, love at first sight, head-over-heels, and till death do us part.  We might be separated by distance and several time zones, but our thoughts today are centered on each other.

Still crazy about him,

Home Made Delicious

If you pick a hundred pounds of deliciously ripe fruit and it doesn't all get eaten at your family reunion, you'll have to do something with it.  After I conned my extended family into helping me sort and pit the last-of-the-season apricots and super-flavorful Santa Rosa plums (this was back at the end of July), we put them all into ziploc bags and I popped them into my freezer to wait for cooler weather.

I'm not crazy enough to make jam and/or jelly when it's stinkin' hot outside. (That's why God created freezers. And I wouldn't want to wreck any Divine plan.)

I spent an incredibly satisfying day making plum jelly, apricot jam, mint jelly and Oriental plum sauce.  I used up every single jar I had in the process.  

I just wanted to mention that I have a smooth electric stovetop. There are rumors about being unable to can fruit or make jelly if you have one. FALSE! I just wipe up any sugar spills or jam drips with a wet cloth and I'm good to go.

Then I took my jars outside in the sun for a photo shoot.  I think filled jelly jars are as beautiful as stained glass!

Yummily,

My Guideposts - Week76

There's no place like home.  

~Dorothy Gale

I'm home.  The Professor and Pooh are home after nearly a month of surgery and recuperation.  The Queen Mother gets sprung and transitions from teen-sitting to her autumn garden later this week. My sweetie is enduring another long stretch in a different hemisphere and yearning for the quiet of his office here at home.

Travel and growth are experiences we wouldn't give up, but returning to the place where the daily temperatures feel normal, the night sounds are reassuring, the mattress is just right a la Goldilocks and cooking in a kitchen doesn't involve searching through three cabinets and two drawers just to find the measuring cup is a treasure beyond compare.  There's no place like home.

FYI, the photo is a birdhouse crafted by my incredibly talented brother (shhh, don't tell him I said that.  It would ruin the whole sibling rivalry thing).

Appreciatively,

There's a Box?

I live in a community that has CCandR's--which I appreciate most of the time since we have no rusty yachts parked in driveways or twenty-foot RVs hugging a property line and wrecking a view.  I admittedly chafe at restrictions on composting, clotheslines and other items I consider earth-friendly and green.  It's unbelievably hard to change them too.

So I just think outside the box.  Clotheslines aren't kosher?  Who says you need a line?  I have four patio chairs that are perfect for holding jeans or towels as they dry in the blinding sunshine.

In redecorating the laundry room I discovered that I'd stashed (and forgotten about) two multiple-skirt hangers that now hook over a sugar maple branch and are perfect for pinning up smaller items.  Like tees and undies. Which multiply quicker than bunnies during summertime's daily morning hikes and dry even more quickly in the Nevada afternoons.

I have plans to introduce the shiny silver metal to my can of Apple Green spray paint. All the better to camouflage my rule-bending hangers in the tree, my pretty.

Thanks to the Bombshells, I've finally managed to make quick-and-easy compost in our dry Nevada climate.   In the past, I've succeeded turning unwanted sod into compost by letting it sit in an old whiskey barrel through the winter.  In our desert climate, the trick seems to be keeping the materials damp enough to decompose.  Last Spring I tried using a reject trashcan which I turned regularly.  I had hopes.  F-A-I-L pretty much describes that result.

Armed with a hammer, some very long nails and leftover lumber from a fence that blew over at the Queen Mother's I cobbled a simple compost bin that's normally enclosed on all four sides but is easily opened at two ends.  Earlier this week, I shovelled a cubic yard of chicken-coop-goop turned compost into the raised beds.  And I've started a new pile of chicken straw which will soon be augmented by autumn leaves mulched into small pieces by the hens.  Multi-purpose, those girls!

Fortunately when these homes were built, backyard chickens were all but unheard of so no one thought of forbidding poultry.  The Bombshells are sort of flying under the CCandR radar (not that they can fly very well).  The coop is tucked invisibly away from any neighbors who might object and the neighbors who do know about it are well paid in fresh eggs.

I guess I'm sort of stretching the rules a bit, but I'm not breaking them.

Much.

I still use turn signals, drive the speed limit in school zones and brush my teeth twice a day.

Iconoclastically,

My Guideposts - Week75

Some things I cannot change, but till I try I'll never know. 

~Elphaba Thropp

I've got a voice and I'm going to use it!