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Friday, June 29, 2012

Sunday, June 24, 2012

Thrifting Vintage

Awesome chenille spread. Atomic retro tureen. Craft book, and as I looked through it I realized I already have it. Breakfast tray for keeps, other stuff for eBay.


Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Vintage Wallpaper Fun

I've been forced to keep a secret.


My friend Pam finally had her big reveal yesterday of her home office renovation. It's been a tease for her readers for quite a few weeks. Pam is RetroGoddess so we hang on every word and picture. I'm lucky enough that she's also become my friend and she asked me (um, and paid me, too) to be involved in her big vintage wallpaper redo.

I spent a few days with her working like a dog, she carries a big whip, there was no reprieve. Actually, we weren't quite finished by the time I left and she had many more hours of paper hanging, trim hanging, contractor dealings to do.

The story will continue for a few days, she goes through the whole process in case you want to do it yourself.

I loved it because I got to see, hug and kiss Astro, who I rehomed to her about 3 years ago. He's such a good boy and a cutie pie, too.

Little Bug also joined me in the adventure and had her little nosey nose into everything.


Pam and I worked and talked about ideas and planned storage and the design of the room. It was a wonderful collaboration of minds (and we didn't get tired or annoyed with each other) it was pretty great. We stayed up late, we ate good food, we talked vintage and blogs and crafting.
A couple weeks later when the room was complete, I went back up with Little Bug and Maddie,
the Bichon I dog sit, and had a photo shoot. I brought 5 vintage suitcases filled with vintage dresses and outfits so that we had choices. We spent a few hours trying things on and figuring out what fit, and what would work with the wallpaper patchwork pattern.

It was a lot of fun. Thanks Pam for the adventure.

Monday, June 18, 2012

The Grass Is Not Greener....

Just different.

a couple posts ago my blogger friend Cindi left me a comment, "I think I want your life. Or maybe the grass just looks greener. Over here it's just a lot of crap and only half of it is dog crap."

Well, Cindi, this story is especially for you, because the grass is not greener, and here's the proof.

(and if anyone else is reading and is sensitive to the unpleasant side of dogs, you might want to skip this read)

Last week was a full week of work and regular life. The plan for the weekend was for me to leave early Friday morning with R.'s two girls and have a girls weekend at camp while R. went riding off to Laconia, NH with some friends to catch the end of the bike rally.

Thursday I worked and was running around getting things packed, and went to family dinner at R's mom's house. I still had to grocery shop for the weekend so I did that on the way home, entering my house at 9pm...to the very loud and foul odor of dog shit. It permeated my 800sf house. I could not find where it could possibly be, that's how strong the odor was in EACH room. The question was, which of the three dogs was the offender. I entered my office where I had crated Hanzie and there it was...all of it's diarrhea goodness....with him, in his crate. Fortunately, Hanzie is so conscientious of his den that he tucked it all into the toweling used for his bedding and sat at the front of the crate looking at me like "get me out of here please, I didn't mean it."

I can't react toward him, but the stress was building up since I wanted to be in bed by 10pm because it would be an early morning start for the girl adventure. Taking the towels out and throwing them into the laundry is really not a big deal, it's not like I haven't had to do it before. The big deal is that his crate is on top of another crate and both crates are tucked into a small closet. If you've ever had a dog take a dump in it's wire crate, you probably know that it doesn't all stay within the crate. So both crates got pulled out, got washed, the closet floor got cleaned up -- thankfully of only a small mess.

As everything was getting washed and disinfected the dogs were in and out a couple times. I was finally able to put the groceries away and prepare some food for the weekend. Obviously, I didn't make it to bed for 10pm.

At about 10:30 I'm getting pretty much everything buttoned up and I let Hanzie out again. At 10:38 he comes back in, and like normal, hops up onto the sofa, the vintage one, the one with velour fabric, the one that I decided I'd try to keep without a cover on the seats....


....and pukes watery shit smelling spew onto one full cushion and a back cushion.

REALLY??

I did lose it a little, swear words projected from my own mouth, even though I know it's not his fault that something terrible is going on inside him but I was tired and getting stressed trying to get everything done. I scrambled to clean up what I could with towels and was forced to pull from the garage, the big guns....the shampooer/upholstery cleaner. I went over that sucker 4 times. Then I figured, since I had it out, I might as well clean the other cushion, too, and what the hell, the man chair has been getting a lot of use by Howie, so why not do that real quick even though I did EACH piece of furniture TWO WEEKS AGO!

dammit.

I got to bed around 1am.

All three dogs continued to have bouts of diarrhea through the weekend.

So, Cindi....do you feel better now?

:)

oh oh wait Cindi, there's more! On the way home from camp, Hanzie and Bug are in the crate and guess what? Yup, very smelly pooping episodes in the crate, attached to the crate, outside of the crate...by Bug.

Now are you happy? LOL

Saturday, June 16, 2012

Blogging From The Phone

I'm finally biting the bullet and trying to figure out the process which is probably very simple and I just got scared to try it, being not so technically advanced.

Will it look the same? Will it be easy to post a picture? Where will the picture end up in the body copy? Will the body copy be the same as the rest if my blog? Well, let's find out.

Why can't I post in landscape mode? It would be so much easier.

It's mid-morning at camp and we're enjoying a fire. We came up early yesterday morning, the weather is so beautiful and it was quiet. So nice. I started a project for here, hopefully it will be done by tomorrow afternoon so I can share.

OK. It works but I don't like that the picture ends up on the bottom. When I have more time I'll see if this can be changed.

Monday, June 4, 2012

A Birthday and Flea Market Sunday

We stayed home from camp this weekend to celebrate my brother's 50th birthday. The party was to be held outside, but due to the rain, we stuffed ourselves into my niece's house. I don't see my brother's often, or my Aunts and Uncles, so it was good to sit, chat, jab each other and laugh. I brought photos of my brothers as teenagers and my niece and nephew as toddlers, those alone created some good laughter.

My Aunt brought the famous 'Chocolate Cake With Gooey Frosting' that we grew up with. We always had homemade desserts and this was a favorite. I think the last time I had it was 19 years ago when she made it for the after gathering of my dad's funeral. And I remember her asking me before the funeral what I would like her to bring and I said this cake. It's so weird, I feel like I had a piece of that cake just last year, the taste is so familiar. My family commandeered it from the rest of the group of my brother's friends, there was no way we were going to miss out on a piece. Funny thing is, I didn't know it was there. They were passing out pieces of cake that my niece made and Aunt Verna whispered in my ear, "I brought the CCWGF cake." I quickly rejected the other cake being offered to me and snuck the famous cake, which was still covered, into the living room where we all were. The plates from each person was quickly shoved into my face, no one wanted to miss out. Oh the memories. My siblings and I chattered on about the cake and cake memories. So silly. Just goes to show what food brings to a family.

Since we camp now on the weekends, we don't usually make it to the Flea Market on Sunday morning during the summer. You know we had to take advantage of being home and the nice weather. We grabbed a coffee and browsed...and bought. Although I passed up a few things I just wanted to HAVE...I kept it to a few things that I collect.

A display head -- to add to my growing collection of heads...


and some necklaces, sometimes a girls gotta wear some vintage bling...


I especially like the bold circle one.

I hope your weekend was fun!