Beauty is in the eye of the... well, you know

Please take a moment to carefully study the photo below. Be sure you take enough time to fully appreciate the goofy goodness. Go ahead, I'll wait.



Okay. Now your first reaction might well have been: "Wow, that is UGLY!" And I would agree with you, except that it PERFECTLY captures my personal sense of humor and the degree of "quirk" I like to have in my life. Here's how this item came to be:

When I was a bride-to-be in 1991 (hey that's 20 years ago - vintage, right?) my groom-to-be and I were preparing to purchase and move into his childhood home. His parents were preparing to move out, having lived there for about 45 years. Ultimately, there were two areas of the house from which they never moved a single item, leaving it all for us: the basement workshop, and the laundry/sewing room.

Around this same time, my mother-in-law-to-be took some time to show me how to make wall-hangings similar to this one out of fabric, an embroidery hoop, and eyelet or lace trim. Simple enough, and I made a bunch of them using various fabrics to give as gifts to the women in my family. But I didn't find suitable fabric to make one for myself until I took time to go through the stash in the old sewing room.

After wading through the piles of 1970's double-knits, I was delighted to find a cotton craft scrap that included one perfect imprint of this flower-bedecked girl who reminds me so much of "Elsie," the friendly representative of Borden's Dairy. I immediately capitalized on my new-found thingie-making skills and whipped this up. I still get a smile, every time I see it.

More soon!

Almost Spring!

After being unemployed for 8 months in 2010, I was certainly glad and grateful to finally begin a new job in late November. Sadly, it turned out to last for only 60 days before a bunch of us newbies were all laid off en masse. So I'm once again job-hunting. I hope it won't take as long to find something this time around!

One of the past-times I was really missing after returning to work was keeping up on a lot of the really lovely home decor blogs I had come to know and love! So this past weekend I took some time to get caught up on my blog reading, while waiting for our Sunday night supper to finish up in the oven. Because I was knee-deep in oggling the tablesettings courtesy of Tablescape Thursday, I decided to arrange a cheery little setting for my dinner. (My dear husband, who was watching television during all this, had planned to eat his dinner on a TV tray.)

I wanted something brightly colored for Spring, but "hardy" to go with the very simple dinner fare. Here's my mix of Frenchy frou-frou and sturdy dinner pottery:



My unidentified white scrolly pasta bowl serves as a charger for the sunny yellow Fiesta bowl:



My Oneida Stainless in the Chandelier pattern remains our daily flatware - a gift from my dear Aunt Hazel before she passed away in 1991.



One my many collections consists of paintings by unknown amateur artists ("Sunday painters," they used to be called). This diminuitive little example has some pretty Spring colors, and the silver frame balances a bit with the flatware opposite.



The painting sits next to my only piece of Fenton glass - I decided long ago I was only going to splurge on one piece, so I made sure it was a form (the ruffled vase in cased glass) in the colors I wanted. It's only about six inches high.



A bit better view of the Fenton vase:



Well as it turned out, when Hubby came into the kitchen to wash his hands, he saw my little tablescape and wanted to eat with me in the kitchen rather than at the television. I gave him the seat of honor in front of the vase and painting, and set a second spot for myself with a coordinating blue placemat. We also each had a nice view of the Charming Farm cloche, which still sits on the kitchen table and delights me every time I see it. And our simple/hardy dinner fare? Marie Callender Chicken Pot Pies. They were delicious, and I thought the whole experience was a nice combination of comfort food on a rather dreary late-winter day, paired with a cheerful, Spring-beckoning setting.

More soon!