New dish acquisition

I am apparently really drawn to some of the patterns of Martha Stewart Everyday! After stumbling upon these lovely pastel yellow plates, and then later these almost-Irish "Garland" salad plates, I've once again found a great little MSE bargain at a local thrift store. 
Today my acquisition was a trio of these soft blue salad plates with a "weave and pleat" design - I am not sure of the pattern name, but they were a steal at 99 cents for all three. 

I brought these little beauties home and washed them up, and immediately tried them in a couple of different stacks to see how I might use them. Here's one sandwiched between a bright white Corning "Tulip" dinner plate and an unmarked mid-century bread plate. 

Here it is with a Royal China Currier & Ives bread plate: 

And here it is with no bread plate at all -  

These would've looked super cute on my Easter table with the "crazy daisies"! Can't wait to use them! Have you found any special treasures lately while thrifting? 

A vintage start to Christmas decorating

I hope you had a lovely Thanksgiving! I've been feeling a little under the weather all week, but other than that our holiday was perfect. Our little family of three traveled across town to celebrate with my husband's family at his sister's home, and as always it was a large and noisy group. My daughter was home for the week, but had to go back to school on Friday due to her work schedule, and by Friday afternoon I had the Christmas decorating bug so I decided to set up a little Christmas tree in my "Mom cave."
I had done some after-Christmas shopping last year and acquired a nice little collection of vintage ornaments,  with a vision in my head of doing some sort of "shabby" tree. I had a brain-fart, though, and bought a three-foot green tree (instead of white) which was super-cheap at the time but not quite what I wanted. Around that time I test-sprayed some fake garland to see if painting my green tree might be an improvement, but decided it would not. So I've known all year that my little office tree would have to be green instead of white. 
 It's impossible for me to take a good picture of a decorated Christmas tree and have it look as pretty as the tree looks in person - but, pictures of individual ornaments always come out pretty good. So, here is my little Mom-cave tree - covered with vintage ornaments but not as "shabby" as I originally intended. (I'm thinking of tying hand-torn muslin "ribbons" on some of the branches - wonder what they would look like?) 

My vintage finds included a small selection of old "Shiny Brites" - the classic ornaments we remember as kids...

I also found a box of small "textured" ornaments, some a pretty rose-red and others a soft white:

I just love little "Goldie" back there, she's only about an inch in diameter. I purposely put her toward the back so she'd be a pretty reward for stepping up to take a closer look. 

I also found a set of four of these large ornaments painted with violets - not vintage, but I fell in love with the violets. I had some hand-crocheted snowflakes in a stash from my mother-in-law's estate. 

Here's another crocheted snowflake, with a large peach-hued textured ornament in the background. 

Found a set of twelve of these spun-glass hearts in a thrift store - they really glimmer in-amongst the lights! 

For the topper, I pulled the floral decoration from my mail tin, and used three little angels from the crochet stash. VERY shabby-sweet, no?

Next-day update: This pretty three-tiered eyelet skirt sure shabs it up! Found this at the Goodwill today - it's not really a tree skirt. In fact I'm not sure what it is - maybe a bassinet liner... maybe an infant car seat cover. Anyway at $2.59 it was certainly all mine - all that beautiful eyelet! 

I'm not sure when our tree will go up in living room. My daughter tells me she would like to help, but she doesn't come home for Winter Break until mid-December. I'm not sure I can wait that long! How's your Christmas decorating coming along - have you started yet?

Our little shopping spree

A friend of mine from high school owns a home furnishings store here in Des Moines called The Mansion. It is filled with beautiful home accessories, custom furniture, and talented designers. Recently, The Mansion has been running a series of "comment contests" on Facebook. The one that caught my eye was for a $20 gift certificate, or 20% off a purchase, and the question was, "Tell us what you love about holiday decorating." Here was my answer: 

My daughter, now 19 years old, told me recently that one of the things she remembered most fondly about our old house - which was destroyed in the 2008 flood - was the way it was always decorated for Christmas. This touched me, because it was a very small & modest house - not "grand" in any sense of the word. But apparently the holiday decorations, many of which were handmade by her and I, were a big part of her favorite childhood memories. Of course we haven't been able to really duplicate all the things we lost that we had made together, but even with mostly store-bought things I still love making the effort to decorate because I know now that it not only makes it feel like Christmas for *me,* but for her as well.

A couple of days later, I was absolutely thrilled to discover that they had not only named me the winner of that contest, but they had also very generously increased the gift certificate to $100! My daughter, whose sentiments were the core of my comment, also commented on their page and thanked them.   All of this is to be able to share with you that today, we went to their store and were able to choose two very lovely items.  First, Stephanie chose this ceramic trinket box with the sweetest elephant finial: 

   And, my selection was this beautiful blown-glass pumpkin:

What a lovely way to spend some time with my daughter, and a great opportunity to experience my friend's store! 

More OCR coming my way... I hope!

Haven't been around here for awhile but I am soooooo excited about an upcoming change in my Old Country Roses ownership status. I am about to go from having "a few stray pieces" to having SEVEN beautiful dinner plates. I seriously just want to squeal! More soon... I will tell the whole story when I know it's finally true. Fingers crossed! 

Dollar store sign blank transformation

I'll admit I didn't accomplish too much this weekend - funny that during the week, I have all these big ideas at work about what I'll do with my days off, then when faced with them I have a hard time finding direction. I did take some time to finish one small project, a pretty bit of wall art that started out as an unfinished sign blank from the Dollar Tree.  

My ideas for this little piece included making a hand-painted sign using one of the many amusing quotes I've been finding on Facebook and Pinterest (maybe this one: "If a ship doesn't stop at your port, it wasn't your ship.")... or, making it look like a plank from an old fruit crate, complete with peeling label. Up until today, I was leaning heavily toward the former. But once I got to sifting through some images from The Graphics Fairy, I found a beautiful label I couldn't resist - even though it wasn't fruit-themed. 
I started the project by removing the hanging string and then lightly staining the unfinished blank with a Minwax maple stain. I dabbed on a couple of coats, including the back and edges. 

I then selected a piece of scrapbook paper which - at the time - I thought would lend itself well to having lettering painted on it. It was a subtle color, with a lovely pattern that wasn't too intrusive. I wanted this to have an aged look too, so I tore the paper into the size I wanted rather than cutting the edges. 

I glued the torn scrap to the front of the blank using ModPodge, then brushed a layer of the maple stain over the whole piece. This served to "age" the bright white torn edges of the paper and made the paper look like it had weathered along with the wood. Once that was dry, I brushed a layer of ModPodge over the entire piece. 

Next I printed out my chosen label, trimmed it closely, and used ModPodge to glue it to the sign blank. I brushed on yet another layer of Minwax stain over everything, let that dry, then finished up with a final layer of ModPodge to seal the deal. 

I really like the overall result... I wish the sign blank itself had looked more authentically aged, but I think my efforts to "old it up" gave it a distinct personality. 

Fabulous Peanut Butter Fudge

I'm so excited about this silly little plate of fudge that I am linking it to "Making Monday Marvelous" over at C.R.A.F.T. Click through for loads of wonderful recipes and crafty projects! 

Quick, easy, amazing... those are the three key ingredients that inspire me to try a recipe. I was digging through the box of clipped recipes that I got from my dear mother-in-law, and came upon this little gem from the "Quick Cooking Collector's Edition. The clipped recipe was submitted by Mrs. Kenneth Rummel of Linglestown, PA. I decided to try this and it is simply outstanding, so felt I had to share. The photo shown here is my own.

Peanut Butter Fudge
2 cups sugar 1/2 cup milk 1-1/3 cups peanut butter, creamy or chunky 1 jar (7 oz.) marshmallow creme Butter the bottom and sides of an 8-inch square pan; set aside. In a saucepan, bring sugar and milk to a boil; boil for 3 minutes. Add peanut butter and marshmallow creme; mix well, blending thoroughly. Quickly pour into the 8-inch buttered pan; chill until set, about 2 hours. Cut into squares. 

HERE is a printable 3.5 x 5 recipe card for this fabulous fudge! 

Son of Zipper Pouch

We've been on two cruises in our lifetime, and both times we took the exact same boat and the exact same itinerary. We've been to the Sturgis Rally in South Dakota twice, and both times we took the same route and the same scenic rides. So it's not too surprising that when I needed to make a second zippered pouch, I used the same fabrics, with the same details, that I used the first time around. 

The first pouch I made using Kate's super-simple tutorial at See Kate Sew turned out so cute... my daughter loved it as much as I did, and she used it as her pencil pouch at school until the day her car was broken into and her backpack stolen. The little pouch disappeared that day too, along with her camera, some personal letters, and a couple of textbooks. 
Now that she's headed off to college, she asked me if I'd make her another pouch so of course I couldn't say no. I used all materials on-hand, so the trim is a little different - and I'm still working without a zipper foot so I had to work carefully around the zipper pull. But overall this "second draft" turned out just as cute as the first one, and again I just have to say how easy the tutorial was for this project. 

 

I may need to make a few more of these!