Sunrise on the Lake

I had to photograph the sun rising up over the water this morning. One picture was taken from the porch; I just opened the door and took a shot, the other was through the window in our living room.
A building developer recently bought the property across the street from us and has proposed two different structures (one was a massive single family home as close to the water as possible, the other a seven-townhouse development four-storeys high) that would obliterate our view of the lake but, good news so far, because of opposition from the community and our local elected city councillor, both applications have been withdrawn. Hooray for that. Now it's a waiting game to see what the developer comes up with next.

For now though, a deep breath and a prayer of thanks for the view.

Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle ... puff, puff, puff

I'm finally switching all my craft supply stashes - cross-stitch, rughooking, stamping, scrapbooking, dollmaking etc - from the basement to the attic. Three flights of stairs with a bag or basket loaded with pens, papers etc. With each trip, I debate if I really want to do this. I think it will be worth it once it's done, the attic is so much brighter and I'm hoping I'll be more inspired to actually make more things.

You can see the challenge of the attic is that it's very narrow and the sides are not tall enough for tall bookshelves so where am I going to put my books and magazines?

This morning I came across this blog. The blog owner is moving her studio space as well. Hers has a much more romantic flair than mine. Check it out - enjoy!

There, I've had my little tea break and now back to work. More pictures will follow as I get more done.

... coming out of blogging lethargy for Button Week

I found out from Dawn of The Feathered Nest that it's International Button Week as declared by
Abbie of Button Floozies. Just what I needed to bring me out of my great, long blogging lapse! Dawn wrote an ode to buttons that you'll see on her blog when you visit there.

Some picture of buttons from my stash:

My favourite quote about buttons -

"A button asks little more than to be held, admired and worn close to the heart. "
I first saw this in Victoria Magazine a few years ago.

Friday's Outing with Friends - Afternoon

As if we hadn't had enough eye candy in the morning, we paid a visit to Christine at The Primitive Heart in St George in the afternoon. Above is a view from inside the shop looking out the burlap covered window. Love how the outline of the star shows through. Hmm, I should have bought one of those stars to put in my window. So many possibilities.

Here's another view - above - inside the shop - we thought we'd died and gone to heaven. Quite a change from the morning with the elegant and mostly white linens, but we love it all! We're just not sure how to marry the two styles in our homes.

And then we went outside again and I had to take some photos the shopowner's home.

Maybe we can talk her into serving lemonade or wine on her back porch, we wanted so badly to take a seat in those comfy chairs.
This little twiggy fence surrounds Christine's side garden.

We had our fill of elegant and primitive all in one day and arrived home worn out but happy in the late afternoon.

Friday's Outing with Friends - Morning

We were off to the semi-annual Vintage Linen and Lace sale in Greensville. After missing our turnoff and circling back, we made it right on time for the opening of the show. What a feast for the eyes; in every direction, we saw antique lace, buttons, pincushions and other sewing tools,clothing and jewellery. The four of us fanned out in all directions, oohing and ahhing over all the goodies. Isn't this a great display piece - I love her face and that hat. We all admired this plastic handbag with a matching scarf although none of us bought it. After circling around we all met up in the foyer for coffee - I'm the only one who caved in to the baked goods, I just couldn't resist a little butter tart which was as scrumptious as it looked.

Refreshed by our coffee, we went in for a last look around. Not sure if that was a good idea, because we all succumbed to treasures that we had missed or resisted the first time around. I bought a handmade over-the-shoulder hemp purse, Joy got lovely linens for her kitchen and dining room plus a pincushion, Lynne bought a vintage sterling charm bracelet as well as a rhinestone pin and Jacqui got a unique button card and pretty fabric to sew a child's dress.

After leaving the sale, we continued driving to St George where we had lunch at the local pub. We all resisted the Ultimate Fried Cheese appetizer and went with the House Burger with Sweet Potato Fries - yum.

STuCk on BuTtoNs

Judy, from The Spice Cupboard, kindly informed me that these big-eyed buttons are probably

"underwear" buttons. I was able to find a picture of some in one of my button reference books and a couple were painted with the little faces like the one above that I have in my own collection. Sooo cute!

I had to have the little primitive clock (on the right) that Judy has on her blog - hope she doesn't mind that I had to have one for my blog too.

I went through a huge song and dance in the last couple of weeks about how I 'needed' a new camera and lens with a better macro feature because the camera I have (point and shoot) wasn't good enough. Some of the photos were coming out blurry when I used the macro setting. It turns out that I was probably not getting close enough or, in some cases, not keeping the camera steady enough with not enought light. The above picture was taken with my little Canon Powershot 570 and I'm happy with how close I was able to get - whew, I just saved about $400!

Ahhh, that feels better.

Bruce and I took a van load of stuff from the garage off to our closest auctioneer yesterday.

It had taken me about 5 days to sort through everything in the garage - oops, I mean my third of the garage where I store stock that I buy and sell at Flea Markets. The other areas of the garage are filled with bicycles and mopeds and garden stuff. No, I didn't take these suitcases to the auction; I have a hard time parting with suitcases. (I can copy and paste this phrase into just about every post "I have a hard time parting with ...")

But it feels good to get at least one area of the garage under control. Next on my list is pricing up some recent finds for the Sunday Market at St Lawrence this weekend.

Buttons from Estate Sale

I bought a small glass jar of buttons from an Estate Sale on Friday. I debated on buying the jar but these buttons with big eyes were staring out at me and I was afraid no one would buy them and they would be sent to button heaven or something. I think people sometimes paint hair and mouths on these and they look like little dolls. I have a couple of painted ones somewhere, I will have to sift through my stash and see if I can find them. I think these are used when sewing on coat buttons to give stability to the button. They go on on the wrong side of the fabric with the 'real' button on the right side. Does anyone know if this is their correct use? It's in my button books somewhere. And do they have a proper name? I'm calling them Ghosties because they look haunting.

I was glad I bought the jar because when I dumped them out at home I found there were a lot of pearlies mixed in. For some reason, I love mother-of -pearl buttons. I have a very hard time parting with small ones and some of the larger ones too.

And look at these cute ones with the holes that are very close together. I have a soft spot for these ones. There's something so cute about them. Does anyone out there feel this way about buttons or is it just me?

Fun with Finn and Picnik.com

Thanks to Lisa's recent blog post, I found Picnik and I had fun playing with this picture of Finn which was taken by our daughter, Jacqui.

By the way, Finn has three different names, one favoured by each member of our household. I call him Finn, Bruce calls him Babboo and Jacqui calls him Baby. Actually, come to think of it, our black cat probably has a fourth name for him but I don't think it would be publishable!

Let me know how you like Picnik, I would love to see any picture you create.

Around the House

Here are a couple more scrabook pages that I made at Scrapblog.com. Pages are very easy to make and more photo editing features and layouts are often being added. Check it out if you haven't already tried it.

Here's another page - very cheery!

I found another free online photo editing site, and I'm off to try it out now - will let you know how I like it.

Happy Easter and Happy Spring!

This is apparently our earliest Easter in the last 100 years. We still have huge mounds of snow on our streets and in our back yard! But there are many signs that Spring is nigh; the sun is shining brightly and melting more snow every day, the birds are singing around the bird feeder on our deck. Once the snow is gone, I'm sure we'll see some flowers peeping up through the earth -- maybe I'm rushing things but it was a very long winter. It is still March after all and I just heard that more snow is expected this week. Maybe the storm will miss us.

Enjoy your Easter!

Organizing Recipes into Binders

I was inspired by a recent post by Manuela at The Feathered Nest about making up recipe binders. And since I couldn't go out because I had a very bad head cold, I decided to drag out the recipes that I had copied and torn out of magazines over the past few years. I didn't have any pretty wallpaper like Manuela's so I decided to scan in some of the old handwritten recipes I had collected to insert into the binder covers. Here is an example of one of them. I even found a recipe that my mother had written out before she had her stroke and loss the use of her right arm. That one is a keeper for sure.

For the inside of the binder, I pretty much organized the recipes in the same way as Manuela. I found some sites that cater to files and organization in case some of you want to order pretty organizers. See Jane Work has many types of files and folders in lots of pretty patterns and styles. At Personal Recipe Cards you can order index cards for recipes and other types of cards for keeping track of all kinds of information. I would love to see pictures of your recipe binders and hear how you file your recipes!

Just in time for Valentine's Day

Perfect timing, my packet of winnings came arrived today from The Paris Apartment.
Thank you again, Claudia!

Guess who loves it all besides me?

--- I wasn't happy with my pictures of my recipe binders. Going to reshoot and try again tomorrow.

... more snow

I meant to add some photos of my recently organized recipe binders complete with scanned covers from my old recipe collection but my batteries needed charging so I have to wait to take the pictures. In the meantime, here's our snowy yard. And as I write this, the wind is raging and more snow is swirling down.

Not another collection ...

How does this happen? First I bought a little blank book at Pottery Barn to carry in my purse for when I need to make a little note or jot down a phone number - never mind that I have a Palm digital thing to make notes - then I saw another notebook that I liked at Winners. I love what that one says on the cover 'She had not yet decided whether to use her power for good or evil'. It was a toss up between one that said 'Somebody was going to have to set a bad example' and this one; they both just made me smile. Anyway, that made two blank booklets, then I found the third, the nice blue one at a newsstand where I was looking to add to my magazine collection ...
The pretty journal in the background is just lovely - too nice to write in and I probably will just keep it to look at and sigh periodically. So now I have a collection of notebooks. Is this how collections happen with you too? ... Next time, maybe I'll show you my pens. Not that they're special, it's just that there are bunches of them in every room in our house.

I won, I won!!

I am thrilled to announce that I won the giveaway sponsored by The Paris Apartment. I've been reading Claudia's blog for a few months now and enjoy her style immensely. Here's a picture of the goodies I won. I'm thrilled and will be wearing a big smile today when I do my errands and grocery shopping.

Getting there ...

I've been doing some sorting and organizing every day and it's looking and feeling a lot better in here. (After photo above, Before photo is below). I moved the toys that were adding too much clutter and distraction to the other shelf where the magazines were in my previous post. They look better there - see below.

Most of these toys (below) belonged to my husband when he was a child. A couple of newer items have been added in.

I found two Ikea shelves with the small drawers by the curbside one day so I've been filling the drawers with some of my ribbons, vintage seam binding and other small items.

Big Mess! Help!

This is my basement 'craftroom/studio'. Well, it would be those things if I ever made anything! I just seem to accumulate the stuff and have intentions on simmer all the time but nothing much gets accomplished except more stuff piles up. So I went down to take stock of what needs to be done and got so discouraged because I don't know where to start and there doesn't seem to be enough room to sort things out so I started looking through magazines which is therapeutic - really it is.
I can usually get a grip on sorting and organizing but this time I'm flummoxed - I think that's the word I want, it isn't in my dictionary. Any ideas on how to sort and tidy (besides throwing the stuff out, that's not gonna happen :-)

A Gift from Nature

My husband, Bruce, found this antler on one of his recent birding walks in a park north of our city. We are enjoying it in our living room and needless to say, our cat Finn Baby, is fascinated with the scent of it. The very old snowshoes were a Yard Sale find from my neighbourhood.

My Fortune for 2008

I went to a friend's on New Year's Eve and she introduced her guests to a Polish custom of fortune-telling. On New Year's Eve, you melt a wax candle then take turns pouring some of the hot wax throught the hole of a door key into a bowl of cold water. When the melted wax hits the cold water, it forms a shape.

This picture shows the shape that was formed when I poured my wax. We all agreed this is a lovely dancing woman wearing a Marie Antoinette style dress - very elegant and graceful, isn't she? What does a dancer have to do with my life and what is that shape poking up from her dress - hmm, I don't know any dancers or go to ballets so what could this mean for me? I wasn't sure at first but on New Year's Day it came to me that it may mean that this year I am going to 'go with the flow' and all good things are going to flow to me. I like that. I hope that's a pile of money stashed under the dancing girl's dress ;)

Feel free to post a comment if you have an interpretation!

As for the other guests: one person created an embryo shape (!), another a goldfish, a third had a heart shape attached to a pair of lips. Each one made for interesting interpretations! This just might become an annual tradition for us and we'll all be looking for signs in each other's lives as the year progresses to see if the wax images were accurate or not.