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!