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.