A New Look...

For my ol blog! It's been feeling very wintery outside lately so I had to get a new template which reflected the current weather situation. Aren't the snowflakes so cheerful? I love it! Want to dress up your blog with a cute new template? Check out this site:



I get all of my templates there! Fabulous & free. Doesn't get any better than that, does it?!

In other news, I also added a link to my pitiful little Etsy shop over there on the left side. My shop is so empty it's almost embarassing to put a link on here. Hopefully I'll have time this weekend to add more stuff! Despite not having much for sale, I've already sold 5 things in just 2 weeks so I can't really complain!

Hope everyone is having a great week! I'm going to stop in to some of my favorite blogs later this afternoon and check out what you all have been up to!

It's SNOWING!!

So what if it's only flurries and it's not sticking, I'm still counting this as snow! Of course I'd be much happier if it was to stick around for a while, but I'll take what I can get right now! I'm jealous of those in western MD though, some parts got 8" yesterday!! It's cold outside (obviously!) and I'm sitting in my office drinking hot chocolate and listening to the Soulful Christmas music and I'm so in the mood for next month!

I'm not, however, ready for Thanksgiving. At.All. Normally by now I've got a menu planned out, my grocery list all sorted out and my to-do list for the actual day planned out. Not this year. I just do not care at all about the actual meal this year. I guess I'm sort of burned out. I've been doing Turkey Day every year since Will and I got married and it's always a huge production. It's usually me, stuck alone in the kitchen for 12 hours, slaving away while my husband and his brother sit on their behinds and I'm just not doing it this year. You know, I realize my attitude is horrible but I'm so tired of hosting holidays and not having anyone help out. This year, since it's only Will's side of the family visiting, I'm letting him do all the cooking and I'm going to sit on my arse and plan out my Black Friday plan of attack. There's a huge, huge back story but I don't feel like sharing it right now but let's just say that I'm done with being the happy hostess while certain members of the in-laws act like I'm their freaking MAID!! It's not happening this year and if that means we're stuck eating tv dinners, well, so be it!

Whew...thank you for letting me vent. I feel a bit better! Now I'm going to go change into my flannel pj's (yes, I realize it's only 3:45!) and I'm going to go sit on the sofa with my doggies and wait for my husband to get home! Oh, and I'm definitely going to stop in to some of my favorite blogs and check out what you all have been up to!

Naked Trees

You can definitely tell that winter is on its' way. All of the beautiful leaves that were hanging on the trees last week are now scattered all over yards and streets and the poor little trees are so naked. Here are 2 pictures I took last week looking out of my craft room






Beautiful, huh? Look at how colorful those leaves are. My intentions last week when I took these pictures was to run up the road to the state park on the weekend and take lots of pretty pictures. Of course that didn't happen because someone whose name I won't mention (ahem, Will) wanted to paint instead. And now I'm regretting not going because all the leaves are GONE! Oh, our Weeping Willow is still full of leaves, but I suspect those will just fall off without any real color change. Here are 2 pictures of the same part of the yard I just took a second ago. See the naked little trees?





I'm going to miss looking out the windows and seeing beautiful colors everywhere. Buuuut, I'm also excited about winter. I love winter, really. The cold, crisp air, snow (man, I *REALLY* love snow!), all the yummy soups we make for dinner, ice skating, frozen waterfalls. LOVE.IT. Some people hate winter but I really like it. Perhaps it's because I grew up down south, where "winter" is anything under 45 degrees. Y'all think I'm kidding, don't you? Haha Nope. It was a "cold day in Hell" if the mercury dropped below freezing!

And snow. We hardly ever saw snow. Maybe half an inch every 5 years. And the entire 3+ years I lived in Charleston, it never snowed once! Now, where I grew up in SC it would snow maybe .5" every 5 years and then every 10 years or so we'd get a "big" snowfall, which in SC terms means anything over an inch! If the forecast predicted any sort of frozen precipitation, the entire state would shut down. Down south we just aren't prepared for any sort of frozen stuff. The grocery store shelves would be empty, people would be stock piling like they were preparing for Armageddon. Of course if you live down south, you know I'm telling the truth. But people that have never lived down there don't really believe that the entire town/state will shut down until they experience it for themselves.

Back in 2001, my boyfriend moved to SC from New Hampshire, a state which is frozen and covered in snow for something like 10 months out of the year, and he didn't believe me when I told him that if it ever snowed while he was living there that the entire city would go nuts, stockpile like lunatics and then the city would shut down until all traces of snow melted. Luckily for me, within 3 or so months of him moving down we had a HUGE snowfall. Now, huge by SC standards is probably a lot different than say, South Dakota. Or New Hampshire. But it was HUGE to SC. I remember the day like it was yesterday. It started snowing one afternoon around 3:00 and when we got off of work, I took him to the grocery store to show him the pandemonium. He couldn't believe people were acting like that. We took pictures to send to his friends back in NH. The bread aisle was completely empty, no lunch meat, no canned goods, no milk, even the fresh meat section was almost empty. LOL I'm telling ya, people down south ain't playing around when it comes to snow. We ended up with 7 or 8 inches of snow, the town was shut down for 3 days and that was the last time there was considerable snow in SC.

So, now that I just went off on a tangent, lemme get back on track! Yeah, I love winter. Especially winter up here in Maryland, because we actually get a couple of snow days each year. Last December, I was home alone because Will was overseas in Africa, and it snowed a good 6" one day. It was beautiful! Of course the next day it all melted. Boo! Then a day or two after that, some jackass decided to drive a little too fast down a very narrow road leading into our neighborhood, hit a patch of ice, took out some utility poles and we lost power. So, there I was in my old house, freezing, pregnant, no friends or family anywhere around, my husband halfway across the world. It SUCKED! Each time I called the power company, I kept getting the runaround. Oh, the power would be on in 2 hours, then 4, then 6 and finally I spoke to an actual person, explained my situation and told him I needed a straight answer because if the power wasn't going to be on for several days, I needed to know so I could pack my crap and drive down to SC. Yeah, I drove to SC. Ugh!

And the year before that, on Valentine's Day no less, we had a terrible ice storm. Terrible. Like a good half inch or more of ice coating every single surface. We lost power then too, but Will was home that time. Although I was very sick with a terrible winter cold and thought I would surely die. That storm saw us sitting in a old drafty house for HOURS, then trying to find a pet-friendly hotel for the night, finally driving all the way over to West Virginia to stay with Will's aunt & uncle, driving all the way back home the next morning because the power company said the electricity was back on, realizing it wasn't, driving 70 something miles down to Virginia to a pet-friendly motel....on and on and on. It was insane.

Wow, I guess it probably sounds like I don't like the winter very much after all! But I do. When we still have power! And I'm excited that it's only 2 weeks until Thanksgiving. And Christmas is coming too and I love decorating for Christmas! We usually go all out but I'm not sure what we'll do this year. Looks like Will is going to be back in Wyoming for 2 weeks during the holidays so I'm not sure if I'll stay here or fly out there. I don't want to decorate as much as I normally do if I'm not even going to be at home to enjoy it. But, I don't want to sit around a naked house either. Hmm, decisions, decisions.

Oh, here's a picture of my cute little coat I bought at the VV on Monday. It's actually dark black but I had to lighten the picture in order to show the detail of the trim. And check out the brooch. That's the one I won a few weeks ago over at Lisa's Retro Style . Looks fabulous, doesn't it?



Ignore the ugly pink price tag I've yet to remove!

Anyhoo, I suppose I've rambled on enough for one day. I need more coffee, I need to figure out if my 5 year old camera is going to live to see another day so I can take more pictures of stuff for Etsy and I need to let the puppies outside. Oh, and catch up on some of my favorite bloggy pals! Have a great weekend, y'all!

I *heart* Etsy!

Yay! I made another sale today, not even 10 minutes after listing an item! I love when that happens! I have been busy trying to get good photos of my items and listing some new things today, but I have so much more I need to get on there.

My room is coming along, slowly, but I'm getting to a point where I can actually walk around without tripping over everything. lol And Will has been busy painting our living room and foyer the last couple of days. It looks great in there but I'll be glad when we're done painting. I think I mentioned before how much I HATE to paint.

I had a ton of good luck on Monday at the Value Village. I found a fabulous 1960s (I guess!) coat which I desperately needed. It's black, has big ol buttons on the front, and fits perfectly. Best part was only paying $15 for a big, heavy wool coat that I'm most likely going to be wearing to the very swanky Holiday Party Will and I have been invited to at the Office of the Vice President. As in *THE* VP, not just some VP of a company! I'm pretty excited about attending such an event, although I'm not sure anyone else will be sporting a thrifted coat from the 1960s! lol The coat really does look fabulous though. I also was quite tempted to buy this great little camel color coat, which fit like a glove, but it had a few imperfections near the hem. It was dirt cheap though, only $5 and was made out of 100% baby camel hair. I loved it and I'm regretting not buying it now! Oh well.

I also picked up a great old scale for $6. Of course this was after I went out last week and bought one for $20 at Office Depot! Oh well, the one from Office Depot only goes up to 2 lbs while the one from VV goes up to 25 lbs! My shopping trip on Monday also found me buying some more vintage Shiny Brites, some vintage beaded ornaments, some more little glasses, old sewing notions and lots of other vintage goodies which I'll be listing in my shop in the near future.

I have been neglecting my google.com/reader list for the last couple of days so I'm going to try to make my way there this afternoon so I can catch up with all of my favorite bloggers and see what vintage goodness you've found recently.

Another little peak...

Would you all believe my room still isn't finished?? Good grief!! This is taking a lot longer than I had anticipated! Oh, we're through with painting, thank the good Lord but now I'm dealing with the nightmare of where to put everything. See, Will built me a big ol bookshelf thing which you would think would offer a lot of storage. I mean it does offer a lot of storage but at the same time, I'm losing another piece of furniture that I had a lot of stuff stored in. I guess I could keep it in here, but the whole reason I wanted to re-do my room, the whole reason I wanted Will to build me a bookshelf was because I felt very cramped in here. So, now I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to store all of my stuff! It's slowly coming along though.

Check out this picture. It's a shot of my wall color and the valance that I initially bought for the twin size guest room, before I even knew I wanted to paint my room these colors. It matches perfectly! It's just like the picture of the curtain I posted last week, only it's a valance. Of course now Target has stopped carrying these so I'm forced to go on Ebay and order 2 more so I can have matching treatments at each window. I looked at several fabric stores and couldn't find anything I liked nearly as much as these so I'm just going to go ahead and buy 2 more and be done with it. The curtains are $20 a panel, and I found 2 valances on Ebay for $12, so I'll stick with the valances!




Oh, it's 25% off day at the Value Village and I found out last Monday that they open a full hour earlier than I thought! I got there right at 10:00 last week and I couldn't figure out how so many people were already in the store with full carts and then I saw the hours on the door. They open at 9! So, I'm going to be there at 9:00 today and maybe I'll snag some good deals. I have a TON of stuff I need to get posted on Etsy today too. I made another sale last week, so in a weeks time I made 2 sales so I hope my luck continues!!

I'm hoping later today that I'll have a chance to catch up on some of my favorite blogs too because I haven't even had the chance to do that lately and I'm dying to see what you all have been up to! Hope everyone has a fabulous Monday!

I am so grateful

I realize I haven't talked politics on this blog before, and really it's because I don't like to mix politics in with fun stuff, I don't want to alienate anyone whose views are different, and I generally wish to keep this blog free things that might upset anyone. However, I have to say that what happened yesterday was absolutely AMAZING. The sheer number of people that turned out to vote, who stood in lines for hours (and in the pouring rain here in MD), who got out and voted for the first time in their lives...I just can't even put into words how I felt seeing that on tv last night.

I never thought that I'd live to see the day when an African American would be elected into the white house, and I'm not even 30 yet. Anyone that thinks racial issues aren't still a huge deal has obviously never lived in the South. I grew up in SC, spent the first 26 years of my life there, and while I never heard of any lynchings or cross-burnings during my lifetime, the racial tension is still very high. Sure, we associated with people of different races in school, but in a lot of ways, it's still very segregated down South. And it's very sad to grow up witnessing people you love and look up to, being racist. These people that you love, these integral parts of your family tree, are so blinded by hate that they refuse to see that people are just people. And as I got older, I became more disgusted with certain members of my family. The same ones that I loved so dearly as a child.

So, getting back to the Obama win last night. I honestly never thought I'd live to see the day when a black man would be elected president of this great country. I am so happy that we've reached that point and I hope that as a nation, especially those that didn't vote for Obama, I hope we can all come together and try to make this a better place. I hope that Obama does amazing things for our country. I hope that one day we'll all see that people are just people...skin is just skin and it doesn't mean a damn thing if the elected person is white, black, orange, green or any other shade of the rainbow.

On the other hand, this election has been a wonderful tool to see just how many bigots are still running around. Racism is alive and well and it reared it's ugly little head so much in the recent months. It's caused otherwise rational people to do and say some of the most ridiculous things. It's divided families and it makes me wonder if anything has changed in the last 160 years. For people to feel like a man is unqualified simply based on the color of his skin, it's just sickening. If you don't agree with his policies, fine. But I've seen people that have never cared to vote one way or another turn into racist jackasses this year and it both saddens and disgusts me.

In the following months, I hope that this nation can come together to work on the real issues and that we'll feel united once again. I hope the economy improves, I hope we can bring our troops home, I hope we can start seeing people as people instead of thinking of skin color first and then deciding whether or not we can be friends with them. Our country still has so many things it needs to work out, especially race related issues and I hope that this election will start to change the way people look at one another.

God bless America and may we all stop for a minute today and be thankful that we're even in a position to be able to vote, for a lot of people have paid the ultimate price to give us this freedom.

A Sneak Peek

I haven't had much time to get online these last few days but I'm taking a break from painting to hop on here for a few minutes and catch up on everything! The painting is almost done and hopefully by tomorrow I'll have my room put back together and organized. I never realized how much I'd miss having my own space until it was gone and lemme tell ya, I miss it A LOT! Sure, I've got my laptop that I could be using to update, but it's not the same. Anyhow, the room is almost finished and I'll definitely share pictures when it's all done, but in the mean time here are a couple to hold you over! I cannot get a good picture of the paint color on the walls. It's a light robin's egg blue. At least I'm guessing that's the best way to describe it. It's definitely not baby blue. I love the color. And my desk...my fabulous PINK desk. Yes, pink. I love it so much! Both colors are a lot lighter in person than they are showing up in the pictures so just pretend that you're looking at them in person!





I have that fabulous chippy green cabinet I bought at an estate sale back in the summer that is going to come back in here when I'm done painting and then Will is building me a huge bookshelf that's painted a pale green too. I found some drapes at Target that would match this room perfectly but I'm trying to resist buying them because they are pricey and I could make them cheaper.

My $5 estate sale cabinet from this summer:


And the curtains at Target that I really want for this room but don't want to spend $80+ dollars on. I couldn't find the picture of the actual curtains on Target.com so I had to "borrow" one from an ebay auction:


Wouldn't those look great in here? I may break down and buy them!

I took a couple of hours yesterday to run to the Value Village and I bought a ton of amazing stuff. Except for 3 items, all of it is for resale and I'll hopefully get to list it soon. Speaking of resale, I learned a very valuable and expensive lesson this weekend. Don't list on Etsy when you are only half-awake. Because if you're like me, you'll put the wrong price on shipping for "Everywhere Else" and someone will buy an item and you'll be out of pocket when you pay almost eleven freaking dollars to mail something to France! So, don't do that! And if you discover you made a mistake on several other listings, go back in and change the price on shipping before anyone else makes a purchase. Yes, I learned the hard way, but it was nice to get a sale within a week of listing something on Etsy. Of course the timing could've been better, seeing how my entire scrap/craft room is turned upside down and it was a PITA having to find the product and then my mailing supplies but hey, a sale is a sale and that's cool!

Oh, crap, I almost forgot! Last week I was browsing through some other blogs and I stumbled across this amazing place: Lisa's RetroStyle. Well, I was reading through some of her posts and saw where she'd recently bought a mannequin and was needing a name. I offered up the name "Veronica" and at the time I don't think I even realized that she was having a *CONTEST* to name the mannequin, but I received a comment from Lisa over the weekend telling me that I'd won the contest and she was naming her new mannequin Veronica! How cool is that? I really want a mannequin of my own and I've been searching the thrift stores and craigslist to no avail! Maybe soon. So, a huge thank-you to Lisa for the brooch that is coming my way!! I can't wait to see some of your other fabulous clothing on Miss Veronica!

Well, I suppose I should get back to work. What I really want to do is drag myself and my doggies upstairs and take about a 3 hour nap, but I must persevere and get this room finished. Look at this weather. Isn't this perfect sleeping weather? This is the view from my windows in my craft room. It's rainy & cool outside and I just want to go snuggle up in bed with my dogs and a book at relax!