An award and a decision....

Hi Everyone,

Have you missed me???

I know I have been absent for a week or so and I will explain why in a minute, but first I would like to take this time to send a very warm thank you out to Marilyn at Our Victorian Cottage for awarding me with the Marie Antoinette Blog Award. I feel extremely honored to have Marilyn share this award with me and I will gladly add the wonderful award to my sidebar. Marilyn, your kindness and thoughtfulness is very much appreciated and I am sorry it took me so long to let you know that.

Ok!! Here are the rules:

1. Please put the logo on your blog
2. Link it to the person from whom you received the award
3. Nominate at least 7 or more blogs
4. Put the links of those blogs on your blog
5. Leave a message on their blogs to tell them

And the winners are:

1. Beverly at How Sweet the Sound
2. Katie at Rose Breeze Boutique
3. Cori at Gingerbread, Crumbs & Company
4. Niki at Nostalgia at the Stone House
5. Linnea at Nearbear and B-Daddy's Nest
6. Lynn at The Vintage Nest
7. Katie at Hazel's Vintage Pretties

Please take the time to visit these wonderful and inspiring blogs.

Now, to explain why I have been absent from blogging for the past week or so…

I decided I needed to take a blogging break and do some thinking. When I first started my blog a few months ago, I never realized how time consuming it could be and that I would start to feel stressed out over participating in some of the weekly blogging events like “Pink Saturday” and “Blue Monday”.

Even though I have really enjoyed participating in those events, I was beginning to feel a little overwhelmed with trying to come up with new and creative blog posts each week for both events and to also find the time to try and visit as many of my fellow bloggers as I could. Add that into a full-time working girls life and I’m sure many of you will understand how I was feeling.

I realized that I don’t want to give up blogging altogether, but I have decided that for the time being, I will no longer be participating in the weekly blogging events. I will however continue to add new blog posts on my own time schedule and I will also continue visiting my fellow bloggers as often as I can.

That has been the one thing I have enjoyed the most over the past several months. I have met so many wonderful new friends through blogging and I have really enjoyed visiting all of your blogs and seeing and reading about the wonderful decorating and craft projects that you are working on and all of the collected treasures that you have acquired in your antiquing, thrift store and garage sale hunts. For me, blogland is like an on-line decorating and collecting magazine and I have found so many great decorating ideas in my visits to your blogs that I would like to use in my own home and they have even inspired me to begin some new collections of my own.

My greatest hope is that you won’t forget about me and that you will continue to visit my blog as often as you can.

That’s all for now. Take care and come back and visit again soon !!

Pink Saturday - Pale and Pretty

Oh my... Another week has flown by and it's time once again to share in the fun of "Pink Saturday" hosted by Beverly at http://howsweetthesound.typepad.com/. Thank you Beverly for being such a wonderful hostess and for allowing all of us that love the color Pink to share some of our favorite Pink with others.

Today, I am showing a vignette of some of my pale and pretty pinks. Included in the vignette is a sweet pale pink lady chalk figurine, some pretty pink buttons, a vintage postcard and a couple of pale pink milk glass candy dishes. A sweet rose patterened plate is the backdrop to the vignette. The color of the candy dishes is such a pale shade of pink that they almost look white. Only if you've ever seen similar pieces in your own eye will you understand just how pale the shade of pink is. I love to use these candy dishes at Easter filled with pastel colored candies.

The vingette re-arranged with the candy dishes removed to show more of the rose patterned plate....

And I would like to send out a shout of THANKS to Katie at Rose Breeze Boutique who last week shared a photo of some beautiful floral fleece fabric that she had found at JoAnn's. After seeing her picture and falling in love with the design of the fleece fabric, I had to run to JoAnn's and purchase some of the lovely fabric for myself. Just like Katie, I now have a beautiful and "shabby" lap throw of my own. Perfect for getting cozy on a cold Minnesota winter day !!

Thanks for stopping by for a visit today. Now head on over to Beverly's for a list of more "Pink Saturday" participants. Make sure you visit the others also to see what lovely Pink they have in store for you today.

Have a fabulous weekend!!

A Little Bit of Yellow Sunshine..

Living in Minnesota, I dread the coming of winter when everything outside seems to lose its color. Things that used to have such lovely and vibrant colors begin to turn dreary shades of brown, gray and dirty white.

That’s why for me, my home becomes even more a refuge as I surround myself with the soft and pretty colors that will sooth me and bring me comfort during the long, dark and cold winter months.

Over the years, in order to bring a little sunshine into my home, I began adding the color yellow into my décor. When browsing the antique malls and gift shops, I keep my eye out for pretty things in the color yellow that I can add to my collection. I am drawn towards the softer shades of yellow and not the bright shades you sometimes see.

Today, I thought I would welcome you into my home for a little peek at some of the yellow in my collection.

This first photo is of a small end table that sits along one of the walls in my living room. I use this table to display the largest portion of my collection of yellow. From the yellow in the pretty flower filled floral pitcher to some of the small items such as a vintage heat shaped candy box with a rose cover, a yellow planter filled with pastel colored buttons, a pretty vase with a yellow and pink floral pattern and a few other miscellaneous yellow its, this corner is filled with sunshine all year around….

A closer view of some of the items on the table...

And in my dining room, displayed on a shelf is a lovely yellow and green lady planter figurine. She looks very much like Marie Antoinette.

And lastly, a cute little white planter with yellow flowers that holds a vintage yellow crocheted potholder.

Thanks for stopping by for a visit today. I hope that you enjoyed seeing some of my collection of yellow and that I may have added a little sunshine and cheer into your day.

Blue Monday - A Bridesmaid in Blue

Happy Blue Monday……

Blue Monday is a fun blogland event that lets us share something blue each Monday. The event, hosted by Sally at http://smilingsally.blogspot.com/ is open to anyone who would like to participate. Click on the link above or on the Blue Monday button on my side bar to visit Sally’s website and learn more about Blue Monday’s. Thank you once again Sally for being the wonderful hostess of such a fun event.

On Saturday, I had the pleasure of attending the beautiful wedding of Joe and Katie. Joe is a fine young man that I have known since the day he was born. Joe is one of my Mom’s daycare kids and we have known Joe, his older sister Jenny and the rest of his family for going on 28 years now. We remain very close to them to this day and consider them to be part of our extended family.

It worked out perfectly for my Blue Monday post that the bride Katie chose a beautiful color of blue for her bridesmaid dresses. Joe’s sister Jenny was one of the bridesmaids in the wedding and I was lucky enough to grab Joe and Jenny at the reception and get picture of them together.

I was also able to get another picture of Joe and Jenny together with their Mom Caryl..

It was such a fun day and the wedding was beautiful. I along with the rest of my family wish Joe and Katie a lifetime of love and happiness together.

Thanks for stopping by to visit today. Now head on over to Sally's blog for a list of other Blue Monday participants.

Wishing you all a wonderful week.

Pink Saturday - Practical & Pretty

Another very busy week has zipped by and it's time once again to share in the fun of Pink Saturday hosted by Beverly at http://www.howsweetthesound.typepad.com/. When you're done visiting here, head on over to Beverly's blog for a list of other Pink Saturday participant's to see what fun and beautiful pink things they will have to share with you.

Pink... A color that for me is both pretty and comforting. I love to surround myself with objects in my favorite color of pink. Some of the objects are practical for everyday use and others are just for sitting quietly on a shelf and adding beauty to a room.

For practical use and to keep things organized and tidy, I have a couple of these darling pink rose patterned wood bins in two different sizes. I have the smaller one on my desk in my home office to hold miscellaneous items and the larger one sits on the shelf of a wicker stand in my spare bedroom.

I found mine at my favorite Home Goods store a while back. They had them in pink, green and blue and they came in different sizes from small, medium to large. In addition to the pink ones, I also purchased a medium size one in blue and a large one in green. They are both pretty and functional at the same time.

If you like these, I recommend you visit the website katiesrosecottage.com/. I was browsing Lori's website yesterday and noticed that she has a few of them for sale at a very reasonable price. If you've never visited Lori at her selling site, you are definately missing out. She has fabulous items for sale and her service is excellent. I am frequent shopper on her website and I have yet to be disappointed in anything I have purchased from her.

Now for the not so functional, but never the less pretty, I have this sweet little pink lady planter figurine that holds a small bunch of artifical pink roses. She is kept on my coffee table in the living room where I can see and enjoy her everday.

I hope you enjoyed the little bit of pink I shared today. Now if you have the time and have always wondered if there was a way to reduce your piles of decorating magazines without losing the best parts of them, check out my last post titled "Decorating Scrapbooks" to see how I've reduced mine and still kept my favorite parts of them.

Have a great weekend and come back and visit again soon!!

"Decorating Scrapbooks"

I have been a collector of decorating magazines for many years and was starting to become overwhelmed with my piles and piles of magazines and didn’t know what to do with them anymore as they were taking up so much space. I didn’t want to throw them away as I love to go back and browse through them to enjoy my favorite parts of the magazines which featured photos of beautifully decorated rooms and home décor items.

Then, one day several years ago, as I was wondering through an antique store, I stopped in a booth of a dealer that had an item displayed that gave me a very creative idea of what I could do to reduce my piles of magazines and yet allow me to keep the best parts of each of them.

What she had done was taken just a standard white three ring binder notebook and added sheet protectors in which she had placed pages from magazines that showed off some of the same style of items she displayed in her booth. A light bulb when off in my head, and I couldn’t wait to get home and create what I now refer to as my “decorating scrapbooks”.

I started my new hobby by going to an office supply store and purchasing several three inch, three ring white binder notebooks (the sort that have the clear sheet protectors on the outside front and back covers and on the spines of the binders), clear heavy duty sheet protectors and a large pack of just some basic cream colored heavy weight printer/cardstock paper.

Then it was off to the Archivers scrapbook store, where I purchased a variety of pretty 14x14 inch scrapbook papers to decorate my new “scrapbooks” with. I also purchased a pack of 8 x 11 mixed color cardstock paper for another idea I had. I chose the pack that had my favorite pastel colors of pink, soft green, cream and yellow.

Once I returned home, it was time to get to work. I chose matching scrapbook papers for each binder and cut them down to size so that the paper would slide into the outside front and back covers. This meant cutting the paper size down to approximately 10 ¾ inches wide and 11 1/8 inches in height. A standard scrapbook paper cutter works great for this, especially if you are like me and can’t cut in a strait line. After decorating each notebook binder with the pretty scrapbook papers, I added the sheet protectors to each of the binders and inserted one sheet of the cream colored printer/card stock paper into each sheet protector. Adding the card stock paper made the scrapbook pages sturdier and gave the sheet protectors a front and back side.

When this part of the project was completed, it was time to tackle may stacks and stacks of decorating magazines and get artistic and creative. While some of you may cringe over the idea of tearing up some of your favorite old magazines, I had no such problem. Over the next several weeks, as time allowed, I went through each magazine carefully tearing out pages with the beautifully decorated rooms and accompanying articles that I wanted to keep and I even kept pages that just may have had only one or two larger printed words that fit in with my decorating style. Some of the pages held only one or two small pictures of different items that I wanted to save and I kept those also. I wasn’t interested in keeping magazine pages with articles or photos that held no interest for me or in all of the advertisement pages so those pages ended up in the trash pile.

After doing all the tearing out of pages, I neatly trimmed the edges on the full size pages and accompanying articles that I wanted to keep and then it was on to the more detailed work of cutting out and trimming the smaller size photos and cutting out the pictures of the smaller single objects as well as the words or phrases that I wanted to save and use to embellish my scrapbooks with. It was a time consuming process but one that I found very relaxing and enjoyable.

Then the fun part started. I began putting together the scrapbook pages.

I should note that this was not all done at once or even in a short period of time. It took me several weeks to complete the initial phase of putting together my new decorating scrapbooks and it has been an ongoing project ever since as I continue acquiring new magazines each month.

Starting with the full size magazine pages that I was keeping first, I began filling each sheet protector with the pictures and accompanying articles. I also added some of my favorite magazine photos to the covers of the notebook binder to make it look more like a book, instead of just a notebook with a scrapbook paper cover.

Once I had all of the full size pages placed in the sheet protectors, I started on the second phase of putting together the new scrapbook pages. This involved sorting all of the smaller photos, cut-outs, words and phrases into the color categories that they best fit in (pinks, reds, greens, blues, purple, etc.). This would make it easier to create scrapbook theme pages by keeping the photos of a similar color scheme on each individual page or blending different colors together in an eye pleasing way. I recently found some great thin plastic storage cases at Target in the office supply/scrapbook aisles that work great for keeping my color categories separated.

Then, using the different 8 x 11 colored cardstock papers as a background, I began choosing different photos, cut-outs, words and phrases and designing a layout for each page. Once I was satisfied with the design layout and look of the page, I used small pieces of double sided tape to tape the items to the colored cardstock paper. Filling a page was not always easy as sometimes the pictures just didn’t look right together, the colors were off or I didn’t have enough smaller pictures of the kind I was looking for to complete the layout. For these, I would keep the part I had already designed and set it aside to be added to at a later time. Once I had a filled page, both front and back, I put it into the notebook binder.

Here a few random pictures of some of my decorating scrapbook pages.........

I still continue to work on my decorating scrapbooks to this day and I have approximately 15 of them filled already. I store them in the bottom cupboards of my entertaiment center in my living room.

While that may seem like a lot, they take up much less space than all of the piles of magazine I had previously and would have accumulated over the long period of time since I started this hobby of mine. Working on these scrapbooks has become one of my favorite hobbies and I often spend hours at a time designing my page layouts using new magazine photos, cut-outs, words and phrases as I collect them. It will be an ongoing hobby as long as I continue to acquire new decorating magazines each month.

Now when I want to enjoy all of the old magazine photos and articles, all I need to do is pull out my scrapbooks and look through them and see only the “best of the best” of the decorating style that I love and I don’t have to look at any of the unappealing photos, articles or advertisements that often fill a magazine. Now all that I see are pictures that appeal to my senses and make me happy.

I hope that by me sharing this with you that I may have sparked an idea in your head and that you may find something similar to do with old magazines that you have been holding on to for years and years.

Blue Monday - Back in Action

Hey there girlies, I'm back in action, just in time for another Blue Monday hosted by Sally at http://smilingsally.blogspot.com/

After wasting a bunch of time over the weekend trying to find somewhere that I could get my camera fixed and not having much luck, I finally gave up, took the easy way out and just went and bought a new one. Same make and model as the one I had before and it wasn't too expensive, so I'm not out a whole lot of money. I still plan on trying to get my other one fixed though and if that does happen, I will give my older camera to my Mom who doesn't have a digital camera yet. She will be happy to have it, even though it's not in brand new mint condition.

It's late in the day as I'm writing this and I was away from home most of the day, so I only had time to gather up a few things in the color blue, take a picture and get it downloaded on the computer to share for Blue Monday.

Several weeks ago, I did a Blue Monday post showing some pictures of my Blue home office. Today, I am showing just a few of my favorite Blue office related supplies.

My stash includes some pretty blue floral printed file folders (I also have several in Pink), a matching blue note pad with a rose print border, a small blue day planner and a blue pair of scissors. I love that even such mundane things as office supplies can be made pretty and are so beautiful to look at...

Sorry I don't have more to share today, but I should be back in full action next week. Thanks for stopping by today. Now head on over to Sally's blog for a list of other Blue Monday participant's and make sure you visit them to see what they are sharing today. Thanks again to Sally for being our host for Blue Monday's.

Come back and visit later in the week to see the fun and creative way that I reduced my piles of decorating magazines while still keeping the best parts of them to look at over and over again and inspire me as I continue the process of decorating my home.

Have a great week everyone...

Pink Saturday

Time flies and once again is time for another “Pink Saturday” hosted by Beverly at http://www.howsweetthesound.typepad.com/. Thank you Beverly for being such a wonderful hostess and for allowing us to share some of our favorite pink things with other likeminded lovers of pink

For those of you who don’t know, last Friday night I dropped my digital camera and damaged it to the point that it won’t even turn on. As a result I am temporarily without a camera and wasn’t able to take any new pictures of pink during the week. To make matters even worse, I also had unexpected and somewhat costly car repairs earlier in the week that took a big chunk of money out of my already tight budget, so I haven’t been able to get my camera fixed yet (if that will even be possible) or to by a new one. I am hoping to find someplace this weekend where they might be able to fix it for me. If not, I will be shopping for a new one.

Luckily, I already had a few pictures of pink downloaded on my computer, so I will be able to share those with you today. Didn't want t miss out on the fun of sharing something pink today.

I have always loved white wicker furniture, and several years ago, when I was still living in an apartment, my Mother bought me a lovely wicker rocking chair for my living room. It's not an antique. I think she found it at Pier 1 Imports, but I love it anyway. I currently have it in my family room in the lower level of my townhouse. I don't much care for the fabric pattern on the seat cushion, so I have covered the cushion and back of the chair with a pretty piece of fabric remant that has some of my favorite pastel colors. It looks like it may have been intended to be a quilt top at one point, but the quilt was never finished. There is also and odd cutout piece on one of the corners that you can not see in the picture, but I loved the fabric so much the missing corner of fabric did not stop me from purchasing it. The chair holds an assortment of some sweet little pillows made from vintage tableclothes and chenille. It is a pretty and cozy place to sit and relax...

Another sweet little item of pink is this pretty pink postcard with a lovely rose print that I have framed in pink. It sits on one of the shelves of my bookcase in the living room where I can see it everyday. The soft shabby colors of pink, blue and green in the card are so pretty.

These final two pictures are of an old vintage sewing box that I found in an antique store. When I found it, it was a dull brown color, but with a coat of soft pink paint on the inside and outside and the addition of some decoupauge paper in a well known "victorian hand" pattern, it has turned into a lovely little storage box. I recently found another unfinished sewing box just like this one at a Goodwill store for only $3.99. It was the same dull brown color as this one used to be, but I have painted the new one pink also and I am going to finish it of with some decoupage flowers and give it as a Christmas gift to a friend. This is about as artistic as I can can get.

That's all for today. As always, I thank you for coming to visit and I hope you come back and visit again soon. I will hopefully be back in full force within a week or two once I get my camera fixed or buy myself a new one.

Luckily, I have another post already completed and ready to go that I will be sharing during the upcoming week. If you are looking for a fun and creative way to reduce your piles of decorating magazines without throwing the best parts of them away, make sure you come back and visit later in the week to see what I have done with mine. I will leave you with the words “Decorating Scrapbooks” as a little teaser of what is to come....

Have a great weekend!!!