Happy Saturday.............

Hi Girls and Happy Happy Saturday to you all. I hope you are enjoying your weekend so far. It feels good for me to finally be able to sit and relax for a bit after a busy and stressful week and try and catch up on some blogging.

I would first like to send out a big Thank You to all of you wonderful ladies who left me such kind comments wishing my Mom a speeding recovery after she fell last weekend and broke her hip and undergoing surgery on Sunday morning.

You will be happy to hear that she is doing extremely well and was able to come home from the hospital on Wednesday afternoon. As can be expected, she still has very limited mobility at this time but she is able to get around quite well with her walker and things will get better for her each day as she gets her strength back and as her hip heals. For another week at least she will need to have someone with her 24 hours a day so my older sister and I have arranged our work schedules so that one of us with be with her all day next week and at the same time babysitting my nieces and nephew which my Mom normally does. Taking care of Mom is the easy part. Trying to keep two 5 1/2 year olds entertained all day is a whole other story. That's going to be the big challenge . I'll manage though as I've done it before in the past.

Now, on to something pretty of course. Can't do a blog post without that can I?

Last summer at one of the occasional sales I went to, I found this sweet wicker shelf that is supposed to be for hanging on the wall, but I had a small stand in my living room that I thought would work perfectly for setting the shelf on instead to use for displaying some of my different collections. What's fun about this is that it's easy to change up just by replacing the items being displayed. Let's me play house so to speak. At the moment, it's filled with some of my collection of pinks and roses.

Don't you just love the darling "Rose Cottage" sign? I purchased this one and two similar signs from Sandi at Wayside Treasures (http://waysidetreasures-sandi.blogspot.com/) quite a while ago but I don't think I ever showed them to you. Sandi, if you're reading this post, just wanted to say thanks for creating these lovely signs that are so perfect for my style of decorating. I love them!!!

Well, that's all for today girls. I'm off to my nieces basketball game this morning and then I'm going to stop by my Mom's for a visit to see how she is doing today. I'll try and get by to visit everyone's blogs sometime over the weekend.

See you soon!!

Quick Update...

Hi Everyone..

Just doing a quick post today to share an update with you on my Mom who as I mentioned in my previous post fell on her icy driveway Saturday and broke her left hip.

Her Surgery on Sunday morning went great. She had broken the ball of her left hip so they replaced that as well as her hip socket as the surgeon said most patients tend to do much better after surgery if they replace both at the same time. For the rest of the day Sunday she was pretty tired from the Anesthesia but did very well otherwise.

Today she's doing even better. They've had her up and out of bed, walking the hall this morning with the physical therapist and now she is able to sit in a chair in her room and not lay in her bed all day. She'll have more physical therapy tomorrow and an occupational therapist will also see her tomorrow to teach her things about dressing, bathing and all that fun stuff we tend to take for granted when we don't have broken bones and limited mobility.

It's looking like she'll be discharged on Wednesday and from what it sounds like, she's doing so well that the doctor doesn't think she'll need to go to a rehab center and that she'll be able to go straight home. Hallelujah!!

She'll still need some physical therapy for awhile, but I think they are going to arrange for that to be done at home through a Home Heath Care agency. That will make it much easier for all of us.

Not much else to report for now. I'm exhausted after the stress of these past few days, not sleeping well and having had to work today, so I'm just gonna veg out in front of the TV tonight and do nothing else. I'll try and post again later this week with something more interesting that an update on my Mom.

Have a great week and if it's icy where you are, BE CAREFUL and don't go falling on the ice like my Mom did.

Bad Weekend....

Hi Girls..

Quick post today to let you know I haven't disappeared. Things are just a bit unsettled here with the dark and gloomy weather we've had the past week that makes picture taking a real chore as the lighting has been terrible and then to top things off, my Mom who is 76 years old slipped and fell on her icy driveway around noon on Saturday and she broke her left hip.

She's in the hospital and is having surgery this morning at 7:30 so I'm up and getting ready to head to the hospital to see her before she goes into surgery and will probably be at the hospital most of the day.

Hopefully things will go OK, which I'm sure they will be, but it's going to be very rough on her, me and my siblings over the next several weeks as we deal with this problem as she recovers. I'll try to post and visit all of you when I can but if I'm missing in action for longer than normal, you know why.

Before I leave for the hospital, just want to share a few pics of a new treasure I purchased on one of my online shopping jaunts.

Found this sweet set of hand painted glass jars that sit on little curricular hand painted stand. One of the jars was missing it's lid, but that was no big deal to me. I love the soft robin's egg blue background color and of course the pink roses.

I have this in my home office sitting on a bookshelf and will probably use it to hold paperclips and such. Don't you love it!!

Well, times flying and I need to throw a load of clothes in the dryer then it's off for a long day at the hospital.

See you soon!

A Hint of Things to Come.........

I am so ready for Spring and all the lovely shades of color soon to be seen...

So much lovelier than the drab dirty whites and greys of these long, cold and snowy Minnesota winters.

Using these soft pastel shades of color brings the feeling of Spring into my home all year round, even on the darkest of days.

Are you starting to decorate your home for Spring?

Simple Things...

Simple things can make me very happy sometimes. Like finding something in an antique shop for just a few dollars that combines two of my favorite things.

And what might that be you ask??

Well it would be a pair of vintage crocheted potholders in my favorite soft muted shade of yellow....


I must admit that I probably have way too many of these crocheted potholders but I just love them as they have so many uses in decorating and because they are so inexpensive, I can feel guilt free when I buy one or two to add to my collection.

I actually had an idea the the other day of a way I would like to display some of my favorites from my collection and that would be to have them framed under glass in a cottage style frame and hung on the wall in my dining room. Just an idea for now and no guarantees that it will happen, but the thought is in my head so we'll see if it ever comes to fruition. If it does, you can be sure I'll share the finished project with you.

I would love to know what sorts of simple, inexpensive things like these crocheted potholder that you love to collect and can't get enough of..

A New Treasure...........

Happy Saturday girls.........

I'm posting two days in a row if you can believe it, but only because I was brave enough to venture outside into the still frigid temps here in Minnesota (where it was still -14 below zero when I left my house around 9:30 this morning) to visit a few antique shops to see if I could dig me up a new treasure or two.

As much as I complain about the cold, braving the cold temperatures was so worth it this morning because look at what I found............

This gorgeous vase with it's lovely rose floral pattern and soft rose colored swagging was sitting high up on a shelf and I almost missed it, but I just happened to look up as I was walking by and it totally stopped me in my tracks. I thought for sure it would be way out of my price range for the shopping budget I had allotted myself for today, but I was surprised when I looked at the price tag and saw that it much less than I would have thought and within my budget too. Yeah for me!!!

I could live without the brass handles and trim around the bottom, but thank goodness it's not too gaudy so I will put up with it just to be able to admire the beauty of the rest of the piece.

This vase is actually quite large in size, standing around 10 3/4 inches high. Not sure yet where I will end up putting it, and I have to find a pretty spring bouquet of flowers that will compliment the floral design on the vase, but hopefully with spring just around the corner, the floral department at Michael's or JoAnne's will have something that will work.

Here are a few close up shots of the floral pattern.......

A perfectly pretty piece to make my weekend shopping excursion complete. What about you? Did you find any new treasures for yourself?

Loving It...........

Ooooooooooooohh............... I'm loving this look.

This is a picture featured in the current Romantic Homes magazine and I almost started drooling when I turned the page and spotted this yummy photo.

A collectors dream!! The soft muted pastel colors, vintage pottery, keepsake books and of course the beautiful porcelain roses. Makes me want to go shopping for some more pretties for myself. This picture will definitely be going into my decorating scrapbooks.

Don't you just love the inspiration to be found in decorating magazines and books?

I'm becoming totally obesessed with these gorgeous vintage baby announcments/cards....


Must be because of the soft faded pastel colors that I am always so drawn to and the beautiful artwork. They look just divine displayed in a basket, a bowl or on a china plate like I have them displayed here.

Something soft and pretty to look at while I'm working away at my desk here at home.

Hope you are all having a good week so far and staying warm wherever you are. It's still very cold here in Minnesota and now it looks like we are in for another inch or two of snow tonight and tomorrow. Just in time for me to go back to the office tomorrow after working at home today and yesterday. Sure timed that one bad...

Winter Doldrums.............

Yikes...... I can't believe it's been a whole week since I did my last post. Except for the crazy and busy week I had at work last week, I've been feeling extremely lazy and have had very little motivation to do much of anything, including blogging I guess.

It's seem the winter doldrums have hit me once again like they seem to do every year, so even trying to think up some ideas to blog about has been pretty hard.

I did make a trip to Michael's on Friday just to see if they had any "springy" things in the store that might help cheer me up a bit and maybe get me motivated to try and do a little bit of crafting of some kind and I did find a few cute things in my favorite pastel shades that will hopefully do the job.

Things like these pretty aqua colored, flower shaped ribbon embellishments with little rhinestones in the centers.....

I also picked up a few of these small white storage tins which are maybe 3 inches in height and have a clear lid that will work perfectly for storing my new embellishments, buttons, pins and all sorts of pretty doo dad's..


I jazzed them up just a bit by adding some pretty floral stickers to the outside of the tins. A very inexpensive and cute way to store smaller embellishments.

And of course, there's nothing that works better at cheering me up than a lovely bouquet of creamy pale pink roses, even if they aren't real. I'll be enjoying these for a very long time...

I wanted to do a little antique shopping this weekend, but it's been extremely cold here in Minnesota the past few days with temperatures struggling to make it into the single digits despite the abundant sunshine we've had, so except for a few short trips to run some errands, I've stayed indoors where it's nice and warm. Hopefully next weekend will be warmer so I can get out and do a little shopping.

Hope you've all been enjoying your weekend, even if you're being lazy like I have been. We all deserve a bit of down time after the hustle and bustle of the holidays.

See you soon!!