A Handmade Gift for an Excellent Person : Beaded Pendants
It brings me such pleasure to look at the series of annual photographs of my cousin Lisa's sweet daughter Delilah, which show her enjoying the handmade gift I sent for Christmas. They live a plane-ride away so I've not been able to see her grow up in person, but the pictures, taken around the same time every year, have given me a wonderful glimpse at how she's changed over time.
We began doing this when she was two and now she's eight, making this the seventh time I've had photos of Delilah to share with you.
This past Christmas, I sent her three beaded pendants and a chain to wear them on. At the end of the post, I'll demonstrate how they were made, but first, let's look at them being modeled by this darling person (and her beautiful Guinea Pigs).
Decorating for Spring and Easter 2020 : Vintage, Second-Hand and Thrift Store Finds
Hello and Happy Easter if you celebrate! Of course, it's kind of hard to be in a celebratory mood when you're stuck inside, but I hope you had a good day anyway. (For future reference, this was during the Coronavirus quarantine period). Nick ordered me a lovely assortment of treats from Soma Chocolatemaker, which was left on our doorstep by a mysterious masked man, and we had a nice dinner, but we certainly missed sharing the day with family and friends.
Speaking of being stuck inside, I went ahead and tried to make our place more fun to look at all day long, by putting out some seasonal decorations, including everything I wrote about in the previous post, about the spring and Easter things I'd found at the thrift store during the past year.
And, here's where those thrift store finds went, mixed in with other spring-like decor.
Update, One Year Later : While these decorations, as photographed for this post, were on display, I filmed them, however, I’d not learned how to edit video yet. So, the next year (2021) I made the prerecorded footage into a video, found below. For the record, the pandemic continued throughout the year, until this following Easter, so, once again, it was a quiet time spent without family and friends. In fact, it’s even worse now, with more serious variants spreading widely. The city remains in lockdown.
Thrift Store Finds : Spring and Easter
Greetings! I hope you're doing well, in spite of the pandemic. What a time.
Before the lock-down, I used to go to Value Village about once a month, but I got way behind in writing about my finds here. I kept a list of everything I got, though, and still have quite a few nice thrifted items to share with you.
Today, we have a grouping of ceramics and linens, that I'll be using to cheer the place up for spring and Easter.
I'll begin with five fantastic vintage ceramic pieces that I found during the same shopping trip. It was pretty exciting to turn into the knick-knack isle and see all these on a shelf together. I'm guessing that someone donated an entire collection and I happened to be the first vintage figurine lover to come upon them. There were even some great pieces that I left behind because I felt I couldn't take it all. Of course, I regretted that later.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day : Decorating with Green
Greetings from our home to yours. Given all that is going on around the world right now, I hope you're doing ok.
Since the annual St. Patrick's Day parade in Toronto was cancelled, as were those in many cities around the world, and nobody will be going out for beer and cheerful music tonight, I imagine that, for the most part, this holiday will come and go with barely a notice. In fact, from what we hear today, all occasions in the near future will pass with little celebration. My thoughts and concerns are foremost with the sick and their families, and my gratitude goes out to everyone contributing to the essential services, and I don't want to downplay the seriousness of what is going on around the world in any way with my plans to share a little seasonal fun on these pages.
In the past, I only changed displays around once in a while, and decorated for holidays mostly when company would be coming over. But recently I’ve been really enjoying looking into cupboards and moving things around. Anyway, as I was setting these displays up, my mister, Nick, said it seemed like I was decorating for nobody. He actually made up a little song about it, which made me laugh. But that’s not true, because I enjoy seeing things in a different light, and then having something to photograph. Also, I'm decorating for you, my dear online friends!
Last week in this post, I wrote about some pieces of vintage green glass that I'd found at the thrift store in recent months. Today, you'll see each of those items, plus, pretty well, every green thing that we own. I love a theme and found it enjoyable to poke about the place, pulling out anything that would work. I hope you like what I've come up with.
Thrift Store Finds : Gorgeous Green Glass
Well, it seems I have a new collection! Before last fall, I had a few random pieces of green glass. Then, I found an interestingly shaped vase and the gates opened up; with each visit, I began noticing all the green glass pieces on the thrift store shelves. I didn't worry about spending too much, as all of this together came to about $25 Cdn, as much as could easily be spent on a single nice "first-hand" item to decorate your home.
While having been previously used, you'd never know it. Each piece is perfect, without a single chip or scratch in the batch. Everything was made in the United States, where several different companies used to make quality glass.
Here's what we have ...
