industrial letters

i found some great industrial letters over the weekend. 
Usually when I find letters I am not able to spell anything I want, but this time I was able to spell out a a few words.
Farm...
Eat...
and Noel.  
The "o" in "Noel" is from an old National City Bank!  It would look great on someones mantle.

The "eat" would be great in a kitchen.  
I will be keeping the "farm" for my self :)

pretty centerpieces

I have been making pretty holiday centerpieces all weekend for next Saturdays sale. 
This is a really simple one I made.  
I took a silver plate platter, I glittered a branch, and added one of the little clip-on glitter birds into a little nest made of excelsior. 
I topped it off with a dome and a simple garland of pine!

christmas advent calendar

 I have been planning on making this advent calendar for a couple years...
 My daughter and I finally sat down together to make this one and a couple others for the sale a couple of weekends ago.  We had so much fun making it together.
Start with some tea dyed shipping tags.  I usually buy these by the box from U-line to always have them on hand. Or you can get them at Office Max.
I use them for gift hangtags, tags for pricing my antiques etc.
I pulled out my bags of old vintage christmas goodies I have collected over the years, my stamps, old photos, my glitter, some vintage broken jewelry pieces, game pieces etc.

  
I stamped the tags from 1 through 24.  This was so much fun to make with my daughter.  
It was like a puzzle putting the different goodies on the days.
On each tag we glued a little christmas goodie making sure that the composition of the overall month looked balanced.

I took an old vintage frame and covered some old foam core with a nice velvet fabric.  
Pin the goodies up and you will have a wonderful advent calendar for the kids to countdown the days until santa comes!
This is a wonderful holiday decor heirloom that can be passed down to your kids!

holiday sale - santa's watching you!!

here is a wonderful santa that I got at Polly's antique mall.  

He looks like he is warning you to not be naughty!!
you better be nice!!!
Isn't he fabulous!

baa baa black sheep

   I always have mixed emotions about changing the clocks back.  
The early evening dark skies are no fun.
But I do feel better about my kids catching the school bus in the daylight now. 
Another good thing is, I can enjoy the scenery on the way to work.  
As I drive down the country roads I enjoy seeing the sheep, cows and horses grazing in the fields.  I especially like our neighbors sheep.
They are so inquisitive.
Our neighbors have invited my children to bottle feed the newborns babies.  
When you stop by to look at them, they are so curious and they peek around the corner at you.  They make me smile every morning as I leave for work :)
And, on the bright side...its only another 31 days before the days start getting longer again!

craft day with pinecones

I continue to have have weekly craft days with my daughter.  Here is a batch of friendly snowmen we made up last week.
This summer we collected pinecones from under the pine trees so that we didn't run over them with the lawn mower.  I have been thinking of ways to use them.  We have glittered them and now we are making them into little snowmen.  My daughter has been naming them.
I'd like to introduce, from top left to right:
Fred, Ruby, Arlene,
Sparkles, Francine and Jolly.

Its official. Invites are out tonight..

craft day - pretty bottles

Yes, here I go again with more bottles!!!
This one is just doing the first process of the snowmen bottles (previous post)
Take some old bottles, add some sparkly things inside the bottle.  Pearls, tinsel, fake snow.
Put some vintage papers on the outside.  Handwriting, music, pictures, whatever you have.  Glitter the edges with iridescent glitter. 
Group several together for a pretty centerpiece.  Beautiful!

craft day - snowman bottles!

Another project my daughter and I worked on a while ago was taking bottles 
(remember - one of my obsessions - I just keep on buying them!) and making them into snowmen.  
Here are a few of the little guys.  This project was a lot of fun!
Fill your bottle with some snow, tinsel, pearls, anything sparkly. 
I used some of my old handwriting pages, ripped them and glue them on. You could use old music too. 
Sprinkle some iridescent glitter around the paper.
Top it off with either a styrofoam ball or a sculpy clay head.  
Twirl him all up with a button hat and a tinsel scarf and you have a snowman family ready for your mantle!

Stay tuned for more fun with bottles.  I have so many bottles I have to keep coming up with craft day projects to use them in!

Auction fun!

My sister came down this past weekend with her load from the last few auctions that she has been to, And boy does she have some neat stuff!!  


It is always amazing what you can find at auctions.  
You get to almost know the people that are selling their wares.  
My sister found this GIANT box FILLED with sock monkeys a lady had made.  Crazy!  I have never seen so many sock monkeys!  
They used to scare me, but these guys are hilarious!
We are so excited!  Santa's workshop is filling up!
We know that when WE get excited, and say that this is a sale that WE would love to shop at, that hopefully our customers will be excited too!

 We have a lot of fun, fun, fun stuff... And, my friends still have their loads to bring out too!!

pretty holiday!!

...so many stories I want to tell in the Holiday Sale.

Here is  a sneak peak of the pretty metals section...golds, bronze, silvers... 

I got these pretty gold leaf bowls at the longest yard sale this summer.  
My daughter and I have been glittering pinecones all summer, add a few vintage ornaments - perfect centerpiece!  
This color story is nice from fall through thanksgiving to christmas...

morning fog

This morning was such a beautiful fog!  I was surprised the kids didn't have a school delay!
I have been so enjoying these last few days of Indian Summer!  Enjoy them while you can, I believe Old Man Winter is fast approaching!
Joie de Vivre!

"frenching"

One of the things I love to collect is old handwriting. 
I especially love old French handwriting.  Every time I visit France I try to seek out old french documents that have beautiful handwriting.  I have no idea what they say, but they are really beautiful!
Some of these papers date back to the 1600's!  It is just amazing to me what great shape these old papers are.  And how beautiful the handwriting is on them.  This really is a lost art.

I use these papers in a lot of my artwork and repurposing.  
I used one of these documents in the banner of my blog.
I use them in my collages, my jewelry, my furniture makeovers and my decoupaging.

here are  a few of my pictures of what I call "frenching"!

duomo

Just got back from Milan.

One of the most beautiful buildings in the world is the Duomo in Milan, Italy.  
The term Duomo refers to the main church or cathedral in the town.  
The Milan Duomo is one of the largest churches in the world.  It has 135 spires and has 3400 statues in it.  It was built in 1386!  Can you imagine?!  Having the technology and skills to build a masterpiece like this that long ago!
You are allowed to walk on the roof of this spectacular church.  You can see the swiss alps from the rooftop!
Amazing!     Magnificent!    Beautiful!!

pretty neutrals!

i love decorating with natural colors..silvers, greys, naturals... and lots of glitter and sparkle...
here is an old bread box I stenciled and some bottles I frenched up and glittered.

stamped jewelry

 a few more jewelry shots...

My sister gave me a wonderful gift for Christmas a couple years ago -  a jewelry making class where we learned how to stamp and solder sterling jewelry.  
We all took the class together and had so much fun!

Now, my husband and I make this jewelry together.  We stamp sweet messages on solid sterling round disks ...add a sterling chain and it is a wonderful gift for a friend, mother or daughter!
Everyone loves getting a sweet personalized message from a loved one!


We're thinking of offering classes of jewelry making and some of the other crafts that we make here on the farm. 
We might have a sign up sheet at the next sale to see if anyone might be interested in learning something new and taking some classes in the Spring....