vintage patina

3.07.2011

under construction

this little blog is dusty and and forlorn and so out of season...so i'm working on changing that:) what you see right now is not what you will get - it seems i have forgotten all about the details of changing up my blog. so hopefully things will look better around here soon.

in the meantime, here's the wonderful old galvanized bucket i found at the thrift store a few months ago:

...and the naughty little puppy with whom we've all fallen in love

...and the naughty little puppy protesting the gate i set up at the door to my studio. apparently he believes my studio is his office since he occasionally goes in there to do his business!

happy monday! talk to you soon:)

1.23.2011

vintage hotel register

isn't this a fun old book? i haven't seen one quite like it before. the silly thing is that every time i look at it, this goes through my mind: 'you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave'! is that a bit morbid? or just the result of really liking hotel california?

if i see that any of your long lost relatives owe a balance...i will track you down!!! beware;)

1.15.2011

good intentions

my boys are gone for the long week-end, ice fishing in minnesota. i suspect they do actually fish part of the time - when they're not busy with all the electronics they haul along. but never mind. i am home alone!!! alone in my own house! what a wonderful thing that is:)

what am i doing? well. first i took a chunk of time to ponder all the things i possibly could do. this was followed by a time of deep meditation otherwise called napping, just because i could.

next, i turned on all the lights in my studio as a precursor to actually working in there. the plan: to purge and organize. however, i then recalled that i had bought some storage containers at target last week and that they were still in the back of my suv.

on my way to the garage, i took a phone call from my sister. as i talked, i sat down in front of the computer and noticed that my brother had sent photos of himself and his new wife, married just last night! yay! so my sister and i discussed this and other things in some detail. when i hung up the phone, i then had to call my other sister and review things with her. then i emailed my brother and new sil.

all of the above consumed most of the morning and part of the early afternoon.

so. in reality, i haven't done anything that i planned. i've done quite a lot of nothing, and a tiny bit of something. in the late afternoon, i was seized with nostalgia (along with a chocolate craving) and went to the cupboard to find my vintage betty crocker kids' cookbook.

i proceeded to make the brownies; but now that they're baked i don't feel like frosting them. and i don't usually eat brownies without frosting. can you say "exercise in futility"?!?

i ~~wasted~~ spent a while paging through the cookbook, recalling how entranced i was with this photo, as a child. pure magic, i tell you. no - i never made it. not then and not today.

i chuckled out loud when i turned the page and found this brilliant piece of baking advice, written in my 9 year-old scrawl! oh, for the days when the trickiest thing i had to figure out was how to double a batch of chocolate chip cookies...

so now. it's early evening and i have successfully returned to my studio. so far, i have taken 'before' pictures so that i can celebrate my progress (at some future, unspecified date).