If I seem distant and inattentive lately, dear blog readers, please forgive me. You have to understand something--my garden is blooming. And really, after years of wooing it with new seedlings, transplanting, dividing and generally fussing over it during moments I could wrestle free from travel for work--well, it is bestowing its considerable charms upon me. I mean, the garden has had points of loveliness in previous years, but this year it could break your heart with its sweet-smiling, winking and flirting beauty--so beautiful that I almost had to write it a love poem and send it a dozen roses (but are more flowers really the right gift to show your love to your garden? I wasn't sure so I settled for some weeding and a long cool drink of water straight from the hose.) Are you still unconvinced of its intoxicating charms? Come, let me introduce you...
(white tango lily)
(crimson pixie lily)
(claire de lune clematis)
(ligularia with japanese ferns and lobed hosta)
(yellow tango lily)
(pink lilies with blackout lilies in background)
(jack-in-the-pulpit--or, voodoo lily as I prefer to refer to it)
(jackmanii clematis)
(casa blanca lily)
(turk's cap tiger lily)
See what I mean? How can I possily fail to resist? But, alas, my garden is fickle and its love is ever fleeting as summer wanes. So, I have to revel in it while I can--before it turns to withering leaves, dropping petals, and dying blooms. But for now, I have its lush love and charm and I am at its mercy. You understand, right?
Of course, I immediately saw what needed to be done. It was the only natural next step to be taken if you are me--you simply MUST go 3-dimensional and plush.
So, here's a little tutorial for you, courtesy of the dapper Mr. Beeper. Last summer I handed him a crate of mason jars and asked him to make some lanterns out of them that we could hang in the back yard--and this was the result. Today, it is about my favorite feature in our yard--instant ambiance in a jar (um, pun intended). 
Get your own ambiance-making instructions right here:
I so love this. Tiny art, installed on the street, left randomly for any old stiff to stumble over. Alientation and whimsy and humor--and so many other things--evoked here. So utterly genius. Why can't I be this cool? (but alas, 
15 recycled stripey tees
This is 
...on the seabed...
...horned...
...feathered...and everything else from large and small (think elephants and caterpillars) to black and white (zebras and albatrosses) to underground (moles and dung beetles) to in the trees (koalas and gibbons) to close to us all(cats and chickens).
And then there is extra information about all the animals indexed alphabetically at the back of the book. So you can learn things like that raccoons like to wash their food in a pond or stream before eating it, or that the wombat is the only marsupiall that lives in a hole. 
And there is some sort of chameleon hiding on every page--attempting to camoflage itself within the theme of the animals on that page...makes for extra fun to try to locate the chameleon amongst all the animals on each page
Of course, one of the main reasons I, personally, love this book is the lovely illustration of over 300 kinds of animals jumbled from page to page (I admit that I reference it from time to time when doing plushie designs and need a bit of inspiration). The loveliness is added to by the fact that the book is BIG--like the pages are 18 inches tall! Of course, with a book this lovely, you had to know that it is a french import, right? Who else, but the french, would make a children's book so gorgeous and impractically large that it captures not only your eyes, but also your heart . (and I might add the book is very reasonably priced for something so grand--less than $13 on Amazon. Find it 
Do you love barbecue as much as I do? And when you put it on chicken? Well, get me a cold bottle of beer and some potato salad and everything will be all right. So, thought maybe you could use a little bit of barbecue rightness too. It is sweet, but not too cloying--the cider vinegar offsets that. And don't be scared of cooking bone-in chicken on the grill--use your instant-read thermometer and everything will be all right. Just watch that final step of glazing on the grill--this part does not take long and there is a fine line between sweet and crusty and too-damn burnt.
Not to bore you senseless, but I made some more cloth napkins. These were constructed in the simplest way possible--just turned the edge twice on 10 different fat quarters and sewed them in place. Given 
So, I have been hating our dishware for some time now--it was what we received as a wedding gift almost 10 years ago, and while I loved it back then, it is pretty dated today, not to mention almost every piece had a significant chip or crack. So, I had been thinking for some time that I wanted some new dishes, but did not want to buy a brand new set of matched dishes--I just wanted to acquire some quirky and lovely mismatched pieces over time--ideally, through thrifting. But everytime I go to the thrift shop and look at dishes, I immediately feel overwhelmed my the sheer amount there (most of it hideous) and I really do not have a clue what I am looking for...so I will look half heartedly, but always end of leaving with nothing. This has been going on for months and months now.
But as you can, perhaps, see in these photos, WHOA NELLY! Saturday was my BIG LUCKY thrifting for dishes day. I just kept finding partial sets of several dish designs that I liked and adding them to my cart, and then before I knew it, I had 5 different pottery/china designs that made up: 
I came home all happy about the price paid ( most pieces were less than $1), and the array I had found--mismatched, but all have some sort of brown in their design, so in my mind, they all hang together okay. And while I purchased nothing for potential value of the piece and all simply because they appealed to me, I decided to do a little reserach on several of the pieces that had brands imprinted on the bottom and here is what I discovered (okay, I realize this is probably not nearly as interesting to you as it is to me, so you will either have to suck it up and bear with me--or, you may just want to go onto another blog right now--your call on how much vintage dish talk you can hack)...
Those brown speckled pottery dishes picture above are made by Western Stoneware and are from a line called Mojavi that was made in 1967. Most plates are selling for $20+ apiece today. The 17 pieces I found are in perfect condition. Were they even used?--I don't know. But I love the brown flecks, the weight of them in your hand, the subtle imperfections due to being handmade, and the ribbed edging.
These oh-so-lovely vintage china dinner plates above were made by the now defunct Vernon Kilns in California and the pattern is called May Flower. They are hand-painted, and transfer printed. Mostly, I just love the little scalloped edge and the colorful wild flower design. The design dates back to the 1940's--selling for around $25 per plate today.
And this one is by Nasco and the design is called Mountain Wood-Land. It is transferware and dates from the 1950's. I am utterly in love with the intricacy of this design, but it is actually worth the least--about $10 per plate. I also purchased some very neutral Dansk dishes (not really pictured here except on the periphery of one of the photos above), as well as a couple of what looks like reproduction trasnferware plates of untraceable origins. 
Posts
