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Friday Favorites

Fall in Ashland ◊ The Mixture of Autumn Colors ◊ The art of being happy ◊ Marmellata di melone

William Morris washi tape!
This is such a pretty pillow. The Cotton Hut not only sells lovely things but also contributes ten meals to hungry children for every single purchase made. That is pretty fabulous business model
Two pretty Instagram feeds to follow: Andrea Groot (for houseplant inspo) and Lärkhuset (for vintage white decor)
Isn't this a cute AirBnB? Over the top girly, for sure, but still adorable

Happy last day of August! I am so over Summer and ready for the Fall. It's funny – I'm always over Winter and Summer but never Spring or Fall. Why do you suppose that is? I think it is because Fall and Spring are more gentle seasons. Summer and Winter tend to be all in your face.

We really don't have any plans for this three day weekend. We'll probably do an end of Summer bbq at my Dad's on Sunday but that's as far as any structure to our weekend goes. I am fine with that. Maybe I should paint the greenhouse. I just have the primer coat on. I still need to find some sort of shelving for in there. Or maybe design something and sweetly ask Rick to make it for me. And there are the irises to deal with. I keep putting that off. Anyone need any irises if I divide them? They are really beautiful.

I hope you have a lovely weekend!

Goodbyes and a life hack

The title is a bit more dramatic than the blog post is going to be.

My coworker is leaving for a new job at the end of the week and we wanted to send her off with a celebratory lunch and a gift as she embarks on this new adventure. She is just getting into cooking and has a particular interest in baking so we decided we would get her a Sur la Table gift card that she can apply towards cooking classes. I also picked up some fun, colorful kitchen utensils (at Home Goods) as sort of a gift basket to present the gift card. She is young and I thought she would like the cheerful colors.

While I was checking out at Sur la Table the woman waiting on me gave me the best tip about gift cards and I thought it was worth passing on.

She said to always check the back of the gift card before you purchase and to make sure the pin number covering isn't scratched off. She says unscrupulous types will expose the pin number, take a picture of the back of the card and then put it back. Then every day they will check to see if someone has purchased that particular card and as soon as it shows a balance they'll make a purchase with it. The unsuspecting buyer will cheerfully gift it to someone who will surely think they are a cheapskate when they try to redeem it and there is only $1.73 left on it.

I thought that was a brilliant tip and not something I ever thought to check for.

A little book review

I paint doll furniture about as well as I do full sized furniture. Not well at all. I always miss a spot.

I follow a very creative woman on YouTube who has a channel and accompanying blog called Thicketworks where she features mixed media art projects. She has been on a miniature kick lately and just featured a tutorial on making miniature books. Her blog has downloads so you can easily recreate them yourself.

The books are very detailed and realistic. She has a great trick of using embossing powder on the book covers to mimic leather which really adds to the realism. And the pages really turn and if you had super power eyesight you could actually read them. I can’t tell if I even got them the right side up or not.

I won’t detail how to make them because her tutorial and blog post have all the steps. I will say it was a relatively quick project. I printed everything up and cut them to size and got the covers embellished the way I wanted. Then the next morning I assembled the pages into book blocks, applied the end papers and put it all together. I would say the entire project took about three or four hours total.

One slight modification I made was rather than printing the PDF files as is I copied the image of the page from her blog and plopped it into a Word document. That way I could size it down slightly to be closer to 1:12 scale.

I printed the covers on Epson Ultra Premium Presentation Paper Matte rather than the recommended card stock because the colors are more vibrant with my inkjet printer. It’s pricey but the results are so much better. It’s the same paper I use when making cards.

I have made zero progress on the dollhouse restoration but at least now the inhabitant is well read!

Friday

(Photo apropos of nothing)

Sorry for the change in posting schedule this week. I am on Grandma duty and it's hard to keep up with my normal routine.

I just wanted to pop on so people didn't think I dropped off the face of the earth.

I'm having a lovely three days with my granddaughter. We have gone to the park, made sidewalk chalk art, read lots of books, blown bubbles and have pretty much done whatever a two year old wants to do. She is at such a fun age.

We don't have any plans for this weekend. Which is fine by me. I'll head back home this evening and tomorrow I plan on sleeping in. Ha! I always say that and then rarely can sleep past my normal wake up time.

I hope you all have a lovely weekend!

Monday

I can never come up with a more clever subject for the Monday post.

Rick and I took a much needed break from the heat and smoky air this weekend and headed for the coast for the day on Saturday. I cannot even begin to say how grateful I am that we live in a location where the ocean is 75 minutes one direction, the wine country about 90 minutes away in another and the mountains are about two and half hours in another direction. If we need a quick change of scenery we can have it at a moment's notice.

We didn't have much of a plan except drive south and see where we landed. We had an errand for my mother in law who wanted a couple of plant hooks from a particular nursery in Carmel Valley. We have a few favorite nurseries and Griggs Nursery is at the top of the list. Before we went in we looked at each other and solemnly swore we would grab the hooks and not even look at any plants. HAHA!! We left with the hooks, an Arabian jasmine, some gardening tools and, as evidenced by the ride home, an ant colony (residing in the jasmine). It took Rick an hour after we got home to vacuum out all the ants in the car.

I have coveted one of these house plants since forever. They aren't your typical Home Depot/Lowe's offering but you can find them at the occasional higher end nursery. And you will pay the inflated price for them. These were in four inch pots and they wanted $25 for them. That seems exorbitant to me. I want one but with my spotty record with keeping houseplants alive I need a lower price point before I'll take the plunge.

After leaving the nursery we headed back north and had lunch overlooking the ocean in Seascape. Summers on the Monterey Bay are typically a bit on the foggy side but will eventually wear off. The beach photo is taken from the restaurant and the fog was just thinking about burning off.

Of course if I'm in the vicinity I have to stop at my happy place which is Wisteria Antiques and Garden in Soquel (first photo in this post is from there).

If I had to say there was one place that has totally influenced our gardening style it would be Wisteria. It has a very European/New Orleans kind of vibe to it. There are actually two businesses here – the antiques which are displayed in the original house on the property along with several outer buildings; and the garden area which features plants, outdoor furniture, statues, fountains, bird houses and the like for sale. The antiques side of the business is what I think of as French Country. We have been going there for, gosh, going on 20 years or so and each time we go there it is just a treat.

I bought a tin urn (new, made to look old) that I intend to use as an umbrella stand. I've been looking for something for years and the urn was just perfect. Lots of chippy green and cream paint.

It was a lovely day – one of those semi-spontaneous days where you have no set agenda but know your destination will pull through and give you the distraction and relaxation you need.

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