Under a Blue Moon

Free Desktop calendar – June

Gosh I wish I had removed that post-it note from my monitor before taking pictures. Ah well. Continuing with the free desktop calendar downloads for June. This time I have included a quote that resonates with me at the moment.

These are all rendered in 1920 x 1080. To save the image click on the link and the image will open in a new tab. Right click on the image and select “Save image as…” and save to your computer.

I’m not sure how to update a background on a Mac but on a PC you right click on your desktop background and select “Personalize.” You can then browse to the file location of the picture you want as your background.

Pink desktop calendar

Lavender desktop calendar

Platinum desktop calendar

I hope you enjoy!

Happy Day After Memorial Day

I wanted to pop on today and say a quick hello. I didn’t mean to take yesterday off but I was enjoying the long weekend so much that I didn’t get around to posting. We had a lovely weekend visiting my sister and her husband and going up to her daughter and son in law’s bbq restaurant. Yesterday I spent the entire day at my sewing machine plus catching up with laundry.

See that sweet face up there? Well this is the carnage we wake up to every morning:

Piles of kitty toys in various stages of dismemberment strewn about the hallway to our bedroom and guestroom (that’s the guestroom above). She brings them, one by one, from her toy basket in the sitting room and leaves them there for us for when we wake up. She’s a fierce hunter, that one.

I know it’s Rosie and not Grace because Grace was sleeping at the foot of our bed all night.

Anyway….I just wanted to pop on and say hi. Normal posting schedule will resume tomorrow with the monthly calendar download.

Friday Favorites

Untitled ◊ Last days of Coney ◊ Untitled ◊ Carrousel

I had no idea that these facades were painted on when I first saw the thumbnails of the photos. Talk about taking tromp d’oeil to a whole new level. Fun fact: I grew up in Palo Alto where we had our very own celebrity tromp d’oeil artist, Greg Brown, that had a number of installations in downtown Palo Alto that were painted in the late 70’s. I also had a friend that was a “house boy” for a very wealthy family in Atherton (we’re talking third richest family in the world at the time….) and their guest house was done up in Greg Brown’s work. It was a bit more risque than what was on the sides of buildings in downtown PA and it was amazing.
Fabulous eye mask from Masqueology. I have tried a ton of different eye masks (and facial masks) in that ever elusive quest to retain a modicum of youth and none have worked as promised like this one. I found this one I found actually depuffed and brightened my under eye area. And they are so inexpensive! I picked mine up at Walmart for a few bucks and got four patches (enough for two uses). I wish they made a neck version….
I’m all about light and serene in my own home but I do appreciate a dramatic decor. This Oak Park home is gorgeous. I think what I appreciate the most is the home owner’s slow pace in getting the restoration and decor just like she wanted with the help of her father.

Happy Friday! We actually have plans for this weekend! After what seems like weeks of weird weather we will finally warm up (and hopefully dry up) and to celebrate we are heading up to Angels Camp to visit my sister and her husband and hopefully visit their son in law’s new BBQ restaurant, 9 Diamonds BBQ, for lunch.

I keep forgetting it’s a holiday weekend too. How is it possible that it is the end of May and we are about to launch into Summer? Where has the year gone? I’m pretty sure I still have a few Christmas decorations that need putting away.

Have a splendid weekend!

Dollhouse: Bedroom

I have been on a creative tear this week. Unfortunately I keep hopping from one project to another and nothing is really complete. You should see my office, it is an absolute tip. Scraps of fabric, beads, buttons, paints, all strewn about.

I did finish a teeny painting for the dollhouse bedroom. I actually started out trying to paint on fabric for a pillow for the wingback chair but my proportions were wrong. I was practicing my roses on a little scrap of basswood and liked how it turned out so I put it above the bed in the dollhouse.

Painting does not come naturally to me. Full scale or miniature. I found a tutorial online and had a go at it. It is from the same woman whose wing-back chair inspired mine.

I need a little more practice, mainly with placement of the roses, but I like how it turned out.

The room is still very much a work in progress. I need to sort out the walls and install the floor properly. I’m a bit divided on the floor. I love the whitewashed herringbone but I think I need to find something easier to install and work with since I want the floors to be the same throughout the first and second floor.

The bed is one of my more popular Pinterest pins. I found the bed on Etsy but it is available in a set from miniatures.com. I painted it white and added clear, faceted beads on the four posters. It looks very much like my own bed.

I made the bed linens from vintage hankies and lace trim. Vintage hankies make great material for dollhouse furnishings. They are very soft and the threads in fabric are so fine. It helps create a realistic draping.

The dresser is a vintage Ideal Petite Princess dresser that I also painted white.

I want to find an oval free-standing mirror and maybe a nice chest for the room and then the furnishings will be done. Then I’ll move on to the 2nd floor landing which is going to be a library of sorts.

Monday

As a Californian I am conditioned to be ever so grateful for any rain that we get but my goodness was this weekend trying. It has been raining since Wednesday or Thursday and I am OVER it. We just had the most boring weekend in history. I was so productive last week and managed to throw out my back in the process so there wasn’t a whole heck of a lot I could have done anyway.

I just wasn’t inspired to do anything other than look at YouTube videos of mail art. I did start a little craft project that is actually for Christmas so I can’t quite share that just yet. I am trying to get better at planning blog posts so when Monday rolls around I’m not scrambling for post ideas (Ahem. Today being a case in point.)

Christmas is ages away but I have to take inspiration when it strikes.

I ventured outside during a brief lull in the rain to snap a few pictures. The flower beds are looking a bit untidy with all the dropped petals and unruly growth but there is a beauty to that I think. I see someone has been nibbling on my violets.

Speaking of unruly growth…

The Cecile Brunner is threatening to take over the shed. It is massive. If you ever need a vigorous and fast grower to cover a fence or wall plant a Cecile. She will do the trick. We planted our pergola with a Cecile Brunner on the middle post to quickly cover the structure and then planted a New Dawn on either end for continuous flowering during the Summer and Fall. As lovely as Cecile is, she mainly just has a single blooming period in the Spring.

I don’t know what this little rose is. It is a miniature that Rick gave me for Valentine’s Day last year. I enjoyed her inside for a few weeks and then planted her in a wire basket with some trailing flowers.

Here is a little video I took of the rain. I took it on my cell phone so the quality isn’t great but you get an idea of what the weather has been like all weekend. I think my next big project will be to build an ark.

Friday Favorites

The Avenue trees in mists and sun ◊ beati loro, con quel panorama!! ◊ Morning sun ◊ Historical charm in Oud Naarden

Gorgeous food blog: Sugar Salted Her pictures are beautiful and all her recipes look delicious. I think she may only feature vegetarian but it doesn’t explicitly say so (anywhere that I could see)
New favorite Instagram feed. You know I love me some boho… @deecampling
Yeah. Pretty much.
This is really random but I’ve always used the MyFitnessPal app for logging my food for the day. I don’t do it consistently, just when I want to keep on track with my eating. Well I just switched to Cronometer and I like it so much better. You get way more detail than MFP

Here we are again – Happy Friday! I hope your week was lovely. Mine was super productive. It started last weekend, actually. I fed all the roses (50+) and then instead of going inside and resting, like I certainly deserved, I cleaned my kitchen from top to bottom. I didn’t mean to. There was a spot on the wall and after I cleaned it I noticed how it made the rest of the wall look really dingy. Next thing I know I’ve got the ladder out and I’m scrubbing down all the walls, mopping floors, cleaning baseboards. The kitchen looks great, I’ll say that.

This week I cleaned my office, recovered my desk chair, sorted out linens, fixed the paragraph spacing on this blog (something that has always annoyed me but I didn’t know how to fix). I don’t know what has gotten into me. Delayed Spring cleaning, I suppose.

It has been rainy here the latter part of the week and will continue to be so over the weekend. So I think we’ll just stay in and be cozy. We rarely get rain in May so it feels like a treat. I realize other parts of the country may be rolling their eyes about now but in California where it has been drought-like for, well, EVER, this is a welcome respite. I fully plan on making soup. Because soup is just better when it is raining.

Have a utterly fabulous weekend and I’ll see you back here on Monday. Unless you know me in real life, in which case see you on Sunday.

« Previous Page