Catching Up

I saw the above on one of my favorite blogs that always perks me up.  I felt like it about said it - except the cute shoes part.  Cute's great, but Comfy is what's really important!

I had a few moments today to take a look at some of the blogs I love reading and realized that I wasn't the only one missing in action in the blog world or the only one thinking about blogging and wondering where to go from here.  That was a real comfort.  I'm hard on myself when I can't or don't get to everything.  So I'm hard on myself most of the time.  Now, I'm thinking maybe it wasn't just me and something universal was going on and several people were being effected in similar ways.  I feel better now.

I'm so behind on sharing what has been going on that it can be really overwhelming to even start to try and figure out where to begin.  I realized yesterday I hadn't been very communicative all around, not just on the blogs.  Guess I was in some introverted stage for a bit.  But I know that there are at least two people out there that would like to know what I've been up to.  So here ya go, Aunt Billy and Uncle Jim - your my best fans.

Weekend before last Mark was busy drying the dishes when my antique glass citrus juicer slipped from his hands and crashed into a million pieces on the kitchen floor.  So when a sunny day came the following week I walked on up the hill and did a little shopping.  The first order of business was to find another antique glass citrus juicer.  This went with our efforts to not bring new plastic into our house and to buy used whenever possible.  Not to mention it was a damn good excuse to go browse an antique store.  The ladies were super helpful at the antique store and I soon had three citrus juicers to chose from.  I went the smallest which was the mid-range in price and the cutest.  It has this little extra feature that really sold me on it - a primary ring with little slits that let the juice out but hold the seeds back.  It was also extra pointy and sharp so I was hoping it would be easier to use than my last one.  It is!  With out further ado - meet the new citrus juicer:

While I was up on the hill I stopped in at a consignment shop and was pleasantly surprised by what they had in there.  So often consignment shops are either focused towards teeny-boppers or old ladies.  I'm somewhere in between and I discovered that the shop was too.  There were several things to try on and I found a couple wonderful spring items.  Including this fun bright green dress.

And this beautiful cardigan.  Check out the detail!

And those are what I wore for our date on Sunday.

Mark surprised me with homemade whole wheat sticky buns for breakfast.  They were sticky gooey wonderful!

Then we caught the bus to downtown and went to the Seattle Art Museum to see the Calder exhibit which was fantastic.  This had to have been the best special exhibit in a while and the entry was the most spectacular I had ever seen with a huge Calder mobile sculpture turning in  the air.  I was so inspired by his creativity and use of random objects  and metal and color.  I walked away with lots of crazy art ideas in my head and I look forward to bringing them to life over time.  If you aren't aware of Calder and his art you can check it out here.


After we left the museum we walked through a fairly quiet Pike Place Market where most everything was closed due to the holiday but Mark did manage to get me a single daffodil, which was really sweet.  Then we stopped at a small coffee shop that is also a local roaster and had a some excellent cups o' bean juice.  

It was time to catch the bus and head back to our little Alki neighborhood with a quick stop for pictures at the beach.

The cats were happy to have us home and sitting still for a little while.

We finished the evening with a light and delicious Japanese meal of Miso soup with tofu, shitake and green onion, brown rice, cucumbers and onions with rice vinegar and a surprise attempt at little cucumber and avocado sushi rolls by Mark.  Great day.  Great Guy.  Lucky Me!

Antiques, Buying Used and Change the World Wednesday Challenge

This week Reduce Footprints has put out a challenge that I fully embrace.  Here's what she wrote"

"This week consider antique stores for household purchases. If you've never been in an antique store, visit one to see what items they offer. If you need a couch, table, tools, dishes, etc., check out an antique store before buying new."

This is something I love to do.  I love the challenge, the browsing and the hunt.  This sort of thing fits well with my eclectic taste as well.  My mom was also great at this and many of the items I have today she either found for me or I inherited from her.  Some came from my grandma and my Aunt, while others were special things I found on my own or with my husband.  One year we even did all our Christmas presents from antique or second hand stores.  One little item for each person wrapped in a scarf I had knit for them as well.  There was a broach for the MiL, cookie cutters for the SiL and so on, a hobby horse for a nephew.  It was so much fun, trying to find something that spoke of each person we were shopping for.  If I could I would do stuff like this far more often.  I thought that for this challenge I would share pictures of some of my treasures.  I hope you enjoy them and are inspired to find some of your own.

I'll start with my most prized antique, an Art Deco Secretary that my husband gave me for a wedding anniversary.

It has become my special place for displaying favorite things and where I love to store all my favorite stationary.  

Often there will be other second hand treasures sitting on top of it.  Like the blue pottery piece holding some Farmers Market flowers in the picture above.  And the cut glass bowl filled with shells and a tea light below.  The shells are mostly ones I collected from a beach shortly after my mom passed away and the bowl was one she gave me. 

My mom gave many beautiful antique dishes and my grandma gave me a few as well.  My absolute favorite is in the fridge right now holding something so there won't be a picture this time, but it's a yellow Fiesta-ware like bowl that gets used all the time.  Here are a few of my other favorites, but definitely not all of them! 

As a tea drinker and the daughter of a woman who loved teapots I have quite a collection.  Here are my two favorites. 

One winter when we were living in Olympia Washington there was a power outage that motivated me to buy this hand coffee grinder for my husband, that way he wouldn't have to look forlornly at the whole coffee beans in the cannister, ever again.  He took this to work where he made grinding his coffee by hand part of his French Press coffee break ritual.  Now it's at home with us since he no longer has his own office.  I think he hopes it will be joined by a French Press for at home - preferably one from a second hand store or a locally owned business.

Antiques and second hand finds are used in the everyday life of our home.  I'm not one for just having them sit around collecting dust.  Here are a few examples of where second hand finds have become essential to our homes organization, especially in the kitchen.

Two crocks sit next to our stove holding various cooking utensils including an antique bright yellow butter melter and plenty of my favorite kitchen utensil - wooden spoons!  The pink glass dish holds fair trade organic sugar while the orange glass holds a collection of chopsticks.  Both glass pieces came from my grandmother.  The crocks were finds by my mother and me and are one of the things I always want to buy more of when I'm in an antique store.  Below you can see that the table these all sit on is serving as extra counter space next to the stove and is an antique itself.  

Another antique find from Olympia was the spice rack below along with several of the spice jars  It was originally brown.  I sanded it and painted it the pale yellow it is today.  I also sanded a break in one of the drawer fronts to give it a curve instead of leaving it looking ragged.

One of my all time favorite things to look through at Antique store are the linens.  I'm constantly dreaming up ideas for vintage fabrics, from using them for what they were intended to letting my creativity loose and letting them become something new.  Here are just a few things in my collection.

I hope all this will inspire you to find the potential for antique and second hand stores in your life.  I haven't mentioned half the things that are second hand and antique in my life, but I was writing a blog post not a novel!   I'll leave you now with a picture of my favorite candle holder, a metal filigree thing that always has a beeswax candle in it waiting to provide a nice candle light ambiance.