Lisa Leonard is having another awesome giveaway

On my wishlist is jewerly from Lisa Leonard. I love the simplicity of her designs. She has designed angel wings... I've waited for those since I lost my daughter Grace. She is having a contest and I am crossing fingers that I win! Isn't this just divine!





http://www.lisaleonardonline.com/blog/2010/12/17/my-heart-is-full-giveaway/#comment-146272

My First Christmas Tea

Every year our church has a Mother/Daughter Christmas Tea. Both my daughter and I were thrilled to sign up this year. I did last year, but she ended up with a bad cold. As I was buying my tickets, the Pastor's wife asked if I wanted to host a table. Host a table? What does that mean? She said, you bring in your own china, glasses, centerpiece, etc. and set the table up however and in whatever theme you would like, making sure your decanters stayed full of hot water/chocolate.

My first thought was a vintage Christmas table using my Great Grandmother's antique Imperial Candlewick dishes. I never use them and thought this would be a fun time to. I inherited my Great Grandmother's set when my Grandmother passed away. I've heard many stories about Great Grandmother using them and how she would save for months just to purchase the next piece. The original butter dish to the set was round. In California, back that time ago, the butter did not come round, it was rectangle (a tad smaller), like we have now.

She wrote to Imperial and told them that she was buying the entire set but the butter dish did not work for her... They designed a special rectangle butter dish just for her and gave her the piece for free. The letter from Imperial stayed in my family but was lost some years ago. So for those of you who may also collect the set or have a few pieces... now you know the history of the rectangle butter dish and who inspired that design.

Our daughters rang bells to Christmas songs. They were so cute and so fun to watch.

The church had a backdrop set up to take mother/daughter pictures. I borrowed the seat and snapped a photo of my daughter, Emma. It was a fun day. I enjoyed the special time with my daughter, the fellowship with other mom's and sharing and using my Great Grandmothers dishes.

PS: I'm still painting....

The Verdict.... White

After much thought and furniture blog lurking... I made my final decision to paint Emma's dresser white, yes, just simple clean white. I thought about other colors that would look cool with lavender, like a cool vintage green, turquoise or a pale blue... but after seeing a dresser like hers done by "The Frosted Gardner", I knew her dresser would be perfect in white. I just recently found their blog as they were featured on another blog I follow. Here are a few of their pictures that inspired me.

Love this piece!

Furniture painted by "The Frosted Gardner"

http://frostedgardner.blogspot.com/

If you have not seen "The Frosted Gardner" blog, please do visit their site. They do wonderful work with pieces of furniture and give them amazing new life, they are really nice people too :)  I spent hours browsing their before/after pictures! Such wonderful ideas and gave me so much inspiration.

My friend Laura from Laura's Rose Garden (http://laurasrosegarden.blogspot.com/) also shared a link from her blog where she too had painted a dresser like ours in white and it was simply divine! She has a beautiful site and amazing taste in vintage cottage shabby goodness.  

So, here is the dresser and what I started with today.

I really wasn't very sad about painting the piece. It was a $30 Goodwill find. As you can see the last owners weren't too gentle with the top and it also went through my daughters stage of thinking any surface is her art canvas. So... on went the primer and 2 coats of white paint.

It will need another coat or two tomorrow but I'm really happy with how it's turning out and especially against the new lavender paint.

This is what it looked like outside of Emma's window today... It was a good day to stay inside and paint.

The bedroom makeover: to be continued.......

Lavender

When I was pregnant with my little girl, 7 years ago, I dreamed about how cute and girly I wanted her bedroom to be. Since I had two boys, I was really looking forward to some femininity and pinkness. I remember scanning through a Pottery Barn catalog and falling in love with a paint scheme they did in one of their furniture ads. It was a soft cream color on the top half, pale green on the bottom half and the palest of pinks on a wood moulding to divide the two colors. She's had her room those colors since she was born.

I've been thinking lately about changing her room a bit. I looked at the Better Home and Gardens paint colors and liked this lavender color. I was a little nervous about painting her room all one color as it's always been divided. Here a few pictures of before. Now, please note that her room isn't always this much of a disaster. I remembered to take the "before" picture after I had already shifted all her things to one side. But you get an idea of her colors.

Before

Before

As I started to put the first coat of lavender over the cream and green, my first thought was uh oh.... what did I do? I wasn't too sure of the color and wasn't liking it too much. I know that's common and I told myself (even though I kept thinking that I could easily put the moulding back up and could touch up the area I just painted) just keep going, just finish one wall and see what you think. I still wasn't liking the first coat...

First coat...

But I continued to paint. Once I completed the first wall with 3 coats, the color started to grow on me.

I finished painting her entire room last night. I started first thing in the morning and finished about 8pm. I will post more pictures of the finished walls and thoughts about painting her furniture in my next post :)

National Pregnancy & Infant Loss Awareness Day, October 15

My Christian and Grace, in their urns with candles lit for them on this day.

This is a day, we unfortunately recognize every year. I have two Glory Babies which entered Heaven before I did. My beautiful baby boy Christian Daniel was born March 10, 1998 and lived just over two hours. My precious baby girl Grace, was born February 27, 2008 and lived almost 1/2 hour.  They were diagnosed with Potters Syndrome. When my son passed away, I was told it was a fluke and it would never happen again. It did... 10 years later with my daughter.

I found out my son was "incompatible" with life in my 9th month, about a week before his birth. They told me he would die shortly after birth - I did not have amniotic fluid and his lungs did not develop. I begged God to let my son live long enough for us to look into his eyes and tell him that we love him and would see him soon. My son lived over 2 hours. He stared at us... his eyes were trying to tell us something, something much deeper, comforting us. We held him every precious second until Jesus came and took him home. I prayed the same thing for Grace when I found out in my 4th month that she too had the same thing Christian did. I wanted her to live long enough to hear our voices, feel our arms on her body and know that she was deeply loved. She came into the world crying and breathing on her own for just a little while. She unfortunately never opened her eyes, but she was alive and could hear our words to her. From what I've been told, about 95% of Potters babies are still born. We were blessed with living babies we were able to bond with, create memories with and pour our love on.

They lived their entire lives in our arms. We listened as their little heartbeats slowly weakened and got further and further apart until the next beat.  .  .  .  .  .  .  didn't come.  It's hard to imagine a person living through such a painful loss, watching as your baby you waited so long for slips away right before your eyes ...and then being able to continue on. Especially, having to endure it twice. Only with Jesus and the promise that we will be together again make it even remotely possible. Life is never the same. A huge pit in your soul cannot be filled with anything. I searched, I moved and moved again, I bought things, I bought more things, I adopted many cats and dogs, I dived into different crafts (never really completing anything), I tried so many different avenues to try and fill that something missing in my life. I finally realized it's nothing that I can do, buy or change. It's only possible to believe. To believe in the promise from our God that He has a plan, and a reason and it will be for our good and their good. They are being raised in a better place - they have Heaven before we do. I look forward to holding my babies in my arms again, to smell their skin, to look again into their eyes and listen to the voices I so long to hear.

Not a moment goes by that my glory babies are not with me, are not thought about and greatly missed.

Every year, October 15th, we write love notes on balloons and release them to the Heavens. We light candles with all the other parents who are grieving for their babies across the world. We create a "wave of light" and hopefully our glory babies will look down and see the shimmery lit earth shining in their memory and know that they are dearly loved and so greatly missed.

My secret

Ok... I have a confession to make. I admit, this is not one of my best qualities and it drives my husband crazy. I am I M P A T I E N T... there, I said it.  I am one of those people who needs instant gratification. Yep, if I'm working on a project, say as in painting a piece of furniture, I just want it painted and in place and done. My husband on the other hand takes the piece outside, puts it on a drop cloth, takes it apart, fills in the cracks, sands it... etc, etc., augh! "Oh Gosh Andy!!! It's never going to get done"!!!! (I say).

If I'm working on a craft... it needs to be something I can complete with in a few hours or at least by the end of the day, or forget it. 

So, here is my example. I found this wonderful old dresser at a garage sale for only $10. A little later at a different sale there was this wonderful little shelf unit that sits on a dresser for free.... I'm not quite sure why nobody wanted it. I knew it would fit perfect on the dresser I just scored. The 2 pieces have been sitting in my living room waiting for me to decide what color it was going to be. I struggled between country blue, red or green. Then I had to decide what shade of one of those colors.

I realized after I started painting that I forgot the before picture

I decided today on green. Went to Walmart and found a really cute green from Better Homes and Gardens called Green Stalk. LOVE the new colors they have! If you haven't seen there new colors go check them out. Such fun fall colors. Came home... found my brush, opened the can and started to paint. Didn't move it from its place or take the drawers out... I just wanted to see the color on a little bit (I said to myself). That turned into everything from the shelf onto the floor and painting to get it done. I used my blow dryer in between the coats because I couldn't wait for it to dry on it's own. And in no time had 3 coats on. Wow, in less than 2 hours :)

The green is not quite what I originally had in mind. But I instantly fell in love with this color. I adore this green. It's perfect. In fact I love it so much that I'm going to move it to the other side of the living room where you can really see it and I'm not going to put the books and dvds back on it...it's too cute for that now. 

Here is a picture of the 2 pieces married together by this wonderful green. I rubbed some antiquing on, (still need to rub some off) and I love it. It still needs a touch up here and there. If you are looking for a new green or a color for a piece you have, check this green out. It's deeper in person than in my photo.

So there, you know my little secret. It's done (pretty quickly) and I am happy  :)

A Fun Garage Sale

Have you ever gone to the same garage sale more than once? Like, they have the coolest stuff for sale and after you've left you think about something you wish you had bought and then go back for it? Or, you're just sure that if you look one more time you will find something you missed the first time. Well, I hit one of "those" garage sales yesterday, and (ahem) twice today.

Not only did they have really cool vintage items, but they were the nicest couple! The kind of people you meet and instantly take a liking too.

At this sale I found something I have always wanted. A vintage Aluminum Christmas tree with the rotating color wheel. She had one and gave me a super deal on it. You'll have to wait until Christmas to see it ;)

Look at that jolly face!

I just love vintage Christmas decorations and one of my favorite collections is old Santa's. She had 4 vintage Santa's.... look at them, aren't they adorable. They will fit in nicely with the rest of my guys. I love them so much I just don't have the heart to pack them away... so my delightful new guys will just have to hang out with the pumpkins and goblins in the living room for the next couple of months ;)

Look at these awesome lights!!! She had two sets of them sitting on the the table with the other Christmas stuff, lit up and beautiful... they were only $3 each. I could not believe that they were still sitting there, but I am so glad no one else saw the beauty in them that I did. They are mine now :) Sitting on my mantel and the other on Emma's piano. Love them!

Yes, yes... I came home with yet another chair. It has the cutest stencil on the back. I'll find some vintage red fabric to recover the seat.

Loved this little shelf

I also bought this really cute mirror. I just love the metal rod on the bottom to hang a few cute linens. Also picked up a cool vintage chalk board, beautiful vintage linens and vintage bed spreads for my daughters vintage bedroom. After I paid for my items she mentioned to me that the next day all items would be reduced to 50% off.

Half off! I'm there! I wanted this adorable pink lamp very bad.... when she mentioned it going half off... I got up early the next morning just for that lamp. It was still there for me, yay! Some of the trim was hanging off the lampshade, but I LOVED that shade, it's perfect for the lamp. I warmed up my hot glue gun and glued it back in place, it's just perfect again.

Bought this great chest too. I loved it! Didn't know where I was going to put it but knew I'd find a place for it and I did. Put my coffee table on freecycle and my cool chest has a new home as a coffee table. It is the perfect place to put all of our board games!

The really nice garage sale lady and I chatted about my son Drew being the 50's collector and I mentioned to her that his birthday was tomorrow. She ran in to her house a came out with a gift for him. Look at this cool idea... It's the front of an old tv and made into a frame. Very cool and those of you who know Drew know how much he loves vintage tvs and stereos. He wanted to go to the garage sale too when he saw what I came home with.... he wanted to thank her for the gift and also show them his car.  Hence, my 3rd trip to the sale.  Yes, we came home with even more treasures and Drew found some neat things to put away for his future house.

You all know I have a weakness for enamelware. I found this incredible canner/soup pot at a sale on Friday. It's in perfect shape and still has the original sticker on it. I was so excited to find it and to only pay $10 for it, yay! Was a good weekend for vintage goodness :) 

Drew and I truly enjoyed meeting you garage sale couple in Rathdrum. I wish I had asked your names.... but I guess I was just in awe with all the treasures you had. Thanks also for taking the time to show Drew your old cars. They were very cool and he really appreciated it.

Rusty Fenders

I took Drew to Pegasus today. This is a local salvage yard that he had sold his very first car, a 1959 Mercury Commuter Station Wagon, to. It's been a few years since he had decided to let it go and he wanted to see it again. It is by far the coolest station wagon ever made. He and I had big hopes and dreams of restoring this beautiful piece of the past. However, we found that it was way too far gone as far as the rust and since it was so rare, was hard to find the parts for restoration (a learning process for us on what is restorable and what is not). 

I actually enjoy walking around the junk yards and looking at all the rusty antique cars. I see so much beauty in them... all rusty but still holding within themselves the memories of the families they once carried around. I look inside and imagine the children being taken to school, families going on vacation, mommy's being rushed to the hospital before baby comes, daddy's pulling up into the driveway and mommy coming to the door wiping her hands on her apron and waiting to kiss her husband hello.....  they came from an era when dinners were all homemade and on the table by 5pm. Life was slow and enjoyed.

I love the designs of the vintage and antique cars so much more than what they make today.

We found Drew's Commuter.... he had a very hard time seeing her in the condition she was in now. The weather had taken a toll on her and nobody had showed interest in trying to restore her. She was much more rusty, losing her color and very dirty..... It was sad to see her sitting there, alone. She sat for sooo long on my driveway and greeted us each time we arrived home.

Goodbye, once again dear Commuter. I do hope somebody comes along and see's the beauty you still hold and brings you back to what you deserve.