Best of....vol. 2

I've been working on a little project. I spent a few minutes each day this week printing out dozens upon dozens of photos of my favorite estate sale treasures from the past year. Then gathering all kinds of vintage bits from swaps, thrifting, this and that and compiling it all together into vol. 2 of my treasure book. Last year around this time I created the first book and I've found it's one of my favorite projects of the year. I love paging through it and seeing all the goodies, some that I'm no longer in posession of, but find them beautiful and inspiring to gaze at and remember where they came from and how they came into my posession. Here are my first several pages.

It goes on and on. This will sure be fun to page through in the future.

Old school...

Went to a few estate sales this weekend that I would consider old school. Lots of really old stuff, accumulated over decades, not really all that sorted through. That's where I always find the treasures. Like these bright and cheery big old birthday candles. Chloe said she wants them on her cake every year until she turns ten! Here was the attic floor. Loved it!!

Great colors and images on these old blocks!

Fun retro books.

I love these adorable little Bambi figurines.

Remember Rainbow Brite? I had to get Chloe this original.

Some fun stash!

Hope you're having a great weekend!

five senses friday: happiness is...

It's always fun to play along with abby's five senses friday. Today I am sharing some photos from my recent wanderings.

Seeing: spring colors in the windows of Anthropologie.
Hearing: more birds outside as our temperature rises into the 30's.
Tasting: these amazing cupcakes from a place appropriately named Yum!
Feeling: all giddy to start a new book on happiness from someone I've been reading a long time. Smelling: red velvet...yum, indeed!

A fresh approach...

Spring doesn't come for a long time yet here in Minnesota, but an important step for me to beat the winter blah's, as the weather begins to get a teensy bit warmer, is to develop my palette for the upcoming season. That's just the way it works for me, always has. Then I can begin to move forward. After my thoughts in my post yesterday about always going back to my default color palette for spring, I decided to make some changes. So while watching the Olympics last night (Amazing!!) I poured through dozens of magazines, catalogs, etc. to try to develop a new palette that would pique my interest and would feel fresh and new to incorporate into my spring wardrobe and decorating. A little personal challenge. I came up with the following inspiration pages. They are definitely warmer tones, rather than cooler, which I usually do for spring. Not much in the way of blue or pink. More creamy beige, green, soft brown and coral. They feel more earthy and calm to me. I think I like it!

This process has been fun. I'm hoping it will motivate me to try some new things this spring and push myself a bit. We'll see!

Changing things up...

Here's a slew of my daily pages for the last week or so starting with some color inspiration. After making thes first two pages below, however, I realize that this time of year without hesitation I turn to turquoise and soft blues with bright punches of pink to get me in a late winter- pushing spring mood. Pretty as they are, now that I got it out of my system, I'm going to try for a new color combination for spring. Funny how the first page is so scerene and the second is just wild and crazy with all kinds of color combinations and patterns. I guess you can tell that I'm in the mood to shake things up!

What colors are you embracing right now?

Vintage inspiration...

I found this wonderful vintage paint book from 1930 at an estate sale this weekend. I wanted to share with you the charming illustrations. Not all the pages are photographed, so the story is choppy. It's about a little girl going on a hunt for her missing puppy. I thought you'd enjoy the vintage beauty.