A Day of Finds

Had a full day! Woke up at 6:30 and headed to Niles for their annual Antique Sale. I came away with a few goodies and after a few hours of garage sale scouring and booth bargaining, I continued onto Oakland for..

... a walk in the Mountain View Cemetery with Miss Essential Monsters herself.


We stumbled on this outsider art shadow box on an unmarked grave in the "unfunded" portion of the cemetery. It was such an amazing find amongst the broken head stones and weeds of a forgotten group of graves from an Oakland's home for women.

After a few hours of graveside strolling I went to SF to see the Birth of Impressionism show at the De Young. You can't, of course, take any pics in the gallery (although I'm pretty sure I did at the Musée D'Orsay when I saw them the first time), but I did take some shots of some of my favs from the permanent collection...

A Lovely Birthday

28 today! My day was full of treats, finds and sunshine... oh and Bergamot Cotton Candy from Miette...
les macarons from Paulette's...
ribbons from the Ribbonerie...

...and other lovely finds!

The afternoon ended with tea at Crown & Crumpet.

Birthday Badges for Little Ones

I made these adorable (if I do say so myself) one of a kind badges for birthdays and celebrations. I found these vintage prize ribbons (for horses) and recovered them with fabric. I used mermaid fabric on some of them from Heather Ross's line Mendocino. I added new ribbons and a bit of glitter paper.  They are available in my etsy store!!!!

They make wonderful package toppers too!

Birthday Trip to Seattle

So far, Seattle is proving to be a very beautiful (and very clean) city! This is one of the libraries on the University of Washington campus.

Treats at the B&O Cafe on Capitol Hill.




In the Fremont District...

Color Pencil Roll Up For Nadia

Nadia just turned 6 on Sunday. I made her this colored pencil roll for her birthday, although she won't have her party with us until we move into the new house. I saw this on Pink Chalk Studio's blog and thought it was too cute. I hope she likes it!

Filoli House

MJ and I visited the Filoli House for her birthday. I had visited the Muckross House in Killarney Ireland last year, and it was my favorite thing on the trip. The Muckross House was purchased by the owners of Filoli, the Bourn's, for their daughter as a wedding gift. The Grand Ballroom at Filoli is painted with murals of the Muckross Estate. I was curious to see the connections between the two estates, and Filoli lived up to expectation.


This tree was beautiful, massive in size with drooping branches that touched the brick walk beneath it.


There are many gardens at Filoli. This patch of lavender was among my favorite.

Not too shabby, huh?


I loved this French bicycle parked in the shaded path.

My ideal kitchen. One of two adjacent kitchens inside the Filoli House.

A Birthday Gift

Today is June 1st, and it is 13 days until my boyfriend's birthday. I made him a birthday countdown box from an old typedrawer. Kind of like an advent calendar, each slot contains a vial with a tag attached...13 vials in all, one for each day until his birthday. I filled the vials with various things, for texture and color then attached a tag with a sentiment related to the vial's contents. I tied the tags to the vials with baker's twin and sealed them with beeswax. To the right of the vials is an accordion book that reads "for you," when closed, and is the end of a message when the book is open.



A detail of the contents of one of the vials... tiny carrots for my "rabbit."