Sea Glass Washes up in the Midwest

Yep, that's right, sea glass.  Here?  In the Midwest?  Can you believe it?!

I can.

Well...sort of.  I made a new batch of my sea glass soaps!  I came up with this design about 20 years ago, quite by accident.  I was re-batching some of my leftover M&P soap scraps and the end results came out pretty.  I liked the way the colors worked together, and the softness of the whole effect, but it didn't dawn on me that it looked like sea glass until I had been using one of my bars for a few days.  I was washing my hands and the sun happened to shine through my window just right onto the bar.  I immediately thought of sea glass.  I love sea glass and whenever I can manage to get to the ocean, I'm always on the lookout for some.  It's so pretty.  I'm a loooong way from any coastline, but these bars always take me back to the ocean.  I think they add a nice touch to my powder room.

Here are a few of the bars that I've been making to cut up for embeds.  Ever since my accidental Sea Glass Soap Invention, I've been making the embeds instead of using scraps.  It may not look much like sea glass at this stage, but it looks much different once it's built into the soap.

I make all sorts of different M&P (as well as CP) soaps.  Since I've got my M&P stuff out, I thought I'd share a few of my other ingredients.  The only ingredient I'll be using from this group is the Shea butter.   (clockwise from top left: 100% Cocoa Butter, Unrefined 100% pure Shea butter, Unrefined beeswax).  The beeswax is from a local beekeeper who sells all sorts of honey-related products.  We try to support as many of the local "mom & pop shops" as we can.  They are such an important part of what defines our country.  The Shea butter I use is from Ghana (couldn't find that product made locally!!), and it was hand milled.  Can you imagine what a loooong day it would be hand-milling Shea butter!!!  It'll add just enough milkiness to the looks of my soap, and the real bonus is that it adds super moisturizing qualities.

And here are a few of the products I use to color and fragrance my soaps.  I didn't pull them all out for this picture, so what you see are a very small representation.  One of my favorite fragrances for soap is Satsuma.  I pick it up at The Body Shop.  Whatever you use, just make sure to only use essential oil when fragrancing your soaps.  Fragrance oil is not the same as essential oil, and it will provide unexpected results once it's added to soap.

This is what my carved-up sea glass embeds look like before i mold the bars.

Here are my results.  The bars look darker in my pictures than they do in hand, but I think they are reminiscent of sea glass.

 

The bottoms..

 

4 Generations of Aprons

I've been really, really bad and haven't posted for a while.  A long while.  I started a new job a couple of weeks ago, and have been trying to settle into a new routine of leaving home while it's still dark, and getting home after it's once again dark. Even though I haven't actually posted anything (for weeks now!), I have been keeping up with everything you've been writing about.  I really enjoy reading all of your blogs!  I can hardly wait to get home so I can catch up on everything.  I don't know what I'll ever do if I end up without electricity for an extended period of time!


Annnnyway...


I just looove vintage aprons!  I've got a few that were my grandmother's, and I even have one that belonged to my great-grandmother who was born in 1852!  Talk about vintage.  They were both excellent seamstresses.  These aprons were sewn by them, and are very special to me.  Please forgive the fold lines from being stored.  I just don't feel comfortable putting an iron on the fabric.  My grandmother was a quilting goddess who learned to sew from her mother. Grandma had won many, many blue and purple ribbons in fairs for her work.  She was an outstanding seamstress and continued to quilt well into her 90's.  She did have a Singer treadle sewing machine, but all of her quilting was done by hand on her huge quilting frames.  Her aprons were a combination of treadle sewing machine, and hand stitching.


Here is some of her apron work...

 And another whimsical one...

And one more with her beautiful embroidery

 

And this one was made by my great-grandmother.  It's over one hundred years old.  It's not flashy, but it was an effective way for her to keep her skirt clean.  It's hard to tell, but there's a patch pocket near the top.  Notice how short the ties are...she was a tiny petite little thing and stood right about 5' tall.  Gathered up, her apron was a basket she used to gather eggs, and harvest fruit and veggies from her garden.  I imagine it came in handy when she removed down-feathers from her ducks to stuff pillows with too!

Finally, I'm hoping to find some time really soon to begin working on my own apron.  I recently bought a vintage apron pattern and have already carefully traced all the pieces.  I looked for a long time before I found the fabric I wanted.  Well, I actually ended up buying "Plan B" fabric, because I couldn't find any really cute vintage-looking cabbage rose prints in any of the stores in my area.  It even took me a long time to find the Plan B fabric!  But I think this fabric is really cute and it should have a nice look once it's finished.

Vintage Holiday Tree Attire

My mother has some wonderful vintage Christmas ornaments, and uses them each and every Christmas.  She has ever since I can remember.  She also has the most wonderful lights on her tree, complete with their original vintage reflectors.  The reflectors are actually metal.  The outer one is silver-tone, and the smaller, inner one is colored.  Her guests always complement on how pretty and unusual they are.  You just don't see the new lights sets looking like this these days!  So I thought I'd share some of her tree decorations with you.

Here's one of her little vintage snowmen.  She's got several...some have black markings, others have red.  They're all made of plastic and date back to the 40's.  Things had so much character back then didn't they?

And this is her little Rudolph.  Of all of her vintage ornaments, he's always been my favorite.  He's also made of plastic, and was hand-painted.  He does have a red nose, if you click on the picture (it's sort of hard to tell at the angle I snapped it), but you can see that it's red.  I think she told me that she bought him at Montgomery Ward back in the 40's.  Do you know the real story of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer?  He was actually created as a promotional gimmick by Montgomery Ward in order to drum up a little extra business.  It looks as though that turned out to be a pretty successful ad campaign didn't it?!

I truly hope everyone had a wonderful, blessed and safe Christmas....and I hope Santa was good to all of you!

Crafty Little Trimmings For My Tree

Call it crafting, re-purposing, recycling...call it whatever you like.  I like to think I'm kinda crafty, and I sometimes have these big streaks of creativity.  Sometimes, my ideas work out pretty good, and that's ok with me.  Sometimes they don't, and that's ok too.  I don't know what it takes to flip on my "crafty" switch (I really wish I did though!).

Several years ago, one of my crafty friends had been hanging on to wine and champagne corks, thinking that one day she'd find a use for them.  Well, I guess she never did, and eventually she asked me if I'd like to have them for a project with my preschool students, so of course they came home with me!  It wasn't long before my students and I created several crafts with them.  But I still had quite a few corks left over.  I started out with...are you ready for this...a half-filled brown paper grocery bag, so there were a lot!  Now hold on a minute.....I know what you're thinking...they weren't all from her house.  Most of them came from the church.  And they came in all shapes and sizes.  Perfect!


A few years later, I started to think about all of those wine corks.  What could I use them for?  Then one day...it came to me!  I thought I'd try to make little ornaments with them.  So I got out my paints and crafty supplies, and what follows are my results.  I made dozens of each, and sold them at craft fairs.   My crafty friend and I used to go in together on booths.  All of my ornaments had their own personalities because it was impossible to make them exactly identical!  Some of my Frosty's had little stranded wire arms that I bent into "twig" shapes and spray painted dark brown.  Some of my Santa's had bigger beards than others for a little variety.  But I had to hang on to these two guys though...they were the first two I ever made.

 

 

 

My little Santa was made from a standard wine cork.  First, I painted his suit red. Then I added Snow-Tex for his beard, and painted his face with twinkling blue eyes.  Well, they're about as twinkling as I could make them!  I used scraps of felt for his hat, and added a tiny pom-pom to embellish it.  For the hanger, I cut a paper clip in half, dabbed a bit of glue on it, and pressed it into the top of his hat.


Frosty was made using a champagne cork for his body, and a wine cork that had a plastic "rim" for his hat.  (I don't know what kind of wine comes with this cork/plastic top...if you do, please, please tell me!)  I painted his hat black, turned it upside down and glued it to the champagne cork.  Then I applied a nice coat of Snow-Tex to his entire body.  I added the black buttons, eyes, smile, and his carrot nose with a bit of glue.  To make his nose I used the clipped end of a round toothpick that I had painted orange.  The hardest part was waiting for the Snow-Tex to dry.  I tied a narrow tartan ribbon around his neck for a scarf, and added a black pipe cleaner with a tiny sprig of plastic holly to the brim of his hat.  The little black bits that look like coal are actually plastic aquarium gravel.  I used the cut paper clip for Frosty's hanger, and added a tiny little red satin ribbon to hang him with.


It's just weird how I stumbled upon that idea to use the aquarium gravel!  I happened to make a stop at the local pet shop for dog food while I was in the middle of this project.  It's my habit to always look at all of the animals whenever I'm there (I can't help myself!).  When I got to the fish dept. I noticed the gravel in their tanks...and I had a brainstorm!  (cue the big streak of creativity!)  It looked as if it would be absolutely perfect for Frosty!  They didn't actually sell this gravel there, but the guy at the counter was happy to scoop out a bunch from one of their tanks for me.  He asked me what I needed it for.  So I told him.  He was quite amused!  So was Frosty.  It worked out perfectly.  And don't worry, the gravel received a good scrubbing before I used it!!

I've been seeing the beautiful ornaments that so many of you have been creating, and I just had to contribute.  And I barely made it!  I've been so busy and ohmigosh time is quickly running out for any last minute preparations!  But I have written up all of my Christmas cards, embossed the envelopes, and sent them out last week.


Christmas is now just around the corner - - someone please tell me how this happened?!?!

~~Diana

Our Dilly of a Tradition!

We have a family tradition that we enjoy every Christmas.  I haven't met many other families who partake in this, but I never thought it was unusual or anything.  Maybe it's more popular in certain regions than it is in others.  I don't know.  But it's something we look forward to, it makes us laugh, guys are so competitive, and it's fun!


So, what is this tradition you ask?

We have a Christmas Pickle!  We don't have any little ones around here anymore, but it doesn't matter to us, and we still have fun with it.  It's a life-sized, blown glass ornament that I hide deep in the boughs of our tree.  It's always the last ornament I hang, usually the night before...as soon as nobody is looking!  It's green, so it blends in with the tree pretty well, especially once all of the other ornaments and lights are in place.  When we sit down to exchange gifts, the first person who finds The Pickle receives a special "Pickle Finder" gift.  Over the years some of those special little gifts have been a Chia Pet (yes really!), a box of chocolates, or a tin of homemade cookies.  It's a goofy little gift that everyone can have fun with.  I've got it all dialed in for this year, but I can't tell you what's in store for The Finder this year.  All I can say is it's something that's never been given to any Pickle Finder before.  I'd hate to spoil their surprise!

I'd be interested in hearing if anyone else has a Christmas Pickle, or has heard of them.  Maybe in fact, it is a regional thing.  Whatever the case may be, I have noticed them more often in the last several years, so maybe their popularity is on the upswing?

An 'Almost' Goose Chase

Sometimes when you go shopping it's a military maneuver; you know..."hit it and get it" as my Darling Boyfriend says! That's mainly the way he shops, but there are also times when he'll happily look around (just not all day!).  Sometimes when I'm shopping (usually alone!) I'll tend to drift in the vicinity of the garden stuff (if it's in season that is!), and of course the bake and serve ware. I just love looking at all of the pretty bowls and baking dishes!

Well, the other day I was shopping for some clothes and strolled over to the kitchenware area. I turned a corner and found the prettiest hand painted veggie / cracker tray, and there was a cute little flower-shaped bowl that matched. They were just so bright and cheery, and really perfect for entertaining. I was all set to get both pieces, and I noticed that there was a fairly large chip along the top of the rim. I passed on buying the pretty little bowl, but I did get the tray!

Of course I still wanted that pretty little bowl, so I called around to all of the other store locations.  I was just starting to get disappointed, and beginning to think that I would have to settle for that chipped one, as I called the last store on my list. Would you believe that they had not one, but four of them?! So I asked them to please put all four of them on hold for me, and they were happy to do so. I showed up with bells on to pick up my four little prize bowls! It's sometimes the smallest personal victories that can really make your day!  Aren't they all so cute?

As long as I was there, I just had to take a look around to see if by chance they might have any other accompanying pieces. I did find one more piece that, I think, will set off the whole ensemble. Take a look...

Oh...one last thing...did I mention that they were all on clearance?  I wrapped up the entire purchase for $13.87.  Major score!

~~Diana