Smitten

I just got my Hable Construction bag in the mail!! It is SO pretty, and look how perfectly it goes with my wallet from Three Green Apples!

Under Construction

I'm working on a couple of fun projects right now. One is a cover for some baby immunization record booklets for a pediatrician, and the other is an example of a linocut reduction for a how-to book on making cards. Here's my quick sketch for the book project:

And here's the booklet cover:

I'm hoping that both of these projects work out. I really like the woman who asked me to design the ducky, and the book would be great exposure for my company (it's being published through Chronicle Books). So keep your fingers crossed for me!

Brilliant

Here's why I'm a genius: I figured out how to make my own frozen lemonade concentrate! Granted, this wasn't difficult at all, but I'm still proud of myself for having the idea. Last week I squeezed about 20 lemons and made a big batch of sugar syrup for the chicken dinner, and quite a bit was left over. So I froze a mixture of the two in muffin tins, and now all I have to do is put one frozen chunk in a glass, stir in some water, and voila! Lemonade! I should remember to do this when my tree starts bearing fruit again.

Too Cute to Not Post

Treasures From the Point

This morning I headed out to Alameda and I found a few more treasures to add to this weekend's haul.

A wonderful (and very heavy) lamp for my living room.

Adorable owl night light.

A super cute strawberry colander.

Another set of turquoise glasses ($5 for 6!).

Two more deer for my collection.


AND... a 1960 submarine lunchbox for only $30!!!!!
I guess I should explain that my great uncle, Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, invented the nuclear sub and is known as "The Father of the Nuclear Navy." This is why my dad and I spent a day out to sea on the USS Rickover last December before it was decommissioned, and also why I own two of these lunchboxes (which were produced for the launch of the Nautilus) and all kinds of miscellanious submarine paraphernalia. In any case, I've seen them (in mint condition, with the matching Thermos) go for as much as $350 on Ebay, so $30 is a pretty good deal.

Color of the Week

So in honor of today's purchases, I have decided to devote the coming week to turquoise! To begin, here are some photos of turquoise things from around my house. (Warning: there are a lot!)




























*also, that little rotary phone just came in VERY handy! We had a blackout, and my newer, "digital" phone stopped working. But using this blue baby, I was able to call PG&E and Eric, and everything was just fine.

A Good Day for Turquoise

The first weekend in June (and the first weekend in December) is a busy one for us Bay Area vintage shoppers. To start things off, there is the Art Deco and Modernism Sale, which runs all weekend long at the Concourse in SF, and then on Sunday is the monthly Alameda Point sale, with usually more than 800 dealers. Today I went to the Deco Sale with my mother and came away with some great finds! Let's just say that it was a very good day for turquoise.

I have been going to this sale since I was 14 years old. I guess you could say I stood out in high school, wearing nothing but vintage dresses in a sea of blue jeans and t-shirts, but my love for vintage design started early. When I go antiquing with friends, people are always amazed by how quickly I can browse, and the truth is, I've seen about 90 percent of it before. But no matter how many Franciscan apple plates, Vaseline glass chicken butter dishes, pink elephant cocktail sets, or teak candleholders I've seen, I still get a thrill out of finding something different. Here are my finds from today:

Gorgeous vase and Franciscan salad bowl.

Fabulous drinking glasses ($20 for six!).

Amazing roll of original Wonderbread wax paper.

Another pair of glasses frames, to be made into sunglasses (I have seven pairs of regular glasses and this will be my second pair of sunglasses).

AND... these beautiful knobs for my stove!!!

More to come tomorrow, I am sure...

You Got Served!

We had 11 people over for dinner last night, and it was a huge success. Eric and I made fried chicken for the first time (thanks to Tyler Florence), and I also made cheese grits. Our guests brought greens, biscuits, sweet potatoes, mac and cheese, and watermelon, plus the makings for Old Fashioned's and Mint Juleps. For dessert I made banana pudding, buttermilk pie, and peach cobbler.

Between the 11 of us, we consumed nearly 4 chickens, and most of the above! It was quite impressive. And at the end of it all, everything was amazingly neat, thanks to my ingenious idea of using newspaper for a table cloth! It made clean-up a cinch!

But I am fairly certain that these tuberoses are the only thing keeping my entire house from smelling of cooking oil...