A fun Friday for under six dollars

I don't go to garage sales all that often even at their peak but I stole my mom on Friday and the two of us hit the town.

I found this lovely white cotton round tablecloth with a little cotton lace trim for $2. I'm dreaming of a lovely afternoon tea...



I'm hoping this will hold a sign for me at the holiday bazaars coming up. It was 25 cents.


I found these pieces at separate sales but they go pretty well together! The brass candleholder is a partylite holder and was 10 cents (it won't stay brass long) and the candle is real wax and vanilla scented but it isn't a real candle! There's a switch on the bottom to "light it up". It has a gorgeous carved detail to it and cost me 25 cents. It even still had working batteries in it.

This five piece vintage pyrex set cost me $2. I love vintage pyrex.

Of course my mom got large bowls in patterns like this for wedding gifts so they don't seem vintage to her. :)

Got this Italian charm bracelet charm for 10 cents. I used to have a keychain like this in high school. It started as kindof a joke when I talked my dad into buying me a super sparkly fab necklace for formal but in truth I am a lot like my dad, so I guess that makes me a daddy's girl. He's been gone for three years now and I appreciate little reminders like this.


This entire basket full of styrofoam balls cost me $1.

And I got these two from the free box at one sale. They are damaged (broken hinge and missing lid) but I figured I could come up with something interesting. The gold one is just a trinket box but the piano is a music box.


I spent a whole $5.70 - try to find entertainment (plus goods) for that price anywhere else!

A handmade Halloween

I've been having a ball finding the cutest Halloween things on etsy. I just love to see what this fabulous group of creative people can come up with. Click on the item title to be taken straight to their shop.

Mary Lou at the ever delightful House of Whimsy blog made this darling pendant necklace.




Missie Zee at the Crafting with Cat Hair blog made this Poisonberry Tart and Tea set - cute and wicked at the same time!

Vanessa of the magical A Fanciful Twist blog designed these potion labels.

The Holiday Queen Melissa Valeriote has an entire Fantastical World of Holidays shop now full of Halloween goodies like this beautiful wooden ornament featuring the silhouette of a winter tree.



I just love everything at the tinybeardk shop - like these darling paper ornaments.

Barbara Sculati (one of my fave designers from Decorating Cents [RIP]) created this stunning velvet handbag.

The Meenas Magickals shop sells perfume oils in a variety of intriguing fragrances such as this Carnival of Ghosts. Listen to this description of the scent: This bottle contains the essence of old ghosts holding a carnival at dusk. It begins with nostalgic glimpses of pumpkins and kettle corn and slowly reveals whispers of apples, pumpkins, licorice, freshly turned soil, and a cauldron of witches brew.

The meekssandygirl shop is selling these crocheted "vampire bite" necklaces - haha! I love it! And when Halloween is over you can wear it to see New Moon.

A handwritten letter

This week's Living Lovely challenge was to write and send a handwritten letter. Handwritten? Gasp! This was actually one of my very first topics when I started this blog last winter. You can read my Gone Postal post here (and do not worry, there is no violence involved in the post.)

There's something so special about a handwritten note - like you a get a little piece of the person with it. For this occasion I dug out my box of brass-tipped pens and fancy bottles of ink.




But ended up using this lovely bottle of blue ink that I found at Goodwill of all places.


Along with a couple sheets of parchment paper from this pad with lovely herb garden knowledge on the margin.

And I decided I should write in cursive because...well...it just seemed like the thing to do. And I know I mentioned in my post the other day about how I haven't written cursive since about fourth grade so when I wrote my greeting and it came out looking exactly like my grandmother's handwriting I thought that was a little strange.

This kind of pen and ink writing was surprisingly easy once the tip stayed moist. I decided to send a letter to my friend who lives many hours away and I don't get to see very often.


And what letter of this sort would be complete without a seal?

I had a lot of fun with my letter writing despite the fact that spelling seems to go out the window when cursive writing comes in - I think it's more likely that my pen just gets to scrolling along and runs away from me. Hmmm. The Tale of the Possessed Pen sounds like something I should start handwriting in prep for Nanowrimo.

Pirate Hunter

Before I get into the "real" review of this book can I just start by saying, "awesome!!!" Okay. I feel better now.

Tom Morrisey's Pirate Hunter is a tale of two pirates - well, one pirate and one marine archeologist - who are intertwined despite the gap of time and culture and find themselves on the same journey of discovering who they are and how to repair their past.

Ted Bascombe, the "real" pirate isn't your typical lecherous and filthy louse but is instead a young man with a business idea who has big plans for his future...those plans just happen to be making money he gets in ship prizes. But under the tutelage of Captain Henry Thatch (also not your stereotypical pirate) he learns there's much more to life than callousness and material riches.

Greg Rhode, the modern-day treasure hunter, wants to forget his own past while searching for other's history. Digging through ship's wreckage (in the last known place of the aforementioned Henry Thatch's ship) his own ruined relationship with his father and his beliefs are put back together.

The back and forth nature of the story flows flawlessly between the 18th century and modern day, not jarring and not confusing, endlessly fascinating and a real page-turner.

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In other pirate news, my cousin finally got his pirate wedding! I wasn't able to attend because of snow over the pass (that's why I live in the valley - much less snow!) but I was sent photos so I could see the lovely bride in her dress made by my mom and jewelry made by me (which I talked about in this post). So sad I missed it!


Also the Portland Pirate Festival got a group of scallywags together on September 20th for the largest costumed group of pirates (1,651 to be exact) for an entry into the Guinness Book of World Records. Ahhh a proud moment to be from Oregon! ;)

Autumn Art - Ode To the West Wind

I just love the opening stanza of Percy Bysshe Shelley's Ode To The West Wind. It is the perfect Autumn line and one that seems like a good fit for some old and spooky-ish looking Autumn decor.

O Wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing.

To make the art fit the old and almost spooky feel, I chose to use a brown paper bag as my base material which will go into this black floating frame I bought several years ago and has been sitting empty.

I start by slitting up the side and going all the way to the bottom of the bag.

Then I cut around the bottom until it is completely off and the rest of the bag lies flat in one big sheet. Then you've got plenty of material to work with. And if the paper is crinkled and wrinkled so much the better!

My frame is 5x7 so I cut my paper to fit that exactly with no room for the "floating" part to show through. You'll see why a bit later.

Then I chose a font from picnik.com that I liked and tried to copy it as I hand wrote the lines blending the font style and my fourth grade cursive writing lessons into some nearly illiterate scrawl. It just adds to the spooky oldness of it, I tell myself.

Now for the fun part! You'll need an outdoor location free from burnable debris, some soaking wet paper towels and some matches or a lit candle.

I'm house-sitting for some people with a large cement patio so that's where I worked. Using the matches, I lit one then set it to the edges of my paper. Be sure to do this in small sections so it doesn't get away from you! Once it looked burned and had some "charcoal" to the edges enough to look old, spooky and salvaged I tapped and blotted at the burning paper with my wet paper towel to stop the burning from spreading.

Working all the way around this is what I ended up with:

Sandwiched between the two panes of glass in the floating frame it really stands out and looks like some antique salvaged document.


I must have taken thirty photos trying to get a decent, non-glaring shot. Not being at home means I don't have all my cool resources available so making-do and going crazy were all I could come up with.

This one was taken in front of a screen door, that's not the frame's backdrop.

Say hello to me and my wild hair - photographing something just shouldn't be this hard. Ah well.

Remember to be careful when burning your paper so that it doesn't get away from you. And I'd recommend using a lit candle rather than matches, just to save your fingers. :)

Visit DIY Day at A Soft Place to Land for more great DIY projects!

And check out Kara's Fall projects linky party!