NumberNineteen

I'm Going to Dream of Snow....

Snow! Snow! Snow!  (5 extra points if you recognized those as being lyrics from a song in the movie White Christmas) 

Snow is what it is all about here in my corner of the world. Finally, a real snow, the first decent one since we moved to this house.  Don't laugh, you Midwesterners & Northerners, but we actually consider 4 inches a real snow here in Virginia.  I'm a Pennsylvania girl, so I long for even more than that, but I will take what I get.  It snowed all day yesterday, right until 11 at night.  I stepped out onto our porch right before going to bed and just watched the perfection of the still whiteness. The crystalline blanket that covered every surface, still untouched.  The air felt sharp and it reminded me of winters when I was a teenager. 

Today Hope and I went outside and she sledded while I shoveled.  This will sound funny, but as I shoveled, I became amazed that nature made this gorgeous, pure, fluffy stuff.  The world hurries us along and we get to a point that we forget about these things. That humans had no hand in creating but is just perfect.  Hope convinced me to take a few turns on the sled, the last one with her.  I hope that I remember that moment forever -- she & I in the tobbogan, my arms around her, flying down the hill with the wind whipping past, us laughing.

I have no good pictures to share because they really can't capture how lovely it has been. 

Thrifting Adventures January 2014

It's been a busy weekend, full of my favorite kind of things.  Thrifting and friends, books and British tv and ideas for creativity just overflowing.

Yesterday, one of my dearest friends came down to my place for an afternoon of thrifting and book shopping.  We started out with lunch at one of my favorite wood fired pizza restaurants and then moved onto the main event.  We scoured two thrift shops and a huge second hand book store and made major scores!  My favorite is this 1956 portable Admiral TV that I came upon in the Goodwill.  I called Glenn to tell him about it & he said "Buy it!"

We hooked it up in the media room/basement den & get this -- it works!  Or, at the very least, it powers up, makes noise & has flashing horizontal lines across the screen. 

I picked up several books for myself, one for the library (we can never have too many copies of the Hunger Games series) and a few for my mom.  I also found a gorgeous skirt and a bunch goodies for the house.

I almost always have good luck with silver at thrift stores.  I just give it a quick polish & it's beautiful.  I'm almost embarassed to have purchased the brass candlesticks -- I gave away about 8 of them a few years ago & have been kicking myself since.  So, when I saw these, I snatched them up.  The pitcher isn't strictly speaking a thrift find since I got it off of craigslist, but I picked it up this weekend so I thought that I'd include it.  I've been looking for more white pitchers since I saw this Holly Mathis kitchen mood board on her blog earlier this week:

source: Holly Mathis Interiors

I just love all of the textures going on there & it's just in tune with the look that I love.  We have the beige walls, tole trays and bamboo blinds and I want to add more large baskets, wicker covered bottles and the aforementioned white pitchers.

Today I went to the second meeting of the young adult literature book club (for adults) that I mentioned about 2 months ago.  It is just so cool to meet new people who have the same interests.  After I told them about my thrifting adventures several of them revealed that they love to thrift and suggested that we have a thrifting field trip soon.  How fun!

I came home and made a cosy meal and am about to start on a craft project that I'm so excited about.  I have about 4 projects going on right now and am bursting to work on all of them.  Darn this work thing that takes up so much time ;)  I'm going to sit in front of Downton in about an hour and craft and escape to 1920s England. 

Baby It's Cold Outside!

Brrr....it's cold!  I know, tell you something that you don't know, right?!  We went back to school last Thursday, promptly got Friday off for snow, went back on Monday and were off again yesterday for frigid temperatures.  It's been the most pleasant return from vacation that I've ever experienced.  It's like the world is letting us slowly ease back into regular life, dipping our toes into it slowly.  

Post Christmas time is always a period in which I feel inspired to change things around in the house.  Fluff up pillows, pull forgotten treasures out of hiding and move around pictures.  I spent my day off yesterday doing a "fluff".  I shop from around the house, poking into storage, pulling things from bookshelves, exploring cabinets.  I found so many things that I thought "Why was this in hiding?  I must find a home for it!".  The big things are slowly being added to our home (bit by bit....month by month....) so I try to make it more cosy with the bits that we already have. 

 

Being house bound also gave us the perfect excuse to bake cookies.  We stirred up a batch of an old family favorite -- Toll House with Oatmeal.  My mother and my grandmother before her always made a double batch of these at Christmastime and we made them when I was a teenager in my mom's house.  I didn't make any this year so I was missing them (though I did get a few that my sister brought to my parent's house).  Hope is the best helper, always in charge of the eggs & vanilla.

 You know that it's a good recipe when the pages are falling apart and covered in smudges of chocolate.

How are you filling these cold days?