Where would we be without our friends?!

Friends have a special way to lift us up! They add so much to our lives. I cherish all of my gal pals. They are a true treasure. This friend is a big, sparkly, pink diamond in my collection of jewels! Mind you, all of my friends are beautiful, but very unique in their own way. Remembering my birthday and always thinking of me even in the smallest of ways makes my day. Getting her funny texts or messages each week keeps us connected. Thank you pal for all that you do. I so appreciate you!!!! Luz sent me this lovely journal and she made this sparkly rose brooch. She cleverly added paper text to the rose petals.
You didn't think it would be all sweet and soft now did you? Yes, I am a circus freak and I know that because she tells me so. What a fun pillow. It of course reminds me of her immensely. I think it may be the shoes.
Yes, she found one! A tiny vintage trailer ornament even in the colors that I am planning to use. Way cute. I will be leaving this out and putting this in the camper when it is finished as a part of her accessories.
When your friends get you, it really makes you smile. Such a pretty, soft vintage apron with tiny red strawberries. What a great collection of goodies. Many thanks, Luz for all the pretty gift tags and care you gave to making these gifts so special. YOU ROCK!!!
Speaking of my trailer, she is really coming along.
With Don at home and his son visiting, my Dad got them to lift the new air conditioning unit on the top. Dad literally works on this little buggy everyday and he absolutely needed help with this. It went on very quickly and smoothly. Don got it wired and away it went. I am happy to say that it is super quiet when it runs. It even works as a heater, too. I was not thrilled about adding it to the camper, because I thought it would look hideous on top. Well, to make a long story short, once the cover went on it, you can't really even see it up there. And hubby said that he would be going no where with me if it didn't have air. I have to concede, that by mid May it would be too hot to enjoy it, if I couldn't cool it down in some way. So, Hubby 1, me 0. He was right, it was a good addition.
This was the latest mess Dad uncovered. The door frame and part of the trailer frame has dry rot. I am happy to say that he has already ripped it out and rebuilt the frame and rebuilt the part of the floor at the entrance. She is solid again! Advice to anyone thinking of purchasing a vintage trailer, pull up the carpet and lift the outer skin to inspect what is underneath. I still would have bought her, but I would have chewed them down on the price a bit. Thanks goodness my Dad loves doing this stuff. The Spring is looking good for her to be finished. In March I will start pricing out her new paint job. Stay tuned......

Treasures...Friends and Finds

I just love these little peep-toe baby shoes. I have to laugh at myself sometimes. I can't believe how goofy and excited we get when we find some great old treasures while junkin'. 10 years ago I would not have even been interested in these sweet things. Yesterday we had a great time shopping, lunching and junkin. Here are some of my spoils.

These 3 dolls were nestled in this box together to purchase. The ceramic one is so tiny with its moving arms and the other 2 are made of lead I think. They re so heavy and painted. I have added them to my small doll collection.
These 3 old bottles will be getting some witch potion labels for Halloween decorations. These were less than $2 a piece.
I found this for Shelby's new bedroom. We just redecorated her bedroom in lavender and put hardwood floors in. This looks so cute on her dresser. When I finish sewing her curtains and get them hung I will show you how sweet her room turned out.
This was a roll of beautiful cream vintage lace. Carla and I decided to split it. There is over 100 yards on this roll.
We also hit Hobby Lobby and found these Halloween goodies.
I scored this chicken wire basket for my kitchen table. I will be filling it with pumpkins and gourds in a few short weeks.
We had a great time celebrating Carla's birthday and of course spending our day together. I hope you all had a great week, too and enjoy the weekend ahead.

Birthday Wishes with a Studio to Enjoy!

Happy Birthday, Carla and Congratulations on turning the big 50!!!! In honor of you today, I have taken some pictures of your new creative space to show you and to share with others. We love being there with you and it came out fabulous! Great Job, Friend!
Thanks for sharing your studio with us, Carla. We have such a great time every week. I hope you have a wonderful day! Tomorrow we are going to celebrate Carla's birthday with a girls day out. A visit to Hobby Lobby, lunch and Junkin', of course.

Simple Pleasures...

It has been a great day. I started out having breakfast with my gal pals right after we dropped off the kids to school. We like to meet up at least once a month and have breakfast to chat and catch up. It is always a blast. After I left them, I did a little shopping, bought the newest copy of Somerset Life and headed home to have lunch.
I grabbed my sandwich and my new mag and headed out under the ceiling fans in my back porch. I put my feet up and enjoyed a few hours of quiet before S comes home. I also share this picture to show you the pillows I made this week. I found a lovely old vintage cloth a few months ago and finally dug it out.
The red flowers just pop off this fabric and liven up the place a little. I had 2 perfectly good pillows, but the fabric had faded over time. So I recovered them with this wonderful vintage fabric. Finally some homemaking going on around here. It has been so good to be home for a while. I found a really good house cleaning service and they started this week. Clean house, laundry done, girls morning, shopping, quiet time, Somerset Life....... Simple Pleasures!

One Sweet Chick!

One sweet chick gave me this wonderful crocheted nest with its tiny bunny! My friend Carla made these colorful nests out of strips of fabric that she crocheted together with a large crochet hook.
Carla found the idea in a Spring issue of Crafts n Things Magazine. She brought them last Thursday night to craft night and let us pick out the one we liked best.
I am not one to save a lot of little fabric scraps, but I may need to rethink that. Carla is always sewing and has such a collection of sweet fabrics. Thanks Carla for sharing your nests with us.
Next week the group is trying our first felting project. We will let you know how we make out.

Junkin' Finds and a Vintage Smock for a Friend!

Our trip to Monroe was so much fun. I wish I could treasure hunt every weekend. Here is a lady head vase that I found the perfect shade to match my studio. She is tiny, too.
This lovely old linen would make great porch pillows. It is very crisp and in excellent shape. I should have enough to do 4 pillows. They should brighten up my back porch a bit.
My camera and I don't seem to be getting along very well lately. So many pictures are blurry. Here is a collection of my other finds.
I love this old painted wooden hanger. It has clothes brushes on each end and is hinged in the middle to fold for traveling.
A met a fellow artist and sweet lady last Spring when the Southern Blogger's got together. Her name is Yvette, "E" for short and she has a kind spirit. I connected with her immediately. She is an amazing artist and has begun holding art classes. It would be great to go to one of her classes. E asked me to make her one of my vintage smocks. So after making her wait awhile, here is what I created for her.
I can see her sporting her vintage smock while teaching her art classes. You go E!!! Hope to see you soon.

Can you say Chocovine?

We had a little group therapy last night! The group was made up of our circle of friends and the therapy was sampling 8 different wines. We started our couples night last night at a place called Wine Styles.
This is a little place in Macon that sells wines and has a boutique of fun gifts and trinkets you can purchase as well. They also do wine tastings. For $10.00 a person, you get 8 generously sized selections of wine and also some cheese and toasted rounds to make the tasting a party. We tasted 3 whites, 1 rose', 3 reds and 1 dessert wine.
As you can see we had a blast. All of the wines were enjoyed, but this group is definitely a white wine crowd. It was fun to learn about each of the wines, the regions they were from, what grapes they were made from, etc. The men in our group stepped up the questions and were giving our wine steward a run for his money.
This was one of my favorites. It was a very light Pinot Noir and of course I loved the label. It went for 30.00 a bottle so I got to admire the bottle and left it on the shelf. Maybe for a special occassion.
This was the crowd favorite by far! This is a dessert wine made in Holland that is a chocolate and red wine concoction that is labeled Chocovine. It is so delicious that you want to break etiquette and lick the inside of the glass to get every last bit of it. This is priced at 13.99 a bottle which we thought was really reasonable. It is served chilled. It would be great over ice cream or in coffee. We are definitely going back to get some for the holidays! Yum.
It was an hour later and we were definitely warmed up to continue our evening out together.
In the same shopping plaza as Wine Styles is a Japanese Steakhouse called Taki. We all sat around the hibachi and had sushi and lots of seafood and filet mignon. Everything was delicious. This is such a great group of people and we all have such a time laughing and chatting. It is wonderful to have people you can lean on, laugh with and help to forget about things for awhile. It truly is group therapy. I am so grateful to have them in my life. These gals get me, tolerate me, cherish me and I them, more than they know!
Hopefully we can get together again before Christmas. Whatever we do , I am sure it will be memorable.

Ladies Day Out

Monday, the 4 of us gals took the entire day for ourselves and headed for Atlanta. The target was a very large mall and an awesome place to have lunch! We left at 9 am with no set time to return home. How often do we really get to do that? Hardly ever.
Here we are having lunch at the Cheesecake Factory! It was fantastic. Starting from the left, Annette, Me, Marla and Trina had a relaxing and leisurely lunch.
We shopped the Perimeter Mall that day and spent most of our time in Nordstrom looking at shoes, clothes, cosmetic, etc. We even checked out the Twilight line of cosmetics. Cool body glitter to sparkle like Edward. We thought that would be fun for our movie night, but at 34.00 a bottle, we changed our minds!
Here we are browsing through Sur La Table. Very neat cooking and home goods store.
Cocktails anyone? Thanks girls for the best day. I look forward to our next shopping day together. There are more Malls in Atlanta to conquer.
This picture was taken last week. Annette and I went out to celebrate our Birthday's together. Our birthdays are a week apart so every year we try to have lunch together. My birthday is actually tomorrow. It will be a quiet day, but we will spend the weekend celebrating. Saturday night is couples night and the 4 of us and our hubby's will be going out to do some wine tasting first and then on to dinner. It should be a blast. Then on Sunday, Don and I are going to an Atlanta Falcons football game. I will be back with lots of pictures and stories of all our fun. I don't mind turning another year older. The problem is how quickly they seem to be going by.