Lil Punkin Found a Home

I found a pretty good home for my new little pumpkin I showed you all yesterday.

It's part of a little fall vignette on the "dead zone" on the kitchen counter.  This little area gets changed up a lot throughout the year.

Lil punkin is sharing a spot on a wooden fall tray with a few other goodies.  

Cute gobbler candle holder.

Showed you that framed phrase a while ago.  Still enjoying it. 

The one thing I especially want to share with you is the book you see there.  The book's author is quilt designer Lynette Jensen.  I was first introduced to Lynette Jensen and her design line known as Thimbleberries, over a dozen years when I was a more avid quilter and worked at a quilt shop.  She's a designer of quilt patterns and fabrics, and has authored many quilting books as well as the little gem above.

As you can see from the book's table of contents above, you're guided through the fall months at her home where she shares her autumnal decorating style using her fabulous quilts, vintage pieces and natural elements from her gardens.

It's a gorgeous book, offering tons of eye-candy for fall inspiration.

I wish I could share every page of this book with you now, but you really should see it person.  Amazon has the book for $10.99 through independent sellers.  It would make a fantastic gift for the person who loves to decorate for fall.

While I was at Amazon researching the availability of Autumn Accents, I saw Lynette's book, Finishing Touches for Christmas is still available.  I think I may have to purchase that one.  

Frankly, I'm shocked I don't already own it!

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JUST FUTZING 'ROUND THE HOUSE

That's what I've been doing . . . 

for the past five days ~ counting today.  I haven't set foot outside my house since last Thursday.  And I've been loving every minute of just futzing around.  

I've been playing with some new surface vignettes.  Setting out and displaying a lot of the things I just love to look at.  I really enjoy walking through the house and catching glimpses here and there of some my pretties.

I filled this metal basket with those bargain Tekla dish towels that Ikea sells that make great oversized everyday cloth napkins, along with some vintage sliver utensils.  The flatware was Hubby's grandmother's, and the bakelite handled steak knives were my parents.  A wedding gift from 55 years ago.  

It's the "centerpiece" of the kitchen table.

The top of the hutch got a new look too.  Gone are all the pinks and reds of Valentine's Day.  Now I have displayed a few more of my favorites.  

Vintage caning jars. I just love 'em.  Ball, Atlas . . . I don't care.  

If they're old, I'll grab 'em up!
And, I have to mention the gorgeous sign hand crafted by the very talented
Paula from Castle and Cottage Signs
is still the crown above the hutch.

In a couple chicken wire baskets I purchased in shop at the Chelsea Market in NYC, are more Ikea dish towels along with some Johnson Bros. Snowhite Regency ironstone plates.  A couple pitchers from my collection ~ a Hall strawberry topped creamer and Johnson Bros. Harvest Time pitcher.  See that green pitcher in back?  That pitcher graced our dinner table every evening when I was a kid.  It was my job to make iced tea for dinner in that pitcher every night.  Not sure what it is.  The only marking on the bottom is the number 30. I should do some investigative work on that piece.

A couple pieces from my salt-glaze pottery collection. 

My new, well new to me, favorite book right now.  

Oh, and do you have Serena's Christmas Book?  Again, not entirely new, but I purchased it right before C'mas and literally could not put it down.  

It's fabulous! 

Atop my fridge, I put yet more of the Ikea dish towels on a cake plate.  

Towels Under Glass

Guess you can tell I really love those towels :o)

I just love textiles in general.  

I've also been doing some cleaning and organizing of my dresser drawers and closet.  That's a YUK job.  

I've been sewing some pillows . . . finally.  I bought a bunch of fabric months and months ago for new family room pillows and it's just been sitting.  So I'm finally getting to that.

And I've been working on the Easter Egg Swap I joined over at Thimbleprims.  Been tinkering around with redoing my blog, too.  Wish I knew what I was doing there!  Hopefully I'll have some of these finished projects done soon.  But, with having to get back to work tomorrow and Thursday, they may have to wait a few more days.

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MONDAY'S RANDOM RAMBLINGS

Happy Monday All!!!

Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend.

Ours was nice.

Absolutely nothing special or spectacular.

Just a nice, productive couple days.

I really appreciated some of your advice on my last post regarding my monstrous

"to-do" list. It all really is just simple, right? Prioritize your jobs and make a list. Well, unfortunately for me, I've never been a good list-making-prioritizing type.

I want it all done yesterday!

Kinda hard when I'm just one person ;o)

Taking advantage of the break in the heat, I took my blogging friend, Kathy's advice, and hit the gardens full steam this weekend. I spent a total of 4-5 hours each day Saturday and Sunday weeding, trimming, dead-heading, edging . . .

You can probably get the picture. The gardens and beds were in pretty bad shape. After enduring, oh, I dunno, 37 heat waves this summer

- and we're starting day one of the next today! -

I just didn't get out there like a good gardner and care for my rooted babies. But I certainly made up for it this weekend.

While I was weeding and cleaning up the vege/cutting garden yesterday, this little beauty

was busy fluttering around all the newly blooming Tithonia (Mexican Sunflower) I planted from seed. He was bizzy, bizzy, bizzy.

The photos below I took this morning when I went out to turn on the sprinkler in the garden. The fog was heavy and it created a quiet peacefulness, almost like when it snows.

As any of you who have grown tomatoes knows, it's always feast or famine. For some crazy reason, I planted 24 tomato plants - several different varieties. I picked 1-1/2 five gallon buckets of tomatoes.

I took tomatoes to the neighbors next door,

tomatoes to my brother and SIL who live behind us,

Hubby took a big bag of tomatoes to work

and I still have 1/2 a five gallon bucket left.

We're gonna be eating a lot of pico de gallo and bruschetta this week!

I'm also going to share just a few pics from my craft room mini-makeover. I've been so inspired going through all the pics from

Karen Valentine's

Where Bloggers Create Party.

I'm still not through the list. Got 'bout 100 more to go!

A good friend had purchased a bunch of boxes of multicolor paper-lantern (only these are not paper - much nicer nylon!) type party lights. She realized they weren't going to work for her the way she wanted, so she was going to drop them at GW. I told I'd take them off her hands gladly paying, but being the nice friend she is ;o) she wouldn't hear of that!

I got to thinking how cool, fun and unexpected it would be to hang a string in my room. But the multi-color thing just wasn't going to work. Being the genius that I am hehe!!! I switched out the shades for a pattern that would match the color scheme in the room - being mostly bright green, hot pink and red. And just to jazz it up a bit, and hide the ugly wire, I used a red boa from one of our crazy Bunco nights.

Thanks, Gladys! ;o)

Now, that ribbon holder/shelf you see up there has been sitting in it's box, unassembled on the floor in this room since January. I finally put it together, hung it on the wall, filled both dowels with just a snippet of my massive collection of ribbon spools, and hated how it looked. Too junky . . . or too unplanned junky, KWIM??? But it does make a cute shelf, and I have ordered a few more spools of that yummy tulle ribbon that should be here any day, and they'll look pretty on the dowel rods - I hope.

The snaps below are examples of a more planned,

or an organized junkiness! :o)

Maybe you remember a past post where I talked about using some of these found metal boxes, containers, etc., here in the craft room.

I managed to integrate a few of them pretty well. I decided to use the old tool/tackle box to, well . . . hold "tools". Scissors, punches, twine, tape runners, glue sticks, tweezers, etc. Pretty clever, eh?

The box/drawer thingy below is housing all kinds of scrapbooking/paper crafts embellishments I'm hoping to use soon on future projects.

This next group of photos are just some random shots from around the room.

My small collection of vintage cameras up there.

A custom-made cabinet (built around a salvaged window shutter) houses a small amount of my quilt fabrics.

Mmm . . . fabulous fabric . . .

And lastly, today was a fun mail day!

Lookey what came!

If you haven't perused through Paula's magazine, it's really good. You can certainly feel her personality in every article and recipe.

I think I'm on year 8 or 9 of the Southern Living Christmas Book. It comes as an automatic shipment, and it's always a nice taste of the Holidays right smack in the middle of summer.

Oh, and isn't this little quilt a cutey?

I made that one years ago when I was sooo fortunate to have been able to work in an absolute premier quilt/fabric store right here in our little town.

It's created from early Debbie Mumm fabrics and pattern.

I love how the background fabric has the bees buzzing along leaving little "bee trails" with the phrase "busy as bee". Too stinkin' cute!

I had to share this adorable card of ribbon I purchased at the Scrapbook/Paper Crafting convention a few weeks ago. Isn't it darling? It's frayed ribbon "flowers" on tulle ribbon strips. I'm definitely going to have get me some more of this.

Pheewww . . . hope I didn't totally overload y'all with pics and words today! I just had too much to share.

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