Necklace Hangers, Earring Hangers

A month or so ago, I found an oak coat tree
that I turned into a necklace hanger.

I still like it, still use it - but it wasn't
enough Between my daughter and myself we have
a lot of necklaces.

So when I saw a mug rack at a yard sale I
thought it my work in addition to the coat
tree. I'm not sure if I like it or not. It
does provide lots of hanging space though.






















My earring situation is much better than my
necklace situation. I hang my earring on
pieces of lace so I can see them all at a
glance and the lace looks nice against the
blue walls.













The good thing about the lace is that there
are so many holes in the lace that there's
plenty of room - just space accordingly when
you add to your collection.

Elixir Substitutes

Since my original post about the demise of Aveda’s
Elixir I have gotten a few suggestions from
like-haired girls (i.e. frizzy)who have found
other products to use.

Cat suggested:
“Try this out! Neutrogena Triple Moisture Silk
Touch Leave-In Cream (with UV shield). It's great,
maybe better than Elixir which did not have UV
protection, and it smells better than Elixir."

Then there’s this:

“I loved Elixir too, but I haven't used it
for a while. My current process is that on damp
hair (conditioned 3 times a week, shampooed once
every 3 weeks or so; I scrub conditioner into my
scalp and it cleans just as well, but isn't drying),
I apply mousse, yes, plain old pantene mousse,
and comb it through. Then I just scunch it minimally
into curls and let it air dry. it's a trick I
learned on "What not to wear" and my haiir has never
been so glossy and frizz-free!”
From Annie of Wexford Girl.

I haven’t tried these yet since I found a big bottle
of elixir for 50 cents at a yard sale, but I plan on
trying both soon. I especially want to try Annie’s
method of washing with conditioner. Will let you
know the results.

One more day (if you don’t count today) of work and
then 9 days off. My stomach gets jittery just thinking
about it!

Housewife Vacation

The title of this post makes it sound like
I am taking a vacation from being a housewife
but I am actually taking a vacation from work
next week TO BE A housewife. I'm taking four
vacation days (+ labor day) and plan on doing
all the things I should be doing on a regular
basis but don't have time for do to working
a full time job.

I will spend my vacation cleaning my fridge,
cleaning my woods floors with water and vinegar,
organizing closets, organizing my work/craft
area, making brownies, taking photos of all the
vintage items I've bought or repaired or revamped
which I now want to sell and photos also of
my vintage pouches to put on Etsy.


















And of course, like the house wife above,
I will be working on Food and First Aid
packages for our troops.


I will also take one day for a day trip
somewhere, all by myself. I am so
excited!

The View From my Window

I used to live in Chico CA where one of the
notable landmarks is Bidwell Mansion, the home
of Annie and John Bidwell who donated thousands
of acres of land to the city, including the land
for the University. They had a good life and
their mansion is beautiful.

Here in Moscow is a similar landmark, right
across the street from my house. The McConnell
Mansion.















The McConnells didn't have it as
good as the Bidwells. The Historic
Landmark sign in front of the mansion tells
their tale:

"After the ... McConnell Mansion was completed
in 1886, McConnell's wife and four children
joined him in Moscow that Christmas Eve.
Although McConnell became the state's leading
Republican, serving as state senator and
governor, and despite securing the University
of Idaho for Moscow, he fell into obscurity
after losing his money in the Depression of
1893.

Although McConnell's wife Louisa filed a
homestead claim on the Mansion property, the
family lost their home in 1898. "

Not a completely horrible story - things could
have been worse I suppose - but it is
disconcerting to read that they lost their
lovely house and fell into obscurity ... They
had four children.

A Different Take on Chandeliers

I bought a small chandelier a year or so ago
at a thrift store and never knew quite how to
use it. We have a nice vintage light fixture
above our dining room table and I didn't really
want a chandelier in the dining room anyway -
too pretentious (this was before I found out
about the royal family). But it was a small,
modest, charming chandelier so I held onto it.

And then I found this floor lamp without the
lamp - just a pretty brass stand. They make a
good match. I wrapped the chain/wire of the
chandelier around the top of the stand, then
draped it down and there you go:

Yarn and Other Projects

I have a lot of projects started. I tend to
start many and rotate them rather than to
start one project and see it through to the
end before starting another. I never get
bored with a project that way. Tired of the
scarf I'm knitting, move on to the ripple.
















That green scarf is a lovely celery color -
the brown will be a scarf for my son for
Christmas.

















When I get tired of working with yarn I
go back to my Vintage iPod Pouches which
I sell on Etsy.





I also have
a couple
of paper
projects
going but
I'll save
those for
another
post.

A Bohemian Princess

I’ve been working on my genealogy for a number of
years now and am pleased to inform you that I am a
Bohemian Princess. That’s right, my 12 G Grandmother
was Anna of Bohemia, Queen of the Romans and
heiress of the Kingdoms of Bohemia and Hungary. It
seems that her main contribution to her kingdoms was
her 15 children, since before my G-Grandmother, the
kingdoms had suffered for centuries from a lack of
succession prospects due to premature deaths among
sickly heirs. But Anna was a picture of health. See ?












My picture is on the right of this blog. I don’t really
see a resemblance but I think I may have inherited my wide
childbearing hips from her. I descend from her thusly:
(sorry - one of the chores of being a princess is the
frequent use of the words thus and thusly)

Anna of Bohemia - Maria Hapsburg - Anna Von Kleve -
Wolfgang WIlhelm Palatine- Philip William - Elizabeth
Anna Palatine - John Von Der Burg - Hans Devauld Funderburk
-Mary Ann Funderburk- Daniel Plyler - Andrew D. Plyler -
Lula V. S. Plyler - Catherine Connolly - Michael Nolan -
Kelly Nolan aka Me, Princess Kelly.

There are 100s of thousands of people walking around today
who are descended from royalty of one sort or another, so
I don’t expect to be greeted with a parade when I go to
visit Prague (someday . . . sigh). But knowing I have a
royal ancestor does make me fell like I should dress a
little less casually and have better posture.

Ever Changing Banner

You know how some days you try on lots and lots
of clothes and nothing feels quite right? Well
that’s how I’ve been feeling about my banner
(and of course, my clothes) lately. I keep
changing it hoping to find the perfect one but
nothing has felt exactly right yet. I found a
great site though, called My Banner Maker that
lets you make as many banners as you want for
$20 a year.

It’s a lot of fun and the easiest banner making
program that I’ve found. It lets you set the back
ground you want, adjust text into several lines
which you can move horizontally and vertically
and has lots of other features as well. Now if
I could just find a decision making program
to help me make up my mind . . .

Elixir and Windows

I had another lucky yard sale day on Saturday. At one yard
sale I bought seven skeins of new natural fiber yarn for
$2.00 each and three pretty window frames which I plan to
hang on my bare white walls upstairs (my workspace & guest
area). They were $1.00 each! I love them!























My big score though was a 16 ounce bottle of Aveda Elixir.
It was .50 cents. A huge deal because 1) this item has
been discontinued and is no longer available in stores.
(read more about that here)
and 2) these bottles are going for big bucks on eBay. Here’s an
auction where you an buy 2 bottles of elixir for
$84.00. Crazy. I was just happy to have some more.

Japanese Craft Book Shopping

I’m a frequent reader of Vasilisa the Fair. In addition
to the beautiful smocks she recently posted, she
also did some very cool embroidery lately from a
Japanese craft book. (That's her photo below.)










She said she got the book here and I went to
that site only to find it all to be in Finnish
which although difficult is certainly more
accessible than Japanese - but I couldn’t find
the book there. So after a bit of a struggle -
I was able to order the book from Japanese Amazon.
It took a bit of searching but I bought the book
pictured enough as well as another craft book and
paid 5100.00 yen for it which was a bit scary.
(It turned out to be $48.00 for the books an
shipping)

Now I’ve gotten an email in Japanese which
I hope is a confirmation that it was sent.
They have also suggested this book:













In their email they described it as :

ステッチid〓es—お絵描き気分でちくちく刺しゅう。
(Vol.1(2005はる/なつ)) (Heart warming
life series? クラフト・Caf〓 Sister) (大型本)

Easy Do-Gooding

This Eclectic Life has a great project
going for kids with cancer that will
provide them with blankets AND lots of
good vibes and warm wishes. She is
looking for donations of granny squares
(see her site for size specifics). She
is providing afghan blankets for an
entire camp next summer and needs 4766
more squares. I would think she would
need them all by march or so to get them
made into blankets.













I found A Place To Bark awhile back and
recently gave a small donation in memory
of Bonnie who died in May. It’s a quick
and easy procedure to make a donation on
line.

Bernie runs a full-time dog rescue in
Tennessee, taking in dogs that have been
abandoned, abused or police confiscated.
She fosters them, retrains them, and then
finds them a new home. In addition to
financial donations, they always need old
towels, blankets, baby receiving blankets,
toys, collars, leashes, cages, food, bleach,
treats, milk replacement, microscope, slides,
scale, stethoscope, muzzles, pet beds, and
cat litter.

Penny Postcards for Free

If you are a lover of paper or a lover of
vintage items you would probably like the
Penny Postcard site. You can download a
variety of vintage postcard here, both
black and white and color. It’s organized
in a nice simple way and easy to find the
town you are looking for. First they have
a list of states. You click on the state you
are interested in and then they list them out
by county. Here’s one from my general area -
about 90 minutes from Moscow.









And here is one from my home town (though not
my birth town) of Chico, California.

Ebay Identify Theft

I tried to go on My Ebay yesterday and perplexed
when my password didn’t work. I’ve had the same
password for five years but for some reason it
didn’t work. Then later when I checked my email I
found four emails from eBay congratulating me on my
wins: a DVD recorded, A Sony mini-cam and two new
cell phones - none of which I had even viewed, much
less bid on.

Someone had stolen my ebay identity. The first
thing I did was change my Paypal password. I didn’t
want the thief to start accessing that account to
make payments. Then I logged on to eBay help,
eventually got to a live chat with someone who
works in the area of security and got it
straightened out. They removed the wins, sent
emails to the sellers explaining that the bids were
placed my an unauthorized user and helped me to get
control of my account back.

I’m not sure exactly what happened but it might be
along the lines of what happened here.
I feel just like the lady below.

Jewelry Trouble

So I bought this beautiful necklace from
Glitteryblue's Etsy shop and it came
and was even prettier than the photo.













So I went to Etsy to leave positive feedback
and made the mistake of looking at her other
jewelry. She has amazing stuff. There are
four other pieces I want to buy and there
would probably be more except I made myself
stop looking. I think I'll allow myself one
piece of jewelry from her site per month.
Maybe 2 in November 9birthday)

Here's what I have my eye on:

Had a Bad Day

Yesterday I worked from 7am - 10:15 pm. And it was
hectic, crazed, rushed work. Today my body feels
like i ran a marathon or something. I'm so sore
I’m thinking about taking a leftover painiller from
when I had a bad toothache last month.

Days like yesterday really make me question a lot
of things - mainly, how long will it be before I quit
my job?

And thoughts like that make me want to spend more
time sewing so I can earn money in other ways. The
main thing I make for selling are vintage iPod
holders. They are little pouches made out of vintage
barkcloth. I started out with traditional florals but
then added some abstract fabric that a guy could use.
Below are some photos.















They are really nice
little pouches - many
of them I can’t bear
to sell because they
have such beautiful
old buttons. But I
need to work on my
marketing skills.
The making of them is
not the problem - it’s
the business of selling.
photographing - listing - shipping -managing.
Someone needs to create an online class in these areas.

I’m soooo tired. Time to get ready to go to work again,

Artistic at Last!

Look at me ! ! I’m artistic now. Below is
a little abstract I did this weekend.





















I’d like to take all the credit for this amazing work
of art but I have to give SOME of the credit to SF Girl
By the Bay for her link to The Scribbler, who gets MOST
of the credit. The Scribbler is a program that takes
your line drawing and makes it look like an abstract.

Even a Stick figure looks artistic (ok - a stick figure
with triangle dress and boots holding a flower). I call
this one: Am I Blue?













WARNING: This program is incredible addictive!

Too Many Projects

I found some great double knit fabric from
the late 60s / early 70s at a yard sale last
weekend. I thought I'd make a few funky totes
out of it (though I think this fabric is really
yearning to be bell bottoms). Isn't it groovy!?
It's actually a brighter blue than the photo
shows.













But I don't know what I was thinking. I am
in the middle of a number of projects. I've
got my Vintage iPod Holders, about a dozen made
just waiting to have their portrait taken for
my Etsy shop, new vintage fabric waiting to be
made into more VIPs; I'm working on a ripple
blanket and knitting a yellow scarf for my
daughter. I have lots of ephemera collected
over the years waiting to be made into bookmarks
and gift bags (also to sell on Etsy). Plus trying
to read a large pile of books, practice my fiddle,
well the list goes on and on and on. Oh yes - and
my main project - a book I've been working on for
about a year.

I think I'm taking on all these projects in a
futile attempt to distract myself from my 8-5 job.

I guess I need to prioritize.

Buttons and Giveaways

Somewhere in my blogging travels this week,
someone posted about buttons. I love posts
about button scores. Buttons are like colored
paper clips or a big bowl of M & Ms. They
make you happy just to look at them. I have
a few large button cards from salesman sample
books and in one corner of our dining room
i have some posted on the wall. Every time
I look at them I feel good so I thought I'd
share a photo in hopes that others out there
feel the same.











And if the buttons don't make you smile then
this giveaway will. Elizabeth Holcombe is
cleaning out her shelves and giving away a
huge stack of interesting magazines to a lucky
reader. If you find out about it through my
blog and you win them instead of me, all I ask
is that you send me ONE magazine from the stash.
Just one - after you have read it of course.
You can enter here

Aveda Elixir Update

Thought I would pass on the following tip that Cat
left in my comment section re: Aveda Elixir. I
plan on trying it next time I make it to the store.
She said:

"It's crazy that they've discontinued this
product...I've been forced to try to find
something else, and guess what... Try this
out! Neutrogena Triple Moisture Silk Touch
Leave-In Cream (with UV shield). It's great,
maybe better than Elixir which did not have
UV protection, and it smells better than Elixir."

I'll let you know what I think after I try it.

Ain't Too Proud to Brag

So I have this daughter, who like her older
brother, is very musically talented.

I am proud to say/brag that she is talented
in other ways as well.

Here's a portrait of John Lennon she did for
school.













Now if I could just get her to do a
portrait of my favorite Beatle, George . .

Monks and Rum Cake

I buy my printer cartridges from Laser Monks - owned
and operated by the monks of Our Lady of Spring
Bank Cisterian Abbey. LaserMonks.com has a bit of an
advantage over other purveyors of ink. First of all,
they “have a 900 year tradition of community service
and outreach”. 900 YEARS! Secondly, in addition to
keeping the Abbey solvent, proceeds from sales go
to a variety of charities such as Camp Heartland,
Coffee Kids and many others.

So with my last order of printer ink, I also ordered one
of their cakes - That’s right, they sell printer cartridges
AND cake. I got the chocolate butter rum cake. There’s
a photo of their label below. Cute, huh?













Then I tried the cake. Yowsers. These monks must
abstain from all alcohol including tasting the cake batter
to see how much rum is in it. If that rum cake had been
had at the pub I would have asked the bartender to add
more coke. That is one strong rum cake. Good though.

Art for Dog Lovers

The Wurst Gallery has a great exhibit online : The Wurstminster Dog Show . I was surprised and excited to see Glen of Imaal Terriers included. (Nosey Flynn is a Glen). The Glen art was by Todd Hoffman of Portland, Oregon and showed a feisty Glen with a human arm in its mouth and the caption “You sir, have just met a Glen of Imaal”. I like that - tough, but polite. Here is a fragment of the entire print.













While this is one of my favorite pieces in the show, there are LOTS of really cool pieces here, in all kinds of media. The only bad thing about it is that once the original is gone - that’s it. There are no other options. This seems like a huge oversight of marketing. Imagine how many people would have would have bought prints of postcards or totes - all with their favorite dog or a dog they used to have or a dog they want to get someday . . . It would make a great fund raiser for the Gallery and maybe a portion of the proceeds could go to the Humane Society.

Or here. I made a donation to A Place to Bark today in memory of Bonnie. )Bonnie and Fergus are to the right - Bonnie is the golden one and Nosey is below.

B is for Bonnie Girl - My last letter

So this will be my last entry in the
encyclopedia of me. I'm feeling a
little constricted with having to write
about myself exclusively. BUT I think
I am going to use this idea for christmas
presents for my children. The encyclopedias
of Tyler, Reilly and Delaney (respectively).

But today - B is for Bonnie. You can see
a photo of her if you look in the sidebar
at right. Bonnie Girl was our dog for
over 13 years. She passed away this June.
We own her mother Fergus, which means we
had Bonnie from day one. She was a very
sweet dog, quite shy, extremely gentle but
with frequent moods of joy. she had a good
sense of humor. We loved her lots and that
is why B is for Bonnie.

A is for Asturies

A tip of my hat to Bella Dia for the
Encyclopedia of Me Meme, which I begin
today:

A is for Asturias (or Asturies in Spanish)











- Once upon a time I went to Sevilla, Spain
where my friend and I and my friend were
robbed by Gypsy bandits. We made our way
back to his friend’s house in madrid. His
friend welcomed us and said “you poor things,
here is some whiskey to make you feel better”
and then “you poor people, here is some good
music to make you feel better". He then put
on a CD which would greatly impact my future.
It was Asturian music. i changed jobs because
of it (long story) and within 18 months I had
returned to Spain to visit Asturies. It isn’t
what you would expect of Spain. It is very green
and cool and rains a lot. It is a Celtic “country”.
It is one of my favorite places and I hope to go
back there soon.

Internet Spendthrift?

So July is over - time to tally up my internet
spending for July. Not included on the list to
my right were the window screen films I
saw on Not Martha). But adding them
to the other amounts I came up with a total
of $228.53 that I spent online. And I think I
also forgot to list a book I purchased after
reading about it on Posie (about taking
photos of small items). Anyway let’s say
$250 to cover my bases - too much.

I started keeping track to see how much the
internet affects my budget. I shop on eBay
occasionally, but have added Etsy into the
mix and I read a lot of beautiful blogs that
make me want things. Those windowfilms for
example (though I really needed them because
my neighbors driveway is right by my bedroom
window and I have been keeping my shades
closed for a year.) Now my window looks like
this:









I think my daughter being gone for a good
portion of the month added to my spending
habits - just via general boredom. And also,
hating my job makes me feel justified in
buying pretty things for their comfort factor.
“You poor thing with the mean boss, here,
have a pretty bird necklace to make you feel
better.” Still - it’s too much. So for August
I’m going to limit myself to $100.00. Wish me
luck!

Aveda Elixir - Gone for Good

We had a great day shopping in Spokane yesterday.
We don’t do the mall/new clothes scene very often
so it was a treat. Ended up at the Aveda store where
I hoped to replenish my supply of Aveda Elixir. I
purchased my last bottle (the 17 oz one) over a year
and a half ago. I only use a dime-nickel dollop so
it lasts me a long time and helps soften my somewhat
frizzy hair.










But Aveda has bizarrely discontinued this product. It
is a well known and well loved product. Award-winning
even. The clerk there told me that “Aveda thought that
if you have to use a leave-in, in addition to shampoo &
conditioner, then it probably means you are using the wrong
shampoo & conditioning products”. Yeah, that makes
perfect sense. They sacrifice all those profits to help
us find the correct shampoo. I haevn’t found out much
about it on the internet. One person said it was due to
“problems with their source”. And
Avoid or Adore did a helpful test of similar
products but they are all British products.

Now instead of my smooth waves I'll be little
Ms. Frizzy again.