Pop Bottles + Grocery Store Flowers

So, I was prepared to get up bright + early this morning and write a Virtual Coffee post while drinking my coffee on a cozy quilt on the couch....
but then I didn't.
First, I didn't get up on time and truthfully, just don't have a whole lot of pleasant things to chat about so I nixxed the whole bitchy morning
coffee thing, you're very welcome.

So... no coffee(well, coffee--just no coffee talk) but grocery store flowers + vintage pop bottles instead.
YES, that I can do.
I can totally do that!

I think that was a lot more pleasant than be grumbling and griping over Coffee this morning...
Don't you?

I can't get enough of vintage pop bottles... I am always on the look out for them when I am antiquing and thrifting... cheap though.
You could spend a lot of money on them and it's hard to find them cheap but I usually can, I do love finding ones from Illinois or especially
the ones that were bottled in my home town.
These make my dining room a whole lot happier.

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Happy Tuesday!

Have a good one.

{My Vintage Valentine}

Happy Monday!
Well, I have been crafting away over here on this cold Monday afternoon and I thought I would show you what I have been working on. I have quite a little collection of vintage Valentine's because I buy them every time I see them,  I just can't seem to pass them up. The problem is, I might have a few too many so I'm having a bit of a hard time coming up with different ways to display them.

I wish I would have thought about this a little earlier because it would have been nice to be able to display this all month long, not just for a week. But that's okay. I think it turned out super cute.
I scour antique stores and flea markets for these vintage valentine's but you can also find a lot of cool reproductions, like these here. I do love these but the reason I love the real vintage ones is because they have a past. There are notes and inscriptions and dates on them. Some are written in cursive...or written crookedly and even mis-spelled. Oh, how I love that. And I wonder who wrote them, who they were writing them to and where they are now. I would love to know the story behind some of them.

But anyway, you can only hang up just so many of these on little clothes lines around the house, so I needed something else to do with some of them. So I gathered up some of my Valentine's, a wreath and some yarn. I wrapped the yarn around the wreath, hot glued lace on one side and stuck some Valentine's on the bottom using double-sided tape. I tried to be careful not to put the tape over any of the writing. I want to add some kind of flowers on the side still but just haven't gotten around to that yet.  Total cost for wreath = $5 and total time was probably less than an hour but hard to say because I got interrupted 1.5 million times. At least. The sun isn't out much today and my pictures are looking a little rough, sorry about that. Oh, I can't wait for the sun to be back on a regular basis!

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What an easy, quick and cheap little project. Now that's what I'm talking about.

Hope everyone's week is off to a good start, see you here tomorrow for Virtual Coffee!

Adore::

Is this not the cutest little salt & pepper set you've ever seen? Don't worry, I'm not one of those people that has 500 sets all over my house, only a few, but I just love these. Blue is my favorite color, all shades of blue and these remind me of the birds in Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs...I love that movie and I adore birds, too. One day, when I open my little coffee/donut shop, I am going to have a set of these on every table filled with cinnamon, nutmeg, etc. to sprinkle on top of your yummy coffee drink. Wouldn't you come for that reason alone? 

I mean, really.....How could you not?

Obsessed::

Since today is the first day of March and it is still gloomy and completely un-Spring like here,  I went to get out a table cloth to brighten up my kitchen table and noticed that I might possibly be obsessed with buying table cloths. These aren't all of them but here are a few of my favorites:

Aren't they cute?  

The second one belonged to my grandma and is made for a card table, I just recently got this one and nowI wish I had a table to fit it. After I decide what color our kitchen is going to be I hope to find a vintage table cloth or some type of linens to make kitchen curtains out of. 

So, I guess if I can't have Spring weather or sunshine at least my table cloths brighten up the place a little.

Happy Monday!

Be My {Vintage} Valentine

Over the weekend I started getting out my Valentine decorations, I thought it would help brighten up the house and our moods since all we have seen lately is clouds, rain and no sign at all of the sun.
 I don't have a lot of Valentine decorations but I do have a collection of Vintage Valentine's that I absolutely adore. I think Eric first started buying them for me when we were just dating, there used to be a little shop close to his work where he could always find them. So a collection (obsession) began.  Since then I am always on the look-out for them at antique stores and thrift shops, hoping to find just a few more to add to my collection. I love the cheesiness of them, the illustrations and the little sayings. I have found some pretty cool reproduction Valentine's for the kids the last couple of years but my favorites are still the vintage ones from many years ago. I love that someone, probably little kids in school a long time ago, gave these to someone for Valentine's Day. The little messages and signatures written on the back in pencil makes me wonder about the story and the people behind them.

 

A couple months ago while antiquing with my sister we each bought a big bag of vintage Christmas cards for just a few dollars. There are a bunch of cards in these bags and there are some really cute ones and I can't wait to get started on some little projects with them this week. I'm thinking...framing some, a wreath of cards, gift tags and maybe a banner.....we'll see. The coolest thing about these cards is that as I was looking through them yesterday and reading them all for the first time I came across some familiar names. Three of the cards were signed by my grandpa's brother and his wife and family....from many, many years ago when they had children living at home. Isn't that crazy? I thought it was the coolest thing to open up those cards, to see those names and think about their lives back then so long ago. And of course it brought back many memories of my grandpa and of his brother who was also his next-door-neighbor and of my childhood and spending so much time down there and hearing old stories from my grandpa about life when he was younger.

Lots of good memories.

.......All just from opening up an old Christmas card.

Junk Jewelry

I love, love, love jewelry, all kinds of jewelry, but nothing real fancy. I am a collector of what
I call  "Junk Jewelry" ...ummm......that means cheap jewelry. Cheap and cute. Sure, I love it that I have some special jewelry that has been passed down to me that I will then pass down to Charlotte one day,  but the junk jewelry is really my favorite. I love all types of jewelry; original, funky, simple, cute, bold. colorful, vintage, costume, antique--you name it. And I don't care where it comes from--Target, Kohl's, Rummage Sales, Claire's, Big Department Stores, little, tiny shops, antique stores.....I will look anywhere.  And unlike clothes, jewelry always fits and makes me feel good, no leaving the store in a depression because I couldn't find any jewelry in my size. Oh, and if it's a really good bargain? All the better. No diamonds or pearls for me, I'll just have my junk jewelry!