Seeing in Color: Purple

Purple has never been my favorite color, although I've always liked deep, dark purple, like eggplant purple. But purple is a color that's grown on me, especially lavender. Andrew bought these flowers above at the farmer's market last weekend, and they've opened my eyes to more purple around me, like these pretty images below on pinterest. 

Images found here: shutters, bedroom, ribbons, doorknob. 

What a Doll!

I've been meaning to make Lois a doll, for about, oh, 3 years now so I'm always noticing cute dolls for ideas. Some dolls I especially love are Alicia Paulson's dolls, Jess Brown's dolls, and Emily Martin's dolls. I also like the fairly simple dolls in the Martha Stewart craft book (and online here). I was back to thinking about dolls recently, so I thought I'd take a peek at Emily Martin's dolls again. I remembered she made them on the Martha Stewart show, so I wanted to re-watch the video. But once I went to her blog, I saw these two ADORABLE dress up dolls, which I had not seen before.

For Little Feet

A while back I bought some cute little baby shoes on etsy. Ever since, I've thought about trying to make something similar. A friend of mine is having a baby soon so I thought it would be a good opportunity to give the wee shoes a whirl. I found a pattern in one of my sewing books, but those shoes had a strap with a snap fastener, and I wanted mine to be slip-ons. After searching around on the internet a bit, I found this video tutorial. I printed the pattern and got to stitching. These were sooo easy to make.

Dollhouse Makeover

My mom's had this dollhouse in her garage, for I dunno, a few years maybe? Maybe just a year or so. She bought it for $10 at a yard sale. The previous tenants were mice. We know because it was filled with plenty of mice poop when she bought it (gross, I know!), but my mom can't resist a bargain and she could see its potential.

Tea Party on Columbia Road

Last Saturday I went to Jessie and Buddug's summer tea party at their shop on Columbia Road. It was great to say hello to them again, and I got to show Jessie my embroidered Amsterdam in person, which was nice since we could only get so far in class. The shop looks wonderful, and as usual, is filled with beautiful and inspiring creations by Jessie and Buddug, including a great dollhouse. Jessie's dad custom built the dollhouse, and Jessie and Buddug have filled it with handmade miniatures. It's beautifully displayed in the window.

Amsterdam Stroll

I finally finished my little embroidered Amsterdam that I started in Jessie Chorley's embroidery class. And here it is in the photos below! I loved Amsterdam so much, that at the class I decided it would be my theme, and I used canal houses as my first bit of inspiration, specifically the roofline of the houses, which is what makes them look so interesting as you're walking along the canals. I made a short video just so you could see the entire piece and to see the scale against my hand. It is very small but still hard to capture the entire piece well in one image.

Georgia Junkin'

One thing I wanted to do on my trip back home was go junkin' with my mom in the sticks. We thought about driving to Opelika, AL since my mom knows of some junk stops along the way and some in Opelika, but she had also heard that Monroe, GA was a great place for junkin'. A quick Google search led to Sassytrash, a cute blog where we saw some pictures of the great antique malls in Monroe. Monroe isn't exactly the sticks, but the photos were all we needed to see to make a decision. And off to Monroe we went! Our first stop was The Cotton Depot.

Historic Roswell Antique Mall

Last weekend my mom and I went to Roswell, GA, which is the town I grew up in. I wanted to go back and see our old house and just see how things looked. Roswell is quite a ways north of where my mom currently lives, so we haven't been back in a long time. It was nice to see the old house but a little strange too. It wasn't the emotional experience I was expecting, which was a good thing because we had some fun things planned for afterwards like hitting the antique mall. The Historic Roswell Antique Mall is right around the corner from our old house, and it was just as fun to browse around as the old days.