Show and Tell

I keep taking images for the blog and yet have not had the time to make the kind of post I have wanted to, so today I am sharing them all with you with little text. Here are some of the things I have been up to.

Strawberries! I am addicted to them. Look at this beautiful basket I got at Zupans for only 2.99. It is perfection. The Oregon strawberries are not quite here yet, although there is one guy selling them at the farmers market. Oregon strawberries are small and so so sweet. These here are the big California strawberries. I welcome them all.


I have been eating the strawberries every day for lunch and then at night I put them on my salad. This is heaven. Last year I got really into putting nectarines on my salads and that is good, too. The ultimate for me is smoked salmon, spring salad mix and strawberries. Sometimes I add dried cranberries, pecans or goat cheese. Mostly I just eat salad and strawberries. The best dressing I have found for the pairing of fruit and salad is Annie's Roasted Garlic Vinaigrette. So good!

This meal above was made after I got back from the Thursday night farmers market. I can't get there until late and it isn't quite full of vendors yet, but it is nice to have it back.


The other day we went for a Saturday afternoon drive. Oregon is so beautiful.



I love the bright green of the trees these days.



And the small details and shadows from the house across from me.


I am having a hard time getting motivated to clean up my garden and actually plant stuff, as this embarrassing picture proves.


I keep taking pictures of beautiful flowers in the park when I only have my phone, so they are not as impressive as they should be.

A few weeks ago I sold some stuff at the Twilight Rummage sale. Also a phone pic.


Today I had an iced tea party for two. I forgot to take a picture until it was over.


I hope you are all having a nice May. Go eat some strawberries.

make your own planner cover

Just a little pop in here to point you in the direction of this really neat project from Just Something I Made blog. It was from last week, so I am a bit late. Maybe you saw it?

She took a vintage book and a day planner and a pretty decorated file folder and made this. So nice!

Detailed directions here.

inspired

Last Thursday I got home from work and was waiting for a postcard club friend to come by and pick up some items I had photographed for the auction that was happening that next night. Friday night was the annual auction and dinner for the postcard club I am a member of, The Webfooters.

I love the Webfooters. They're a great bunch of people I am getting to know and I really like spending time with older people. At 45, I am one of the youngest ones there!

Saturday and Sunday was the annual Webfooters Sale so it was a full weekend of postcard and vintage ephemera madness. Both events were fun. I got some great stuff. I had never been to an auction before, but more about that later.

The point of this is last Thursday. It was a pleasant sunny evening and I opened the windows to let the air come in. I watched the tulips sway in the breeze and I opened my mail in the quietness of the house. In one package was a book that I had ordered.

The book was Postcards to Box 464 by Amanda Laughtland. It was the most absolute perfect time for me to receive that package and I sat in the stillness and read the book cover to cover.

Amanda, a poet and teacher, was given a box of postcards, all of which had been sent to a couple that she was very close to growing up. She took the different postcards and created poems out of them. She moved words around, changed phrasing, maybe added in some things, but all the while she tried to keep true to the postcard while also perhaps infusing it with another deeper meaning.

The result is a wonderful selection of poetry and history. The love she felt for these people who owned box 464 comes through in some way as well. And so does the love of their friends who sent postcards from all over.


October 20, 1954

At Fisherman's Wharf, we felt
like fish ourselves, lured in
by the catch of the day. I love
these restaurants for their names-

Alioto's, The Grotto, Vista Del Mar.
They sound as close to Europe
as we'll get. Had three days here
but leaving tomorrow for Reno.

Maybe I'll have some luck.

Amanda makes it look easy. I am tempted to try my hand at this kind of found poetry, but I think that it is probably much harder to do it and to do it well. The results of Postcards to Box 464 is a dreamy, friendly collection of poems that somehow manages to be carefree and deep at the same time.

It was a very pleasant hour and I am so glad I got to read this wonderful book in that way.

It is put out by a small press. If you are interested it would be such a nice thing to support small presses. You can find how to order here. Amanda's website can be found here.

best laid plans..

I had a nasty computer virus for the last couple of weeks and have not been able to spend more than a couple of minutes on the computer. I think it is over now (knock wood) and am glad because there were blog posts I wanted to get too...now if I can just remember what they were.

While I am trying to figure that out I thought I would pop in to say hello and let you know of some neat vintage sewing patterns I put in my Etsy shop today. I am trying to help my mom make some extra money, so I volunteered to list them. I have a lot more from the late 80s and 90s's that I may list later if they don't sell when I take them to the Twilight Rummage Sale next week (Portlanders, that is on 50th and Hawthorne at the Eagles Lodge from 4-8 on Saturday).

Anyway, take a look a these if you are interested. Some of them were bought for me in 1965! Almost all seem unused.

Etsy Buy Handmade thecedarchest

april is a great month for....

Another installment from my How to do Anything Better Book. Some good ideas here. Let's all go to a drive-in movie!

free moo cards!

Moo is working with Etsy to give away free business cards. Sure, the cards have a promo at the bottom that offers a discount for people on Moo cards, but since I totally like Moo and Etsy I have no problem with it. Plus, did I mention they're free!

Moo lets you use images from your Etsy shop, Facebook or Flickr account. I used my flickr account and it looks like I got about 2 of each, which means I must have used about 25 images. It was pretty fun to be able to use some of my vintage images, images of zines and other stuff, too. I got the recycled paper with a matte finish. You have a couple choices on paper.

I think there was a charge for shipping, but if I recall it was about 5 bucks. Still a totally great deal. Here is a pic of some of mine. Get some yerself! Offer expires April 30th.

weekend cooking

I have been wanting to actually use my cookbooks lately. I tend to make the same things or just make up stuff. I think I was inspired by this post on the Not Martha Blog. She and a group of friends have a cookbook club and the feast they had from the book they chose this time not only made me want to use my cookbooks, but also encouraged me to buy yet another cookbook. So, I thought I better start using all these recipes I have been collecting! Isn't a cookbook club a great idea? I loved that post and all the food looked so good!

Lat weekend I was invited to a brunch potluck. I decided to make the Cheddar and Black Pepper Biscuits I saw on the blog Joy the Baker a couple months ago. I made them smaller than regular biscuits since I knew there would be lots of food and people may not want a large biscuit.

They were really good, more like scones I thought. With butter, they were the best, but also good plain, too.


Last night I made something that was called Farmers Market Spinach Cannelloni from the cookbook Foods to Live By published by the people behind Earthbound Farms (they have lots of recipes on the website, but not this one). It had lots of steps, but was still pretty easy. I easily get intimidated by recipes, so if I did it you can bet it wasn't too complicated.

The recipe didn't call for cannelloni shells, but just rolled up lasagna noodles. It was quite tasty and something you can easily make in advance or freeze for later.



It was fun to put together while the mister and I watched a old movie. I am excited to make some more new things. Do you use your cookbooks or just collect them. They are entrancing aren't they?

welcome spring

When was a bout 6 or so, a man who worked with my father making educational films gave me two books, A Child's Garden of Verses and A Child's Book of Poems. Both were illustrated by Gyo Fujikawa.

These books had a big impact on me, although I didn't notice it till many years later. The illustrations were so beautiful. Many of the poems dealt with seasonal things. There were lots of winter poems about the joys of skating and snow and cold and coming in from the cold. The images with them were so enchanting and charming.

But, they confused me a bit and made it clear to me that I was missing out on a lot of neat stuff living in Southern California. January didn't mean snowmen to me. I never needed to bundle up to do anything. And except for a few vacations, I wore my scarves and gloves mainly to go to the ice skating parties at the indoor rinks.

I also noted that there was supposed to be lots of rain in April, winds in March and other people had lots of leaves to rake up and burn in fall. The whole seasons thing captivated me and that has never really gone away.

I think these illustrations were the first thing that really affected my desire to move North and have more weather. I love that in Portland we have true seasons without it getting too out of control.



Gyo Fujikawa was a American born Japanese woman. She was born in Berkeley, California and she did some work for Disney in the early years. She was one of the first illustrators to get royalties from books instead of just a flat fee.

She was interned with her family during World War II where she continued to do advertising layouts. She never married or had children. She died at 90 in 1998.

A lot of the prettiest pages in the books I have are on both pages. I scanned these two to share with you in honor of yesterday being the first day of spring. Click through to the flickr page to see the bigger size.

a great find on the coast

While I was at the coast a couple weeks ago I got to visit a place recommended by my beach house roomies, a recycle center called Cart'm.

Cart'm is like Scrap in Portland, if you are familiar with it. It is a place to recycle all kinds of things and they have a resale store with some great stuff in it.


Outside is a little garden with neat outdoor art made from recycled products. It was fun to see all the neat stuff they had come up with.

A substantial stash of a vintage magazine were found in the store. The magazine is called Ideals. It is a strange magazine that was in print for 50 years. It was filled with all kinds of illustration art, mostly poetry and no ads. It was Christian and there are lots of Christian images and poems, but for example, the Easter issues still had lots of easter Bunny stuff, too. It used lots of reader contributions.


The illustrations are amazing. The colors are great, so saturated and rich and the styles are great, they remind me a lot of stuff I saw as a kid. They are awesome for collage. It is hard to cut into them, but I will, when I finally get the focus and space to do those collages I keep talking about.

Anyway, Ideals Magazine seem to be pretty available on Ebay. The issues came out with themes. I got a bunch of Christmas ones that are great. Here are some images from the Easter ones.

More images on my flickr account.

I also got these awesome slide storage cases while I was there. I love the style of these. The compartments flip out to access the slides. I don't know if I ill actually use these for slides, but I might. I certainly have inherited enough of them.



So, yeah, check out Ideals magazines if you come across them and Cart'm when you are near Manzanita, Oregon. Good stuff.

march is a great month for...

March is already underway and I have not posted the list for this month yet. If you are wondering what this is you can see this entry. All so far can be found here.

I never knew March 17th was pea planting day! I hope your March is nice. Maybe you can fit in some grasshopper pie.