nice smells

Don't you love yummy smelling soaps? I don't mean perfumy stinky soaps like you often find at at some chain stores. I mean rich earthy smelling soaps made from natural oils. But really, how often can you go through those soaps? It takes forever and I actually don't even use soap as much as shower gel, so then I have an abundance of soaps (especially if you are also gifted with lots during the holidays).

My favorite thing to do with them is distribute them in drawers and linen closets and between sweaters and all over. The smell seems to last even longer than sachets and you get to keep the soaps in their lovely packaging.

There's something about holding a bar of soap in nice packaging. It's smells nice, looks pretty and feels good in the hand - like a rock covered in fabric. Is this just me? I'm kind of weird that way.

I love opening up my linen closet and having the most wonderful scent come out.

These small Sweet Petula soaps are some of my favorite to use for this purpose. I just love the way they look, too.

Do you have any tips for making the closet and things smell nice? I would love to hear them. I am in serious cleaning/reorganizing mode these days. Nice smells make clean closets even nicer.

Happy February!

wintering

I have come to really like winter and look forward now to the quiet months of January and February. I always have big plans for what I will do with those months. Somehow, with the holidays over and it being winter it seems I have more time to do these things. However, I'm still working full time, so I'm not sure how much "extra" time I really have.

I love this collage by catwalk

So far this month I have been able to do some decluttering and reorganizing, but it has not been nearly as much as I need or want. Meanwhile, here it is Saturday and I'm doing a blog post. I'm hopeless!

I've been wanting to do a zine about winter for some time and what I like about it. Every year I do some writing, but I have yet to get it out. I need to declutter my to-do list!

Laura from the Welcome to Bend zine just made a zine about winter and her favorite things about it. It was a lovely read this morning over my Earl Grey tea. You can find it here.

Hope you are enjoying the winter. There's lots of great things about it. Someday I'll tell you more about about that. <3

Christmas in the Old West

Christmas is over and New Years has come and gone and I still have not taken down the Christmas decorations or even put away some of my gifts.

I am longing for newness, organization and redoing almost everything, but almost all I seem to be able to do is think about it. I've done a bit of cleaning out, but more of playing with my new wii (!), keeping warm by being under blankets while watching Netflix and catching up with friends - all of these include lots of tea drinking.


My holidays were great. My niece came from Brooklyn and my sister from Southern California. We have a small family and no little kids. About 15 years ago we started a tradition of having a theme for Christmas. We don't always do it for different reasons - but we mostly do.

Some of our favorites were Medieval Christmas, Dutch Christmas, Hungarian Christmas, 1960's Christmas and and last year's 1930's Christmas. We use the theme to determine the menu, activities and music. If it's a time travel Christmas we try and dress up.

This year we did Old West Christmas. This was not nearly as glamorous as last years!


My mother decorated one of the trees all in gold for the gold rush and the other tree in fancy Victorian style ornaments (like you would see in a fancy hotel at the time). We all dressed western - mostly cowboy or prairie style. We had amazing food including pan friend trout, buffalo stew and turkey (I heard the latter two were good. I myself am a pescatarian).

The dog does not eat at the table, but like those folks at the Academy Awards, she fills in the empty seats when someone gets up. She does, however, enjoy getting in costume - just like the rest of us.

Our Christmas themes are lots of fun. We all seem to share the love of a theme, which makes me very happy. It's always neat to see what each other comes up with. We don't have a theme in mind for next year, so let me know if you have any suggestions.

I hope you are enjoying the new year so far. Happy 2011!

it's almost christmas!

The time is closer and hopefully you're ready. I am finishing up some things while The Muppets Christmas Carol keeps me feeling festive and reminds me it's Christmas Eve. All the sudden these last few days it hasn't felt like Christmas to me for some reason.

Are you in need of little boxes for baked goods or small gifts? You can print out the cutest cuckoo clock boxes from My Paper Crane.

If you are finding yourself without gifts and running out of time. Here is a free printable you can use to create some really impressive coupon books for folks, brought to you by the Just Something I Made Blog. She does lots of printables, so check out the blog for more options.

Merry Christmas Everyone! I hope you have a especially nice time this year.

christmas forest

Today has been all about Christmas and I still got stuff to do. Christmas came way too fast this year and I have taken to doing things like printing out new Christmas tags instead of trying to go through my packed closets and find the many, many I already have. Yeah, it's been like that.

Last Sunday I did finally get to the decorating. My nephew came by and kept me company while I untangled Christmas lights and set up the Christmas Forest display. I'm pretty happy with this years new additions (the bright green and turquoise tree - bought to go with the new snowman - and the small orange and pink tree). There are little white lights under the "snow".

The snowman and small trees were purchased from MagpieEthel who I wrote about earlier this month. I just love this little guy and I love the yellow and green colors on him.

The Christmas tree I put up is the same artificial one I have had for the last ten years. It's narrow and small and it works for my small space. But it's getting old and every year I say it's the last year for it, but then the next Christmas comes and I pull it out again.

This cuckoo clock is my newest ornament. I got it last year at that all Christmas store in Lincoln City. I 'm pretty fond of it.

Below is one of the oldest ornaments I have. When I was a kid my mother got a queen ornament (with a hot pink long fluffy skirt) and 2 princess ornaments. Every year my sister and I would put on "our" princesses. It's a very sweet memory. This princess here is about 40 years old! She looks pretty good.

Hope you all are having a nice time getting ready for Christmas. Here it comes!

christmas tag printables

Christmas is a week away! I can hardly believe it. I haven't started wrapping presents and don't even have everything yet. Once again, I resolve to have all my Christmas gifts by September next year. We'll see how that goes.

I think my favorite thing about wrapping presents is the tags. I sort of have a thing about Christmas tags. It's no wonder considering my old paper and ephemera obsession. Oddly, I didn't even think of it as a collection until I saw this collector's book and wow. I sure would love to look through that.

So, as you can imagine, I'm not really in need of Christmas tags, but these new and vintage printable tags make me wish I was.

Here are some really cute printable tags from the illustration Orange You Lucky blog.

From the blog That's Happy, some pretty little birds that could be tags or ornaments.

Creature Comforts blog has a download from some printable tags in 3 color schemes.


And here's some vintage ones on flickr that you could print up.

inspiring christmas journals

If you are interested in starting a Christmas Journal I recently came across some great reconstructed blank books that would be great to use.

Attic Journals is a Portland company and they have some good options. Here are a few I found.
You can do a search on their site for Christmas, Holiday or Santa and you'll get a number of options. If you are in Portland, you can also go visit them at Crafty Wonderland this weekend. I am betting they will have even more journals.

There are some journals on here also made from old craft books. A good idea for a the crafty person on your list.

restocked

I've been really slacking on the zine printing lately. And by lately, I mean all of 2010. As of right now I finally have all three Current Residents back in stock, including issue 3 which I have been out of for quite a while. Yay!

I really like doing Current Resident. I think working on a new one would be a good project for this winter, don't you think?

Next up on the list is to get some old Figure 8 issues reprinted. Here's hoping it won't take as long.

a reinvintaged christmas

Spent most of the weekend treating myself as if I was sicker than I was hoping that that would make my cold not get much worse. It seems ot have worked. I am sick, but not that sick.

Besides my work holiday party Sunday night, the only other thing that got me out of the house was a craft show at a local elementary school. There were a good amount of vendors, but I have to say that it takes a lot to impress me when it comes to craft shows. Maybe that has something to do with being on Etsy everyday. I either like really unique things or classic old school type crafts. For example I bought a needlepoint Santa ornament from a senior citizen. Love that stuff.

Besides the always enjoyable crafts of Jenn and Jenny of Chet and Dot, Robot Candy and Plants and Animals, the other vendor that made me wish that someone would force me to spend all my money on myself was MagpieEthel.

Magpie Ethel takes old vintage findings, pieces of other decorative vintage items and rearranges them, fixes them up and adds on a bit and ends up a very fresh vintage item. Everything was so sweet. I got a snowman and a few other items. I love her generous use of pipe cleaners.

I'm looking forward to adding the new items to the Christmas display. I wonder when I will actually get in the mood to set it up. Not that much time left now. I really wish there was a month between November and December. Dear Santa...

sickly

I'm feeling a bit under the weather today. Think I've caught that cold that's going around. So, just a quick pop in to tell you about my new favorite food item. Don't you love it when you find some perfect meal that is easy, healthy and you want to eat everyday? For me, in the summer it is always a salad with salmon and fruit and whatever else there is. But, in winter I want warm veggies.

The other day when shopping at Trader Joe's, I saw this guy reach out for this package near me and grab a few. So, of course, I wondered what it was. It was Tuna in Green Curry Sauce. Since I am a pescatarian and pretty much only eat Tuna and Salmon, I was of course interested. I got past the fact that it isn't refrigerated - which always kind of makes me wonder - and got a package.

I went back the other night and got 6 packages. This stuff is awesome and so easy to use. I saute up some onions and other veggies like mushrooms, red peppers, whatever I have and then add on lots of greens like chard, spinach or kale and then just put this on top and saute all together. It is so very good. I am making some right now for lunch.

The red curry is good, too.

Also, on my Trader Joe's hit list right now is their Black Vanilla and Cinnamon tea. It is delish. I recommend it.

So, I'm off to have some of both of these and watch a Christmas movie. Hope you all are having a good weekend.