Twin purses

Hi everyone! Yes, it's been rather quiet around here. My mom and step-dad have been in town. We've had a full house pretty much all of July!

Yesterday, my mom and I worked on a sewing project together. Neither of us could even recall when was the last time we did that. I was probably in high school!

Here's a couple of snapshots she took of our work in the basement.

You can see our new dinette table that I'll be using in my craft area. They brought it all the way from Maryland with them. It used to be in the restaurant of family friends, who had a few in storage after expanding the space some years back, and they kindly allowed me to pick one for my very own! You'll see more when I get to the point of actually taking photos around the house... which will probably be after painting... which will probably be this autumn. ;) I'm not quite sure the era, I'm guessing 30s or 40s. It's definitely much older than our 50s dinette table that's our dining table.

My mom's description and photo setup, isn't she cute? The Guinnesses were not to drink, but to hold the purses open as we had to glue the frames on. We used the same outer fabric and different linings, and then swapped linings for our pockets. I know, I know, commence a big "Awwwwww" right now. My mom did most of the sewing, I cut the pieces and did a bit of basting, and we both attached our own purse to our own frame. They really are fabulous and I think it'll be a great purse for summer into autumn. For those of you interested, it's the Gracefully Kelly pattern.

I hope to get back on track with the blog world soon. Our best friends in Chicago are moving out of the country this week (though we'll now have friends to visit in Wales) and I haven't really been excited to document all the goings on in life lately. Though another thing that may keep me a bit more quiet than usual—as you know the Olympics start this Friday. What you don't know: I'm a huge, rabid Olympics fan (though much more winter than summer). I'll be participating in Ravelry's Ravellenic Games 2012, so I'll basically drop all crafty projects for 2 weeks except for a new project I'll be knitting specifically for the games. They will be fair isle legwarmers for autumn, which I think will look darling with some land girl-esque boots and 40s wool skirts (yes, it's going to be 100 out today and I'm already plotting my cooler weather wardrobe!). I'll be using a chart from a fair isle sweater pattern, with Shetland wool, and making up the legwarmer pattern on the fly. Hopefully I'll be able to complete them during the Olympics. In 2010 I was able to complete a sweater (albeit worsted weight) and fingerless gloves, so I set the bar rather high for myself! I'll definitely check in with at least one or two progress reports during the games. Let me know if you're participating, too!

I hope you are all doing well and enjoying yourselves! ♥

Back to life

I'm back! There aren't enough exclamation points in the world to express how glad I am to have my life back after two weeks of working non-stop. But I made it through somehow, and now I have a lot of catching up to do!

Because I didn't get a chance to properly do so before I was thrust into crazy work zone, let me first say a heartfelt thank you to you all for the wonderfully kind comments on my wedding photo post. I'm so happy I was able to share that with you. Of course I don't know very many of you in person, but I do feel like my 'readers' (seems a cold term, doesn't it?) are part of my online family. :)

Anyway, since I did nothing but work for two weeks I really have little to share! I still have to do an outfit post from prior to my crazy two weeks of work, but instead here's an outfit post from this weekend. We packed a lot into yesterday and today since I was able to do nothing for so long. Today's outing involved a lovely brunch at our friend's house complete with champagne with a smidge of St. Germain,  savory casseroles, biscuits and cobbler. Oh my, was it ever yummy! So I'm featuring the outfit I wore for today's adventures.

In the last couple of weeks I received two parcels in the mail that I didn't even get a chance to really open until this weekend. (Isn't that crazy? How can you be too busy to open goodies from the mail?!) One was a vintage sundress all the way from Latvia with a 'folkloric' feel. The other was an order from beltmaker Cassie Stephens, whose Etsy shop I've always drooled over. I tend to be one of those people who hem and haw over something for so long that it takes me forever to make a decision. I knew I wanted one of her belts but could never seem to decide on what buckle or what fabric. I finally decided on two, and boy am I ever pleased! Not only was she a sweatheart to work with, the belts were packaged wonderfully, and they are beautiful.  I just love, love, love them to bits!

So of course, my outfit today featured my two new purchases.

The dress features contrasting blue bias trim and two large pockets. I swapped out the self belt for one of my new belts. I have a difficult time pairing prints together, so I'm trying to learn to be a bit more daring. I think it worked!

I also tried another thing that was a change from my norm. I am usually a red nail polish girl, but I know women in the 40s did venture out into other colors, so I thought I'd try a periwinkle blue. It was really fun to do a half moon manicure this way! I may have to try this out with some other colors.

I particularly loved how it tied in with the belt!

I've been really into yellow lately, so I threw a bit of that in with my Bakelite bangles and Sven clogs. I definitely need more yellow accessories.

I carried a vintage sadle bag style purse that fits a lot more than the handbags I usually prefer. But it even fits my new DSLR camera, so it's gotten a lot of use this summer.

It's too hot and humid here to even think about setting my hair and wearing it down (I admit, I can't stand having hair on my neck when it's hot out!), so I twisted the front up in a bit of a pompadour at one side and wore a bun. The navy flower earrings I made myself.

All in all it was a fun day, in a fun outfit. I went outside my usual style boundaries a wee bit and feel pretty good about it!

Look out soon for a couple of giveaways. I was planning one already, and another awhile later once I hit 300 followers, but it seems I reached 300 while I was off working. (Wow!) So keep your eyes peeled for some fun things, soon!

The honeymoon

Thanks everyone so much for all the kind comments on our wedding! I admit, I'm still catching up with life. I promise I'll have wedding photos to show soon, but I'm waiting until we get our photos back and then I'll share all of our stories as well. In the meantime, how about I work backwards and show you our honeymoon photos?

The wedding was Friday, the party was Saturday and we spent Sunday and Monday nights on a mini honeymoon in Galena, Illinois. Galena is a very quaint town in a gorgeous part of Illinois, about 3 hours from Chicago in the far northwest corner of the state, not that far from the Mississippi River. We weren't initially going to go anywhere after the wedding hooplah, as we're planning to take a trip to either Scotland or Paris next year for our 10 year anniversary and thought we're wrap it all up into one trip. However we decided to take a break for a couple of days and boy, we needed it.

We stayed in a fantastic little cabin on a property that had 5 rental cabins from the 1800s that had been updated on the inside with modern comforts. Both days we had the place to ourselves! It was absolutely perfect inside. Living space downstairs with a bedroom area and kitchen/living room, with a half loft upstairs where the bathroom and two person whirlpool tub were.

We felt at home right away...

I decorated our coffee table with the boutonnière and corsage from our wedding...

Did I say we had the place to ourselves? Well I was partially right. We had no human neighbors, that is. The property was right next to a large sprawling farm with a small herd of cows, who came so close to the fence at night we could practically touch them!

It was a beautiful view from our windows...

And the outside of the cabin was as inviting as the inside...

When we first arrived at the cabin, we noticed a curious addition to the decor: many many wine corks and beer bottle caps tucked away in odd little places in cracks in the wall, the ceiling, you name it. Obviously years of guests had added their own little touch, and clearly it wasn't discouraged. So the first night we saved two caps...

And the next night, Mel added them to the wall above the fireplace, just under a large saw hung on the wall. (You can see several corks tucked into the teeth of the saw.)

Monday morning was met with gentle showers, so we sat on the porch having tea and enjoying the rain...

This is a cute photo of Pia, but even better, you can see my fantastic seersucker pajamas that I got at the Modern Vintage Chicago show.

This was the view from our front porch of two of the other cabins...

We took some photos around the property in the morning...

Once the rain stopped we headed into town. The cabins were perfectly located just a few minutes from the main part of town and a couple of minutes from the grocery store (there was a microwave and no stove, and we ate very well from the deli), but somehow it felt like it was in the middle of nowhere. Just ideal.

There was lots of interesting old homes...

We particularly liked this fire station, built in 1874, which was obviously moved into the building on the right when it was built in 1940. I appreciated how they tried to keep with the original feel of the old building as much as possible.

After lunch and a stroll around town we headed towards an antique mall we'd seen on our way into town. Some of my favorite places to stop in small towns are antique malls in warehouse type buildings. Usually it's a metal building, kind of reminiscent of a manufactured home, with a big sign out front that says "Antique Mall". Those two are usually a winning combination. And when you're lucky, the sign is posted on a cool vintage pickup truck like this.

The place was awesome. Three trips back to the front counter to hand over piles of goods awesome. Crazy cheap awesome. Freaking awesome.

I can't even recall all of the great finds we came home with, but here's a sampling. Several hankies in great condition for $1 or less a piece.

Isn't the embroidery on this one lovely? So delicate.

A great tooled leather purse in very nice condition for $18...

I picked it up to add to my pile and then saw its neighbor purse. Can you believe this??

Oh yes. That's a diagonal lucite handle, metal clasp, raffia on the sides and Spanish dancers in relief on top! For $25. I think my jaw dropped. I didn't even hesitate.

I also got a couple of knitting booklets, and three craft magazines. Two issues of Needlecraft from 1931 and 1924 and one issue of Home Arts from 1938, for $3 each.

Neat ads inside the 1938 Home Arts...

I absolutely love the mailing addresses, fantasizing about the owners, Miss Myrtle Fischer of Minnesota and Mrs. Helmuth Suckow of Iowa.

But the best find I'll save for the end of the post. In the meantime, after our antique mall high we stopped at a small cabin by the Stillman Inn just on the edge of town. I can't remember the name of it, but it was apparently inhabited up until the 1970s by a family of 6.

And now to the pièce de résistance from the antique mall, appropriately displayed on the handcrafted bed at our cabin. A vintage double wedding ring quilt!

Isn't it just gorgeous? I still can't believe it's ours. What could be more perfect than a wedding gift to ourselves of a traditional wedding present, a quilt? It's a bit of a mystery to us what era it's from, but from my research and conversations with my talented quilter friend Elisa, we think it's probably from the 40s or possibly 50s. The double wedding ring quilt pattern was very popular in the 30s and 40s, but I don't feel the fabric patterns seem quite right for the 30s. No matter what though, it's our wounderful gift to ourselves to remind us of our perfect little honeymoon retreat.

The trip was just so perfectly peaceful and relaxing. I'm hoping some day we go back there to stay in "our" little cabin again. It would make a great anniversary trip, don't you think?