Glass Items Hard To Let Go Of on Ebay

Pink depression glass cup, saucer, candy dish

Garfield coffee mugs

I have a hard time selling some of my collectibles on Ebay as I have become attached to a lot of things. For instance, although I've never used them, I have a pair of brightly colored glass mugs from 1978 that are Garfield cartoons. So cute!  Then, over time I've accumulated some depression glass items, such as this delicious lacy pink teacup with a serrated saucer and a two-partition pink candy or serving dish. There's quite a bit of demand for depression era glass, so maybe these will sell but to be frank, I'm not sure I really want to let go of them. But they are up listed on Ebay under my seller name, Mugsim7, so maybe someone else will find them as lovely as I do and will want to buy them.

Gingham scraps become lunch bag

Someone saw my blue gingham lunch bag and asked me to make them one so I scrounged around in the fabric stash and found the last of the pink gingham and blue gingham fabric leftovers and made this cute little lunch tote bag. It is lined with the pink gingham and has a little pocket on the outside for a teabag or pack of nuts or something.  The hardest part of this little fabrication was making sure the zipper in the top was set right as I inserted the fabric handles between the zipper and bag wall.  Anyway, this is the only photo I have of this item and I'm quite proud of continuing to bust through my stash of cloth and make useful items for me and others.

Transforming Cargo Pants into Small Cargo Bag

There seem to be a lot of jeans in the fabric stash, so once again I stitched together a bag using an old pair of my son's khaki cargo pants that were horribly worn in the knees and way too small for him.  I just hacked off the pieces that had the wonderful big pockets on them and made those the sides of the bag after opening up the pant seams and stitching two big pieces together.  I then made a strap out of the rest of the leftover fabric and found another piece of fabric in my fabric stash to make a lining. This fabric was something I'd hacked off the bottom of a pink dress that I had remade into a shorter version -- you can tell I hang onto all kinds of bits of fabric!  I then embellished this bag with some brown grosgrain ribbon left over from some other project and stitched in some Velcro snaps in the top so the bag could be closed. And, hey presto chango, I had a small cargo bag.  Now, this became a gift to my sister who thought it very useful to carry all those extra things she wants to take to work with her, like shoes, or make-up or lunch.  She noted that the outside pockets were great for cell phones or keys.  I said "the whole thing is washable too!"  I just love hacking through my fabric stash with these types of useful recycling projects!

Pink floral lining and Velcro "snaps" at top of bag

Spray Painting Trash Into Treasure

Several months ago I picked out of the trash from the alleys around here a little round wooden table and a plant holder. I've been hanging on to them and nearly threw them back out again (nope, I'm not one of them TV hoarders!) except I got some pink spray paint recently on sale ($2 a can!) and just knew what to do with it. After a quick wipe down, over about three days I spray painted these items outside with about three coats of paint, letting them dry overnight.  I put these items out on my front porch to join the other colorful chairs and plants there.  I'm quite happy about this recycle-reuse activity as I really did need a little table on the porch for cups of tea and cookies and that plant really did need someplace to belong other than the floor. That's the trick to not being a hoarder, you just have to do something with it right away! 

Couch Blanket Made From Airplane Blanket And Prom Dress Lace

Actually I made this couch blanket over ten years ago but am posting about it now as it helps me realize I've been into re-use and recycling for a long time. The story about this creation is that, by mistake, or should I say inadvertently, I brought home one of those airplane blankets -- I think this might have been from Delta airlines. It sat around a while and then I knew I just had to do something with the blue and pink lace yardage that I'd taken off some old 1960s prom dresses (yup, I'd kept those a long time and salvaged the lace and satin bits). So I cut these lace pieces into the shapes of various letters from the runic alphabet as they are interesting shapes with interesting meanings and something I once studied. I stitched them on directly onto the outer blanket surface, turning the edges of the rune letters as I went along. Not being perfection oriented, I just scattered the rune letter shapes in a rough design around the edge of the blanket. Then going back to the fabric scrap pile, I found an old worn sheet and taking the best bits of that and stitching them together, I created the lining or backing for this couch blanket, just overstitching it on and using some more leftover strips of the lace as a binding around the edge. Over time, this has gotten washed and so the navy  blue has gotten a bit purple in places and the pink and blue laces pieces have faded out somewhat, but I've always received quite a few compliments from visitors when they see it tossed on the back of a living room chair. And, of course, it's a comfy thing to have in the winter when there are a few draughts about.

Flowers in the Winter; It's all about Watering

Somehow we've got loads of flowers in the house during this cold winter snap in February.  Some lovely orchids are opening up.  I'll be sure not to overwater them as I killed an orchid plant before with too much! Apparently one or two ice cubes a week is all it needs. Then we have some lovely pink tulips that are bulbs sitting on a ledge in a tall vase and as long as you keep the water level up to the ledge, the tulips bloom.  We have four huge pink tulips flowering now!  Then, though they are not really flowers, I have three lovely red poinsettas. These were rescued from the church display in January. They were almost dead from lack of water but they've now resurrected, sitting on sunny window ledges and each drinking a cup of water each week! Then, there's that lovely bunch of a dozen red roses I got for Valentine's Day.  As long as I keep the stems trimmed and the water fresh, they will last a while, I'm sure  It's so wonderful to have flowers in wintertime! 

And The May Garden Is So Different

Candy Geraniums

Yellow Irises

It's almost a month later from my last blog about all the flowers in my garden and now everything has changed. Gone are the tulips and daffodils and it's all irises and budding roses and geraniums and peonies.
It's a lot of pink and yellow and even blue and very exciting to see everything coming out blooming again.

King Peonies

Pixie Queen Irises

Miniature Blue Iris

I've been growing these flowers for years now and it's always a lovely surprise when the leaves shoot up and the buds form and then -- usually after a few days of sun and heat -- the flowers start to unfurl.  Each year the flowers are different, either a bulb has doubled and there are more flowers or somehow the plant is making bigger flowers, or in the case of the Queen Elizabeth rose bush, smaller flowers seem to be appearing, but a lot more than usual.  I've spied about 20 buds there! And for some other reason the miniature blue irises doubled and are a huge mass this year.  Just so delightful!

Queen Elizabeth Roses Budding

Pink at night, Bloomingdale delight.

Really, the sky over Bloomingdale DC was this color the other night and was quite spectacular so of course I had to snap away and record it. And no, I didn't fidget with the photo software and make it pinker and bluer and prettier!  There's something very intriguing about our peaked roofs; when my mother-in-law came to stay once we were sitting on the back deck and saw a similar view as in this photo, of all the peaked roofs lined up pointing away, and she said it reminded her of ships moored at a harbor.  So here we are, moored in Bloomingdale DC in our lovely Victorian houses, and enjoying the pink at night, sailors' delight! 

Lots of blooms in Bloomingdale's Crispus Attucks Park

I just had to take a walk in Crispus Attucks park the other morning to see all the flowering trees and bushes and anything blooming on the ground. The pink and white magnolias were out, as well as the little blue and white eyebrights and of course some lovely purplish hyacinths.I did spy some dog poop left behind on one of the pathways but decided not to foul up the flower pictures here with that! Although you can see that photo on twitpic via the twitter.com connection below (after the Yelp thing) or if you follow me @jeniferjs.These are not the only flowers gracing the park so you will have to go walk there yourself to see everything else.  And it will be a great walk too. And, mind the poop, or scoop your poop, as appropriate.

October Roses in Bloomingdale

There were a few days recently in October when it was Indian summer and the weather was so nice I ended up walking about in the neighborhood a bit and of course, since I had my camera with me, snapping away at whatever caught my eye.  So of course when I saw these bright pink roses growing by the roadside I just had to kneel down and take the shot against the background of the historic houses nearby.

Those Bus Riding, Plugged In, Finger Tapping Twenty Somethings

reading & emailing

ear buds in

blackberrying  and i-tuning

I just couldn't resist it the other day on the bus into work; just about everyone sitting near me was either plugged into I-tunes or sending messages on their smartphones or doing both at the same time. These fellow passengers were all in their twenties or so, and kept themselves very busy with these wondrous technology gadgets.  So I just had to photograph them, surreptitiously, despite the loud clicking shutter sound my "feature phone" makes when I snap a photo on that cell phone. They were so absorbed in what they were doing or had ear plug buds in that they never heard what I was doing using what to me is a wondrous technology gadget. I think it just amazing that I can take photos on a "phone" and then send them, through the air (!), to an email address and use them later, such as in this blog!  I could say how I can remember when we had a phone installed in our house, and shared "a party line" (not what you think!) and then when transistor radios came out they were so tiny you could put them in your bag but I would really be dating meself and besides, that's boring. Although, I do like the look of stunned disbelief on the young people's faces at work when us over 50's reminisce about copying documents on mimeo machines (remember the manual crank!) and hiring messengers on bikes to take letters across town (there's a buggy whip bizniss!) or having someone answer the phone who wrote down caller's messages on little pink pieces of paper from preprinted phone pads that were put in your message box with a metal clip (that was email then!). Not to mention, of course, sending a roll of film off to be developed and asking for one week expedited prints! Ha ha. How it all changes, but you know, people don't change much!

Love them Summer Roses!

While my front yard does go out of control in the rambling columbine vine department, and there are a number of other mysterious things growing there that I swear I never planted, the pot with the bright pink red roses hasn't failed once this summer. From the day I planted this rose bush two months ago to now in the sticky mid-August heat, this little bush just keeps on budding and flowering and blessing me and every passerby with its small and lovely flowers.  I forget the name of the rose plant but if they have them on sale at Home Depot or Lowe's later this month, and if they are in white or yellow, I think I'll go get a couple more. This is the kind of gardening I like! Just plant 'em and water 'em when I remember, shake a little plant food occasionally, and off they grow, sharing their little flower faces with us! What joy!

Watching the Gardening Flower

On Sunday mornings I usually have an hour or so to relax since we usually go to Church at 5 p.m. and this morning was no different. I sipped my coffee and watched my garden grow from the front porch and it was just a delight. The new rose bush has the brightest crimson flowers, the pink crepe myrtle is about to peak with its frothy fronds, the roses of Sharon are blazing away, the little red gold marigolds are starting up and even a few day lilies are still hanging about. An interesting smoky dark blue bird, slightly larger than a sparrow, hopped along the neighbor's fence with something wriggly in his beak, catching my eye due to his (her?) lovely color. There was an amazing breeze that swept into the tree across the street making the leaves rustle and rattle and making me think of rivers and trees. Feeling energized, I watered every plant that called out to me, "Me thirsty!" and then transplanted a few seedlings into bigger spaces so they could grow better, taking care to make sure I didn't rip my back out again. But it was glorious and sunny and stayed that way all day even when I went inside and cooked Sunday dinner.