Thursday, August 25, 2011

More thrift scores

Some more great thrift store crafty finds!

Halloween cross stitch patterns!  They were either a quarter or fifty cent!

Including The Frankster--which I just had to get.
Some random cross stitch patterns.

Some embroidery transfers for fifty cents each!
Some more amazing embroidered/crocheted linens.




This one is a stamped piece---not quite finished.



This one is so beautifully done.


A nice crocheted throw
In other news:  
*I am pretty much obsessed with Bon Iver at the moment.  The newest album is so beautiful. 
*I finally finished reading The Princess Bride.  I've been reading it on and off for a while now.  It was quite good with many more details than the movie.
*Colby has to do an experiment with crickets for one of his animal classes so we now have crickets in our house.  It's actually kinda neat watching them and I can now tell a female cricket apart from from a make cricket.
*I'm longing for a journey...I totally blame the song below....I've been obsessively listening it to it lately for some reason...it's reminding me of Alaska. 

Sunday, August 21, 2011

New addition

I found a new addition to my "big-eyed kids" art collection.  I find so few of them at thrift stores these days.  This is by Eden.  A little sailor girl.




I think she'll fit in nicely with my collection....don't you think?

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Local adventures....

Colby and I took a little trip through Durham a couple of weekends ago.  I love exploring the local area.  As much as I love traveling to far off places, there's just as many interesting spots locally that we can visit.  We've lived here for almost 5 years now and still there's so many places we haven't been. So we decided to check out one of them.  We started off at the Duke Homestead, the home, farm, and first factory of the Duke family.  They founded the American Tobacco Company and became very rich manufacturing cigarettes.  

The home was quite lovely--built in the late 1800's.


I loved the colored glass around the door.

Old tobacco barn

They still demonstrate how they hang tobacco to cure.  It smells so sweet.


The tobacco was blooming



In the museum, there was the "inspector"---inspecting the cigarettes off the rolling machine.  She looked so happy.

Funny, old advertisement

This cat named Biscuit had lived there at the Homestead for 5 years now.  He was a sweetie!
 From there we went downtown, milling around Brightleaf Square for a bit. I didn't take any photos here though--wish I had.  I found that the vintage store Dolly's was gone though!!  It's moved to Main Street though so it still exists!  Phew!
 
After Brightleaf, we drove to the American Tobacco Campus.  We love going here.   The Durham Bulls stadium is here too. 
 We had lunch at Piper's Deli--another new-to-us place.   We had yummy sammies!


Then to Rita's for an Ice!

Nom Nom
That's about it.  A fun day trip visiting a new place and a couple old favorites.  I think we'll be having more of these little adventures now that Colby's started classes again.  It's a great way to spend a day and learn a little about the local area. 

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

A place to be...

I have finished this painting finally....exploring the pull of places, particularly home.  Places hold memories so strongly, at least for me they do.  Some happy, some sad.  Either way, I like to think about those memories sometimes...and think about where I am now in relation to where I was then.

Acrylic, fabric, embroidery


I embroidered the fence on this lovely fabric I've had for a while now.  The fabric itself brings its own history memory to the piece.


embroidered and stuffed window

On to the next.

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

I solemnly swear.....

OK, I know I said no more Harry Potter posts but.....you're just going to have to bear with me.  I stitched up the Marauder's Map and just love it! Again, you can find the pattern here.


Also, this video had me in tears.  OK, now I'll try to move on.

Monday, August 1, 2011

So what did you do to get in here......



 You may remember Andrew saying this in one of my favorite movies....The Breakfast Club! 



 Please look at this awesomeness I received from Becky for the movie swap!!   A lovely pillow with this quote from Andy.  This is why I love doing swaps.  I always receive such wonderful things!


 I mean are you serious??  How awesome is this?


 I love all the little patterns and borders.  So cool. 


Thank you Becky!!  You rock!