12 Days of Valentines Day: Day 3: Sentimental Jewelry

12 Days of Valentine’s Day. Day 3 Go to your jewelry box and pull out some sentimental jewelry and wear it. You’ll think of that person all day. This roadrunner pin was a gift from my Great Aunt Wezie. She lived in Arizona near her only sister, my grandmother Anne. She bought this and sent it to me, wanting me to have something distinct from the area where they  lived.  #womeninmyfamily #beautyofeverydaylife #12daysofvalentinesday #valentinesday #day3

12 Days of Valentine's Day starts today!

I think you should have fun for 12 days straight. I know, we don't always look at things that way, but that is the beauty of celebrating the "12 Days of Valentine's Day". You decide what fun little thing you want to do each day in honor of Valentine's Day and the people that you love in your life.

Celebrating the 12 Days of Valentine's Day helps make lovely gestures a habit. It's a time when you do little things to show love for family, friends and yourself. Wear a pink sweater one day, put red food coloring in your cake batter, set the table with red place mats - everything counts when you are celebrating the fact that you love a lot of people.

There is no set schedule. There isn't a "number" relationship between the days (meaning you don't have to sneak 10 Hershey kisses into a loved one's pocket just because it is Day 10).  Nope, you just do what feels right and fits into your schedule on any particular day leading up to Valentine's Day.  

When someone compliments your pink scarf, just smile and say that its in honor of the 12 Days of Valentine's Day.  If your neighbor questions your sudden gift of 6 muffins, tell her it's The 12 Days of Valentine's Day.  Have fun with it. And let me know how your coworkers and friends respond.

My suggestion for today is order a rose bush for your garden. You will never regret the day-after-day beauty you will enjoy this summer.

#12daysofvalentinesday #valentinesday #celebratelove #beautyofeverydaylife #momentsofdelight #finddelight #valentine #bemyvalentine #bemine

Frame Beautiful Christmas Cards as Art

Now that the holiday decorations are all tucked away, do you still have a stack of Christmas cards on your kitchen desk?  I know lots of cards have family photos on them (so cute!) Did you receive any that have an imageI want to show you how a pretty card can become a permanent piece of art. 

I know it isn't ground breaking to imagine framing a pretty card, nor is it hard to do. But sometimes you need concrete evidence of how worthwhile the effort is.

My pen pal Renate lives in England (remember when she collected souvenirs from the Royal Wedding for me?) and is a lovely friend who takes great care in choosing a Christmas card for me that is distinctly British. This year she sent me a card with a beautiful painting depicting the changing of the guard on a snowy day at Buckingham Palace.  I just love it and wanted to be able to enjoy for years to come.

I took the card with me to Joann Fabric to find a frame with the right scale and coloring.  I went over to the paper department and held the card up against a million different styles of scrapbook paper - a really fun way to make a mat for a picture - but nope. I didn't like any of them.  

When I got home, I looked through my stash of fabrics and found a piece with just the right mood: a rich red plaid to highlight the guards' red uniforms. I ironed the fabric, wrapped it around the mat board that came with the frame and secured it to the back with duct tape.  Then I placed pieces of scotch tape rolled into a small tube on the back of the card, at each corner, and carefully placed it on the fabric. It left a border of red plaid fabric all the way around the card. The bits of tape on the back of the card helps to keep the card from slipping when I placed it in the frame, against the glass. Then all I had to do was close up the back of the frame. I wrote Renate's name and 2014 on the back of the frame. Voila! I have a sentimental piece of art to put on display for years to come.

Have I inspired you? I think this is a wonderful way to decorate a tabletop for the holidays.

Seattle: Sentimental Starbucks

Grande Nonfat Latte has been part of my vernacular for so long it is hard to remember that Starbucks had a modest beginning, just like all great American brands.  I've never seen "the first McDonald's" or "the first Baskin-Robbins" but when I had the chance to visit the first Starbucks across from Pike Place Market in Seattle, Washington, I had to stand in line and place my order.

There was a line out the door and of course it was orderly chaos inside, but I found that the wait time was not that bad.  The store is loaded with Pike Place Market Starbucks merchandise and everyone seemed perfectly happy to wait to drink a sentimental Starbucks.

Sentimental Objects: When Spices Are So Much More

Do you have a sentimental attachment to an everyday object?  I love when people tell me about the history of a piece in their home.  The sentiment lies in the story or origin of the item.  Once when I mentioned that I was looking for vintage Pyrex at a garage sale, a woman went into her kitchen cupboard and pulled out her prized blue Pyrex bowl to show me.  It was precious to her and she held it up saying, "This is the bowl my brother made banana pudding in." That bowl should never leave her kitchen. 

These are my prized pieces in the kitchen, spice tins that belonged to my maternal grandmother.

I keep them in my kitchen cabinet and move them left and right as I reach for the new containers that I actually cook with.  These must date back to the 1950's (you can find similar containers on eBay under "vintage spices") and by their weight I can tell that they are still full.  I hardly use paprika or cream of tartar either, so our tastes run in the family.  The cream of tartar tin is marked 43 cents on the bottom!

My mom gave me these tins a few years ago - she had them at home in her kitchen and she knew that I'd like to have them.  She has another melange of her mother's spice containers mixed in with our actual pantry items up at the cottage. 

Every once in a while, when I ask Dan to get me something out of the cupboard, he'll grab one of her vintage cinnamon or mustard tins and bring it out.  I'll say, "Thanks, but those are Nama's. They're probably 50 years old." 

He'll look at me like I'm crazy, but then return to the pantry to try and identify a tin from this decade.  Still, he understands that it is important to my mom and me that those tins stay right there on the shelf where they belong.  Mixed in with the other pantry staples - a part of our every day lives from long ago.

Make an Heirloom While Preserving the Vintage Photograph

Every once in a while I make a little piece of art - this is a fabric pillow displaying a photograph of my maternal grandmother as a child.  Love the hair bow!  

The best part about this project is that I can scan the original image and then print it on a special printer fabric sheet (8.5 x 11) by June Tailor.  This creates something "new" for me to work with and leaves the vintage photo completely unharmed.

For this project, I machine stitch the photograph to a piece of coordinating calico fabric, then place another piece of fabric (the same size) against it. The two "right sides" of the pillow face each other.  Machine stitch along all four sides, leaving a 2-inch space to allow for stuffing.  Turn the pillow right side out.  Lightly press the fabric and photo to smooth out any wrinkles that happened from turning the fabric.  Stuff the pillow.  Hand stitch the 2 inch gap closed.  Hand sew a short cord onto the top (or trap it into the seam as you stitch the 4 sides closed), to hang the pillow.  Use Fabri-Tac to glue a decorative trim along the photo to create a frame. 

I have this hanging in my dining room on my china cabinet.  I love this sentimental touch in an unexpected place.

Lipstick Sunset

The night was coming on so dark and heavy - Fall was in the air; the days were shorter and definitely cooler. This particular life day had been gray, then everything changed at sunset and the deep teal of Lake Michigan was offset by iridescent pinks, lavender, apricot and yellow. 

It was a lipstick sunset.

Do you know the song?  I have a lovely memory of working with a woman one summer who was still receiving mixed tapes by an old flame.  They lived in different parts of the country, but every once in awhile a cassette tape full of music would arrive in her mailbox.  Their lives had moved on, but he still thought of her.  

She shared her favorite tape with me, I dubbed a copy (remember tape-to-tape?) and listened to the patchwork of songs all summer.  "Lipstick Sunset" by John Hiatt was one of my favorites.

My Sentimental Garden

I am a sentimental fool...and luckily, I married a man who is too!  When I went to Paris with my parents to celebrate my mom's 70th birthday, we were gone for just over two weeks.  

Around Day 10, Dan was out of sorts and ended up wandering the garden center. He bought and planted a peony for our garden.  He said that when he saw one that was called "Gay Paree," he simply couldn't resist.  Isn't that wonderful?

I'd loved it for years and then we had some kind of natural flooding in the peony bed.  Our area has a lot of clay in the soil and the heavy rains made parts of the yard more like a clay bathtub holding water.  I lost most of my peonies to rot.  Needless to say, it was not a delight, so I haven't talked about it much.  Fast forward to last Fall.  Dan saw "some signs of life" in two peony plants (that haven't bloomed in two years) and moved them to our side bed.

Tah-dah! It is June and both plants lived, and bloomed, and one of them was "Gay Paree!"  It wasn't until this bud opened that I knew which peony had survived.  Thank you, Mother Nature, for helping this sentimental plant "hang on" until we could move it to a better spot.

Do you have any sentimental plants?

Family Traditions

An issue of Body & Soul magazine has an article about the importance of tradition in our lives as a source of stability and as "powerful organizers of family life." I have attached a link to a summary of this article for you. 

In my family, when we bake Christmas cookies, someone has to make an "elephant with a purple blanket" for my Mom. It is something she must have requested back in the 60's, because as I started baking with my grandmother at age 4, I was instructed to not forget the elephant with the purple blanket for my Mother. 

This year my Dad actually put the elephant cookie in a plastic baggie and hung it with an ornament hook on the tree. It is that important. 

In part of the article, author Barbara Ehrenreich says, "Festivity plays a critical role in our lives; it's mood-lifting and community building." 

What are your traditions? Enjoy the old and make some new ones too.