Christmas 2008

when i first decided to set up a blog, it was in hopes of keeping a visual diary, if you will, of my collections and how they continually evolve. it is now march and i am finally adding my christmas collection.

if there is someone out there viewing this--and knows how to set up albums withing a blog page, i could use some advice.

Christmas Favorites

Texas Winter Sky

Happy Ornaments

it's only been a couple of months and i miss my glass ornaments. they are quietly sleeping in the attic dreaming of december.

Christmas looks like Easter

Ice Queen

...from christmas.

Burlap and Lace

never thought two textures would look so exquisite together, but these two found one another. i was cleaning up my thanksgiving decorations and placed one next to the other and viola. magic. for me at least.

Flowers and Stones

First of all, I am not going to pretend that I am clever enough to come up with catchy entry titles. next, i'll admit that eventhough i am an english major and taught english for several years, when it comes to internet writing, i have an aversion to capitalization. yes, i know internet and english should be capitalized, but i do not care...
i found this rose at spice, here in waco. "the girl next door" was the vendor. she had 5 more of these and i kick myself for only buying three--one is now missing, though. this flower is so simple and yet so gorgeous! i think it is one of my favorite things.

Schizophrenic Design

I'm a decorator's nightmare because of my schizophrenic style. Some people might call it eclectic, but I disagree. This is a blatant disregard for the "rules". Every room has its own personality and none of them share anything in common except for, flowers, shells, and photos.

To Stop, or Not to Stop...

When does one stop collecting dishes? I can't ever believe there is a point in time when one does. Dishes are a symbol of what we do as women and how we change over time. we take care of others--we cook, clean, and keep house. we all do it, whether we do it well or not. i believe it is an art form. we all keep house-- and dishes reflect what we hold as valuable. Time-worn, distress, chipped, tarnished, mismatched, or never-used. Our plates and platters say something about us.

SPRING...almost

Spring is here and it is time to clean house. I love stuff, but there must be a rhyme or reason. Otherwise, it looks like you tried too hard or not enough. I tried, but I got some help here.

BBC Reports--

Apparently the BBC reckons most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. Mark the ones you have read with an "X", and the ones you intend on reading with "O"

1. Pride and Prejudice- Jane Austen X

2.The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte X

4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling

5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee X

6. The Bible- X

7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte X

8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell X

9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens O

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott X

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy O

13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller X

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare X

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger X

19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot X

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell X--IT WAS TOO DESCRIPTIVE SO I GAVE UP

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald X

23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy parts of it

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky parts of it

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck X

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll parts of it

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame parts of it

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy X

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens X

33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis O

34 Emma - Jane Austen X

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen O

36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis O

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden X

40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell X

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez X

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy O

48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood O

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding X

50 Atonement - Ian McEwan O

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel --only heard of it!O

52 Dune - Frank Herbert --love the movie!

53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen O

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon O

57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens X (was in the play version)

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley O

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez X

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck X

62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov--parts of it

63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac X

67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy X

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding

69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens X

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker X

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett O

74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses - James Joyce O

76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath X

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal - Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray O--love the movie!!yummy

80 Possession - AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens X

82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker X

84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert X

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White X

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Alborn

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle X

90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad X

92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

94 Watership Down - Richard Adams -- O saw the movie as a kid

95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare X

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl O

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo x(98 is obviously a trick question)O-dream to read it in french

Deletion, possibly due to Wine

i kind of am still trying to figure out this whole blogging thing. i've made a bunch of mistakes, but i am finally going to bed now because i just finished an entire bottle of wine by myself working on this. hate being a lush, but damn i love the quiet moments in the day when i can just be. you know?

by the way, i accidentally deleted this photo from the chandelier" paragraph at the bottom of this entry.

Drive-by Shopping with Marta

i went shopping with marta (from marta's room in belton, tx) and we found some lovely peices in georgetown. i couldn't believe how amazing some of the shops were. unfortunately, i forgot my camera. we had such a wonderful time. marta is truly a wonderful soul and a kindred spirit.

the vintage bottle decked in jewels was made by amy from bloom and bee swanky, one of my favorite places to shop in waco.


the vintage valentine was some purchase made along the stop and shop expedition marta and i made. i do not remember what little town we were in. we talked the entire time and only screeched to a halt when we saw the sought after "antiques" sign along the road.

this gorgeous christmas ornament is so rough, but i think that is its charm. again, this was bought at the most AMAZING antique mall i have ever seen in my ENTIRE life. i could spend an entire week in that place and not see everything. and it is so NOT junky!!! love, love, love,--all we need is cash! and lots of it!

these are a few things that i picked up at marta's room.

she has a keen eye and a taste for all things charming. you know she has been seduced by objects of beauty when all she can say is..."mmmmm---yummy".

i think that she missed this antique towel rack when she quickly scanned the floors, shelves, and walls of our last stop (we had 15min. to cover the entire place) because when she spotted it in my purchse pile she emphasized what a wonderful deal this was. i have been wanting to find one of these ever since my dad started visiting (from laredo) and helping with dishes. he always lays out the wet tea towels we use to dry all over the kitchen counters once we are done. "a place for everything and everything in its place". i was determined to find a place for the wet towels--other than, you know, every square inch of counter-top space.






these are some other finds from georgetown. marta took me to "gatherings". it is the most amazing place i think i have been to. heaven! they are so talented!!! i want to study under them or work for them for free just to be exposed to the constant beauty and inspiration! in the end i think i would have to pay them for working there because i would spend my entire paycheck and them some!!!




there is so much beauty out there how does one go about deciding what to choose and what to forgo? when grandma passed, everyone carted off the things they had been wanting for years. guma had told me about her chandeliers, now antiques. she had purchased them 50+ years ago from a furniture store that was closing its doors. she bought four and two sconces. it was my turn to pick from the things that were left in the house. i chose the chandeliers and sconces. everyone looked at me like i had broken the rules. i bought replacements. her loteria boards, broken eyeglasses, a mess of ephemera (which i later found included postcards from her brother from okinawa during the war, her original wedding invitation and announcement, and recipes she collected), and the chandeliers all happily reside with me now.