Paper Pretties...

Over the weekend I managed to get a few new vintage book wreaths listed in my Etsy shop, Simple Joys Paperie.

The first one is from an old Alice in Wonderland book. In a week or so, I will have one made from Through the Looking Glass.

The other two wreaths are made from a book called Mother Knows Best (c)1927. I wanted to use the entire title page, but due to a library stamp over part of the design, I had to cut out what I could salvage. One wreath has a pretty little bouquet and wreath from the title page:

...and the other wreath has MOTHER which was all I could get from the Mother Knows Best title due to the purple library stamp across the rest of it.

I placed MOTHER over a large vintage mother of pearl cabochon for a unique centerpiece.

~*~

Now for the news around home. I am still working on the bathroom ~ sigh. It's not taking this long really, it's just that I took a break for a few days and now have to get as much as possible finished this week. By the weekend, I hope to have everything except for the flooring and the trim that goes down after the flooring is installed.

As for outdoors, I still need to work on the backyard flower bed --- however, I'd like to go a few days without picking up trash! We have had a bear visit us two nights out of the last three nights. Our trash cans were snapped shut (no, they aren't bear proof) and the bear(s) got into them, rolled them over the hill and carried large bags of trash about 1/2 an acre away before tearing into them. The cans now have large punctures in them. We knew there were bears in the area since the park service brought several in a few years ago, much to most everyone's protests. Quite a few neighbors are having trouble with them and have mentioned that the bears are not afraid of humans, which is not a good sign. My daughter and I had been doing our walking on a trail in the woods beside our house ~ not anymore. It's sad, these last couple of years are the first times in my life that I have been worried about walking in the woods. I practically grew up in the woods and though I was taught to be cautious, I was never afraid, and always enjoyed going deep into the woods and camping and fishing and swimming in the river down through the years. My how things have changed!

I'll keep you posted about the bathroom... and the bear! :)

Thanks for visiting!

Take Care and God Bless,

Lana

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Something Old, Something New...

...here are some close-ups and I'll share the rest in a near future post.

Enjoy!

Not very pretty...

... by ANY stretch of the imagination, but I hope to change that very soon. :)

Yes, the lilac IS pretty, but I'm talking about the bathroom pics below. I sure didn't want to begin this post with ugly pics! ;)

When I got ready to spring clean the bathroom, I realized that although cleaning is good, it still needed more. More, as in a clean fresh coat of paint ~ the dark green stenciled ivy had been there a loooong time and the walls were dingy white although they'd been washed a lot.

We aren't smokers, but the walls had gotten dingy over the past xx years. I'm ashamed to say how long it had been since I'd painted the bathroom.

Trim needed to be painted, the linoleum badly needed replacing, light fixtures and faucets needed updating, and the sink cabinet needed to be painted or refinished. I also have a china cabinet in there for storage that needed updating or changing out with something else.

So, with no money and no plan (isn't that how is usually happens?), I decided to re-do the bathroom. I have been buying paint and fixtures as I sell something from one of my Etsy shops (here, here, and here) or from my website, here. The tub and the sink will have to remain, but I am slowly, but surely, changing everything else. My husband, a self-employed carpenter, has been very busy with other people's homes (sound familiar?) and also recently suffered some cracked ribs, so I am pretty much on my own here.

I have painted the walls, and Roger has installed the new light fixtures (it was painful, but bless his heart, he still did it), and hopefully by the weekend we will have purchased and installed the white beadboard. Flooring may have to wait until after the Lavender Festival in June. Until then, I will remove the trim around the floor, rip out the old linoleum and put a few scatter rugs down on the plywood.

Check back in a week or so for updated pics...... I hope! ;)

Have a lovely week!

Take Care and God Bless,

Lana

~*~

And the winners are...

1. Elsina of EMS Arts

2. Robin Thomas of A Nest With A View

3. Cindi of Windy Cindy

All you have to do is send me your mailing address and your choice of ribbon color for the eye pillow.

Thank you to everyone who played along!

Take Care and God Bless.

Winners Announced Tonight ~

Good morning! I've been very busy the past few weeks and nearly forgot about the giveaway! It ended today and I will be announcing the 3 winners later tonight. So if you are checking in, I'm still here, just busy. I'll be sure to email the winners as well in case you forget to come back to see who won the Vintage Damask Lavender Eye Pillows.

I thought I'd share a few photos of my wisteria. It's in full bloom this weekend! I didn't trim it last September but it still looks pretty. When you stand near it, the buzzing of the bumblebees is all you can hear!

Take Care and God Bless,

Lana

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Spring Cleaning Continued...

I've been spring cleaning indoors the past week, clearing out rooms, dusting, vacuuming, washing walls, washing floors by hand, painting, getting ready to put up beadboard, and I will soon be painting a few vintage and antique furniture pieces to repurpose. I'll share some photos of those a little later in the month.

For now, I have listed more items on my Spring Cleaning Junk Sale Page and in my Vintage Honeysuckle Etsy shop. Be sure to visit both as the items are different. I'll be adding more over the next few days and then later this month.

If you see items in this post that haven't been listed yet and are interested in them, just email me for the details. I'm adding a few things, then doing the dishes, then adding a thing or two more, then doing laundry, etc. :)

Don't forget ~ you have just a few more days to enter my giveaway for a Vintage Damask Lavender Eye Pillow. Just read the previous post and comment.

Have a lovely, blessed day!

Lana

~*~