Fruitylicious

Have you ever eaten at Jason's Deli? If so have have you ordered fruit with their famous fruit dip? Well if so, then you know it is Delicioso!  Seriously, you could eat it all by itself with a big ol' spoon. Not that I  have ever done that. Ok, maybe once. Anyhoo, it being summer and all, we eat tons of fruit. I thought to myself, man, some Jason's Deli fruit dip sure would be yummy with this. So I looked up the recipe and found it on topsecretrecipes.com.  Only THREE ingredients! And I had them all (or so I thought). 

One cup of sour cream, 1/2 cup brown sugar, and 4 teaspoons of Grand Marnier. Sounds disgusting doesn't it? Well, trust me, it ain't. Mix all ingredients together and chill for an hour. Here's a funny story. I bought some alcohol in May for my kids grad party. I found this yummy punch I was going to make. Well it never happened. So I had some alcohol left over. I thought that one of the bottles was Grand Marnier. So when I found the recipe for the fruit dip, I was like, hey, I have all the ingredients! Turns out what I had was Grenadine, not Gran Marnier, not even close to the same thing. So I had to make a trip to the liquor store to buy a bottle. And let me tell ya, those Parisians are pretty damn proud of their Grand Marnier, it was $40.00 for a bottle!  On the plus side, I have enough to make approximately 7,000 more bowls of fruit dip. Or enough for one good drunk on Grand Marnier. Either way, win win. So whip some up, then die and go to heaven! 

Nom, nom, nom...

Hey Boo Boo, Grab That Pic-A-Nic Basket!

If you remember that show, your awesome.  Hey hey it's Saturday! It's gorgeous outside, you know what that means, let's go shopping! So I did. My mom and I hit it early (noonish) to see what we could find. Went to a little town about 30 miles south of KC called Ottawa. Cute town with lots of good stuff. Here's what I found

A yellow tin picnic basket, straws, vintage Kordite box (to freeze all your fresh picked berries!) old hangar, swizzle sticks and a Pottey Guild crock with lid. My fav find has got to be the picnic basket

This is a newer collection that started innocently enough. I was at a yard sale in the Spring and I found this guy

Rough shape but oh so cute and love the color. A few weeks later I was in a junk store and came across this brown and white basket pattern one

Well shoot, now I have 2 and they are pretty cute. I told myself I wouldn't actively search for them but, well, if I happen to run across a cute one for a good price then maybe...

You know how that story ends. I went to First Fridays in downtown KC the first weekend of July and found this beauty. Ok, now we were into a full on addiction, I'm talkin scouring ebay and etsy addiction. But have you seen the prices of some of these online? Crazy. I knew if I was patient  I would find another one for the right price. Today that patience paid off. Found the yellow one for $15.00 which is more in my price range. So I finally have four, which is just how many I wanted.

Why four you ask? Because that is the amount that would fit where I wanted to display them. Above my built ins in my family room.

Now I must stop, because I HAVE NO MORE ROOM! Unless it's reeeeaally awesome. Or reeeeaally cheap. See how easy those collections start? Scary. 

I really liked that crock. I thought it make a great utensil holder in my kitchen. Plus it looked vaguely familiar. When I got home I figured out why. I had the matching bowl! 

Now the crock is holding my utensils, the bowl is holding my napkins and they are living happily ever after together. (they told me).

I bought the straws because, ahem, I happen to have a collection of them. Shocking, I know! 

Not sure why I started this collection. Fun graphics I suppose. I got the Carnival one several years ago at an estate sale. I think it was even in a long ago blog post that I am too lazy to find. Then I found a few more. Notice that the Carnival straws  and the Elbo straws have the same creepy clown. Was he a popular clown at the time?   And if so why? These are the important things I think about. 

I may sell this collection at my next show in October. I don't display it, don't really have room for it, but yet still managed to buy 6 boxes. To be fair, 3 of those boxes I found taped together at goodwill for .99.

 

So there is TWO of my collections! In ONE blog post! Are you impressed? Me neither. Next time I will show you a few more. Have a blessed week! 

We are the World

My daughter is heading off to college in a month. We decided this weekend was a good time to start dorm shopping. We found most of the stuff on our list (bedding, pillows, a few clothes that were so NOT on the list Hailey!) One thing she really wanted was this picture of a world map done in watercolor to hang on the wall

She was going to ask my sister to paint it for her. But since she lives 1,500 miles away and mailing a huge canvas is about as fun as mailing a huge canvas, we decided to try it ourselves. You know what that means right? Time for a "BLOG TUTORIAL"! How exciting!

First, buy a huge canvas. The cheaper the better because at this point your not real sure of your painting skillz

Next, find a world map outline on the internet and print it onto some transparency sheets that you found at the Goodwill and SO KNEW would come in handy someday

Blog Tutorial tip, don't touch the wet ink or you will smudge it and you will be unsure of the exact shapes of countries above Africa. (not that you will care)

While you are smudging countries, send your kid out to paint that canvas!

Next step is to get out the overhead projector that you scored for $5.00 (!) at a yard sale and pretend you are a teacher

I loved the projector as a kid! I could watch my teacher flip transparency pages for days! Weird, I know. 

Anyway adjust the image onto your canvas on the wall.

Tape the canvas down, tape the transparency down, and for the love of Pete, once the tracing starts, don't touch the projector! You will wiggle the picture and it won't line up properly and the world may just end. Now get to tracing. Hope you been working out that arm!

I was hoping to pawn this tedious step onto my daughter. Unfortunately for me she is a leftie and she "claims" she couldn't do the tracing because her arm got in the way of the pic. Sounds like a cop out to me.  Anyhoo, next step,  paint that bad boy! I have no pics of this step because we were having too much fun painting to take a pic, but here is what our final result looked like

Quite cute hu? The painting, not us. 

Collecting

Do you love to collect? Of course you do! If you read this blog than you must love vintage as much as I do and vintage lovers love to collect. Plus I read all of your blogs and so many of you have drool worthy collections. I love seeing what people collect, how they display it, why they love certain items. Who knows why things speak to us. Why we feel the need to have something, or five, ten or fifty of something. Who cares really, it makes us happy and I am a firm believer of living with the things you love. That being said, sometimes I will go into a friends house where everything is, dare I say, normal. You know what I mean. Beautiful homes with perfectly placed items. A family picture above the fireplace, one gorgeous vase on a side table, a lovely plant placed in the corner. And I think to myself, do I have too much stuff? Do people think my house is too full of stuff? Should I pare down and live more simply and not spend so much time collecting, and shopping and decorating, and organizing and obsessing about cool vintage stuff? Simply said, no, I shouldn't. Because that's not me, nor is it any of you. I know, I've seen your homes and I love them all. Recently I heard about a new book by Mary Randolph Carter. It's called NEVER STOP TO THINK...DO I HAVE A PLACE FOR THIS? I bought it today. She showcases her collections as well as many other peoples. She puts into words, better than I ever could, why people collect and why it's awesome. Can I say something? You need to buy this book! First off, its pure eye candy. Secondly it will make you stop feeling like a hoarder. It's full of fantastic collections, cool people and lovely stories. Plus it will make you want to add to your collections, or maybe start some new ones! How fun is that! Here is the book

It's not cheap, but worth every penny IMHO. I'm going to do some future posts on a few of my collections. Don't hold your breath waiting for them, I don't want you to pass out, but I am going to try to do a few over the next couple of weeks. And please, share your collections too! Remember people, we're all in this vinatge love together! Magpie Ethel, your excluded because you already share and you are The Queen of Collections.

Red White & Blue Thrift Post

Well it's 4th of July! So I squeaked in this post before it's too late. I've found lots of stuff since my last post, a lot of it perfect for my 4th of July decor. I tend to shop depending on what holiday is coming up. Except vintage Christmas, you know I buy that ALL year round. My aunt gifted me an awesome old wood ladder. So I added a metal basket and put lots of red white and blue goodies inside

Easy Peasy.

I found this Cook paint can and hd2hvit! (That's "had to have it". My friend used to have personalized license plates that said that:)

Not only is it red white and blue, it's also my last name.

Of course I looked to Pinterst for some fab chalkboard art.

My daughter and I were in Fayetteville AR last week for college orientation and we went to some boutique stores in the downtown area. One of the shop windows had a big chalkboard and they used this same artwork (mine was better) 😄

I found both if these items this year. Lone star dominos and a great GoJo can. It was hand cleaner for like mechanicss

Cute hu? 

Well have a happy 4th!  I'm taking my daughter to camp tomorrow in Purdy, Mo so my mom and I are going to drop her off then head to Eureka Springs, AR. It's only an hour away and a cool little town. Plus they have The Crescent Hotel. The most haunted hotel in America. I see dead people in my future! Ha!