Shopping at a Museum

Fair warning - LOTS of photos! :)

I took a little peek inside the Greefield Village store the other day...oh my! They have done some updates over the winter and I couldn't wait to check them out. Want to see???

This is about the halfway point of the store. Yes, the halfway point. There is still more behind me. So much for the idea that a museum store is a tiny little cubby hole, right?

If you have never been to Greenfield Village, you need to go sometime! One of the many things they do there is celebrate American crafts. One of which is pottery. All of the pieces sold in the stores and online are made on site, in the Pottery Shop. These are just some samples of the redware pottery they make. Each piece is signed and dated by the potter who made it. They also make custom pieces for things like a wedding or birth. Staff who work at The Henry Ford receive a personalized piece of pottery to mark their anniversary, every 5 years. They start with a mug at 5 years, a pitcher at 10 years, a ring pitcher at 15 years, a bean pot at 20 years, and on and on. Very unique!

One of the other highlights in Greenfield Village is the Glass Shop. There they make a huge variety of items that are also sold in the stores. Here you get an idea of the color spectrum they use. Each year they also make a special glass candy cane and bowl. I have all but two of the candy canes...I just didn't like the colors they used for the other two years, but usually they are gorgeous!

For many years they have been selling small amounts of yarn, made from the fleece of the Merino sheep that are kept at the village. Each spring they are sheared by hand, using traditional shearing tools/methods. No electric tools here!

A before and after, so to speak. I took this picture a couple years ago during shearing season, but I still love how it shows the difference!

 Around the corner of the wool basket I found a couple other fun things, like the books, needle felting kits (in the basket on the left side of the photo), and these little measuring tapes. Crochet bees? Seriously, far too cute!

But do you see what is peeking out behind the book?

Roving!

Yes indeed, they have started selling the roving! How fun is that?? This bag full of fluff is $8.00.

There were also these knitting needles...if I didn't already have so many needles that have been bought or gifted to me, I might have taken a pair home...I do love wooden needles. Maybe next time...

My hunt continued...

What can I say about this cart, other than I wanted to wheel the entire thing out with me? The glasses are really pretty, and would be the perfect size for the kids. They are using glass more often than the beat up plastic cups. However, I passed this time.

Balls of Bakers Twine...nice thick twine. Love the galvanized tubs!

Cute little pitchers, bowls, etc. I loved the yellow, though the pale blue cows were sweet too!

A table full of jams and jellies - yum!

A little reading nook. The shelves in this photo? All dedicated to crafts, gardening, cooking etc. I have bought a few knitting/crochet, gardening and cooking books here before. I even bought a book on raising backyard chickens...if only...

Car stuff, of course. Greenfield Village was founded by Henry Ford, after all. It's kind of a no brainer. :)

And I LOVED this little nook, with stationary and some really cute sheets of wrapping paper!

Wandered into the kids section and found hats and bonnets for the kiddos to try on. They have lots of traditional toys and games, and of course books. And so you don't think it doesn't have any of the traditional museum kid stuff...there were lots of giant pencils, whistles, and lollipops as well! :)

Finally I found what I was looking for...in the middle, on the bottom...

A drop spindle kit! It came with a little bit of roving and instructions, though I opted to watch a lot of YouTube videos instead. We have been giving it a whirl this weekend, and both me and the two kids have had so much fun playing with it! Goodness knows if we are making anything usable, but we're having a blast!

So much so that I have this on order:

Isn't it gorgeous??? I don't usually go for pinks and such, but it was so pretty I couldn't resist! I also thought the gentle shift in colors might be more forgiving with my inexperienced hands. I bought it from Claw Tree Fibers, who also happens to be in Michigan. It shipped this morning, so I hope it will be waiting for me in the next day or so. Come on, Mr. Mailman, make my day!

So while this may sound like a shameless plug for the Greenfield Village store, I am doing it entirely on my own. I had so much fun poking around here again, and seeing what new goodies and new displays they had. And also to say that you never know where you will find just what you were looking for. After all, who would think to look for a drop spindle at a museum store? I love surprises like that.

And next time, I am bringing home some of the fresh made fudge. Being a Michigan girl, we take fudge very seriously here, and I have to say, I think it rivals the fudge in Frankenmuth, or dare I say it? Yes, even Mackinac. It's that good. I've been good so far, but sooner rather than later a bar of Dark Chocolate Salted Caramel will be coming home with me...and maybe something for the rest of the family too. :)

Have a great day!

A look back at Easter

Wanted to share a few pictures from Easter. It was a good, busy day! :) As I mentioned in my last post, I took over the dinner for some of the family because of an illness in the family. My mother usually hosts Easter, but she wasn't able to do it this year. We don't have a very large family, so moving it to our house was easy!

A peek at the new chalkboard door in the kitchen:

 

I've been on a tulip kick lately - I am so tired of everything being brown and crunchy outside!

I found a lovely set of late 1940's dishes by Homer Laughlin (you know my love of Homer Laughlin from earlier posts!) It's called "Cashmere" and is part of their Eggshell Georgian line. It's not complete yet, but I had enough to lay out the "grown up" table. I'm looking forward to this weekend, when I pick up the rest of the dishes I need from a seller I found on Craigslist. :) I will end up with a 12 piece set plus a variety of serving pieces - I can't wait!

I really need to buy some nice table linens...we don't usually have a tablecloth on our table but for Easter dinner I needed something! :) I found this light blue linen cloth at a local thrift shop last year but it wasn't long enough for the table, so I found a vintage floral bedsheet that also came from the thrift store when I was working on this project.  I didn't use it for the project so it has become a sheet for forts, sleepovers, and now a table cloth.

The kids had a egg & basket hunt first thing in the morning before I had to go to work. It was a gloomy morning with a bit of sprinkles, but then it cleared up and we had a sunny day with temps in the low 50s. Perfect chance to open the windows and go outside! They spent the majority of the day playing outside and when I got home and started cooking, my husband, brother and brother-in-law set up another egg hunt for Davin & Abby and their cousin Emily in the backyard. Since I was cooking I didn't get any pictures unfortunately, but throught the windows I could get a peek of the hunt - the kids were so cute!

We ended up with a total of 7 for dinner. Because I had to work, the menu was going to be simple: ham, potato dumplings & mashed, fresh green beans, corn, and breads. A selection of brownies, pudding and ice cream for dessert kept the kids happy - how could it not? :)
A day full of playing, a full tummy and a comfy couch, and we found Abby like this at about 7:30:

(via my Instagram)

Love that little face!

It was a pretty hectic weekend, but we were so happy to spend it with our family. We aren't a religious family, but holidays like these are just as important to us as a way to celebrate the importance of the special love that family and close friends bring. It's something that can feel routine, that they will always be there, but my moms illness this weekend was a timely reminder that we can never take for granted the time we have with them. Thankfully it turned out to be much less serious than it could have been, but even so, it was a wake up call that the time we have together is always precious.

I hope you had a lovely Easter as well, and no matter how you celebrate the day I hope it included all the love that you could possibly have, whether from family and/or from faith.

Happy Easter!

Just wanted to take a moment to wish all of you a very Happy Easter! I hope that however you celebrate the day, it includes the love of family & friends.

Do you have any fun traditions for Easter? My mother is German, so we always have branches with decorated eggs hanging from them. Nothing quite like this family though! I couldn't imagine storing over 10000 eggs! lol

This blog post from Romantique and Rebel reminds me a lot of my visits to see my grandmother, as well as the boxes of Easter treats that would arrive from Berlin. I've been thinking about her a lot and missing her tons. I hope that she is having a wonderful Easter with some of her siblings and friends and eating a Lindt truffle egg for me. Oh my goodness, Germany is THE place to go if you are looking for Easter sweets and decorations. :)

Unfortunately this year I didn't have time to put out many decorations...it kind of snuck up on me and this week has been a whirlwind! But we did dye and decorate some eggs last night, with only one dropped (you can see it in the picture, the blue one on the left)...and in the end Davin liked the look - it reminded him of a spiderweb. I'm glad he's generally a go-with-the-flow kind of kid. :) We had some cool double sided stickers that we put on the eggs and then covered with glitter and flocking powder...they loved that!

We did a little egg hunt with the kids early this morning before I had to dash off to work. Once I head home I will be making a quick dinner...our original dinner plans fell through because of an illness in the family so I offered to host a small dinner instead. Here's hoping a ham doesn't take too long to cook! lol It will be a little nuts, but it's worth it - my family is small but it's very important to me.

And Happy Easter from Cheeks! I think she is ready for a forever family who won't humiliate her like this! I just couldn't resist, though. And the cats would never tolerate this anyway.

I hope you all enjoy your day!

p.s. This is my 100th post! Hurray! :)

Working through my sadness over Google Reader

At first I wanted to believe it wasn't true - not my tried and true Google Reader! It couldn't possibly be going away! *sob* Say it ain't so!!!

Then I thought, no way, they will change their minds! Have a change of heart, right?

Ok, I'm now coming around. Change is inevitable, right? Change is good, right? *sigh*

I guess now I am resigned. Reader is going away. So I've been doing a little bit of poking around to find an alternative reader. I love reading blogs, and based on my activity, I probably love reading blogs even more than I love writing my own. You bloggers are amazing and I get excited that I can vicariously live with you for even a few minutes...see you craft, see you cook, see you DIY, see you parent. It makes me happy. :) And I hope that down the road I will be at a point that my blog could make someone else happy like that, be a bit of an escape from their dirty laundry, or unswept floor, or cranky child, or bad day at work. Or maybe none of that at all, just a place that they get new ideas or chuckle over some silliness or sympathize with some grumbling. Whatever you like, it's all good. :)

So with that being said, I finally jumped over to Bloglovin, for those who like a "Follow" button. One of the other purposes of this post is to officially "Claim" the blog. If I can figure out how to add the button, you will see it over on the sidebar (or somewhere else for future readers who might visit after a design revamp that could/should eventually happen). Either way, I'm glad you stopped by, and hope you'll come by again! :)

<a href="http://www.bloglovin.com/blog/5772317/?claim=sn7gtjk94ec">Follow my blog with Bloglovin</a>

I'll keep the Google Friend Connect link till the bitter end though, because who knows, right? As a personal reader I am trying out Feedly, and though I still need to get used to the layout, it's fine. I need to seeif I can tweak it so I can sort by blog, rather than just having them all listed by published date. I just haven't set aside the time to really play around with the settings yet.

How are you dealing with the Reader closure? Any readers you prefer or have switched to?

Making bows from thrifted clothes

Just a quick post today!
I was checking out a local thrift store and came across a pair of brightly colored floral capris. I'm not a huge fan of that many flowers decorating my bottom half, but the cotton material and print size called out to me anyway!
It would make the perfect material for hair bows!

I took one of the legs apart and cut off a short length of fabric. I hand sewed the edges and created a loop which I gathered in the middle and tacked down with some thread. Then I wrapped the center with a small piece of a mango colored fabric froma  thrifted skirt, attached a hair pin, and voila!

A perfect little bow with a pop of color as we limp through the gray days before spring finally makes its way to Michigan. We had a beautiful day in the 60's yesterday, and a gray day in the 50's today, but we'll be dropping again and whisperings of snow have been floating through the air. I really can't wait for spring...it's not usually such a big deal for me, but this year I really have cabin fever! How about you?

One last thing...I wanted to share a picture that my son made at school. We had the school book fair last week and as I was setting up, I looked up and saw this on the wall. I love their art. :)

Meet Cheeks!

We have decided to become a foster family for this sweet girl!

Her name is Cheeks, and she is a 2 year old Staffordshire Terrier/Shepherd, possibly Boxer mix as far as they can guess. We don't know a whole lot about her, but we do know she was found by a woman at a gassing shelter in Georgia. The woman brought her to Michigan where she found out that Cheeks was expecting puppies! She fostered her until her puppies were born and weaned, and they have all been adopted through a shelter in Grand Rapids. The woman couldn't keep her any longer so she was given to a rescue group in the Detroit area.

Whew! This girl has covered a lot of ground!

We applied to be her foster family and the next day I got a call telling me I could pick her up from the local vet where she had just been spayed. So off we went to meet this little girl and bring her home.

She is a pretty timid, submissive dog so we have been working on her confidence. Each day she comes out of her shell more and we get to see how sweet and silly she really is. She is a total love bug who loves a good snooze on the couch (she even snores!):

She wasn't too sure about getting a bath the other day...what a sad doggy face! :)

She walks really well on the leash, although she is still unsure of loud noises on the road and people walking around. She bumps against my leg periodically as we walk for a little reassurance that everything is alright.

She doesn't really know how to play, and has no interest in balls or chew toys yet. But she will run and jump with me in the yard a few times when we go out in the backyard. I have to initiate the play though, she is still unsure how to do that on her own.

We're working on her basic commands, and she is quite smart. She wants to please, although when she doesn't want to follow a command, she will flop down belly up, being submissive and looking darn cute in the process. Little stinker. :)

We discovered that she had some separation anxiety, particularly with me. When I would leave the room or the house she would either immediately follow me, or whine that she couldn't get to me. The first few times we left the house, she was a mess, and caused a mess. She urinated on the carpet and damaged a door trying to open it. The rescue group brought us a crate for her, and we tried that, although it was rough goign for the first couple of days.
Turned out that she hadn't been crate trained before we got her, and the first few times she was in the crate she tried to dig her way out. Once I found out that she hadn't had any crate training, it made sense why she panicked the first few times she was in there. But we have worked on that, giving her meals in the crate, nights in the crate, and short periods of crate time during the day when we are home (kind of like "tummy time" for babies), so that she learns it's not a scary place to be. A few days in, and this is how she reacts to the crate now:

She still isn't thrilled when I leave the house and will still whine, but she doesn't urinate on her bedding anymore, and only messed up the blanket with a few swipes of the paw at the door before she settles down.

She's awesome with kids. That was one of the requirements I had about taking her. We had friends over for Oscar Night and had a total of 6 kids in the house, from a crawler just a year old to Davin who is 7. We had only had her 2 days at that point and she was great with all of them.

She also couldn't care less about the cats. The kitties, however, weren't as convinced. Noodle (my tuxedo cat) settled in after a couple days, but Jewel (above) is still a little unsure about it all. Neither cat is afraid of Cheeks (or any dog for that matter), and in fact Jewel stepped right in to show the dog who was boss. Poor Cheeks ran into her by accident and came out of it with two small scratches and a piece of a cat nail in her muzzle. Needless to say, she gives Jewel wide berth now! But Jewel officially came out of hiding after 5 days of self imposed solitary confinement in the basement (beyond a head poking out of the cat door to give a hiss or a growl if the dog walked by). I think her need for attention finally won out. lol

Who wouldn't fall in love with this sweet face? We've been asked a lot if we are going to adopt her. At this point I can't say yes. She's an awesome dog and will be a great pet for a family, but I also know that at this point, she is such a submissive dog, that I think a family with another calm, stable dog would be so good for her. She could learn a lot from another dog; how to play, how to keep her anxiety down, etc. Without trying to sound like the Dog Whisperer, I really think she would benefit from a "pack". She looks to me as the leader (smart girl! lol) which I think is why she gets upset when I leave. I would love to see her as happy and comfortable with any person as she is with me. Hopefully we will keep helping her move forward, to fulfill her true potential, and if that happens I will be so proud to see her with the perfect family who will love her as she deserves to be loved.

Craigslist find!

Ah, Craigslist. There are few things I check for periodically: an armoire for our bedroom (we don't have a closet in that room), a cupboard for our bathroom, and seating for our front porch. Among other things of course...Craigslist is wonderful for window shopping!
I was excited to find this cupboard when I started my search:

After a number of emails back and forth with the seller during the day I decided to drive out after work to pick it up before someone else snatched it up. As he told me, the first one to pick it up gets it. Well by golly, that person was going to be me! :) So I called my dear husband and asked if he would accompany me on a little road trip (about 40 minutes drive from home...hmmm). After all, I couldn't very well go to some strangers house I have been in contact with over email by myself, right?

Turned out the owner is in the process of moving to Canada and has connections to the Detroit Tigers, so I think my husband was hoping we could stay and talk baseball!

Once we got it home I went back to the bathroom and I'm pretty sure the room had shrunk! The piece will fit, but will completely cover the wall to the toilet. The room is so small that I think it will look too crowded. So, I changed my plan, which was accompanied by rolled eyes and sighs by my husband. But he just doesn't have the vision! At that point he gave up trying to understand me and went back to watch the game, telling me to call him if I needed help moving it somewhere. After nearly 10 years of marriage, I think he realizes that there are some things about me he will never understand. Some girls love shoes, and I love vintage furniture! lol Maybe one day I will find the perfect vintage couch to replace the ugly black leather couch from my husbands bachelor days, but even I have to admit it is practical with two kids...much easier to wipe off leather than fabric and I don't care if the kids are crawling all over it. One day though...

So once he left me to my own devises, I grabbed the can of stripper that I used this summer to refinish our front door and went to work. Yes, I am impatient, but I really couldn't wait to see what was under the green paint! It's actually a pretty color green, but isn't the color I wanted for this piece. And the owner said that the unpainted drawer was original to the piece, so I hoped the rest of the piece would be as pretty. I got the paint off the top, wiped it down with mineral spirits and found this:

Gorgeous!!! I was literally doing a happy dance in the middle of the room.

So now I have a plan: I'm going to finish stripping the top and the lip of the piece, then I will add some soft wax to the top to protect and seal the wood (I ordered Fibbes & Sons soft wax from Etsy). The rest of the piece I will paint white and I think some glass knobs would really look better than the white porcelain knobs that are currently on it.

Love the beaded details!!!

Next I need to look at the back of the piece. The panels that are missing seem to simply be a veneer, and I don't think they affect the actual structure of the cabinet. But I need to inspect it more closely to be sure. There are also two small pieces that have come off the bottom right of the cabinet that need to be attached. They aren't broken, just detached, which is good. I think some wood glue will take care of that without a problem. You can see the open spot in the top photo, just look at the bottom edge, just past the cabinet door.

Once it's all done, I think I will use it as a tv cabinet for the front room. We bought a very boring tv stand from the thrift store a year ago for our old tv that has since broken and been replaced by a smaller one. This will raise the height of the tv a bit and there is still plenty of room on top for the small cable box and the Wii console. The cupboard can hold games and dvd's, and the side cubbies can hold coloring books, etc. I wouldn't mind it for some craft supply storage, but at this point it would serve more of an aesthetic purpose, rather than a practical storage purpose...I have too much stuff! lol

So what do you think of my Craigslist find? Would you have jumped on it, or is it too "old-timey" for your taste?