April showers...

bring forth the most gorgeous crocuses.



Such pretty little flowers crocuses are! They are the most perfect little flower. These are blooming in the garden now, and our tulips are making their debut very soon.
I've seen quite a few crocuses in the area, while walking Lulu. The purple are my favorite, but the yellow and white ones are lovely too!

and......

our lilac bush has buds! Last year we got a very poor showing on our lilac bush. Only two blooms! I don't understand what happened. I'm hoping that it will bloom more successfully this year.

I sure am enjoying the weather lately, except for the rain of course.

Pillow Talk!

There must be a pillow....must be a pillow-talking boy for me. THERE MUST!

(play the song while you check out the next post about...what else? Pillows!)

More pillow talk!

I just made some more lavender mini pillows. I have featured my other pillows previously, the one with the owl motif, and I just created these other ones which are now up in my shop.

I've only sold one to date, but I'm hoping this new venture will be successful someday soon. They are easy to make and I love working with the lavender, my studio smells so wonderful! They are stuffed with polyfil and just enough lavender to lightly scent the pillow, about 1/4 cup of french lavender buds.

I love this fabric, which is a woodland animal scene..it's a nice linen/cotton fabric that I picked up at the Textile Museum sale, that happens every spring.
I hope to go again this year and pick up some more goodies, and take pictures to show you the madness! I posted about it here last year.




This pillow is larger, sans lavender, but I just love the folkloric bird pattern and the purpley blue, green and cream colors. Looks so pretty on my bed. Pillows are definetely my favorite thing to make at the moment.

Speaking of pillow talk, Doris Day, who made the movie by the same name, just recently celebrated her 84th birthday. Yes, I am a fan of Miss Doris, even read several of her biographies. She is quite the lady, so beautiful and I find her voice, not just her singing voice, to be quite lovely. I also love her chic sense of style in her movies. Her fashions figure prominently in her films, and she always sported a cute little blond dutch bob with bangs! After her films, she had two talk shows that were quite sucessful for her, and she was also a big animal lover, especially of dogs, and even has a 'dog-friendly' hotel in California. I also get such a kick out of watching her movies and have been a devoted fan for some time now.

These are some of my favorite Doris Day movies:

Please Don't Eat the Daisies - Doris teams up with David Niven, some rambuctious rug rats and a sheep dog to play a wife of a theatre critic. They move from crowded Manhattan apartment to the burbs and find a dusty old house to renovate and make their own.

The Glass Bottom Boat - Doris plays a NASA tour guide and single woman, who gets mixed up with espionage by accident. The results are a hilarious caper and the movie also stars Rod Taylor.

With Six You Get Eggroll - Doris and Brian Keith are a couple of widowers who meet and marry, joining their two broods. Fun stuff here with the kids' hostility to their new found home.

Send me no Flowers - Doris plays a housewife who suspects her husband, Rock Hudson of having an affair but actually he's a hypocondriac who believes he is dying and he is trying to find a new husband for his wife. Tony Randall co-stars. This movie is Doris and Rocks' third and final film together.

Lover Come Back - Day and Rock team up again to play duelling ad execs who vie for the same accounts. Hilarity results from their rivalry, while Rocks' boss, Tony Randall tries to figure out what the heck is going on!

and of course, my favorite.......Pillow Talk!
Footloose bachelor...beautiful career girl...and the world's most fascinating pastime!

Spring has come...

........the flowers have ris,
I wonder where the birdies is?


Well, the birdies and the flowers are slow gettin' here, although we are in the last week of March, so I was expecting a bit of spring to show up by now!

I'm feeling so impatient waiting for signs of spring! The only things I've seen to remind me are the articles about maple syrup in the newspaper, all the tulips and daffs at the grocery stores and in my neighbours' yard, their forsthia bush has buds on it.


I stole a few cuttings from them (I don't think they care) and I put them in a vase of water to force them to bloom. Hopefully soon they will spring forth a pretty yellow petite flower. Can't wait to see all the flowers blooming in front yards of the houses I walk by everyday while taking Lulul for a stroll. C'mon SPRING!!! SPRUNG already!!!! I'm tapping my foot impatiently now!

On a walk today I found signs of winter still, like this polar bear:


but Lulu and I did actually find a few signs of spring...




potholes! Lots of potholes!!


and this robin probably scouting out a place to build a nest.


This house has it's very own palm tree, a sure sign of summer! Fake but funky!


We're eating more pears lately, which appear (a pear) to fit ever so perfectly in my pear bowl with the chip in it. I'm trying to eat more fruit now, and less cookies and yummy pastries since my trip where I gorged on breads and desserts at the resort. I was very displeased to find out I can't wear my favorite jeans cos I gained some weight from the trip. I'm trying to cut down on chips too. I will try to walk Lulu more too! Maybe I'll be able to fit into them again next month! No Cupcakes either! Wahhh!



Steve bought me these pretty daffs to keep me happy until the ones outside start to show!



And speaking of extra weight, Archie is really packing on the pounds. It's my own fault, since I think I've been giving him too much kibble, plus I let him drink my cereal milk almost every morning and the occassional tuna or chicken tidbit. He and Eddie are real moochers! Archie needs to lose weight! Do they sell Kitty treadmills? hmmmm. .....maybe Kitty aerobic dvds? Well, I better start measuring his food instead of just dumping his kibble in his bowl. At least he doesn't have to try to fit his booty into designer jeans!

MUY EXCELLENTE!!!

That's how I would describe my trip to Mexico my friends! It was bueno!! Muy bueno!! I am still speaking spanish back home, in fact the other day I was paying for something and I said 'gracious'...haha! I actually did take grade 11 Spanish, and I remember I got a very bad grade in the first semster, probably due to ditching school, but did a lot better the second semester. I can't remember more than a few phrases and half a dozen words since that was a lifetime ago...almost!


(this shot taken from the aeroplano....duh!)
We visited my sister Cathy first in Regina, Saskatchewan...the prairies if you didn't know....and these photos show how remarkably flat it really is there) I must tell you though, being the land of big skies, they have awesome sunrises and sunsets, and the clouds look so surreal sometimes.

(flying over Saskatchewan)

(more of Saskatchewan)

(flying over the Baja penisula in Mexico)


(This is a cool shot where the wing of the plane is on the right and you can see the coastline of the Sea of Cortez)

Our trip was amazing though, despite getting ill one evening, and a bad burn on my arms and legs while on a boat....after snorkeling at a reef. I did also get to ride a horse on the beach, which was lovely but hot, we chose to go riding at the worst time, 1 pm in the blazing sun near water!!! Dumb dumb dumb. No hat and no boots either...so i couldn't get the horse to go faster. Although he did start to gallop a little and i freaked cos I thought I might go flying head first into the sand. There were about oh, a million or so spring break college students on the beach, half drunk and yelling stuff like 'Ondelaaaay, Ondelaaaay (sp?). On the boat cruise we took, we were surronded by the rambunctious randy college kids, who were getting wasted (booze cruise) and screaming whenever they saw a whale....scaring the poor thing away!! I was amazed at the sight of the whale, spraying water like a fountain, and glistening in the sun....a wonderous sight!
Lets see, we also saw a historic town, Todos Santos, which featured a lot of colonial architecture and the famous Hotel California. I had no idea it was IN Mexico! It was a lovely place....such a lovely place..(sorry, had to sneak that line in from the Eagles song.
So if you would like to see some photos of the trip, I invite you to click on this link here:
MEXICO TRIP PHOTOS HERE - the first three pages.
since I am feeling immensely lazy right now, and don't wish to upload the photos again....(just uploaded to my flikr account).

Hasta la Vista Baby!

say hello to my little friend..

....his name is Fred. Fred is sort of cute. I'm still trying to figure out what kind of animal he is. He likes to lie around and listen to the Beatles White album and drink Nestle Quik. Fred loves to stick his tongue out, not at you, he just prefers to let it hang out. Fred needs a new home because he drinks all the Nestle Quik in the house, and all the milk of course!
That's the little description i have in my shop for Fred. I always like to come up with a personality for my little kooky friends. He and Harold the bunny are now waiting to be adopted. Hope some nice people adopt them!


here's a close-up of Fred. Is'nt he cute, well...sort of?


Archie sits in my studio and loves to sit on top of the sofa in the sun.

He's waiting anxiously for spring to arrive so he can go lie in the sunroom downstairs off the kitchen, which is too cold right now. Soon though, he will be enjoying the sun in another room as will I!!! 16 days til spring!!!!!


One of my new favorite things to do is decoupaging. I've even designated this box which i decoupaged to hold all my pictures from magazines. I have a huge stack of mags in the corner of the studio which i go through while watching tv and clip clip away with my scissors, images that attract me, flowers, food, interior design stuff, etc. Why should all these pretty photos be hiding when they could be decorating some object, like a piece of furniture, or a trinket box , or anything really. I got this new book from the library which is the most wonderful book i've even seen on decoupaging, called 'New decoupage by Durwin Rice. Yes, the man's name is Durwin!!! Reminds me a bit of Bewitched when the Mother-in-law called Darren Durwood or Durwin!!
This book is so fabulous i think i may have to get it from Amazon or the bookstore.
So, I'm getting ready to decoupage stuff soon. I've already decoupaged some of my light switch plates too.

So much fun!! All you need is an item to decoupage, some glue, magazine or photo clippings and varnish.


Born to Decoupage!!! (oops! i need to fix the 'p' - should be the other way!)


This is my latest lavender mini pillow. I love this fabric with the wee owls!! So cute!

It's in the shop too!