WOW, ANOTHER MAGAZINE

I guess this has been my year and I don't know why....but, on Tuesday I will be honored with yet another feature in a magazine.

It's call 'SHE' and it's out of Kenosh, WI and it's a magazine for and about Women.
Here's the link: http://www.she-magazine.com/index.html

We are going to be in the September issue
Here's the August cover

I'm not sure just what this is going to be all about but they do want to come for the photo shoot of our home on Tuesday so here I go again....oh and she said it will be a FALL shoot this time - seems the issues are opposite of the seasons for me! So it's out with the Geraniums and in with the darker Fall items.

I was also asked to wear something more Fallish rather than summer clothes as I will be in several of the photos and she thougth I MIGHT (a HUGE MIGHT) BE ON THE COVER - maybe....OMGosh, I never got to finish my Weight Watchers - too many parties got in the way and now I'm going to look like one of the Pumpkins! lol

No, it's just that I didn't expect to be in the photos and wish I had dropped about 10 pounds that the camera will certainly put on me.

Last Saturday we went to a cousin's reunion at my husbands cousins (Leanne and Fred's) - it's a yearly thing the last Sat. in July and we each take a turn hosting it. This is the only time WE ALL are together so it's a nice time.

Leanne just re-married two years ago (husband passed away 28 years ago) and she moved into Freds place and totally RE-DID the back yard and it's such a beautiful pleaceful place.

She put in a raised garden and fenced it all in - I just love it.

THE GROUP!

Well that's my story today - hope you enjoyed it just a weeeeee-bit.

I'll take pictures of any tweaking I do over the weekend for the photo shoot - not sure just what I'm going to be doing though...not a lot of time to tweak because we're having all the kids in Sunday for two of our son's birthdays - youngest will be 40, oldest will be 45 YIKES!!!

Anyway - not much time here for tweaking so they might just get what they get.

Have a great one! Oh, and on Wednesday I will draw a winner for my 200th follower and let you know what the gift will be!

Karen

WHITE WEDNESDAY

Come with me into the garden for this week's installment of WHITE WEDNESDAY. I think I have said it before, gardening in Florida is a bit of a challenge especially if you have lived in another part of the US and know that there are peonies out there somewhere. But I digress... (sigh). So I try to give my garden the charm that I crave with crusty, rusty elements and fragments in my favorite WHITE...


Cute birdhouse from old pieces and parts. Notice something has taken up residence in the lower floor by chewing the opening. So much for the birdies...


Fab old rusty white wheelbarrow.


I love this white sunflower bird feeder.


One of my favorite hoe shields from my collection.


Iron garden chair that I found where? You guessed it~~in the trash!!! What is wrong with people?


A section of old concrete garden edging.


I never throw anything away until there is no other option. An old rocker that served us well now sits in the cutting garden...


Concrete bunny that guards my butterfly garden.


Architectural element on my garden cottage.


Old porch post and an old corbel on the garden cottage.


Old rusty, crusty vent cover.


White angelonia.


Fab old crusty painted trellis.


This piece would have protected the bottom panel of an old screen door. Now hangs on a section of old picket fence.


Another old trellis with a twig wreath.


Fab old architectural element on the porch.


Thanks for coming along. Until next week...

Hugs,
Shelley

Pictorial Webster's

My friend Kara alerted me to the imminent publication of Pictorial Webster's


I hate to just shill the publisher's pitch, but...

Pictorial Webster's -- Featuring over 1,500 engravings that originally graced the pages of Webster's dictionaries in the 19th century, this chunky volume is an irresistible treasure trove for art lovers, designers, and anyone with an interest in visual history. Meticulously cleaned and restored by fine-press bookmaker Johnny Carrera, the engravings in Pictorial Webster's have been compiled into an alluring and unusual visual reference guide for the modern day. Images range from the entirely mysterious to the classically iconic. From Acorns to Zebras, Bell Jars to Velocipedes, these alphabetically arranged archetypes and curiosities create enigmatic juxtapositions and illustrate the items deemed important to the Victorian mind. Sure to inspire and delight, Pictorial Webster's is at once a fascinating historical record and a stunning jewel of a book.


They are giving away a very fancy leather hand-bound edition, too!


Buy Pictorial Webster's: A Visual Dictionary of Curiosities at Amazon (for 34% off -- only $23.10). There's also a Pictorial Webster's Stamp Set and Pictorial Webster's Wall Cards.

Via Junior Society.

And The Winner Is......

Congrats DEMAINCA on winning the box of goodies!!!!



Thanks to everyone who commented and for all the lovely words you sent my way! I am very blessed to have so many people interested in my little blog. And now to Bobbie, my winner, if you will please send me your mailing info this box of treasures will be on it's way to you toot sweet!!

Hugs,
Shelley

Submarine Set in Cartoon Heroes Video

Ben sent me this music video with a fabulous steampunk set -- you have to wait a while, but then you get a hybrid spaceship/submarine straight out of Jules Verne.



I didn't expect to like it, but I loved it!

200th FOLLOWER GIVE A-WAY

UPDATE:
OKAY.....this is just incredible! As I'm tying this and then posted....within that time I got 2 MORE FOLLOWERS....SO I PASSED THE 200th FOLLOWER....so I guess it's time to start commenting NOW!!!!!

ANYONE CAN ENTER!!
I see Judy from THE SPICE CUPBOARD is my 200th follower...thanks Judy.

OH, PLEASE LEAVE YOUR E-MAIL!!!! I will need to get ahold of you!!!!

I can not believe that the next follower will be my 200th one!

When I first started my blog I never thought I'd reach ANYONE let alone 200 people thinking I had something interesting to say....now that being said....200 people DO NOT post comments! LOL

I am going to have a GIVE A-WAY when I reach my 200th follower but I'm not sure what that will be - but as you can tell - it's going to be a surprise...EVEN TO ME!

So just leave a comment below when you see I have reached 200 (I'm at 199 right now) and I will draw the name within one week of the 200th follower!

My good computer is in the dr's right now being fixed so I can't upload pictures from my camera to this old computer but when I do I will be able to post more....I'm lost without the good one. How did I ever function with this one although....LOOK...I'M ABLE TO AT LEAST BE ON THE BLOGS AGAIN!!!! And I don't get all those errors!!!!!

This has been just the busiest week for me/us.
Tuesday we had our two grandchildren
Wednesday we did work around here
Thursday Doug and I priced products ALL DAY and that evening we went to our sons for dinner
Friday we had shopping to do
Saturday we had a cousins reunion to attend all day
Yesterday we had a cousins reunion on the other side all day
Today we have to go to that same cousins for fun and chatting and then she's having us all there for dinner this evening
Tomorrow we have our two grandchildren again....SO IT'S GOING TO BE RESTING TIME THE REST OF THE WEEK!

I can't believe that July is about over and then we're into August....when we get into Aug., I feel we're on the downside to summer - we haven't even been anywhere to get away and relax yet either.

I hope you are all having a great summer so far...and it sure sounds like it from all the blogs I have been reading! Lots of Florida vacations going on I see.

HOPE TO SEE LOTS OF MY FOLLOWERS ON HERE POSTING FOR MY GIVE A-WAY!!! AND anyone else too - I love new visitors and comments!

Karen

20th Century Props Auction

Cherie sent me this:

20th Century Props seems to be closing it's doors with a humongous webcast auction of it's warehouse July 28th - August 1st.

When 20th Century Props decided they had
enough, Great American Group was chosen to
sell everything down to the bare walls. With
over 40 years of collecting and buying, renting
and selling, Harvey Schwartz, the owner of 20th
Century Props is ready to retire. You’d be hard
press to find any movie or television show that
hasn’t had one of these props on the set. You’ll
find the futuristic shower Tom Cruise used
in “Minority Report” to an armchair that starred
with Marilyn Monroe in multiple films to the Art
Deco chandeliers from “The Aviator” &
“Titanic” with Leo DiCaprio. Whether you are a
movie buff, a collector, an interior decorator ar
just a person with a thing for leopard skin
furniture, you’d be crazy not to attend this
auction. Bid on site or bid online from the
convenience of your PC! Log onto our website
at www.greatamerican.com and view over
200,000 square feet of furniture, collectibles,
antiques, figurines and artwork from every
period in the history of the world.


There's a Windows Media video tour here and a pdf brochure here.

Some advice here? No 6 foot high statues of anything (unless you have 20 foot high ceilings, and then only maybe). Stay away from fiberglass. Focus on the furniture and housing accessories -- it looks like they have some great antiques. Your best deals are probably on the earliest and latest auctions each day -- when people haven't warmed up yet or have already spent their money. Remember, there's a 10% buyer's premium and if you don't live in LA you've got to figure out how to get it home -- and freight shipping is probably not cheap.

Heather Jean's Steamy Horrorpunk Home

Heather Jean is an artist who specializes in wierd, wonderful, horrible collages. She also has a fabulous home to share with us.

Although I would consider myself more horrorpunk than steampunk, I think you can see the influence on my decorating... The first 2 pics are in my living room, that's a radio tube stuck in an antique candle holder, a photo of my spouse and I at Dances of Vice last year, and a fetal skeleton replica which was altered by my friend Mike Locascio to look like one of the dancing fetal skeletons of Bologna. I'm an artist and I work at home, so I've really enjoyed creating an atmosphere to suit my eccentric and esoteric tastes.

What is it about the old kid's piano that makes it the spookiest thing here?

WHITE WEDNESDAY

This week's installment of WHITE WEDNESDAY features random photos from my archives and select quotes from one of my fav books on living with white~~AT HOME WITH WHITE by Atlanta Bartlett.


White has the appeal of the nothingness that is before birth, of the world in the ice age. Wassily Kandinsky


For those colors which you wish to be beautiful, always first prepare a pure white background. Leonardo Da Vinci


White... is not a mere absence of colour; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black... G.K.Chesterton



Renoir said once that nothing was so difficult, and at the same time so exciting, to paint, as white on white. Ambroise Vollard

Martin's Watchmaker Loft

Here's Martin's loft; he says he's

...more oriented towards a Sherlock Holmes interior with strong watchmaking influences (my grandad was a watchmaker).




The apartment is a loft in a renovated toy factory from way back. Because of some of the interior features of the building such as the enclosed courtyard, we sometimes call it the Willy Wonka Building. Now if I could only get that fully surrounded double height shelved library going!

I love the personal history informed view of his steampunk style -- "the watchmaker." Did you notice the shelf full of timepieces?

BLOG PROBLEMS

Hi everyone!

As of this week I have been having internet problems - everything keeps telling me I have a certificate error and other things like that - and mostly on my blog I sometimes can't sign in and lots of times I can't comment .... SO THAT BEING SAID....that's why I haven't been commenting on all your wonderful blogs - it's not that I'm ignoring all of you.

I can't even do a Yahoo search - it keeps giving me DIAGNOSTIC problem errors.

I'm just so frustrated.

Guess it's time to take this thing in to the dr.
Wouldn't you know....I've had it a year on the 4th!!!! So the years warranty IS UP!!!

Hugs, to all.
Karen

100th Post~~You Know What That Means!!!

A GIVEAWAY!!!!!

So it certainly took me awhile, but here I am at post #100! In keeping with tradition in blogland, I'd like to show my appreciation to everyone who stops by and leaves me lovely and inspirational comments by sending a lucky winner a package of goodies. So please leave a comment on this post to enter the giveaway, and tell all your readers to enter as well. I will draw the name of the lucky fabulista one week from today and then leave him/her a comment on their blog as well as announce the winner in a post here on my blog. So let's see what the winner will get...

A lovely creamy white dome-topped wooden box filled with treasure.


Open the box and look inside. An apothecary jar with lovely egg soaps from Gianna Rose, a teeny old whisk broom, a set of botanical note cards from Secret Leaves, a bar of luscious honey almond soap from French Soaps, and an old watch face to start...


Add an old clock face, and some fabulous hand-made gift tags in a French theme...


Add some old buttons on a card...


A better look at the egg soaps, buttons, tag, and a lovely charm from the one and only Cathy Penton. The charm has a birds nest in brown and cream on one side and says "wish" on the other...


The egg soaps, the whisk and the clock and watch faces...


The botanical note cards and honey almond soap. Great for dirty hands after gardening...


The Cathy Penton charm and the old clock face...


Fabulous hand-made gift tags...


Good luck to everyone~~I hope you are enticed to enter! Who knows, there may be a few surprises tucked in here and there as well...

Maeve's Apartment

Remember Maeve? She was looking for advice on decorating her apartment about a year ago. She sent me some pictures of how her mainly-elbow-grease-fueled project turned out, although I'm very late in getting to them.


Here are a few pictures a month in to trying to decorate my apartment. Most of the pictures are of the kitchen, since that's the room we've made the most progress on. One of the biggest, simplest, cheapest changes was the kitchen cabinets--we simply taped a few inches from the edges with electrical tape and it looks like an entirely different kitchen. One of the other cheap, simple projects I'm proud of is the kitchen hutch, which started life as a terribly ugly mid-nineties light wood finished thing, and a couple of coats of high gloss spray paint and white spray paint on the knobs totally turned it around (not to mention it adds a lot of storage in my teeny tiny kitchen). The hutch was $30 at the thrift store and the spray paint was five dollars.

The other big, cheap, (relatively) easy DIY we did was reupholstering two chairs and an ottoman (second ottoman to follow soon). The chairs were $20 each and the ottomans $5 at the thrift store, plus fabric for everything came to about $60. My boyfriend and I weren't sure that we were going to be able to do this properly, because neither of us had any experience with reupholstery at all, but it really wasn't that bad.

Mark Phenicie's Home and Furniture

Mark Phenicie sent pictures of his home, and of furniture he designs and builds.

One day, back in the early 70’s after I had returned home from Traveling Trough France, Italy, Living in North Africa for a year and going through Israel, India, Thailand and living a year in Vietnam as a young Marine, I decided to set out to build some of my own furniture with my own designs. I frankly could not understand why we as Americans who had access to the most sophisticated tools could only turn out what I called “Sears $49.95 junk furniture, whereas in the poor countries they were turning out detailed masterpieces.



Although my furniture was influenced by my exposure to other designs i had come in contact with,it slowly evolved and was not patterned after any particular artist even though it was a combination of ideas that I pulled out of my head and were pleasing to my eye. My living room today still maintains that original design which I labeled “the Spiral design” or “the Open helix” based on the DNA chromosome and or vine festooned trees. This design was popular with traditional English furniture known as the “sugar Barley twist” or some of the Flemish or Spanish furniture designs using the open barley.



My "steelchair53" line of furniture has evolved from a slab of rough sawn oak which was taken from a barn loft stash from a friend of mine. In the process i designed and made a large desk and a chair that matched, with a sofa and lamps and coffee table which will have end tables to match. this furniture smacks of "Steam punk", "Mad max", "Post Man, Water World and a smidgen of Dinatopia.

See the whole set, with some amazing furniture pieces (including a $3000 birdhouse), here.