Little Vintage Style & Other Miscellany

Here's Miss Avery in another vintage Polly Flinders dress, paired with jeggings from Target and thrifted boots. 

 This sort of combo is such an easy choice for mixing vintage and modern.  The leggings keep the dress from feeling overly fussy, while still allowing the dress to be showcased, if that makes sense!

We had a fun little photoshoot this time around.  She seemed to enjoy finding different ways to pose for me.  I found this My Little Pony toy at the thrift store, and Avery is in love!  She sings and dances, so Avery was following along!

 Then she set off to "clean" the bench...

 ...and stand on it!

And finally, she proceeded to pick up a stick and say, "Boing, boing, boing!" and pretend she was on a pogo stick!  I have no idea where she picked that up!  

Thanks for all the bedspread love in the last post!  Can you believe that I wavered as to whether to buy them?  Six dollars a piece seemed a little steep to me for thrift prices, and I just couldn't picture them in the room.... I'm so glad I went with my instincts though!

Anyway, the post sparked a question from Lynxymama about Avery's room: 

have you taken pic of miss a's bedroom? i would love to see her space too!

Well, I haven't taken photos of her room recently.  Here  and here and here are some bits and pieces, but I've rearranged things multiple times.  I'd actually love to do a tour of her room, but we're in a transition stage right now.  She's close to being potty-trained (meaning we can lose the changing table soon), and close to moving from the crib to a toddler bed.  So both of those things will mean some further rearranging.  Once we've accomplished those things, and I've got her room redecorated, I promise I'll do a real tour though.  Next to my studio, her room is my favorite room in the house!

To those others of you who asked me questions, I'll answer them soon!  

A final bit of miscellany.  I'm honored to have been given the Liebster Blog Award  by Barbara and Alicia from A Mother and A Daughter!  Thank you so much, ladies!!

Awesome Thrift Find! (And One Question Answered)

 I recently had such a fun thrift score!  You may recognize my boys' room from their room tour, but one thing that's changed is their new bedding!

 I found a matching pair of vintage bedspreads for $6 each, in the perfect colors for their room!  

I didn't dislike their old bedding, but how could I resist this cuteness???  And now we've got a couple choices, if they get bored and want a change.

So far though, they love the new bedding.  It's very lightweight (like a sheet), and they prefer that to the thicker comforters we used to have.

It even has this cute blue and green fringe around the edges.

 Seriously, how adorable is that zebra?  And the porcupine?

I'm so glad that I still have some amount of control over the kids' decor.  I'm cherishing it while I do, because I know my time is short-lived! 

And I thought I'd also answer one of the questions from my previous post. 

Renee asked:  Have you always collected/saved the vintage goodies? 

I'd say that I've always been interested in vintage things.  When I was young, I collected dolls and teddy bears and dollhouses, and I always gravitated towards the "old" ones.  Then as I got older and began decorating my own places, I tended towards items that looked aged or old.  The same went for my artwork- I tried to make my art look aged and worn, and often used vintage ephemera.  My vintage OBSESSION didn't really flourish until I had kids though!  Once I began decorating nurseries and doing baby journals, I "discovered" my true passion- vintage baby's and children's items!  And my love for dolls and dollhouses was renewed once I found out I was having a daughter (I SO needed a daughter!!)  And that brings us to today.  I have a feeling that even once my KIDS outgrow it, I'll still be collecting vintage children's items- I can't see MYSELF ever outgrowing it!

Lil' Vintage Story Books #14

Welcome again to Lil' Vintage Story Books, where we share our favorite vintage children's books!

I absolutely love this week's book!  It's a Tell-A-Tale Book called "Pockets", written and illustrated by Lucy Ozone, published in 1955.

 It's about a bunch of children who are bragging about how many pockets they have, and what they keep in their pockets.

 A roller skate key!

My, my so impressive!  Three pockets!

 Love this little boy in his cowboy outfit!

  The little boy in the striped shirt is always looking on a little sadly, because he doesn't have any pockets...

 ...until...

 ...his Daddy beats everyone with ten pockets!  

 Hurray!

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I'm A Project Life Convert! (or Am I A Scrapbooker Now?)

First I'll give you some background, for those of you that may be newer followers of my blog.  I've always considered myself a collage artist vs. a true scrapbooker.  While I keep scrapbooks for my kids (here, here, and  here), I do them in more of a collage style than a scrapbooking style.  I love the books I've done, but as we have added children to the family, it's become more and more difficult to keep up with journals for all three kids!  I've tried to make sure I do spreads for the younger two, but as a result, I've neglected doing them for my oldest.  The last spread I did for him was when he turned five, and he's almost 6 1/2 now!

So lately, I've started hearing about Project Life, a new scrapbooking system by Becky Higgins.  It consists of divided pages that house 4x6 items and 3x4 items.  In addition, you may then purchase kits that have 4x6 and 3x4 decorated cards to fit into the slots, to supplement your photos. 

I thought it may be a perfect solution to my dilemma.  I can keep up with the collage style of book for Avery (until she turns five), and then use Project Life books for Noah and Riley (Noah turns five in two weeks).

I decided to take the jump and give it a try.  I ordered one set of pages and one core kit.  And, dare I say it, but I think I may be hooked!  I've done three spreads, and they went so much more quickly and easily than my typical collage spreads.  While they lack a little bit of the artistic, more personal aspect of my collage journals, I think I'll actually be able to keep up with them!  And that's exactly what I needed!

I went on a little bit of a shopping spree (if you can call it a spree- we only have one scrapbook store in town other than Michael's, JoAnn's, and Hobby Lobby), and bought some scrapbooking supplies that I thought would be good supplements to the kit, and then organized everything all nice and pretty!

 Anytime I'm going to work on a Project Life page, I can just pull out these two containers, and I have everything I need!   

So now, after a novel of explanation above (!), here are the results of it all:

Since I stopped Riley's last journal at age five, I'm backtracking and doing some pages from the past year.  The above talks about some of his interests- tools and science.

 Then this page talks about some of the things he's accomplished in the past year- "walking" across the monkey bars, riding his bike, climbing the steps of a lighthouse.

And the last page talks about his and Noah's relationship, and how he enjoys the responsibility of being a big brother.


On some of the pages, I added my own 4x6 and 3x4 cards that were cut from scrapbook paper, when  I couldn't find ones from the kit that worked.  I have a feeling I'll do that a lot, just because I can never do anything by the rules (ha ha!).  But what's so great is that the kit sort of give me a starting point, and I can expand from there.


So anyway, there you have it!  I guess I'm a real scrapbooker now!




By the way, thanks to those of you who asked me some questions in the last post!  Daniele, this post should answer most of yours, I think, and I'll get to the other questions soon for the rest of you!  Feel free to ask away if anybody else has questions!

Ask Me Anything....

Sometimes I get questions from you guys about various things, and I try to respond directly to you.  But I thought maybe it was time to do a question/answer sort of thing here, if anybody has any questions they haven't asked me before!  It can be about anything- my collections, my artwork, my kids, my book, thrift-shopping (I'm an expert, if I do say so myself!), Avery's vintage clothes, my studio, my house, etc.  I always enjoy reading these sorts of posts on other blogs, so thought you may enjoy it here!

I'll start the ball rolling with this question from Kortney.  (Kortney, I didn't have a way to respond directly to you, so I'll post your question here...)  She asked:

Where do you find all your dolls and doll goodies. After 20long years my husband and I had our beautiful baby girl. She is 4 now and loves vintage things and babiy doll. I have Bren looking for vintage dolls for her room but I can't find any. Do you have any hints?

*I'd say about half of the vintage dolls I have are from when I was young.  My sisters, mother, and I used to "collect dolls", and I held onto the ones that were the nicer ones.  The others I've gotten from mostly antique stores and Ebay.  I really don't consider myself a  serious doll collector, but I do pick up ones that I think are cute from time to time.  Vintage dolls can be so expensive, and I don't even want to get serious, because I don't have enough money!

So, ask away!  I'd love to see what you guys are wondering!

Lil' Vintage Story Books #13

Hi Guys, so sorry about the late post this week!  I've been having computer issues all morning, and have finally resolved things (I hope!).  As a result though, I don't have a book to show you this week.  However, I know some of you still want to link up, so I'll put up our linky list below.  I can't wait to see your books, and I'll be back as planned next Friday! 

Vintage Corduroy

Oh, how I love this photoshoot I did last month with Avery.  She just was looking her most adorable!  I mean really, how can I have such a beautiful daughter???  Love this little girl!  So, anyway, there are a lot of photos this week because I couldn't narrow them down!

She's wearing a little vintage corduroy jumper, over thrifted leggings and a turtleneck from Walmart.  And, as with almost all her outfits, vintage Goody barrettes.

Sigh, I just can't get enough of this photo above...

I'm linking up this week here and here!  Thank you, Kim, for featuring us last week!

Miss Avery's Book

Oh my, I have really fallen behind working in the kid's journals.  With new school schedules this year, I'm having a hard time finding art-making time.  When I create, I like to have uninterrupted blocks of time, but I've lost those due to our schedule.  Nevertheless, I've found some time recently to do a couple spreads in Avery's book.

 

The first is about her first haircut.  She just got a little trim to clip some of the scraggly baby ends off, but it was a fun event!  She did so well (because she watched big brothers get their haircuts first), and looked so cute sitting up in the seat!  I attached a bit of her hair to the page just like I did in Riley's and Noah's first haircut pages.

Next is a page about her love of pizza.  Every single time she sits down for a meal, she asks for "zah!", literally.  She LOVES it (can't say that I blame her!). 

I know I've mentioned it here before, but I'm so torn about how to continue with these journals.  I love that I've done them, and I love looking through them, but it's becoming such a struggle to keep up with them.  The last spread I did for Riley was when he turned five (15 months ago!).  Noah turns five next month, so I'm considering stopping his then as well. 

I'm looking into Project Life as a way to continue.  This looks like a quick, simple way to do a child's journal- I could get as artistic as I want with it, without feeling too overwhelmed.  And I could easily go back and catch up with the time that I've missed with Riley.  Have any of you done Project Life?  Any thoughts?

Lil' Vintage Story Books #12

Welcome again to Lil' Vintage Story Books, where we share our favorite vintage children's books!

This week I'm featuring a little book that I received in the mail yesterday from Renee!  (If you haven't been to Renee's blog, you must go- every post she does is full of eye candy!!)  She was so sweet to send me several vintage books for my boys and an adorable little apron for Avery.  But first let's focus on the book.  It's an old Bugs Bunny story called "Bugs Bunny Hangs Around", from 1957.  When I showed the boys the books Renee had sent, this was the first one they chose.

 It really brings me back to read Bugs Bunny.  Remember when Loony Tunes was one of the only choices for cartoons after school?

 And Petunia Pig!  I'd forgotten about her!

It's harder than you think to do Elmer Fudd's voice!  The kids couldn't figure out why I was talking that way!

 Porky and Petunia set up a trap to catch Bugs, because he was stealing all the carrots...

When we were done reading, the boys were talking about how Elmer and the pigs were mean to Bugs.  It made me realize how foreign Bugs Bunny is to them- their take on the book was that Bugs was the good guy (even though he was sneaking the carrots).  They don't have the history of knowing how Bugs is ALWAYS being mischevous, and that we really are supposed to be happy when he "gets what he deserves"! 

 

Now, I also mentioned that Renee sent Avery a little apron.  It is was the sweetest thing (here are Renee's original photos from her post), but unfortunately it was a little short for her.  It barely covered her tummy!  So I dug into my vintage fabric stash and lengthened it up for her!  My seamstress skills are not up to par with Renee's; nevertheless, I still think it turned out pretty cute after the minor alterations! 

 She was not into modeling right after her nap...

...but a few Goldfish crackers later (the never-fail toddler bribe), and she was all smiles!

 

Thank you again, Renee!  As you can see, we enjoyed all of your gifts!

 

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