It's Girly Time

Ali and Lynne.

 It's not very often that I have the chance to get together with my girlfriends. Most of my time is spent at home with our three male dogs, one male cat, my husband and son. The other girl in the house besides me is my 16 year old kitty (Lucy) who sleeps in my closet most of the time. Needless to say, I LOVE spending time with my girlfriends. It brings me back to myself and reminds me how much I LOVE being a girl.

This time we got together for the day and did a little vintage shopping at one of our favorite places, Ahab Bowen Vintage, in Dallas. Having first discovered this place in the 80's, I was sweetly surprised that it is still the same - no, it's better! Reasonably priced, clean, and fun: that's how I would describe their collection of vintage clothing, shoes and accessories. My favorite room is in the back - the men's section. Hats, coats, suits, ties and shoes! I never walk away without a treasure or two.  This time I walked in with some treasures:  Lynne, Ali and Nikki.  Love love LOVE those girls!!

Every girl needs something sparkley.



I want them aaallll!



One fantastic pair after another!



Different discounts for different tag colors = FUN!

 

The perfect hat for Ali.



Hello!

I'm so happy they are still around!

Scat

The neon beckoned us down the long alley and
into an elevator that took us down to heaven.

  This weekend, a dear friend of mine came to visit and we decided to stay up past our bedtimes, but we didn't want to be the oldest people in the room.  Just our luck, we stumbled upon the coolest place I've been to in AGES.  I'd heard about Scat Lounge in downtown Fort Worth, and was curious to see if it lived up to it's image.  After all, it has a tough act to follow.  In high school, my fellow band buddies and I would sneak our way into a tiny jazz club in Dallas called the 6051 Club on Forrest Lane, because it made us feel like grown-ups but mostly because the music was so fantastic.  I don't remember the names of any of the musicians we saw, but there were many.  Scat reminds me of this place.  The clientele is low key, great music is the focus and the drinks are de-lish.  My friend, Lynne, and I spent the night gabbing, and trying to nail a good shot of Joel Cross, the performer that night.  You can see her shots here and here.  I think I learned something that night, dirty martini's and all.  I need to stay up past my bedtime more often.

One Hot Day in December

It was on December 21st that my husband, son and I decided to head over to Fort Worth, finish up a little Christmas shopping and hang out at the Botanic Gardens.  We ended up a the Japanese Gardens on that day.  I had to take my shoes off because the temp had reached an really strange 80 degrees Fahrenheit.  After I wondered around barefoot for a while with my film camera, shooting up the last of my Kodachrome film, I found this guy!

We were laughing at him because he looked like he was eyeing the giant Koi in the pond, like he was going to have one of those mega fish for lunch!  Then, suddenly... he speared a smaller fish.  And we got to see the entire thing unfold before our eyes!

Taken just before he speared his lunch.

Had I not been so surprised, I might have gotten all his beautiful wings in the shot.

Down the hatch!

I'll never laugh at a Great Blue Heron again!  I wonder if he's ever gotten one of those Koi....

New Year: Clean Slate

Happy New Year!  Have you made any resolutions?  Not me!  Not a single one.  But I did make a firm decision to start this year off with a clean slate.  Inspired by the video of Lotta Jansdotter's Open Studio Tour with Etsy, my first plan was to simply clean off my bulletin boards.  But then when I took a good look at my mess of a studio, I decided a bigger re-do was in order.  I spent half a day planning and choosing furniture and accessories at Ikea with a $500 budget and several days after that putting the stuff together and figuring out what to do with all my clutter.  My arm almost fell off from screwing everything together and my recycling/trash heap was pretty darn big, but I think it was worth it.

Here are some Before and After pics.



The piece of Victorian architecture was a gift from my husband for my first mother's day.  The two glassed in shelves are from Ikea (Billy bookshelves with Kiaby doors), so's the lamp (Tral).  The work desk is actually two desks from Pier One that I pushed together (I need a big space to work on).  The cat is Frank!



That big fat black chair was not very comfortable, so I replaced it with a very comfy red one (Ikea Klemens).  I got the desk (Micke), printer cart (also Miche), desk lamp (Mil), file holder (Spontan) and three magnetic bulletin boards (also Spontan) from Ikea.  The hubcap clock was a gift from my husband for Christmas this year.  It's from a 1960's era AMC Rambler (and from Etsy seller 8MileCreekDesigns).  Cool, huh?!  Oh, and there's Frank again, in the window.



Most of the clutter went into the shelves.  I covered the bottom six panes of glass with some mulberry paper so I could hide the ugly stuff down there.



The before picture makes me look like a hoarder, doesn't it?!  Most of that stuff is sewing supplies, which I inherited from my husband's grandmother who just recently passed away.  I've stored most of that under the work desk, to be pulled out when I finally learn how to sew.  And that bulletin board - what a mess!  I decided to just stick to one place to put up things I want to see every day - inspiration.  Some of that stuff had been up there on that bulletin board for at least 3 years.



Look at all that junk everywhere!  Boy, did I ever need me some drawers.  And now my computer is up off the floor, too.  This Ikea desk had a little space to hide all the cables from my printer and computer.  There is a very messy cable party going on that nobody can see now.  Yay!



Now there are only a few "dust catchers" out.  All my little horses and cars went behind glass.  But I had to display the beautiful 1950's Singer sewing machine that I inherited from my husband's grandmother.  He still raves about the ninja costumes she made for him on that machine when he was a little boy.  She took very good care of her first and only Singer.  It's still in perfect working order.

 What about you?  What are you doing to mark the beginning of a new year?