Wren's Nest

More Green...

Some more green things around my house - in fact, one of them IS my house!!

Here is some pretty thyme on my front porch - it's my favorite herb - I love to come out the door and snip it - it smells so good! My little herb garden here - courtesy of Trader Joe's!

 

Going Green

Green is harder than I thought, but here's some! (I would post more pics, but I'm having trouble with Typepad, so maybe tomorrow...)

and again...

A beautiful summer tomato! I love these heirlooms that are funny shapes and beautiful colors! We had a funkier looking one, but we ate it.

So tired today - we had three little earthquakes in the night, and I felt them - they woke me up! My husband is in Chicago, so I'm not sleeping well anyway and after the first one (at 2am) I had trouble going back to sleep - yikes!!

So glad it's almost the weekend!

Seeing Red Again

I haven't been so good about keeping up on the Seeing Red idea. I've been looking...I used to have TONS of red in my house, but we've gone to more light tones it appears. Here's some lovely red thread. I do have lots of quilts with red.

Off to field day at my younger kid's school - I'll be the lady handing out the otter pops...oh, there's red there!!

Have a lovely Thursday!

I Saw Red

Here is another fun photo challange - over at Sadie Olive.
















In continuing to try to use my camera more and figure out what all those settings mean - I love these challenges since they force me to use the camera and think about what I'm doing. I love the color red and this seemed just right. I see red in this fabulous blanket that is on our bed. It's part one of the bed face lift. We are still waiting for our quilt to come. It's a great, cozy red color and I do enjoy sleeping under it!!

Today I made cupcakes for the family the bought our "cupcake of the month" at the school auction - they were pretty easy and I think turned out cute. Hope they like them! They're Lemon Poppyseed Butterfly Cakes from the Cupcake book by Elinor Klivans.

Pretty

This was a Mother's Day gift from my husband. I had told him about this amazing website and blog by this lovely lady- Lisa Leonard, who has quite a story and just seems like someone you want to be friends with. I love her jewelry and will, I'm sure be ordering more! We ordered this lovely on Mother's Day and I chose which piece I wanted. I got it a couple of days ago and haven't stopped wearing it. It's all 3 kid's initials and I love it!

St. Francis and the Lady

I've had a busy few days of collecting - my newest obsession - the santos! I've recently purchased 2 (reproductions - the antique/vintage ones are a little out of reach for now), though there are some amazing ones here (now I need a reason to go to LA so I can visit that shop).

I got a sweet St. Francis at a great boutique called Queen Bee that's near me. St. Francis is one of my favorites. I went to Assisi in college and it was absolutely the most beautiful and peaceful place ever! I would love to go back.

I also got this lady santos from the same place. She's very pretty and fits into the living room just great.

Off to try to get some things sewn before picking up kids and doing the whole baseball thing for the 3rd night in a row!!

3 Beets and a Carrot

Here are some fun things I've been working on lately - they're all pincushions (but look good enough to eat)!!

Enjoy your Monday!!

Santos

I've recently discovered these beautiful, amazing figures while perusing various blogs and websites. They are called Santos and were used in religious celebrations and parades back in the day. I'm on sort of a big religious iconography (is that a word?) kick right now - looking for items like these, big artistic iron crosses, beautiful tiles a la Sid Dickens, etc. I bought one of those (it's not a Sid Dickens, but it looks similar) yesterday - I'll share it tomorrow. I don't know what it is about all this stuff- it just all seems very cool to me and in the remodeled house, I actually have room to put things like these Santos figures. Here are some that are so lovely I have to share (all pictures used by permission of the shop owners).

This one is from The Curious Sofa in Kansas City - how badly do I want to go to this shop! If you live in that area - lucky you - if not, her website and blog are fantastic and very inspiring!

The Curious Sofa also has this amazing collection of crosses - WOW!

Next is a lovely from Sadie Olive, she has quite a few in her wonderful online boutique (where I am a frequent customer, admittedly).

She also has this amazing St. Francis - I love the little birdie!!

Yesterday, I got my new Ballard Design catalog (I'm also a frequent customer of theirs, though I do really like supporting the smaller, independent boutiques) and they've jumped on the bandwagon - though they are calling their figures "Flemish Dollmaker Forms" - theirs are resin, not wood, but I thought it was interesting. Looks like my Santos have gone mainstream! (Mind you, I still don't actually own one, but I'm hoping!)

Macro Challenge Day 30

It's the last day of the Macro Challenge and, again, what a great time I've had taking these pictures. I know I'll continue experimenting with this setting! Here are 3 pictures I took with my new Lensbaby macro 4 lens. So much fun to play with!

The light wasn't too good on this one - it's on my porch and it was late afternoon, but I thought it was sort of cool anyway, so I made it black and white in iphoto and I like how it looks!

Here is a mosaic of all the macro pics I took during the challenge - it's fun to see them all together.