tidbit adventures...

here is the photo journal of our most recent tidbit adventure....

our sale, a few weekends ago, with wildflowers photography.

better late than never?
is that even true?

Book love for my imaginary coffee table

I have a love affair with books.

I love the words, but also I love the feel of them, and the smell of them. One just can't take in all a book is with a "reader." I understand its place of convenience, but how could we as a society ever permanently trade away the feeling of opening a hardback in your hands and flipping the crisp pages for the first time? I can't imagine we ever will. I have this dream of one day having this incredible stack of super special, big, beautiful coffee table books - on a coffee table - that people actually look at and feel inspired by. OK, realistically, that's not happening anytime soon. Hello, motherhood. But a girl can start a collection, right?

So today when we went to the going-out-of-business Borders bookstore and everything was 40% off, I was hunting for treasures.

And I found them.

Oh. My.

I had no one to share my absolute glee with when I happened upon a single remaining copy of this book in the design section. I'd been wishing for it, but had never seen it in person. It is so beautifully substantial and inspiring. I want to take a picture of every page and post them.

I WANT TO LIVE IN THIS BOOK.

Check it out. I know a couple people with this wallpaper....Joy & Ashley Ann...both ladies with incredible taste.

Heaven will be decorated by Orla Kiely, I believe. This book is going on the top of my coffee table dream stack.

I also found this beauty at the bookstore.

It was in the children's section, and is a sort of vocabulary book with amazing graphics and colors. It was originally in French, so some of the vocabulary words are not standard for American children, such as "bocce" (as in the game) and "tapping" where people are crouching next to trees in a forest, presumably harvesting maple syrup. Look how pretty and 'me' it is.

I bought it to (gasp) remove pages to hang all over my house as the seasons change. Yes, I'm cringing at the thought of damaging this book. I'm also considering buying a second copy to ease the pain of watching it be dismembered. I'm so weird, I know.



 This is my favorite page. How fun is this book?



These books are on my wish list for Christmas.

This one, well, because Capri is my favorite spot on earth, and having a giant book of incredible photography will 1) remind me of being there with my love on our tenth anniversary, and 2) ease the pain from our camera getting stolen on our last day there and ending up with zero photos. Yeah, it's been four years. And yeah, I still a little bit want to cry about it. This book is a mandatory part of my dream stack.

And this one seems like a book you and I both would love. Remember we saw it in person at that cute boutique a couple weeks ago? Yummy.

And oh. One last thing. I saw this today at Borders.

I did a double take at the author. Yep. Good ol' Pioneer Woman. Which tells me one thing: when I get to be a famous blogger, at least I'll finally have an "in" for getting my children's books published (that I have not yet written). That's one bonus for being a famous blogger. Next she'll be coming out with an album and sporting a cameo on Grey's Anatomy.

So what's in your dream stack, ya know, if you had a coffee table all to your big girl self that was magically repellent to Legos and Disney princesses?

linking up with Kristy at Paisley Jade today!

little mommy

this is ella's favorite book right now.

she has the whole thing memorized, which she thinks is reading it.

i'm sure you remember that phase with your little guys too.

it's so sweet.

so when i brought home that little buggy that you and i found at the boutique today, she ran as quick as she could to get "little mommy" and show me that the buggy is almost identical! 

of course she proceeded to grab a tidbit head scarf so she could be just like the girl in the book and take her children "for a ride, they sit in the buggy, side by side"

how lovely is that!?

5 minute Friday escape

Need a little five-minute Friday escape, my friend?

Well now you can take one with our favorite friends that we don't actually know.

(You won't want to spoil this escape with people yelling or fighting or playing lightsabers in the background. That may ruin it. So take the laptop into a room with a door that locks. It's OK. It's only 5 minutes. What's the worst that can happen in 5 minutes? Oh yeah, that. Well, it's worth the risk.)





You know, this makes me so very happy.

So happy that I can forgive his wearing of shirts with a mandarin collar.

This is just the escape I needed today.

{Thanks Jules. You know what we like over here.}


And P.S. We need a new Cake & Cotton playlist. Mixpod. Please. Let's do it. This song first.

View-Master inspired bathroom

 

I while back, I fell in love with this fabric. Like serious love.





I love the colors, you know I love the graphic nature of the pattern, and I love the heavy, natural woven cotton texture. I also love the nostalgia behind it. Didn't you have a View-Master when you were a kid? I remember loving to click through the little scenes. Well, this fabric is just meant to bring back that joy.

So I bought the rest of the bolt at the fabric store, and made it into a shower curtain for our downstairs guest bath. The fabric wasn't quite wide enough for a shower curtain, so I flanked it with dark denim to pick up the navy in the print. Yes, it's quirky. But it is also very happy.

Then, last weekend, at the flea market, I found this amazing View-Master to go in the room! I remember having the red plastic Fisher-Price version from the 70's when I was kid. But this beauty is a shiny, black, Bakelite model from the 40's. It is heavy, and has a satisfying metal lever to switch from frame to frame. (I told my kids like twenty times to be gentle! as they tried it out.)

This guy needs a special little shelf of his own.

I also bought three vintage View-Master reels, each of special places to which we've traveled. I clipped them on a strip of decorative scrapbooking paper, and clipped that to a clipboard I covered with fabric using Mod Podge (actually, I used "Paper Mod Podge" because that's all I had, and it worked fine).

And while I was at it, I created this list of reminders for my kids who sometimes get ready in here.

I wanted to hang such a list for a while, but didn't want to stick up an ugly piece of paper, and I don't love the messiness of chalkboards (what a surprise). So I layed this out in Photoshop using a background from Ava7 as if it were an 8x10 photo, added text using Picnik and printed it on photo paper. Yay for camouflaged rules. I'm so tricky.

Last but not least, remember my spray paint revolution? Well, this is where my newly painted towel bar ended up. That awesome Tomato colored spray paint went perfectly with the persimmon color in the fabric.

Don't those things make you happy? The next time you come over, you should check out my bathroom. Be prepared, though. There's good entertainment in there, which means you may have to wait in line.