Category — Random

Finally, the day has come to show you our purchases from the Rose Bowl Flea Market! At the top is my pièce de résistance – a gorgeous wood and cane chair painted white, distressed, and then reupholstered in burlap and vintage grain sacks. Oh, I can not begin to tell you how gorgeous it is – the pictures do not do it justice! I adore the “125 LBS” on the back of the chair. It makes me wish I could just place it right in the center of a room and put it on a spinning platform.

If you’ve ever been to my house, you may be thinking, “What room is that chair sitting in? I don’t remember any room in Linda’s house looking like that.”  You are right, this is Sheila’s living room at her cottage on Coronado Island in San Diego, California. Before I can share with you any of the other wonderful finds we bought, I just have to share with you the “story” of our trip. The trials, tribulations, and the seriously sheer stupidity on our part while planning our big shopping spree!  Honestly, what good is a trip without a story attached?

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The Rose Bowl Flea Market was on Sunday, but Sheila and I arrived in Los Angeles early Saturday morning. Our first order of business was to go directly to Big Daddy’s Antiques Warehouse. If you recall, I found out about Big Daddy’s from Vignette Design and it was the first booth Marissa, Dave, and I visited last month at the Alameda Point Antiques Faire.

Big Daddy’s not only participated in the Rose Bowl and Alameda markets, but they also have warehouses in both San Francisco and Los Angeles.  You may also remember that I was coveting the Turkish olive baskets in Alameda and then found one back home in Arizona. Well, the same baskets line the steps up to the front door of the LA warehouse. I took that as an excellent sign that there were more good things to come!

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There is a VERY good reason I did not post over the weekend… I was in Pasadena, California at the Rose Bowl Flea Market with my girlfriend, Sheila. Boy, did we have a fun and fruitful adventure!

It was a gorgeous Southern California day and we took full advantage of it. We arrived at about 7 AM and didn’t leave the market until well after 2 PM.

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Me, my mom, and my brother, Dennis, on Easter 1961 in our front yard near Pima and Chaparral Rds. in Scottsdale. My mom is 26 years old in this photo.

Today is my mother’s 77th birthday. It’s funny how we see our parents – kind of through rose-tinted glasses. My parents divorced after 28 years of marriage in 1981 when I was 20. Because of the way things went down, I took my dad’s side, and my sister sided with my mom. When it comes to our parents; my sister, Sloane, and I now take the “divide and conquer” approach. She deals with our mom and I deal with our dad.

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Last weekend I shared with you my two projects – the porch curtains and some interesting gardening ideas.

BFF, Peggy, had a birthday on February 26th. Anne and I took her out to dinner the Thursday before her big day. We first went to Barrio Queen for appetizers and margaritas (so dang good!) and then walked across the street to FnB, where we had an amazing dinner. Sadly we did not get a picture of the three of us together, so the photo above is one I have not yet shared. It is from several years ago, taken in my kitchen, before heading out for a night on the town.

Anyhow… after our dinner, we “acquired” some seriously awesome wood crates. One of my boards on Pinterest is dedicated to the cool stuff you can do with wooden crates and pallets… so I already had my eye on these specific crates for some time. We each ended up with two crates and there was one more left over. All seven crates have been stored in my garage since that night. [Read more →]

I thought this was a cooking blog!  I know, I know – I haven’t posted a recipe in nearly a week. It’s not that I haven’t been cooking, it’s just that so many much more interesting things have been going on.  In fact, I was cooking up quiches like a fiend for the last couple of days but I won’t be able to post those recipes until after an article about their runs in the Arizona Republic food section in a couple of weeks.

Food editor, Karen, and food photographer extraordinaire, Michael, were here at the house this morning.  My plan to was to take pictures of Michael taking pictures of the food, but yeah, I forgot and just chatted it up with the two of them instead. Darn ADD gets me every time! 

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Check out this article that was in The Washington Post a couple of days before Leap Day four years ago, in 2008.  It just makes me smile… and want to crawl back into bed!

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Does this photo look familiar? If so, it is because I posted it back on February 7th as I was describing to you the wonders we saw at the Alameda Point Antiques Faire. These vintage Turkish olive harvest baskets were in the Big Daddy Antiques tent.  Here is what I said about them, “The one thing at Big Daddy’s that I really wanted to buy was at least one of these vintage olive harvest buckets. As we walked through the faire, I’d see people with them and be so jealous and sad that I couldn’t get one home.”

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I didn’t post yesterday because I was busy working on a project that I had seen on Pinterest. Are you on Pinterest yet? If not, why not?  It is such a fantastic internet tool, I can’t get enough of it and I’m going to explain why. Then I’ll show you two projects I found on Pinterest and then DID! That is correct, I didn’t just “pin” said projects, I actually did them!

If you have not yet discovered or even know what Pinterest is, read this article from Forbes. It describes it in a much more comprehensive way then I would or could. The paragraph that hits the nail on the head for me is;

“The value of Pinterest is in capturing and collecting inspiring scraps of the Web. The site taps into our primal hardwiring to hunt and gather. We want to keep things that make us feel good and we like knowing they are kept somewhere safe; like a treasured shoebox full of life’s memorabilia. Through its browser bookmarklet, “re-pin” button and ability to invite contributors, users collect items onto “boards” they’ve labeled based on their interests. Common boards include, “things I love,” “places to go,” and “stuff for kids.””

That is what Pinterest is for me, “a treasured shoebox full of”… full of stuff from the web that I want to save and access again.  Before Pinterest, I would take a snapshot of something from the web, or copy/paste a website address and place it on a Word document, and then I’d put the snapshots and documents into folders “somewhere” on my computer. That’s the key problem, “somewhere” on my computer where it would later take me forever to find them when I needed them. I’d search and search for that thing, that idea, until I was either totally exhausted from the search or until I gave up.

If you would like to join Pinterest, let me know by sending me a comment saying so and I’ll send you an invite. An invite is the quickest way to join. I joined without an invite (just by going to Pinterest.com) and it took about 5 or 6 days for them to get back to me, thus allowing me to join.  OK, so what projects did I do because I saw them on Pinterest, subsequently “pinned” them onto one of my boards, and then went back when I was ready to tackle the projects?

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My webpage seems to need a little technique support, so while that is occurring, instead of the planned post for today, I am going to share with you this beautiful Arizona Valentine’s day sunset that I captured last night.

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