Valentine’s Week is Here

Hello dear friends,

With so much talk of Valentine’s Day approaching, it’s now just one week away. Yesterday, my Miss Gracie was like a toddler clinging to me all day. So I decided to make her happy (after all, isn’t cat happiness the most important thing?) and stay home with her. In honor of Valentine’s Day, I looked around my house for objects of desire to photograph that fit with a Valentine theme.

While photographing the bowl of red roses, you-know-who was following me and decided she should be in the photo, too. It turned out to be a great day to snap pics of her, as she very politely sat and posed for me for quite some time.

After we finished our photography session, Miss Gracie led me upstairs to “our” bedroom where she likes to play. We played her favorite mousie-pole game until I got tired of it!

Then, as I sat down at the computer, she jumped inside the desk to nap nearby me. My MIss Gracie is just a nut, or a “butternut” as I like to call her.

Well, back to Valentine’s Day. We, or I should say I, did manage to get some photos of pink and red objects including one of my favorite chocolate bars called Chocolove. Mmmmmm… this is smooth,velvety chocolate that makes me swoon. Not only do you get the chocolate bar, but you also get a love poem inside.

Underneath the wrapper was this poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Chocolove has several flavors but I can highly recommend Raspberries in Dark Chocolate. It’s perfect for Valentine’s Day.

I’ll be posting more of my Valentine’s Day themed photos throughout the week. The most exciting part though is I will be receiving my Vintage Valentine fabric fat book from the swap. Sarah of Gypsy Mermaid has completed the books and will be mailing them on Monday. She says they are beautiful and “FAT!!” so I can’t wait to see it and share it with you, too.

A Few Valentine Pretties

Valentine’s Day is inching closer. Remember that Valentine cupcake I was going to purchase at Whole Foods Market to photograph? Well, when I went back last weekend, they had changed the frosting design and it wasn’t the pretty one I had seen the week before. So, I didn’t buy one and left a bit disappointed. In the meantime, I looked around my home and found some other things to photograph with the Valentine theme.

Can you see the red glitter that covers this sign? It’s so much more sparkly in person, especially when it catches the light. I keep this up all year long (just like many of my Christmas decorations!). Holidays should not be kept to one day; let’s let the joy of each one permeate our lives all year long. Every day deserves to be special!

More February Babies

I’m so glad to hear from other February babies! Happy birthday month to Sarah at My So Called Junky Life on February 13 and Tammy at T’s Daily Treasures on February  26. I’m right in between on the 19th which is on the cusp, according to my horoscope. I could be an Aquarius or a Pisces. The funny thing is that they are both water signs and I’m not too keen about water. I have never even learned to swim!

Famous people that share my birthday include author Amy Tan, singer Smokey Robinson, actor Benicio Del Toro, and Prince Andrew. Do you share your birthday with any interesting famous people?

February, My Favorite Month

Why? Easy… here are a few reasons:

• Valentine’s Day
• President’s Day (a holiday!)
• My birthday (a vacation day to celebrate)
• Daylight Saving Time is almost here (March 14)
• Spring is finally here next month (March 21)
• It’s the only month with 28 (or 29) days

What is your favorite month?

So Many Letters, So Little Time

This afternoon, I turned on my iTunes music and spent some time photographing an assortment of delightful objects. While foraging around for some background material, I came upon a pile of my calligraphy sheets.

These were just practice pages I had done some time ago. Every time I see these I think to myself “I need to spend more doing calligraphy”. I love this Copperplate script and would like to do more. But as I’ve said before, there are not enough hours to do everything I’d like to spend time on. And that makes me sad. Of course, it would help if I wasn’t interested in so many things, but that’s just me. Oh, there are so many wonderful calligraphic hands. I want to do them all!

I do use my calligraphy script throughout the year as I address envelopes for birthdays and special occasions. There’s just something soothing about drawing these curvy letters. And it makes me feel good when I give an envelope to someone with their name on it as it’s just a little more special.

Sometimes I envy people who have one large passion for their art. Me, I just can’t contain myself to one. I do go back and forth though. So while I may focus on one thing and then move on to another, I will continue to use what I learned previously. For today, I just had a good time shooting some photos with a Valentine theme. And can you believe not one cat photo? That’s because Miss Gracie was glued to the space heater all day!  

It’s Almost Valentine’s Day!

It’s hard to believe that February is almost here; January went by too fast. Well, you know what this means… flea market time on the first Saturday of the month! I really shouldn’t go next week. What I need to do is stay home and sort through all the things I’ve purchased in the last several months (and save my money!). But oh, the fun of it all. I still have a week to decide.

Vintage Valentine Swap

Our Vintage Valentine fabric fat book is due to arrive in each swap participant’s hands by February 10th. I can’t wait to see the finished book! Photos will be posted so you can share in my swap happiness. :-) In the meantime, I hope to make it to Whole Foods Market this weekend to pick up a Valentine’s cupcake. Of course it will be photographed first, then my sister will be more than willing to eat it. That is, if Miss Gracie doesn’t get to it first!

Shall We Dance?

Last summer, when I was perusing the stalls at the flea market, I spotted these two pairs of gently worn Capezio dance shoes at $10 each. As luck would have it, they happened to be my size. Now, can I dance? No. But I’m always on the lookout for costumes because you never know when you’ll need to wear one. Well, at least once a year there is a day for it. I really wanted to buy these shoes at the time I first spotted them. But, I told myself that I shouldn’t spend the money for something I would rarely, if ever, use. Of course, I regretted it later.

Lo and behold, when I went back earlier this month, there they were! I sat down and tried them on and decided that buying them was the right thing to do since I had lived with the regret these previous months. So, now I own two pairs of dancing shoes. And guess what? The cream pair goes wonderfully with the goofy dance dress I bought at a garage sale last summer! So now I have a costume for my next event which just happens to be in February. I'm thinking of going as the Jolly Green Giant's wife; what do you think? I just need to make a matching hat!

One project that's been dancing around in the back of my head for some time has been to decorate a pair of shoes. I think that's how I justified buying them - they could always be an art project! What I really want is a pair of ballet slippers to decorate, so I'm keeping my eyes out for those at a garage sale or flea market. I've never taken a ballet lesson, but I've loved ballerinas since I was a very small child. Oh, how I would love to decorate those slippers! For now, I'll just be happy with my red and cream dance shoes and picture myself on the ballroom floor as I Dance With the Stars.

Equal Time for Nippy

I do love Nipper too, really. It’s just that she sleeps an awful lot so it’s harder to catch her in as many cute poses as Miss Gracie. On this particular day, she was sitting on my table in my bedroom. She looks like she must have been staring at Miss Gracie. She seems to be saying “ what are you doing here?”

Nipper, or Nip as we call her, loves to chase Cheerios across the tile in the kitchen. Eventually she eats them too. Her favorite fruit is a strawberry and she starts asking for them in February. Somehow she knows when Spring is coming and that they’ll soon be here.

Nippy usually sleeps all day on the back of the couch. About 5pm or so each day, she arises for a snack of her crunchies. By 9pm she is back in bed, curled up in her new pink donut bed. Really, how does she sleep so much?

She is a bit chubby, weighing in at close to 15 pounds. No surprise there since her favorite activities are eating and sleeping! But she is a sweetie, too. She loves us and makes little tiny meows to let us know. What is so funny is that little Gracie can be a screamer, always talking and loudly, too. But the big girl Nippy didn’t learn to meow for a long, long time and when she does, they are tiny, soft meows. One day I had brought Nip to the vet and someone asked me if I had a litter of kittens with me because her mews were so small!

Oh, and in case you are wondering, Nippy is named for Nipper the RCA Victor dog. We always liked that dog but since we weren’t getting one, the next best thing was naming our kitty after him! Our vet was concerned that she was a biter because of her name. No, she doesn’t bite. She’s just a big scaredy cat deep inside.

My Miss Gracie

Gosh darn, my Miss Gracie is just the sweetest girl around (sorry Nippy). Oh, how she hates it when I leave the house. I must avoid her gaze or the guilt sets in. She talks to me with her face. Mom, you aren’t leaving, are you? And how happy she is when I return. When she hears the sound of the garage door opening, she runs down the stairs to greet me.

Each morning, sometime between 3 and 5 am, she jumps up on my pillow and waits for me to lift the covers so she can climb inside the bed. She curls up next to me and goes to sleep. When Tina (my sister) wakes up, she runs down the hall to greet her and then meows until Tina walks with her to my bathroom where her food dish is located. She only wants someone to watch her eat momentarily. As if she couldn’t eat by herself!

While I am getting ready for work, Gracie happily rolls around in front of my space heater on her back. Being in front of a warm heater makes her very happy. She gets in goofy positions and then meows for me to notice her. After I leave, she sleeps on the Comcast TV box because it is always warm.

Gracie also loves to talk, and does she ever. In fact, the day we brought her home four years ago this month, Tina wanted to take her back to the SPCA because she was so loud. Of course, I would never return that cute little grey and white fur ball that was now my little kitten.

When I’m working on the computer, she will come over to me, stand on her two back legs and tap me on the back to tell me she wants something. Usually, it is to follow her either to watch her eat or to hang out in my (our) bedroom. She is so smart, I like to tell her she should have been born as a person. It’s just that when she was being created, a mistake was made and she wound up as a cat! If there was such a thing as cat college, she would graduate at the top of her class.

Oh, Nippy is sweet too, but Miss Gracie just has the personality.

Flea Market Fleurs

These lovely (faux) flowers came from the same vendor from which I purchased the tiny ribbon roses.

The flowers were very inexpensive and he had a whole bucket-full.

I bought several as you never know when they might come in handy. The large red rose was purchased specially for the Vintage Valentine fabric fat book pages.

Following up on yesterday’s post… Tammy, I do have a wonderful flea market but I can’t visit it any time. It’s only the first Saturday of the month. Good thing, or I’d spend too much! Debbie, thank you so much for the compliments. Christine, I did use some of the little roses on my pages for the Vintage Valentine fabric fat book swap. We get our books sent back to us by February 5th, so I’ll post more pictures then. Gwendolyn and Carolyn, thank you for your sweet words. June, I hope he still has that fabric too but now he’s gone until summer!