Pink Poodle Saturday

Today I have a short post…it’s all about a thrift store find from before Christmas. I bought a big bag of sewing notions mainly for the buttons. Well, would you just look at the treasure I found inside…

Yep! It’s a pink plush and felt poodle!…Made  by a firm named Land o’ Lace here in the U.S.A. …it was a sold in a store where they hand printed the price…no bar codes here. Probably from a fabric store where they sold patterns and yard goods and sewing supplies and not much else. If you also needed milk and anti-freeze you had to make two more stops on your way home. I love convenience, but, boy howdy, do I miss the specialty  shops and the old five and dime stores.

  At a dollar forty-nine it must have been a luxury item…there is a zip code in the firm’s address so it dates no earlier than 1963 or so…and it had adhesive so it could be pressed on…I have no idea when that convenience became available…

We’ll have to ask someone who sews more than me or someone with functioning memory banks…someone like Sue at http://collectintexasgal.blogspot.com/ You must stop in to see her today…she’s got a birthday bash planned and she’s having a giveaway to celebrate. Say Hi from me, and then be sure to check in with Beverly to see who’s sharing Pink today. http://howsweetthesound.typepad.com/

It’s cold and rainy here in central Texas today so we all need a healthy dose of PINK…thanks to Beverly for giving us just what we need…

Valentine’s Day and Chinese New Year are coming up and Mardi Gras is just around the corner…

I’m either a holiday junkie or a garland and lights addict. When the Christmas decorations get packed away, I start to pine for Valentine’s Day…the house looks so bare and forlorn. I either want new paint, a new bedspread, or an early start on Spring Cleaning, yeah, right…Usually I’ll drag out Valentine decorations, but this year it’s been so cold and gray that I need sparkle and lights. So I set up a Chinese New Year tree! It’s the Year of the Tiger which falls on February 14th! So I can get lots of mileage out of this bright tree and I won’t go into holiday withdrawal…

The ornaments come from a vacation in Vancouver, my sister-in-law, Rose, and a couple of Christmas stores. I set it up some years and not others…this year it stayed packed away …but post-holiday blues sent me up into the attic one rainy day when I needed hot tea and bling…

Just what the doctor ordered…perfect to lift my sagging spirits…little Chinese children and glad tidings.

Then I set up Kimono  Coats over lighted wine bottles…

I listed them in my etsy store and then I made a series of Chinese New Year Gift pockets from recycled-upcycled vegetable cans…

Each one is covered in red tissue(recycled, of course) and all sorts of Chinese ephemera…and firecracker package art work. The little bells jingle so they even sound happy.

Look at the gold foil lanterns…I just got them from Two Palms Trading Company on Etsy… they were so perfect that each gift pocket got a set.

Yep, that’s all it took, a little bling and some gold foil and the New Year is looking bright. It doesn’t take much for some of us…thank goodness.

Pink Saturday…Can You Believe I Won All This?

One of the best facets of our blog friends must be their open hearts and their generosity.  We visit each other now and again during the week and we form the 21st century version of old-fashioned Pen Pals… I have a hometown friend who has a Japanese Pen Pal  with whom she has been corresponding  since elementary school. They were paired during the 50’s after reading an article in My Weekly Reader.  The two recently met when his family visited the United States. Amazing these days when many marriages don’t last but a few years that her long distance friendship has lasted for so many decades.

While blogging does not have the decades-old history of pen pals, it has introduced us to amazing women who share their stories so willingly…and it’s not just their wisdom and encouragement, but also their talents that they share. Nowhere is that so evident as in the many swap sites and groups that exist…and in the giveaways that we have seen here among the Pink Saturday ladies….Let me show you what I mean. Now don’t be jealous…I visited with Miz Mollye http://mizmollye.blogspot.com/ one Pink Saturday when she was hosting a giveaway and I WON!

The package arrived wrapped in a bright PINK mailer and was jam-packed with presents! 

Fun and funky hoop earrings, a sparkly purse, glitzy earrings and crystal-diamond necklace…

Just look at that bling, would you? And the purse is so dang cute I’m carrying it tomorrow to a concert…I have a tunic top with the same pattern look and the same colors…deep PINK, of course.

Miz Mollye added a cute book about Pink’s older, more mature sister, Red…and a clever tag…

But the most amazing gift of all, yes, there’s still more…is a fabulous mixed-media altered art book that she created!!! It’s titled Meet the Sisters,,,Telling our Story…

The pages each have a theme or a quality or a source of joy…as this one which explores the mood “Pensive”

  Or a spirit of playfulness…

or a spirit of nostalgia…

The “lingerie” page carries its own fun message. and “Little Ladies” is just the sweetest page ever.

This page with its poetry about a Mother’s Love is may be my favorite. There is a page dedicated to dance

and the book ends with a page filled with Pink and dedicated to “Romance”.

So we may not have been pen pals for decades, but I have found a sweet friend in Miz Mollye in Louisiana . And it’s all because another sweet gal named Beverly had an idea for a series of blog posts! Speaking of Beverly, she made the super suggestion that we tell about blogs we have visited on P.S. Well, I visited Treasia’s blog Stepp Into My World   http://steppintomyworld.blogspot.com/ she has lots of vintage pink to share. Enjoy the day…stay in with a cup of tea and stay warm…Central Texas won’t be much above freezing all day…we Girls Raised In The South aren’t used to so much cold! Thank Heavens for blogs!

Pink Saturday in the New Decade a Plan to Increase and Decrease…

Today I’m sharing my New Year’s Eve Hat. It comes from Texas artist SariJane and it is elegant and playful at the same time.

It’s made from vintage dictionary pages and features vintage PINK butterflies and silver leaves…most festive.

It has lovely soft white feathers (please tell me that’s feathers not fur) around the bottom…it would be perfect for an elegant black tie event…one with lots of caviar and champagne; however, it worked just as well for staying home in front of the tube watching Dick Clark’s Rockin’ New Year’s Eve and hoping we didn’t get a bullet through the roof! That’s right…a bullet!  Seems that some cowboy-wanna-bes and wild partygoers or maybe the bored stay-at-homers shoot guns into the air at midnight. And what goes up…Yup…last year in San Antonio, Texas, a stray bullet came through a roof in a residential neighborhood. We made it into 2010 unscathed and ready to start the new decade.  

As for the traditional resolutions, I’ve decided to Increase and Decrease. I’ll increase the things I’m proud of in every area of my life and decrease the things I’m not so willing to own up to… I’ve already started working on one habit to decrease the amount of time (substantial) that I spend looking for things…my new mantra is “Don’t  put it down; put it away.” I’ve been saying this for about a week now and following the practice pretty well. I say it dozens of times a day and feel so smug when I follow the good advice I’m giving myself. I already have more time and I’m more relaxed and in putting things away I’ve actually found three pair of missing reading glasses!  I sound like one of those commercials for self-help products. Well, I’m going into the new decade feeling pretty good…at my age it doesn’t take much… “Realistic Expectations” was part of my resolutions a couple of New Year’s Days  back (maybe 2000) and it was one that I have followed pretty well.

Have a Happy New Year with 52 wonderful PINK Saturdays to come thanks to Beverly. And speaking of Beverly, tell her “Hi” for me when you check out this week’s participants.  Enjoy the day. Think Pink.

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