An interesting Etsy sale, the Examiner, & Life in General

Starting out with "life in general," I haven't written a post for a month--hard to believe that so much time has gone by--but I must admit it's a challenge just keeping up with the stuff I'm doing on a daily basis: writing two articles a week for Examiner.com, putting items up on my Etsy shop, writing press releases for the Sharon Arts Center, babysitting my two youngest grandchildren every afternoon, and doing all the other things that have to be done to maintain a household. Not to mention spending time with my husband and friends and family members....

But everybody is busy these days--it doesn't matter who you are or what you do, we're all busy!

In addition to writing local antiquing articles for the NH Examiner, I've done some fun pieces as Vintage Home Decor writer for the national Examiner, such as:

Another assignment as a writer on vintage

I've been writing articles for some months now as the Manchester (NH) Antiquing Examiner, and recently I've been doing "Antiquing This Weekend" features on various locations in New Hampshire like Portsmouth and Peterborough, Amherst, Keene, and Milford, but a few weeks ago I was assigned a position as Vintage Home Decor writer for the national Examiner.com.

My first article in that position was called "How vintage lovers decorated for the 4th, and what you can do next year" and the most recent was "Decorating with vintage maps and where to find them." Both of these articles have slide shows, and here's some pix I used in decorating with maps (for credits, see the article)--all great ideas:

Happy 4th of July!

This is what we had for dessert today after our chicken barbecue, deliciously made and beautifully decorated by good friend Bonnie:

We had a lovely time celebrating our nation's independence with great friends. My decorations consisted of two flags stuck into flower pots on either side of our front door, but look at these fantastic decorations by Debra of Common Ground:

From Decor 8: 8 Decorating Trends in Europe

I came across a blog today called Decor 8, where I found an interesting post on 8 decorating trends in Europe ("trends you'll love," they said. They're right...):

1.Industrial lighting

Design Sponge-type Food Mills Found on Etsy

In a previous post I briefly mentioned and pictured this colander/food mill beautifully repurposed on Design Sponge:

Thinking About Antique Textiles: Coverlets & Quilts

Browsing on the internet today I found some pix from Brimfield and this one in particular caught my eye because I have an overshot coverlet that's very similar:

Here's mine, blue and white rather than black and white but also in a type of "pinetree and snowball" pattern. We found it decades ago in the Shenandoah Valley:

Inspiration from Design Sponge

What a great repurposing idea found on Design Sponge!

For more about how to make this very cool planter from a vintage kitchen food mill, go here.