Spring in all its forms: snow, rain, cold, garden vintage, flower earrings....

It snowed the day before Easter here in the Northeast. Unbelievable to wake up to that white stuff, and not just coming down--all over the ground!

Thankfully the temps rose and melted everything before our family Easter egg hunt, which this year was more complicated as treasure maps and clues had to be designed for three different ages: the littles, the middles, and the teens. My husband is the mastermind, so he spent Easter Saturday trying to craft hunts for each age range that weren't too hard or too easy. Way too much candy was consumed the following day by the littles, the middles, and the teens, but they had a lot of fun trying to find their candy baskets.

And even though I didn't have any candy, I did partake of way too much turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes and stuffing, ham, that old faithful green bean dish with French Fried onion rings that shows up several times a year, and my daughter's special dessert filled with whipped cream, strawberries, custard, and Oreo cookies.

Which is why we keep a huge tub of Tums in our bathroom.

However, I started feeling a cold coming on that very day (not surprisingly), which ripened into a nasty chest infection I'm still struggling with today as the rain falls on this late April day.

Meanwhile I'm way behind on the blog, but even with Easter festivities and preparations, have posted some new items on Etsy and wrote two articles for the Examiner: "Antiques and the Economy" and "Thinking Spring, Thinking Vintage Garden."

New items in my Etsy shop include a rhinestone-studded vintage brooch:

a vintage Chinese vase:

vintage blue flower earrings:

vintage silver plate champagne glasses:

and--just listed today:  a Vintage Sterling Silver Zuni Sun Face Ring with mother of pearl, turquoise, red coral, and jet:

All of these items were in my mother's collection, which I inherited. She loved costume jewelry and rings and I've got lots more to put up. She also loved colorful vases for flowers, as she was an amazing gardener, and she loved silver--she had a whole cabinet full of things she'd collected over the years, some of which I'll be selling and some of which I'll keep. These champagne glasses are the first to go.

So now I should probably put my feet up and try to get rid of this cold by resting!