A Few of My Favorite Things

Even in the midst of remodeling chaos, there are some things around here that continue to make this place feel like "home". I've always loved the giant canvas that sits atop our mantle. The flowers and colors are so alive and are a great pick-me-up:) A few have said that perhaps the piece is too large for the space but that has never mattered to me. I could lie on the couch and stare at it all day and never get tired of looking at it.

Because we don't really yet have any bookshelves (gasp!), I do a lot of book stacking here and there and I love how some of my favorite books coordinate nicely with the canvas, which brings me to another favorite - old books! Not all of the books here are old, but how I do love finding a great old book! Do you every open them up and just smell them? So I'm always on the hunt for old books that pertain to gardening, housekeeping, music and other titles that interest me.

Atop this particular stack of books is my pair of birds, partridges I think. I picked these up at Goodwill months ago. The first time I saw them, I carried them around in my cart and ended up putting them back as I was already buying loads of stuff that day (sound familiar?). But when I went back to Goodwill, they were still there so I brought them home. Actually, I think when I saw them next, I could only find one of them, but then the *next* time I went, they were together at last. I love these little birds:) One looks like it had been broken and glued back together, but that's ok. I just like how they look like they belong together and love each other and are up there on that big stack of books by all by themselves but huddled together. One is a little bigger than the other, so perhaps they are mother and child. I keep them facing each other as they are extra sweet that way.

As you can imagine, I've been incredibly busy. I do really hate that word and wish that I could remove it from my vocabulary. I ended up having an extra week to fill my candy order so I'm very much relieved by that because between school shopping and the kids actually going back to school this week, it has been crazy around here trying to get back into the school routine, attending all the orientations (one on Tuesday and two tonight!), and other little things that I just didn't have to do during the summer. The week after next should be much easier as all three kidlets will be in school all day long and I won't be picking up my kindergartener in the middle of the day as I am now.

I did make extra boxes of candies with the large order I've had to fill so that I could go ahead and post them to my shop, but I had some requests for those boxes - which means they won't be going in the shop afterall. I want to apologize to all of you who have written and who are waiting for them to be posted online - but I will be making new ones again starting next week and won't fill any other requests locally until I have items online. Thank you for your patience!

Hope everyone is doing well and staying cool! We're having a major heat wave here - got up to 104 yesterday! Whew!