Moonshine Junkyard

(an adorable miniature gift book from 1969 that addie gifted me back in the 90s, rediscovered in my recent blast to the past) i hope you all had a really cozy romantic loving day no matter who you spent it with. i don't get sweet time with my hub today as our work schedules opposed and he won't be home till 11 pm. last year was a little more romantic but luckily we are secure enough that we know we'll have infinite date nights and fancy dinners together. having a boring v day just means that we are bucking the system, that's what i tell myself! much love friendies!

Memorial day weekend, we went to a flea market in the tiny historic town of El Dorado. The town is famous for being the home of local favorite watering hole, Poor Red's. It was a gorgeous sunday with spring blooms in full blossom everywhere... ..and treasures galore. We got this beaded belt buckle for a late birthday present for Art. Personally, I am a sucker for antique photographs... and also, I'm determined to bring the bonnet back into fashion. (Darin isn't so sure it's going to work...) Darin was pretty stoked on some old sci-fi books. There was the cutest little country-western band with a 93 year old lady playing mandolin. And as the day grew warmer, a strawberry/raspberry sno-cone was the perfect treat! It was a good little jaunt away from the neighborhood so I could try to get my mind off my missing cat for a while. (it's still breaking my heart...) I wore my newly hemmed dress from an Etsy shop called...

Have you seen this? I just spent a dizzying hour or so going through Jamie Livingston's collection of polaroids   taken from 1977 to 1997.  He was a circus performer and photographer living in New York and he took a polaroid a day for twenty years until he died from cancer. They are amazing. I think if you listen to the right music while listening to them, they are haunting and melancholy, strange and heart breaking. They depict tiny moments, like sleeping, snow globes, parades, clouds, neon signs, reading in a cozy chair, smirking, cooking. They depict hospitals, love, animals, grandparents. The little moments that make life grand. I guess that's a perk of polaroids. A big one.

this is an old/new farmgirl obsession of mine, to go along with my post about mama earth farm. i first read about maryjane butters when i read, long ago, a 1995 National Geographic article before many people were even talking about the word organic. i was intrigued by her story, especially about the fact that she dropped out of college to become a wilderness forestry ranger at a young age. and i have been sort of in love with her ever since. I found her magazine while browsing the shelves of Borders one day and since then I've followed her as she has built an empire of organic living stuff. Her husband calls her a visionary, which i think is appropriate: she has a true entrepeneurial spirit but the nice thing about hers is that the ideas she comes up with bring community and organic living together and strive to make the world a better place. For example, she started this thing called the Pay Dirt Farm School which is a non profit organization that teaches young people how to do...

small houses are beautiful. this is a real family's hobbit-hole home in wales that you can read more about here on a wonderful blog about living small. doesn't it remind you of one of the best dwelling places you could imagine as a child? i love the idea of living smally and simply. and maybe that stems from my love/hate relationship with that lame phrase "give a woman a bag and she'll fill it," which i sadly have to admit fits me pretty well. my purses are always a giant mish-mash of random tidbits and, likewise, the spaces in my home are mostly filled to the brim with piles of books, skirts who need new elastic, strange pieces of art darin bought at thrift stores, indian blankets, glass jars, craft supplies, and antique lamps who don't work. i guess i just imagine that if i didn't have extra space i couldn't fill it. so needless to say, i dream of living in a tidy and eco-friendly and beautiful little place like the tumbleweed houses that jay shaf...

i am in love with amy sol's art. when i see these, i want to float away on a tiny wispy cloud and land in a magic forest with great soft dream-creatures that fly over treetops and i will live in a fairy's treehouse with pockets full of kittens and panda bears and butterflies and books. and also, i will build a little raft of cedarwood and lilypads to go down to the sea, and visit with mermaids and wild rushes and riverfish and whale pups. i will gather foxglove and gingeroot and hyacinth, and black currants for snacks and i will rescue fallen owls who will teach me to fly. i will travel light. to see and rhapsodize more, go here: http://www.amysol.com/