I always hear people say things like: "we're settling in." And man I'm I envious of those people! I wish I knew what "settling in" felt like. Over here we are totally not "settling in". "Settle" sounds so gentle and slow and easy. This move-in process has been none of those. We're at that stage now...the move is over, we're back to work, back to marathon days and nights...only now we have to periodically dig through boxes to find those all too essential "things" that we just can't do without in order to complete whatever task is at hand. I'm sure you've all been through it before. Probably several times in your lives. But when you're in the thick of it...you see no end to the chaos.
But I'm not here to whine. I've come to bring you images of cookies, vintage wallpaper, rick rack, and street scenes of 400 year old cities.
Lets get to the cookies first. They're actually teamed up with the 400 year old city pics. Aaron's parents and his aunt and uncle went up to glorious Canada for a week. They first hit Quebec and by chance they made the trip during a big celebration week for the four hundredth birthday of Quebec City....that is really really old! Me and Aar looooove Canada for too many reasons to list but we have only been up to Toronto, which is a very modern city. I just have a few example pics of both Quebec City and Montreal but Aar's parents have a ton of good shots and looking at the pics you can just feel the weight of the world lift. It all looks just so much slower and bigger and airy up there in the beautiful north. We'd love to do the same trip. After QC they drove to Montreal and took in the sites there. In some instances Montreal seems like Amsterdam lite. Lots of wacky tabbacky being smoked in public, lots of naughty dance clubs, etc...butall that juxtaposed with gigantic old cathedrals and cobblestone streets. Anyway, Aaron's mom always has gifts to give. Even if she just went to your local Target, she's got something to give you...could be a leopard print pack of tissues or it might be a toaster! So, up in Canada she picked us up this box of cookies...just a store bought box of cookies. But man oh man...these things are good!!! I looked 'em up online and apparently...if I get urges for these in the future they're only a mouse click away at Amazon.com. They're like really good, really big, oreos with delicious maple flavor cream filling.
Next is the rick rack...and all sorts of other vintage goodies. I've raved about her before and I'll do it again. Pink grapefruit style is in my top 3 of Etsy shops. The stuff she's got is so goooood! Just look at this tiny offering and you'll get the idea. I got this stuff before I moved and I finally got to post some pics. She's totally my go-to gal for hard to find trims and things.
Now the wallpaper. Check out this scrumptious wallpaper pack from Donna at Under the Red Roof. You know, unfortunately I've come to dislike the word "plethora" because Aaron has this way of jokingly pronouncing it that sounds utterly gross, with lots of roll to the tongue...terrible sounding. Anyway, this prevents me right now from saying that this is a plethora of papers. So, I'm switching to a new word...it's a panoply of papers!! Really, tonnnnns. And the label on top was adorable. Donna's got Etsy digs as well so def go check her out. She is the wallpaper Queen! Rolls and rolls and rolls of the stuff!
Ok, one last thing. Recently, we had a customer request to do our "pretty girl portrait" in a larger size. We though it was a good idea so we did it. She's usually 8 x 10 and in that size it's a cute little plaque. But when we saw her in the new size we liked her way more. This is her but in 15" x 20". (Nice and BIG) The polka dots are much more pronounced and overall it's a statement piece. This is a pic of her hanging on the wall of our new studio...of course I'm not ready to pan back yet because it's still chaotic over here. But at least you can see the wall color. And she just acted like the spokeswoman for the room while she was hanging up there...but then we had to box her up and ship her to Australia, because the customer was waiting. She is now available in this size over on etsy!...if you were wondering. :)
I guess that's it. If you need me...I'll be over here "settling in".
xoxo, Jenny
