Weekend Plans

Happy Friday to you and hooray for park weather! Hoping to park my butt right there this weekend. Also on the agenda: gardening, reading, napping, drinking smoothies...all the good stuff.

Other good things to know about:
It's free National Park weekend in the US. If you spent all winter being cooped up and miserable like most of us around here, why not take advantage of the waived admission fees and do some exploring in a beautiful place?

Also, Saturday is Record Store Day, and there are events scheduled at record stores all over the world. Check the site to see what's going on near you. If you're a vinyl lover, you probably don't need a reason to buy more, but you know, it's good to get out and support your local shops!

One more thing, on Saturday there's a huge Earth Day event happening on the Mall in DC with a bunch of bands and I don't know what from 11-7. You can watch a livestream on the site. Most local folks, myself included, will probably take this as a warning to steer clear. Not that I don't love the earth, but you know people, so many people. Ugh.

Anyway, I'm off to the post office to mail an order. Hope your weekend is swell. xo, Mary

Pear Blossoms

White-tipped trees in the late afternoon sun gave me pause the other day as I was walking back to my car. A woman told me she thought they were pear blossoms. They were all over the place and absolutely gleaming.

We still haven't been to see the cherry blossoms around the tidal basin this year, although we have seen other cherry trees blooming around the city. I'd still like to make it to the Mall at some point this week if we can find a good time to go.

I was looking at tweets about the National Cherry Blossom Festival recently, and I came across a link to an article on Washingtonian Magazine's blog giving advice on how to take good photos of the cherry blossoms. To my complete surprise, they used one of my Instagram photos from last year as an example. How cool is that?

Looking at these photos again is making me think I might need to find an excuse to nip outside before it gets dark. :)

Hope everyone is having a good week. xo, Mary

Winter Walk of Lights

We went to a "Winter Walk of Lights" at a nearby garden one day last week, and it was beautiful! My photos don't do it justice at all. Unfortunately, it was bitterly cold the night we decided to go, and I could barely hold my camera steady, much less get perfect shots. I was just trying to see as much as I could before the cold forced me to walk back up to the visitor center.

Anyway, the lights! It was truly spectacular to see all the trees along the garden path aglow. It might be hard to tell from these photos, but the lights were wound up the trees really high (one person guessed 40 feet, and I'd say they probably weren't far off). It takes the staff and volunteers three months to set it all up! I didn't even get a chance to see it all because my fingers and toes turned into stinging icicles, and I had to skip some portions.

I hope we can go back next year, possibly armed with better gloves and an extra pair of socks, and I can take more of the photos I wanted to take this time. A couple of the displays changed colors and shapes, and I would've loved to have taken more photos to make gifs or even made a short video, but that just wasn't happening on this visit. Maybe the universe will be kind and grant us a warm night in December next year. :)

Looking back through these photos, I'm really glad we went despite it all. Maybe it's because I was obsessed with my Lite-Brite as a little kid, but something about colorful lights against the night sky fills me with so much happy. xo, Mary

Scenes from (Work) Life

Happy Friday, guys! Sorry for the lack of posts this week. I've been spending most of my time at my messy desk, surrounded by piles of felt and floss.

It's actually worse than this picture lets on. If I were to pan around the room, you'd see crafty debris on pretty much every tabletop, desk, and bookshelf available. It is a colorful, happy mess though. :)

Just look at this pretty felt bundle...soon to be cut up and sewn into little creatures...

...like this guy! I'll be selling this snail ornament and lots more at GRUMP on Dec. 14th.

I'm going to do another post next week with more sneak peeks of what I'll have at GRUMP, but in the mean time you can always follow me on instagram for more behind the scenes shenanigans.

Have a great weekend, friends! xo, Mary

Shop Update + Crafty News

I added a couple of notebooks to the shop last week...

Cat with pink and red stripes

And a colorful fox in the woods

*****
Also, I will be selling at GRUMP Art + Craft fair at Artisphere on December 14, so mark your calendars if you're local! This is my first juried show, so I'm excited and also a little nervous. I've been to GRUMP before, and they always have the coolest vendors, so at least I know I will be in good company. :)

I'm working on new ornaments to sell, new prints, plus my usual array of cute notebooks and brooches. I'm already brainstorming display ideas, and that part is really fun too. I will probably post more about it over the next two months as I get ready. Would you guys like to see sneak peeks of what I'll be selling or display finds? I plan on selling some things at the show that won't be in my Etsy shop, so there will be a few surprises too.
xo, Mary

7 Photos from Saturday

We got a slow start on Saturday because I was really tired and reluctant to do much. But eventually, we went to Logan Circle to check out Meet Market, which is on the first Saturday of every month. It was pretty small, but they had a good mix of vendors, so if you should find yourself in the area, it's definitely worth checking out. We stopped to talk to my pal Beth who was selling there, and then decided to walk a few blocks to check out some shops.

First we went to Miss Pixie's, which is a (mostly) vintage shop on 14th street. It was fun to browse in here, but I would not describe their merchandise as "curated vintage," as much as I dislike that phrase. (Side rant: does anyone remember when "curated" actually meant something specific and implied expertise in a certain field or area of study? It has been so misused/overused that these days it means something akin to "stuff I like" and anyone/everyone is a "curator.") Anyway, Miss Pixie's is mostly a hodgepodge. Sometimes they have great vintage pieces, and sometimes they have used IKEA furniture.

Also, they claim to have reasonable prices, but that probably depends on your perspective. If you're from DC, you'll probably think their prices are ok, maybe even cheap on some things. If you're from pretty much anywhere else, you'll probably think it's expensive. (I found an industrial metal cabinet with drawers that I liked, but not enough to buy, for $500, a mid-century dresser that was ok-looking for $600, a dining table that did not look vintage for $645.) Anyway, it's definitely worth a look if you're nearby, but I would recommend educating yourself about how to identify authentic vintage pieces and what they should cost (or know what you're willing to pay for them) before you buy.

I bought these three tiny black and white photos for $1 a piece. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with them yet, but they needed to come home with me.

We also went to Home Rule, which is a tiny one-room shop stocked with super cute and colorful kitchen and bath things. If we had more cabinet space and money to burn, I'd buy half the things they sell here. I will definitely be back.

We decided to walk to U Street since that was the closest station to where we'd ended up on our walk, but we totally forgot that Funk Parade was happening and ohmygod so many people. Peter and I are really good at ending up right in the middle of events on accident. I wish I'd remembered, though, because there were a couple of things I would've really liked to have seen, like the artists painting murals. Anyway, we pushed our way through the crowds...and let me tell you, my favorite place on earth is to be right in the middle of a crowd of sweaty people who've been day drinking...and finally made it to the metro. Whew!

We stopped at Silver Diner for dinner on the way home (I had a jack cheese omelet and hashbrowns, and Peter had huevos rancheros something-or-other for those who are curious), then we went home to play with our Roku. We got a Roku streaming stick about a month ago, and we're still adding channels and figuring out how it all works. We actually got a Roku back when they first came out (maybe 2008?) and it was terrible; the picture quality was blurry, like watching TV without my glasses on, and it would buffer constantly, so we sent it back. I was wary of trying Roku again, but everyone kept raving about it, and Peter really wanted to try it--he wants to dump cable when our contract is up--so we did. So far, it's much improved from the first version. But one drawback to Roku I have noticed is that sometimes the audio and video do not match up, which is annoying. Also, it's not great if you want to watch live events like a baseball game, for example. I'm sure no one reading this post is a sports fan, haha, but your only option is to pay for a subscription channel like MLB.com, and then you have to wait a day to watch your home team play (some nonsense about in-market blackouts and giving priority to local broadcasters). It is nice to watch Netflix movies on our TV though, and if they could improve the sound/video lag that sometimes happens, it would be perfect. (It's not our internet connection because it doesn't happen on the computer or other devices, only Roku).

Anyway, all in all, it was a good Saturday filled with a few treasures, some nice people, and a healthy dose of the unexpected. Oh and did I mention a corgi? :)

By the way, has anyone else got Roku? Any channels you can recommend?

Catapalooza

Hey DC folks! The Washington Animal Rescue League is having their annual "Catapalooza" adoption event and fundraiser tomorrow (Sunday) from 12-3 pm. One of the organizers contacted me a few weeks ago and asked if I'd like to donate something from my shop for a raffle prize. Of course, I said yes, and sent over a cat brooch like this one:

There will be lots of cute kitties that need homes (all have been spayed/neutered, vaccinated, etc.) and if you bring a 5 lb bag of cat food, the adoption fee is only $14! Also, there will be lots of great raffle prizes and cupcakes from my most favorite place, Hello Cupcake.

Even if you can't take (or don't want) a cat right now, it's still a fun way to support The Washington Animal Rescue League in their efforts to rescue, rehabilitate, and rehome animals that have nowhere else to go. And did I mention cupcakes?? :)

GRUMP

On Saturday, we went to a local holiday craft fair called GRUMP at Artisphere. If you follow on Instagram, you've already seen these pics, but I wanted to share links to the shops of some of the awesome sellers who were there...


like my pal Beth, who makes the cutest animals out of upcycled wool sweaters. I've given Beth a few old sweaters actually, and I can't wait to see what she makes out of them.


We got some milk chocolate nutella cookies from Whisked! that were so so good.


And I also got this little print from Rachel Roellke, which I love!

A couple of other vendors whose stuff I didn't manage to get photos of but who are nevertheless really awesome are Rania Hassan and Meaghan O'Malley.

Actually, I made a "Shop Local" treasury yesterday of all local DC-based Etsy sellers...these guys plus a few more.

While we were there, we also checked out a couple of exhibits...


Illustrations by Elizabeth Graeber.



And this isn't really an art exhibit, but part of a green wall in the 3rd floor atrium that's just really cool.

On a related note, I wrote a little about why I buy and support handmade over at Little Nostalgia. I'd love for you to check it out. xo, Mary

Mini Christmas

We went to our local garden for a Christmas fair last week, and they had set up vintage miniature trains and little Christmas villages. There was a market/gift shop and treats too, of course. It was all very cute!

We also took a walk through the greenhouse when we were there, and I snapped a few photos, which I'll share tomorrow.

In other news, if you follow me on twitter or instagram, you already know that we got our tree last weekend and did a bit of decorating. Our house smells so nice right now. :)