Turkey Success

I just wanted to share a couple pictures from Thanksgiving! The day was wonderful. Our weather was really nice, a little cool outside. Much better than being warm on Thanksgiving like some years down here. We set up a table outside in our front porch (screened in). It was very nice. Today is even more chilly!

My family is visiting from Alabama, and we also had my cousin, her husband and daughter over. It was fun as usual!

I am not even tired of turkey yet. I think because there are so many things to eat on Thanksgiving, I don't get as much turkey as I wanted to. So today I am planning to snack on turkey again.

My first turkey cooking went successfully! What a relief. Here's my turkey, sorry it's still in the bag for this picture! I forgot to take a pic of it unbagged before it got carved.

Me next to my dad at the head of table, for the picture

Everyone that was here for Thanksgiving lunch/dinner, except me taking me the picture

Have a wonderful Friday! I did join in on offering some sales at my Etsy shops.
At CoffeeandCream, there is free worldwide shipping on all necklaces.
At TheCozyNest, there is a buy one get one 1/2 off section of pilows and pillow covers.

Blog readers can also receive 10% off their entire orders by mentioning "blog" in message to seller. Or just send me a message if you forget that part! Refund will be sent within 12 hours.

My day

So I'm pretty busy today as I am sure most people are! Last night I baked a pie called Mystery Pecan Pie, a Paula Deen recipe. A friend of ours made it not long ago so I got to taste it. It's so good! Looks like a regular pecan pie from the top. But the mystery part is that inside is cheesecake!!
Here's my pie:
If you would like the recipe: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paula-deen/mystery-pecan-pie-recipe/index.html

I'm also cooking the turkey already today. It's in the oven now! This was my first time getting a turkey ready for baking. It's not the most pleasant thing, right? haha. Yuck! Some turkey juice got flung into my face as I was trying to pull here and there at it. I am praying it cooks well and is tasty!

My family arrives later in the evening for the weekend! yay! This time they are all coming. My nana, parents, sister and sister-like friend. All are staying here at our humble 2 bedroom abode. Somehow we manage for everyone to have a sleeping area!

Christmas Decor!!

Cute award

I was given an award from jordiegirl!

How sweet and thank you very much!! :) It comes with some rules, but I am being bad and breaking them at the moment because today has been busy and I am just finding time to post right now. I have lots of prep for Thanksgiving at my house!! :)

Minty : Flickr Pictures

1. july1st 010, 2. Bookworm, 3. It's All A Growing Process, Print, 4. Faire Houre, 5. FRYD + Design, 6. novetsy 030, 7. Shabby Christmas!, 8. Christmas Nativity, 9. whimsy studios happy homes winter series

Two of the above are my mom wearing her cool creations that are for sale!

Favorites this Friday

This list will surely change within a few days as I often add things to my favorites. But I wanted to share these specific items from my favorites lists today.

I had such a good day on Etsy yesterday! I sold a lot of items, between my two shops. That is always so exciting!! I sold 5 items from coffee and cream, and 3 from the cozy nest!

Flashback Friday!

Last week I wasn't prepared and didn't participate, but wanted to again today! I still wasn't prepared but I have a picture I can use now. Inspired by Christopher and Tia's blog.

This is from November 2001(or 2002? I think 2001), 8 years ago!
Left to right: me, my sister, our good friend, and a friend (who we never see, she lived in a different city).
We were visiting Cleveland, TN(a little north of Chattanooga) to visit our friend Lisa. She had moved away to college up there a couple years before and we went about 3 years in row to visit, the 3rd time being for her wedding! :) We were all bridesmaids, that was the year after this visit I believe.

My thoughts on this picture:
This is when me and a lot of my friends liked wearing a lot of black and tried to look more rock and roll(hehe). My hair was black as well. Rachel, the friend with red dyed hair, hates the way her hair looks in this picture. My sister and her also said "what's up with the lipstick", because darker lipstich was in style then I guess and they hate the way it looks on them in this picture haha.

Me, my sis, and Rachel were having a blast because of being in FALL weather. Coming from FL, where we don't really get to experience much of it. We were loving wearing scarves and gloves.

We were in Panera maybe, a cozy place in the downtown area.

Vintage: Pretty Coats

Some pretty vintage coats and jackets to keep you warm this winter! These are still not needed here in Florida. I would imagine most people who feel very cold right now would rather be warmer, but I'd rather be colder! There are just so many cute scarves, gloves, hats, and coats to be worn and I don't really get much of a chance to! (hehe)

Enjoy looking!

1. Blue Wool Coat 2. Cream Wool Coat 3. Cream Coat with oversize collar 4. Dusky blue and plum coat 5. 30's Wool Tweed Italian made jacket 6. Autumn Plaid Wool Trench

Treasuries

I hope me sharing these things aren't annoying, because they excite me! :) I felt like I hadn't been in many treasuries for awhile. Recently I finally seem to be in some again! Yesterday I checked and found my pillow shop in two new treasuries!

This one is such a pretty red and soft green treasury! It's called "h o l l y". I think it is front page worthy but with so many options to put on the front page, we will just have to wait and see what happens! My tree pillow is featured. You can click the image to visit the actual treasury.

Then there is also this adorable plaid treasury that a pillow is in! Called "Playful Plaid". I love plaid, and this one is also very Christmassy.
Ok and here is something that is funny to me. I didn't even start visiting craftopolis.com until very recently. I didn't KNOW you can go there and find out easily if you are in a treasury!!! If you are like me, and you didn't know that, now you know!! The treasure hunt feature is a time saver, and awesome. As well as the treasury clock! Though I haven't been on Etsy at the right time to make a treasury in quite awhile.

Coming up is a feature of pretty vintage coats!

Want to be part of a blogger gift swap?

I guess today I will continue to share things at other blogs that you should check out! I already mentioned my mom's blog giveaway.

Over on Pickles on Pizza, one of mine(and my mom's) favorite blogs, there is a gift swap you can be a part of that Angela is putting together! Hurry over soon: Secret Blogger gift swap.

My mom is having a nice giveaway

Go visit my mom's blog to enter her first giveaway! She is giving away two items, so two people will win! Those are great odds. :) Please go visit.

Vintage Shop Feature: Ginger Kisses

Today I am featuring GingerKisses, a vintage shop on Etsy that opened a few months ago. Something I really like about this shop are the shoes that are for sale! I often look through vintage shops on Etsy these days. I look for items to feature once a week here, and finding the right shoes for a vintage outfit is not always easy. So now I notice those kinds of things for putting together ensembles!

I asked them to write something about themselves that I could share on the blog. It turns out the shop is run by two sisters. How fun! So here is a little in their own words:

We're two sisters (one, a child of the 70's, the other of the 80's) who grew up loving to play dress-up! Anything we could get our hands on we would make into a fun outfit. Ginger Kisses grew out of a dream I (Breanne) have of opening a vintage boutique. We both were starting to develop great vintage collections, and also finding other amazing pieces that we wanted to share.

So, one spring afternoon, we decided to just make it happen! Our shop is also a little different because Kathleen is based out of Denver and I am in New York studying fashion design. This works out wonderfully because we have double the areas to scour for unique vintage items! We love to check out estate sales, yard sales, and to also get in contact with our mother's friends who have amazing pieces and are happy to share their clothing memories. -Breanne @ Ginger Kisses

Stop by their shop! In their shop announcement they write "Welcome to Ginger Kisses, a cozy little nook for all things fabulous and vintage. Take a look around and hopefully something will tickle your fancy!" Very welcoming, wouldn't you say? :)

40 days until Christmas! Holiday plans.

Yes you read that right! Wow! That doesn't sound very far away at all. I am already getting excited for Christmas. I want this season to feel extra special and hope to do some fun things with Kavi. I want to be out and about in activities during the season so I hope we find fun(and free) things to do. We will be going to my parents' house in Alabama for Christmas.

It's my first time ever to travel to another state, or more than 30 mins away, for Christmas! So it's exciting. Growing up I always heard friends say we are going to my grandma's (or whoever's) for Christmas. I never had to say that, but now I do! I am going to my parent's house in Alabama for Christmas. It's fun but also a little sad since they are far away now. My family has had Christmas in Florida since 1984! My parents also, even though they moved. Last year they all came back down here for Christmas at our house. That means most of our Christmas holidays were not cold. I don't like an 80 degree Christmas or even a 75 degree Christmas! Please, at least 60 and lower would be better. But those were far and few between.

My family is coming here for Thanksgiving which is less than 2 weeks away now! It will be the first time I host Thanksgiving at my house which is going to be fun, but I really really don't want to ruin the turkey. I have never cooked a turkey! Why would I have when mommy always did it? :P Now I have to be a real grown up. Ack!!

Refreshing colors decor inspiration

1. Sewing Room, 2. Emily's Sewing Room/Library, 3. sewing table, 4. Nursery

Red, grey and black

On polyvore I wanted to put together something with red in it. This is what I came up with:

Casual+Evening looks grey, black,RED by ChristinaD featuring Old Navy

Items in this set:
Old Navy jeans, $35
Charlotte Russe cardigan, $27
Forever21 top, $2.50
Peacocks.co.uk dress, 20 GBP
punkrose shoes, $20

FRONT PAGE: me!!

I have calmed down a little but I found out around 4 pm that I had been on the front page of Etsy earlier in the day!! I checked my email to find a conversation from a fellow Etsian that said congrats on being on the front page. I thought "what?!?!?!?! When??? WOWWWW!!" and got ecstatic!! The newly listed cardinal pillow(listed last night) made it to the front page. My first time!

The funny thing is that I think adding "celadon" to the tags for the item definitely helped. How funny!! And amazing! And that pillow sold. :) If you look at tags or titles of other green items in this list, they had celadon as well!

Christmas Pillows, finally.

I finally made some Christmas items for my shop and listed them. Only two so far though...here they are!
I am still working on my crafty table/area in the "back room" and it's taking me forever. Mostly because I keep stopping in the middle of working on it. Here's a peak at what's been going on back there. *Unfortunately the coloring in the pictures didn't turn out well*, but you can get the idea!
I used extra fabrics that I had for these hoops. I love the apples fabric. Then there's the bicycle fabric again(was in the tree pillow above). And then the other three hoops are fun, retro inspired, sewing themed fabric by Alexander Henry.

I also wanted to mention a lovely smell wafting through the air in my house. For my birthday last month I received a lot of candles from Bath and Body Works. I love them!! In my collection is now: Fresh Balsam, Fireside, Leaves, Pumpkin Patch, and Winter.

Fresh Balsam has become my favorite, followed second by Pumpkin Patch. Though I love them all! You need to buy Fresh Balsam (or ALL of them) when they are on sale. The smaller size had been on sale for $5. The scent is refreshing, especially in Florida where it's still humid outside a lot of the days. Even hours after it's been blown out, I smell it here and there in the air. Like when the a/c turns on (yeahhh remember, Florida), and blows towards the candle, the scent starts making it's way around again. *Sniffffff*, so nice!

Hip Hop Elves

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

I am getting such a kick out of this!!! Me and the family, as elves, hip hop dancing.

Coffee recipes book!

I was given a cute recipe book recently by a friend(Nancy). It contains coffee and espresso recipes!! And not just recipes for drinks but also for sweets!
I haven't tried any recipes yet but I really want to soon! Look at these delicious examples.
If I do try some soon, I will share them on the blog of course! Fellow bloggers, isn't it funny how everything turns into a blog opportunity? A Blogortunity? Yes I had to be dorky and say that. I had taken pictures of lemon poopy seed muffins once after baking them, to put on the blog. But I forgot about them! I'm pretty sure I've done that more than once. But you need those pictures, just in case! (haha...)

I have noticed the adorable google search homepage the past week. It's been Sesame Street themed! But why does Sesame Street get so many days as google's decor? I like it, but still - why so many days? I find it funny but cute. Today's image:
I need to work on getting to bed earlier at night! I'm a night owl. That doesn't really mix well with motherhood! I am a tired mother these days. And Kavi has been testing limits more and more often. I want to be a good and fun mom but also a good disciplinarian because I don't want him causing a ruckus while we are out and about. He is a good little boy most of the time, but you know, the normal phase of testing has been going on! He is 21 months old, not much longer until two!!

Woodsy and Girly

I put together a woodsy, girly outfit recently to submit for the Couture De Jour at lillyella.blogspot.com and it's today's ensemble! Go take a peak, it's a cute outfit! And the hair comb is so interesting in my opinion. Click the link to visit the blog:
http://lillyella.blogspot.com/2009/11/couture-de-jour_10.html

(Another post coming along soon!)

Tired Sunday

We are the "sleep in" types, especially on the weekends. Although my husband is much better at waking up early than I am, he also likes his sleep in weekend time. Well Kavi(our son) has been messed up by the time change. He wakes up earlier yet goes to sleep later. Aye aye aye!! So last night he fell asleep much much later than he should have but was up since 7:30am this morning. That might sound normal to most people, but we like a 9 am awakening around here haha. So I am pretty tired, and Kavi must be as well although he will fight it! I see a nap in his future...

Well I have coffee brewing and will make some breakfast now - probably french toast since it is Sunday! :)

Some Fun Fashion Inspiration

A couple of weeks ago I posted polyvore sets made by other people that were inspired by TV shows and movies.

So I got the idea Thursday night to create a new set of my own, inspired by Jane Austen's books. So I think of this as a new way to dress like they would in those days! I even googled some info about shoes to make sure it matched up somewhat with the style of the day. This was just fun to do. I hope you enjoy looking at it!

Modern Jane Austen by ChristinaD featuring Adrianna Papell dresses

A blog I check out all the time is found paper co. I love the "affordable treats" feature and I always find something new to mark as a favorite on Etsy because of it. So I clicked the link for a mug that was in the feature and in the Etsy shop found even more goodies. They had to do with Jane Austen's writings. I mentioned before that I haven't actually read her books(hangs head in shame), but I love the movie versions.
This dishtowel went onto my favorites list!!

Mr Darcy Proposal Dish Towel $10 from Brookish

Awwwwww.

Flashback Friday

I have been reading Flashback Fridays at ChristopherandTia and have been wanting to join in. I finally am! So here's a blast from the past. My family. From mid 80's I think.

(I'm the one on the left)

Most of my life, people we know always say I look a lot like my dad. I agree. But as I got older more people would say I favored my mom. Still we all think I look a lot like my dad. In this picture I like that me and my dad are smiling similarly and my mom and sis are smiling similarly. Notice it? And my sis was always told she looks like my mom. I had very straight hair while my sister had curly hair. As we got older, my hair got wavy and my sister's hair got even more curly. Her hair is very pretty but she has never liked it. People always tell her "I'd pay big bucks to get hair like that", which she is tired of hearing but always smiles. Me and my sister are 21 months apart(I'm the oldest). So thanks for taking a little walk down memory lane with me...

Vintage Mugs and a Song

This week's vintage items are coffee/tea cups and mugs! Click picture to get to Etsy listing.

And here's a song I have liked for a couple years! It just never gets old. "Soul Meets Body" by Death Cab for Cutie.

Fall Back

So how does everyone feel about setting the clocks back an hour last weekend?
(left: Fall Time Clock necklace from ArtfulGoodies)
I always look forward to it, and saying "we get an extra hour of sleep" is always exciting to say but is it real? haha. By Sunday night it just becomes the same amount of sleep. I like it, but then again I don't really like that it gets dark earlier. But it does mean cooler evenings in Florida, so that's a plus. I still am not sure why they changed WHEN we set the clocks. It used to be a different week.

a cool lion

We found these very out of date sunglasses somewhere months ago, maybe in my car's glove box. Kavi loves if he can play with them and wear them. He makes a funny face to try to keep them from falling off. While I was taking pictures of him on Halloween he had them on for some of the pictures. He is very entertaining!

I felt like I was in a creative slump for a couple weeks. I feel a little more motivated again! I made some new jewelry pieces on Sunday. I still need to sew new things though. :/
Here are some new earrings I listed:

Happy November 1st!

A great way to start the month...with coffee cups! After a Saturday filled with lots of activities for people I bet a nice cup of coffee is needed today!

coffee by ChristinaD on Polyvore.com