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Tomorrow is Valentine's Day! Can't wait..
I have decided to make a nice hot boiled lobster dinner for the Captain. Should be nice.....nothing like hot boiled lobster and hot drawn butter with maybe strawberry shortcake for dessert...sounds very summery, doesn't it? That is OK. Those are his favorites..
see you all tomorrow..
more later,
carol
more later,
carol
well well well.......a picture is worth a thousand words....
more later,
carol
When you find this heart from me,
I hope you'll very happy be.
And if you are, 'twill mean that you
Will be my Valentine so true.
Just another way to let someone know how you feel on Valentine's Day...
this one is from around 1920 or so.
I just love the illustration of the little girl in the middle of the heart.
On the back of the card it is signed in beautiful penmanship...."To Lillian from Bobby"......mmm, I wonder what the story was with them??
...were they classmates in school or neighbors or just friends??
....or was Bobby smitten by Lillian from afar and finally got his chance to let her know on Valentine's day...??
Did Lillian feel the same way?
Was she so excited when she received this heart card from Bobby, did she show her friends and scream with delight that he had acknowledged her?
Did she even know how he felt?
I guess we will never know, but it makes the vintage Valentine all the more interesting to think about the story behind the card and who it belonged to at one time.
Just a memory from another time, pretty and thoughtful, that was given long ago to show someone how they felt.............and that is enough for us to remember that it was all about love.
Enjoy the weekend,
more later,
carol
OK all you blogettes out there, I am on a roll here with my owls....first, "Owl do I love thee..." and now this one "Cause owl always love you", which just happens to be the title of the song by Taylor Dane that the Captain and I danced to at one of our daughter's weddings that I dearly love....and the good news is there are more coming...
something about them....and when you add in a polka dotted mushroom...well, just wait till you see how cute the combo is....owls and 'shrooms...and more...
all for Val love day coming up next week...
mmmm, I wonder what the Captain has in store for me?
He is so thoughtful and sweet that I am sure it will be something wonderful. And on Friday, we are going down to the Big Apple for the weekend to see the Broadway show "Young Frankenstein". I gave him the tickets for a Christmas present and we are meeting our daughter Susan and her husband Mark there as well, so that will be fun to look forward to.
In the meantime, I have much design work to do..
I am currently painting up a line of melamine sets of trays, bowls, platters and dinner plates with crabs and lobster designs.
I have to finish up my "Harvest Moon" garden line of birdhouses, garden signs and home decor items and get that all off to China so when they come back from Chinese New Year it is all ready to go.
Then I have to design the hang tag for that garden collection which will be fun. That way each item in the line will have a tag attached to it with the name of the group, describing the collection, my photo and the story behind it all. I will keep you posted on the launch date...sometime this summer for delivery in the fall to the retailers.
Lots going on here in the Carol Eldridge design studio aside from owls and mushroom love....
have a great weekend!
more later,
carol
OK ladies...get out your fast drying glue, your styrofoam balls and those ubiquitous candy hearts for Valentine's day...have I got a cute idea for you!!
I made these little topiary trees as decorations to use on the table for our Valentine Dinner coming up next week for me and the Captain. I wanted something "sweet" that said Valentine's! I think these certainly do the job.
So, take a couple of styrofoam balls and carefully glue (using the quick drying craft glue) the candy hearts all around the balls. You will need to do this in increments as the hearts make the balls get heavy and they tend to slip off. So if you do one segment at a time and let it dry it will work much better.
I painted a couple of clay flower pots that I had in the house left over from the summer time. I used white and pink acrylic paint and painted a little rick rack design along the top of the pot and some polka dots along the bottom. Then I painted a thin dowel that the Captain made for me with the same colors. I cut a piece of styrofoam to put in the bottom of the flower pot so that I would have something to stick the dowel into and anchor the heart ball.
Here is a close up of the hearts all glued on the styrofoam ball.
After the hearts had dried over night, I added a white lace doily to the bottom of the ball, just for fun. Nothing says Valentine's day like a lace doily...I used to love to color them when I was a kid. It just adds a touch of "prettiness" I think.
I stuck the dowel into the ball and then into the styrofoam base that I had placed into the flower pot. I tied a rick rack ribbon on the dowel and put a little piece of pink felt around the base of the dowel to cover up the styrofoam, giving it a finished look.
Easy and how sweet are they?
And speaking of sweet, how nice was that of Kim to feature me on her blog last night? She writes an interesting post every few days of creative people she finds in blog land and her post last night was about me. Quite flattering....I was so excited and now I am in the company of some wonderful creative bloggers out there...so thanks again Kim for all the kind words!
Hope you can make these love trees for your Valentine Dinner table..just adds a bit of whimsy to brighten up the day.
much later,
carol
This just says it all...
more later,
carol
In keeping with the theme of my blog "From the Nest" and the pre-Valentine promise I made to post icons that will lead up to the heart holiday, I am showing my latest polka dotted clay nests.
I made these with the type of clay that just air dries...the munchkins all love it so I keep it on hand in the Craft Closet in the kitchen for them.
These are tiny red and white polka dotted nests filled with tiny red and white polka dotted eggs. Just too cute.
"How did you paint the eggs you ask"? Well, I made an "egg tree" using a styrofoam cone and placed the eggs on the ends of tooth picks and stuck them into the styrofoam...clever, huh? That way I could paint the whole egg around, let it dry and then go back and add the polka dots without the egg touching the table and smudging the paint.
Well, well, look who is back....those cutest of mushrooms...."Fungi love" as Vanessa from a fanciful twist calls it....here they are making a circle around the little nests....protecting them from something I guess. They look so good around the mushrooms...all red and white...crisp and clean...polka dotted...mmm, makes you wonder what the little bird looked like who laid her eggs in this polka dotted nest...we will have to keep a look out for her. Perhaps she lives in the mushroom forest....I am told that everything there is polka dotted. Must simply be too cute for words.
But wait...the famous candy hearts want to be part of this too..making a nice base for the tiny nest and saying "Hug Me", "Call Me", " My Girl", "Cute Stuff" "Love your Captain" ( one of the hearts doesn't really say that but I made one for my Captain that does!!)
So, we have mushroom love, nest love, polka dot love....candy heart love...all building up to the Biggest Love day of all....February 14th!!
Now, that's a lot of love!
more later,
carol
A love nest.... a pretty white lacy nest of yarn filled with love...felt hearts that represent all the people that you love.
Want a fun Valentine craft to do with your family?
Something that everyone can do together?
A craft that creates such a lovely Valentine keepsake that you can make yourself?
Well, then make a Love Nest with starched yarn or string and fill it with felt hearts....one for each member of the family.
here is what you need..
package of small party balloons
glue
yarn/string
scissors
pen
paint brush
red paint
red felt
stuffing
buttons
large eyed needle
liquid starch
make a template of a little heart and trace onto a piece of red felt.
after tracing onto the felt cut out 2 hearts for each stuffed heart you want to make...front and back.
sew around edges of felt heart with white yarn.
just before you get close to the end of sewing up the heart, put some stuffing inside, it does not take much. Then finish sewing it up.
Then glue some little white buttons on top of the heart with a fast drying craft glue. With red acrylic paint, do some cute little designs on the buttons to make them stand out from the heart.
You can then add the names to the back of each heart of everyone in your family or friends or whoever you choose. Then place them in the nest of starched yarn.
The nest is made from dipping the yarn into a liquid starch like Linit and then wrapping it wet around the bottom of the small balloon that you have blown up. First I wiped some vaseline on the latex balloon so the yarn would slip off easily when it was dry. Then I let the yarn dry on the balloon overnight. In the morning I simply popped the balloon and there was the lovely lacy nest ready for the family of hearts.
Or you could paint up some heart eggs for your nest...
Lots of fun to do...you could vary the sizes by blowing up the balloon smaller or larger depending on what size of nest you want. They could be favors at a Valentine party. You could add other things to the nest such as candy or eggs or whatever your imagination comes up with.
For my love nest I started with the red felt hearts, then added some white eggs with the painted hearts and then....remembering my Mushroom love....had to add the red and white polka dotted mushrooms.... they just seemed to fit perfectly.
lots of love for your nest too......with whatever you fill yours with...
more later,
carol
As part of my build up to Valentine's Day February 14th, I promised to post icons each day that reflect the holiday in some way.
Today is about mushroom love...
When the Captain and I were visiting Finland last September, we took a walk through the woods in the tiny town of Inari. In between the birch trees we found these darling red and white polka dotted mushrooms everywhere. Turns out that the local reindeer love to eat them and the mushrooms help them stay healthy during the long cold winters there.
I cannot tell you how cute these were....in a forest with mostly browns and greens these red mushrooms just stood out all over the place...they almost did not look real.
So again the inspiration bug bit me hard and so here are some of the little clay mushrooms that I made for Valentine's day...just because they were so cute and I loved the red and white polka dots.
But wait.... What is that felt heart in the middle of the mushrooms??
...well, that is for another post coming up soon.
So, you just never know where you might find love....hiding in a forest in Finland....or wherever you may roam.
more later,
carol
