There and back again

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We are back from our big road trip through Utah, U.S. We visited about every National Park that’s there to visit, we couldn’t get enough of it.

Made so many pictures, it’s insane.

For old times sake, we spent the last couple of days in San Francisco, a city you should visit at least once in your lifetime. It’s laid back, it’s beautiful…what can I say, I feel almost home there (and it takes a lot for a city to make me feel home)!

Now my head is filled with memories of the wonderful red landscape. Of the soft-colored houses in SF…the sweet Hummingbird we saw in the Golden Gate Park (so closeby, so tiny and so precious I could cry)….I could go on forever.

I will be starting up the shop and everything else again in the upcoming weeks.
But first I need to get my head around this major jetlag that I have. I feel like sleeping at the most odd moments of the day, like now for example :-D

It’s good to be back though! You can imagine how happy we were to be united with dear little Molly, our family and friends, our home. There’s always so much to go back home for.
I made some cool Polariods too, can’t wait to show you those!

Above: Monument Valley, after a sandstorm (red sand is still coming from my ears and nose ;-))
Below, left: the last day say we saw this Hummingbird sunbathing in Golden Gate Park.
Below right: a super-retro 7-Up neon-sign in San Francisco

Here’s to you, Mrs. Wilbers

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Mrs. Wilbers has been a very busy bee. I bought four of her embroideries and that wasn’t even everything she made (I could have taken them all home, but I didn’t have a good reason to take home, for example, a giant Bernadine embroidery ;-))
Makes me wonder why all her hard work ended up in a second-hand store.
Did she had to move to an elderly home?
Did she want to get rid of all the embroideries, because she just wanted to clean up a bit?
Did she pass away and did her family recklessly brought everything she owned to a thriftshop?
And if that would be the reason, why would they do that?
Maybe she wasn’t a very nice mother and once she and her husband died, the children were glad to get rid of her stuff. Or maybe they just didn’t give a thing for all their mother’s hard handmade work.
Maybe she didn’t have family.

I guess I’ll never know.

One thing is for certain: Mrs. Wilbers did love her own handwork. All the embroideries are lovingly framed and marked at the back with her name, along with a number. The number reveals she was kind of a bookkeeper too, why else would you number your embroideries?
And whoever she was, I’m very happy with her embroideries. They will be mounted on a nice place, regularly watched and they will make me smile.
In a way, she will be remembered, so maybe it’s not even such a bad thing her stuff ended up in a thriftshop. At least her work is loved, in this case by me.

This will be my last post for now.
I’m taking a three week break from sewing, thrifting and blogging, to get energy and new inspiration flowing again.
Hope to see you back here then, I can hardly wait!
Take care,
xox

Three Happy Years

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What husband takes you thrifting for your anniversary?
My husband.
He made a list with thriftshops and made me choose which I wanted to visit. Fortunately for him, one of the thriftshops I chose had a huge vintage records section. We can now listen to old James Bond and Miami Vice soundtracks on our Secretly-Not-S0-Vintage-Recordplayer.
I think even he enjoyed himself (although..when we’re together, it’s no big effort to have a good time)!
Me, temporarily tired of expanding the tacky dog collection, found a whole new kind of Very Collectable Thrifttreasures: bird embroideries!

Driving from thriftshop to thriftshop through small country roads made me feel like we were a couple of elderly people, making a nice trip through the countryside. I can imagine us driving like this in our car fifty years from now, quarrelling about everything in general and nothing in particular, feeling content with the happy years we’ve been given. It was just a wonderful day, celebrating us being together.

What’s the best anniversary you ever had?

Our Sunny Dutch home on Apartment Therapy

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…no wonder Molly doesn’t want to leave the house.
According to Apartment Therapy, it’s already very sunny inside.

A warm welcome for those who are new here!

(The former owners painted the house in typical Dutch dark brown 80s colours, so painting the outside timberwork is a major project that needs to be executed this Spring. We’re planning to turn the dark brown into grey or dark blue combined with bright white.)
I must really be off to bed now, must be my bright happy self tomorrow, it’s our anniversary…!

A little surprise in our garden

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We’re being indulged with days full of sunshine and warmth and blue skies in The Netherlands.
We’ve been spending every spare minute outside, enjoying the sun, the animals that run free through the garden (although Molly had a close encounter with Haas this weekend, they’re almost the same size and Molly didn’t felt very comfortable with a big brown rabbit sniffing her…so she thumped him on his head..without her nails…she’s such a gentle spirit. Haas wasn’t impressed at all though.)
What seemed to be a bit of an insignificant tree in the back of our garden amazes us now with a spectacular pink blossom explosion. I wish it could look like this the whole year through (but then again, it wouldn’t be very special then, would it!)
After the long, cold and dark Winter it’s such a delight to feel the sun burn on your skin again, to see nature flourish, to hear the singing birds…to feel that there’s life everywhere you look, smell and hear.
It’s almost poetry.