Carrie – Page 59 – The Creative Salad

Loving the Purple

Right now I’m trying to resist buying these lovely purple items:

1. Land’s End Natural Zip Top Canvas Tote Bag for beach excursions, road trips, and weekly visits to the library.

2. Kate Spade Continental Wallet might actually hold everything. Maybe.

3. Hunter Original Short Boots as we head into the rainy season and I need some sort of foot protection.

I could almost justify each of these purchases.

In the meantime I’ll use my purple Baggu reusable bags and relish the purple that’s everywhere in our house.

Okay, I might splurge and buy myself the Land’s End bag. After all, I have a 25% off coupon and it’s already on sale. How can I resist?!

Garden Failures and the Potential For Yet Another

Not everything has been peachy-keen in our garden this year.

There was the Alium Disaster. Remember last fall (above) when we planted dozens of alium and tulip bulbs? Yeah, well none of them sprouted. (Thank you to our neighborhood gophers who I assume are responsible.)

Then we planted hundreds of poppy seeds days before I sprained my ankle and, well, they never got properly watered and didn’t sprout.

The good news is that we have hundreds (thousands?) of poppy seeds remaining, so we may try again next year.

And now we have one more grand garden adventure that I so hope will pan out: tree collards! Given to us by a friend, these evergreen kale plants typically live ten years and grow ten-twenty feet tall, all while continually producing.

Right now it’s a tiny plant in a giant planter (sitting in a giant mound of compost). I’m excited to see how this goes!

At the moment I am not feeling overly optimistic, but perhaps I’m just trying not to get my hopes up after the previous two garden disasters.

We’ll keep you posted!

The Art of Finding a Thrift Store Score

I love finding a good thrift store score. We have two fantastic locally owned and operated non-profit thrift stores near our house where I do much of our shopping for books, toys, kitchen items, magazines, music, and craft supplies.

Why pay full price for something of equal value and often in similar condition that costs a fraction of the price?! It’s more eco-groovy and budget-friendly to shop at second-hand shops.

brand new $4 coloring book we bought for 25¢

Here are my tips for finding a thrift store score:

1. Shop often – pop in, do a quick walk around, and head out. The more often you stop by, the more likely you are to spot a gem. You’ll also be familiar with your thrift store’s pricing structure and be more likely to know when something is a real steal.

2. Only buy something you’d be willing to pay full price for. I know this sounds counterintuitive. I find it keeps me from buying things I don’t really need simply because they’re a good deal.

$12 Ravensburger puzzle we scored for $1

3. If you’re looking for a particular item ask if they have it in the back. Many thrift stores have a giant inventory that’s constantly being moved into the store. I’ve had luck asking about Pyrex dishes and giant embroidery hoops.

4. Shop with an open mind. Don’t like the color of that picture frame? Paint it. Love the artwork in a particular book but the front cover is ripped? Frame pages or do an art project with the inside pages. Not sure about something that costs $1? Either buy it and donate it back later if you change your mind, or skip it and know that someone else will bring it home and enjoy it. Either way, you really can’t go wrong.

Rivers, Roads and Rails game for $2 instead of $20

There are some items that I always am on the lookout for: Ravensburger puzzles, wooden Scrabble letters, I Can Read books, Pyrex dishes, Gap kids clothes, games by Gamewright, eeBoo and Family Pastimes, empty coloring and activity books.

Curious about other great deals I’ve found? See the entire list of Thrift Store Score posts here.

Handmade Watercolor Postcards

At our local art supplies store I spotted a packet of blank watercolor postcards for sale. Instead of purchasing them, I bought a large pad of (deeply discounted) watercolor paper. We traced a 4×6 inch postcard on one sheet and found that we could fit four postcards on each page. Instead of paying $5 for 15 postcards, we can make 120 for approximately they same price.

Does this count as a thrift store score?!

Tracing our postcard template

Erasing the pencil outline of the traced postcard

Using water color pencils and glitter glue to decorate the postcards

Dried and ready to mail

Our daughter has been busily working on making postcards to send to her friends. Whether they make it out of the house and into the mail remains to be seen. I have a feeling they may end up in our pretend post office instead.

Postmaster Leyba has some beautiful, handmade watercolor postcards to deliver!

New Living Room Configuration and Wall Art

Here’s a post I’ve been meaning to write for a while now. Earlier in the summer we rearranged the furniture in our living room.

This is what it looked like previously (it’s actually decorated for our daughter’s third birthday party last January):

Here’s an alternative, more ~~messy~~ realistic view:

And, no, it doesn’t always look like this.

Nevertheless, the wide open space in front of the couch frequently became a bottomless pit of toys, hard to keep tidy and forever a place of stubbed toes.

We decided to move the couch from resting against the wall to bisect the room and take advantage of the phenomenal view from our front window!

This weekend we finally hung artwork on the wall and the room feels more cohesive:

The upper right and center pieces are prints of paper-cuts by artist and author Nikki McClure, with a photo taken by me in the lower right of our daughter at the Cornerstone art installations in Sonoma, and an Art Doll Print called The Wind’s Bride by artist and doll maker Christine Alvarado.

The room is starting to feel more cozy and, well, us.

That being said, I have plans. Stay tuned!