The price of making your house unique

I need a new bathroom vanity and sink but the ones I've found near me, are made from particleboard. I can't use particle board cabinet doors in my art, so no way am I using them in my bathroom!
So, I'm redoing the existing vanity, replacing the doors with beadboard ones, and replacing the sink and faucet with a set I found on the side of the road. Amazingly, it fits my vanity, and has cottage-ey "hot/cold" faucet knobs. However, the cost to install this top and put new pipes in under the sink (they are old and noisy)...$239!
The parts I found retail for $300, so it's worth it. And what a story...the plumber says, "so you find your plumbing supplies by the side of the road?"

Last night at Goodwill I found a pair of milk glass bedside lamps. A PAIR! I am infatuated with the lamp in the little girls room in the new Charlotte's Web movie. The decorating from that time was all about texture. I love it. The pair I found was rubberbanded together with that scary Goodwill appliance price tag "Sold AS IS"...for $3.99.

It felt daring to take this old lamps home, all dirty, but they are SO cool! and isn't that what all the cool homes in magazines have? really funky cool old lamps?

So I cleaned them in the sink with a brush (the dirt was all in the grooves), they gleamed. Then today my husband bought two rewiring kits for $30. Ugh. Then we went out tonight for shades, and I ended up with pleated ones, that might be all wrong, I don't know, but the white of them works (I'm really working towards all CLEAR colors in my house, no beige). The shades were $14 for the pair.

Today, when my husband took the lamps apart, I had to repaint the brass "look" bits. Brasso didn't work, so I don't think they were brass:-)

When I was at the dept store, a woman next to me in Lamps was buying a set of wrought iron ones for $30 flat. When I got home tonight, unsure of the shades I bought, I almost threw in the towel. But then I thought that in two years the dept ones will look boring, and I'll still have my ones that are at least 50 years old. That are so hard to find. That are as old as the house, and are unique like me.

And of course, down the road, when the house is in Cottage Living :-), they'll be a little notation about my lamps. "Found at a Goodwill for $3.99, Maggie's husband fitted the lamps with new wiring, and Maggie added the ball fringe to the shades."

You can't write stuff like that boring new lamps!

Etsy chair

my Etsy chair with beautiful hand spun yarns from knittydirtygirl.etsy.com!
it turned out so bohemian, and you gotta love that:-)
Add your own Etsy pins and things to it!
available soon,
on... you guessed it!

my new Grocery!

oh my....heaven....!
Stauffers of Kissel Hill's new Rohrerstown store- opening day today (the biggest SKH is the county)...it's right down the road, and looks like a really big version of Whole Foods (which for some reason hasn't come to Lancaster yet).
the produce aisles and aisles and aisles are so tidy .... the prepared foods are gorgeous, it's just great.
I am partial to SKH because when we moved to Lititz when I was 17, from a tiny town in Massachusetts, the SKH was so close to us and we thought it was fantastic. We went there nearly every day and came home with tasty things constantly. We took our guests there...it was kind of a joke, but they loved it and would go back the next day too.
now I have my own store and it's better than that one. there is something about having a really really really nice food store near your home. It makes you just feel good. I think it's because it's one of those places that you go to all the time, so the nicer it is, the nicer your life is.

1000 Handmade Greetings....

is coming out a month earlier than expected!!! Hooray! Look for two of my cards in it!

ISBN: 9781592534739
January 2009

$25.00
$27.50 Canadian
£14.99

Flexi-binding
1000 photos/illustrations
320 Pages
Size (in): 9 x 9

1,000 Handmade Greetings

Creative Cards and Clever Correspondence

Laura McFadden, with Deborah Baskin

Even in this current day and age, where we are all senders and receivers of voluminous emails, handmade greeting cards, stationery, and invitations never lose their charm or fail to touch the heart. This book is a delightful showcase of 1,000 exciting and contemporary hand-designed greeting cards, with examples that feature a wide array of paper craft techniques, including: paper cutting, paper stencils, stamping, punching, stitchery, monoprints, screenprints, paper piecing, and more.

Laura McFadden runs her own graphic design studio, Laura McFadden Design, Inc., and has contributed to various craft books and magazines. She is co-author with April Paffrath of The Artful Bride: Wedding Invitations and The Artful Bride: Wedding Favors & Decorations. Her most recent book is 100 Ideas for Stationery, Cards, and Invitations.

Press today....

Claudia, aka reporter called me last night for info on au pairs and technology while they're working....it's fun to be quoted in the paper:-)

Fun night with the au pairs....

I met the au pairs from Reading and Lancaster tonight at Buca di Beppo Italian Restaurant. It was really fun. People (ie. the waiter) find them all very entertaining...7 young people from all over the world. the place is a little bizarre but you remember going there, that's for sure:-)
Really really excellent service I might add and the salad was spicy! (but really good)

And YES! those are two boy au pairs!!!! Moritz and Tobi!

Yesterday I painted the kids table at Eastern Market with the kids...it is BEAUTIFUL! I can't believe I didn't have my camera. At one time there were about 10 kids painting it at once.

Very very hot here...I was enjoying our early fall!

I crack myself up late at night:-)

The edge of the seat has Lancaster street names around it!

Check it out....I'll have some art here....

Whales and stuff!

I had a dream of three whales!
Here is what they say that means:
'dreaming of a whale reflects a sense of calmness and spirituality within you"

The three of them looked like this Orca! It was startling because in the dream I was standing on the beach on a rainy day by myself and they appeared right at the shoreline.

I have had many revelations lately that are very positive to think of. My house is really coming together, I love being a local artist and spending time with a wonderful circle of artist friends, and I've realized since my son turned 3 last month, that I did a great job these last three years!!!! He helped make me who I am now...and helped define me. All the decisions I made for him or related to him or our family were hard at the time, but now things are fantastic and I am so proud of myself! It is hard to quit your job, but it was worth it...like a million dollars worth it! and I think now that pursuing my dream of being an artist has been so rewarding to me.
Whenever I had thought about "winning the lottery" (during my twenties as I sat in my cubicle as an admin) I would say, "I would be an artist." and the people around me would say, "you like art?" and it would floor me that they didn't even sense that about me!!!

I had a meeting with Lancaster Indie Arts on Wed...and what a wonderful thing it is to talk about art on a Wed morning at 11am and not weird office crap and politics! I feel like I'm in heaven. Like I did when I was at summer camp as a kid and we would be walking down a path to the Art Cabin for Art class.

It really really pays you back in a zillion different ways to just follow your heart, because when you do...things in your life will just move along..."swimmingly!" :-)

Saturday

Saturday Mary and my first Day of the Dead piece.
both are on Etsy now.
www.maggiefrenchfolkart.etsy.com

Little guys on my chair!

At artist Maggie C. Mowery's house:
...her new silkscreened stuffed critters!!!....www.happysilence.etsy.com.
A great artist and friend:-)!

Thursday...Friday....

A Week of Mary:

Monday Mary, Tuesday Mary, Wednesday Mary....

I could sit here all day....