Articles this week

Travel:

* There's More to Helen Than Oktoberfest

* This October Head to Ruby Falls Haunted Cavern

Photo:

* Creating Silhouette Photos

Other:
* Advertorial (not by me, but on me) on Offbeat Mama

Homemade pink lemonade

I normally don't like lemonade or anything citrus for that matter, but for some reason I had a craving last week for pink lemonade, and for a homemade version. I decided to make it myself without a juicer or a recipe. It turned out fantastic and delicious, but my hands were in fact quite sore by the end!
I think I ended up hand-squeezing about 5 lemons. From there I added some sugar and some agave (to cut down on the amount of sugar used). Then added some water, grenadine and a splash of pomegranate juice. Mixed it until it tasted good, so I can't share exact amounts of ingredients with you, but I'm all for experimenting and making according to taste anyways!

I later did a web search for how to really make homemade pink lemonade and the recipes that surfaced were all made with cranberry juice. Sounds good enough, but pomegranate and grenadine sounds better!

The bathroom

The next stop on our little home tour... the main bathroom, aka the "girls bathroom". We currently have separate bathrooms, and we both love it! The "boys bathroom" also doubles as the guest bathroom, after a good cleaning of course. I won't be showing that one on here.

Now, my bathroom is small, but it does what it needs to do. I do however have a nice little closet in there, which is good because with the pedestal sink there's no storage. I love the sink, but there's also no counter space which can sometimes be challenging. In our last place, our bathroom was black, white, and grey. We transferred the items into our current place, but I'm not quite sure I like the grey with the yellow- the walls, tile, and floor are all a pale shade of retro yellow. It's not really a high priority, but when it's time for new rugs and towels, I'm sure I'll switch things up.

The floor tile- what a great shape (and it looks like fish scales, see below)

I have three (sets) of vintage chalkware fish on the bathroom walls.

This was my first set (and my fav.), an anniversary gift from my honey.

And Swampy rolling on the rug... he likes to follow me around the house, so you'll probably see him often on our tour. If you need more Swampy cuteness and missed the photos of his sink time, check them out here.

A few repurposing tips- bathroom products

Since tomorrow we're continuing on with the home tour into the bathroom, yes, the bathroom, today I'm going to offer a few repurposing tips with two common bathroom products.
If you live in an older house, chances are you have a few wooden doors that stick from time to time. This happens especially when seasons change and when there's humidity in the air. To help a door out, take a bar of soap and rub it around the parts of the door that are sticking.
If you use any beauty products in smaller tubes with pumps, it's sometimes difficult to get the last bit of product out. No need to waste it- just turn the bottle upside down so that the rest of the product falls towards the top. To keep a small pump bottle actually turned on its head without falling over, stick it inside a toilet paper roll.

Day trips

Atlanta day trips I wrote about this week:

* Visit Petit Creek Farms for Fun Fall Activities

* Play with Miniature Animals at Tanglewood Farms

If you live in Georgia or will be visiting, you will definitely want to check these out. They are short and easy to read articles with photos!

Vintage camera ads and magazine covers

If you like vintage advertising and photography, you'll love the sets of vintage ads and magazine covers I've put together over on the KEH page. Find them here. Enjoy!

Atlanta Day Trips

A few weeks ago I accepted a writing gig for another website that I have not previously written for. I'm kind of going to go with it for a bit, see how it goes, and then reevaluate at a later date. My column topic is "Atlanta Day Trips".

My first article is up: Experience Fall to its Fullest at Hillcrest Orchards

More to come soon!

The kitchen

The kitchen is the largest room in the house... it's actually kind of kitchen/dining room/random extra space in one, and makes a large L shape.

I love the cabinets but want so badly to re-tile the awful floor.

I picked this vintage dinette set up a few years ago. It took quite some time to find just what I was looking for. If I had the space, I'd love to add a whole booth set up as well. Maybe one day.

The bread box was a Christmas gift from Skip. We looked for bread boxes for forever but I never found "the one". He finally found this one, and I love it! I seem to have a problem when searching for specific vintage items in that it always takes me forever to find what I'm looking for if it's on my "looking for" list. I either eventually find it (I'm talking a year +), or give up and then one pops up out of nowhere. I'll come back to this "looking for" list in a minute...

Appliances and serving pieces on wire-rack shelves- cake pedestal that gets used often, vintage bar ware, a jukebox air popcorn popper, espresso machine, glass milk bottles (from the book release party), vintage toy tin toaster and cake carrier, etc.- most of these items were gifts from one occasion or another.

An over sized postcard from Yeehaw letterpress

Got this at a super bargain! A vintage tin toy stove/oven. It's missing a few knobs sure, but it's already gotten tons of use from little ones that come over. And I just love the way it looks.
Travel/home cross-stitch was our first house warming gift when we moved into our current house- thanks Jessica!
The newest addition- found this on our recent trip to NC. I love vintage western stuff! The bells still ring and the voice box (kind of ) works.
And on the back wall... my anniversary gift to Skip from this year. And here's the story of how this came to be... we were eating dinner at our favorite Mexican restaurant down the street when we both looked over at a painting on the wall. Immediately both our eyes grew wide and started talking about 1, how awesome it was, and 2, how funny the glued on bark piece was. I thought how great it would be if I could talk the restaurant into selling it to me... 1, because it reminds me of our wedding because it's a mountain scene (and our wedding was in the mountains), 2, because it's from Mexico and one of our honeymoon stops was in Mexico. 3, it would be awesome in our house. 4, It would surely serve as a reminder for good times and eating at our favorite local Mexican spot. Long story short, I talked them in to letting it go (it was a struggle... they did actually bring all of the paintings back from their trips home to Mexico). The wood frame itself is pretty nifty and has little carved designs in it. And I still laugh just about every time I look at the fake (?) glued on bark trunk.

Now, back to my "looking for" list.... it's an ongoing thing. There's always something on it. It's kind of exciting to look for something specific which will in turn be a challenge. As previously mentioned, we love vintage store shopping. And here's the thing... when we go, we could spend hours looking around and maybe come home with one small item, but that's a good thing most of the time since we just spent a day totally entertained for maybe a couple of bucks. But anyways, back to the list... so currently I've been looking for a very specific milk sign. It's in my head, but I'm not sure I've actually seen one like I want in person, but I know it has to exist. I've been looking for this for about a year now. Item number 2 is a recent addition. On our NC trip I found an entire kitchen set like the little stove (pictured above)- it included a matching oven/stove, dishwasher, and refrigerator. It was all in perfect condition, reasonably priced, and SO awesome. The problem was, I had the Honda at the time and it wouldn't fit in the car, the shop wouldn't ship it, and they wouldn't break up the set to sell one piece of it. So I had to leave it behind. Now I'm determined to find a large tin toy fridge.. that's the one I really want. One that has pictures of food items printed on the metal on the inside of the doors. I have a feeling this one item will also send me on a wild goose chase and I'll be on the hunt for a very long time. So now that I've disclosed this information, and if you see one, it's your duty to let. me. know!

Recent photography articles

If you're interested in photography, whether you're just learning or a pro, here's some of my articles from the past month to check out. I promise you'll learn something regardless of your level!

* Tips for shooting in sunny conditions
* Troubleshooting: The bottom shadow, and lens separation
* The Periodic Table and photography
* Digital lens compatibility- parts 1, 2, & 3 (for SLR cameras)
* Crop factor

The sunroom

Every time the seasons change I go through a homey period of cleaning, decorating, cooking, and baking. Since the fall is usually when most towns have their "tour of homes", I thought it would be a great time to share a little peek into my own home. I've been debating for awhile now whether or not to do a post series like this. On the one hand, I'm like, "does anyone really care", but on the other hand, anytime someone new comes over they typically take their time to look around and usually have a ton of questions. We like nic-nacs, collecting, and (I like) decorating. Yes, we have a lot of items on the walls and items on shelves, but we're pretty thrifty at finding them. Our collections come from gifts, thrift/vintage/antique store bargains, other artists, and of course sometimes from our own making. So, here's the first post to get this mini series kicked off... I introduce, our sunroom!

Skip made the parking sign (for our wedding),

and the bunting is handmade from oil cloth (an Etsy find).

I purchased the two retro green metal lawn chairs a few years ago, and then was gifted the matching glider and side table for my birthday this summer.

Yes, our sunroom does have dreaded wood paneling and green (astro-turf like) carpet.

I typically hate both, but it actually works well with our retro kitsch camping theme.

Vintage metal sign- a flea market find

Chalkware bunny- a recent (finders keepers) addition

Swampy at the (kitchen to sunroom) window telling me he wants to come out there too

PS- This is technically a "test" post... please let me know if you're interested and want me to continue with this series. If I get little to no response, I won't be finishing "the tour".

Tuesday

On Tuesday my sister and dad came to town for the day and we headed to Athens for a few hours. Just a few random shots from the day...

Swampy... not in Athens, but on Tuesday

Drugstore in Athens

hamburgers in Athens

My sister texting away in the car

coffee roasters in Athens

Sweetwater Creek

This weekend I took a few hours out of my morning and headed to Sweetwater Creek State Park. It's a short drive down I-20w outside of Atlanta, located in Lithia Springs, GA.

I started out on my little hike on the red trail, or the history trail. My main reason for going was to see the ruins of an old textile mill that is located along this trail.
The New Manchester Manufacturing Company started out as Sweetwater Manufacturing Company in 1849, and when sold in 1857 was renamed. It stayed open as a textile mill until 1864 when it was burned by Union forces in the Civil War. The original structure stood five stories tall and all that remains is part of the exterior brick walls.

Beyond the ruins is a gorgeous spot that the river runs through.

There's large rocks to climb on and clear mini rapids.

To view more images from Sweetwater Creek, check out my Flickr set.

at the river

Yesterday I took the entire day off from all work and all household chores to just relax. We packed up the car bright and early in the morning and headed with some friends up to the North Georgia Mountains to spend some time on the Etowah River.

An awesome day filled with grilling food, friends, skipping rocks, and tubing.

Hope you all had a lovely holiday weekend as well!

Previously unreleased

There are two photos from my new book Less Pin-up, More Pin-down that I had not posted anywhere online... I was saving them to be special little surprises for the book release. Now that the book is officially out and has been seen, I feel like it's time to unveil the two previously unseen images...

(if you read the back of the book, the above image will make more sense)