Brooches and Buttons

Hello, all!

The lovely Kezzie has been sharing some of her funtabulous brooches on her blog, and in a comment on my blog she sort of demanded that I do the same. I do have a few really nice brooches, which I haven't been wearing much lately. Summer clothes can't hold up anything that weighs more than a piece of lint. But now that lapel season is on its way, let me show you some of my pretties.

Before I do, though, I HAVE to mention that I just reopened my Etsy shop - click on the link and bring your credit card! Of course, my "chaos" brooches are listed. Please have a look and give me feedback.

Now, where was I? Oh, yes, brooches. I have posted pics of these before, and I'm probably better off using old pictures than the newer ones. This is what I accomplished taking a selfie today:

The brooch is a beautiful blue butterfly I bought from Bella at Citizen Rosebud. Here's a usable photo with a smug smile.

The butterfly was also seen here. Lovely, n'est-ce pas?

--- edited on Sept. 29, which happens to be TARDIS Tuesday, and I'm wearing blue so I shall link up with My Closet Catalogue.

This is one I made for myself using a sticker of an Edward Hopper painting and putting resin over it.

I've grouped it with some buttonflowers from Megan Gann (who used to have a blog but she seems to have quit the blogging life). The little yellow curves in the buttonflowers match the hat in the picture.

Here's a photo from 2012 with me wearing a brooch I got at a charity shop in England.

This is when Mr. S did some photography for me, before we started bickering each time (Me: Hurry up! You're taking too long! Him: You keep making silly faces!). Ah, memories . . .

And here's a micro-mosaic set that belonged to my grandmother's cousin Naomi, who had no children of her own so my mother got them. And now I have them.

 
I know I mentioned buttons in the title, and I was going to tell you about the buttons I made - yes, made - for this purple velvet jacket, which was a hand-me-over from my niece. But maybe that will wait for another post.

Linking up with the longest running link-up on the webz - Visible Monday at Patti's Not Dead Yet Style. Are you going? I'm bringing a cheese ball (his name is Guido - haha!).

PS - when I added my link, it wanted to shorten the title to Brooches and Butt. 

Val

Oops, I did it again

Remember last month when I posted pictures of my nephew-in-law Kenji when we had a family get-together (Easter)? Well, here are some more photos of my nephew-in-law Kenji at another family get-together (Mother's Day).

I was trying to crowd in on his hipness then, too.

His vest, which his mother sent him from Japan, has a striped back and striped lining in the pockets. The label actually says "University of Oxford." Maybe they're branching out to make some extra money?

Remember in my last post when I was wearing a red dress? Here I am wearing another red dress. I bought both dresses the same day at the thrift store, so I'm linking up - again - to Secondhand First at Citizen Rosebud. I'm just going around in circles here!

Since the dress is red, I'm also linking up with Share-in-Style: Red at Mis Papelicos.

I wore the leopard-print cardi to work twice that week, and then again on the weekend. Madness!

Remember when I told you about my blogger meet-up in my last post? I'm on my way to another one!

It's just like Groundhog Day, lasting all week.

Val

SToned

I usually try to have some kind of thematic cohesion to my posts, something that pulls the text and photographs together. Maybe you haven't noticed. Seriously? You haven't noticed how hard I work on this? Well, then you won't notice that my theme got stretched a bit in this post, but I think we'll get there in the end.

You see, I've got photos of the skirt I gave you a sneak peek of here.

And I've got more photos from the Scavenger Hunt that I dumped out of the bottom of my handbag. These are of my city, Eugene.

And the only thing I could think of to unite them was stones. Have you ever read The Stones of Venice by John Ruskin? No, I haven't either, and I have two degrees in Art History. Maybe I'll get to it one day.

For now, I present to you My Stoned Skirt and The Stones of Eugene, in one rambling post.

I found the skirt at St. Vinnie's thrift shop - just the right size! The stoney-pebbley print was irresistible. I wore it with white tights in the morning, which looked about the same as my white legs. By afternoon, it was hot so I ditched the tights.

 

The shoes were previously seen here. The top is just a basic tee from Kohl's.

Now to the stones of Eugene. Downtown Eugene has a lot of mid-century architecture, and very few old buildings.

There used to be some lovely old architecture, but it wasn't cool to have old buildings in the 1960s, so some were razed and some were adapted.
 

And in case you're wondering, Eugene was named for its founder (circa 1850) and first postmaster, Eugene Skinner. Eugene is an odd name for a city, but it's better than the original moniker of Skinner's Mudhole, which I'm guessing was dreamed up in a saloon.

This was taken about a month ago - all the trees have leaves now, lots of leaves.

Now for an added bonus and another stitch in the thematic jacket that is trying to hold this post together, here are some photos of Venice, taken in 1989.

Linking up with Citizen Rosebud for Secondhand First and then to Not Dead Yet Style for Visible Monday.

Ciao, amici!

Val

Easter Melange

I love that word - melange. And I couldn't think of a better way to describe this post, which covers Easter, birthdays, men's style, food, family, sunshine, sewing, and a gnome.

In my family we have plenty of birthdays in April - my mom's, my sister's, my brother's, now also my nephew-in-law's, my sister-in-law's, and also one of my best friends's (pronounced "best friendzuz"). At least here in this town we're able to combine three birthdays and celebrate at once. It just happened that Easter was the best time to get together for a barbecue!

my brother-in-law barbecuing

I've been wanting to take some photos of my very cool nephew-in-law, Kenji, who was one of our birthday celebrants. Kenji would like to find some men's style blogs, so if you know of any, let me know.

 

the sunglasses are Ray Ban's

Cool, huh? He's also an absolute sweetheart, which is nothing less than my niece deserves.

This is Kenji and his wife, Lisa, with their two nephews.

This photo includes my sister, color-coordinated with Lisa, and my other niece, Mildred. The boys are her sons.

My goodness, these people are multiplying like rabbits! My mom and I joined the line-up.

And what is Val wearing, I hear you ask. Well. I made a cape thingy from a scarf and wore it over a white tee shirt.

maybe Kenji's coolness will rub off on me

I'm also wearing my Frida necklace (made by the delightful Tamera) and some pale pink jeans.

Here's the back of the scarf-cape. I just had to cut the scarf in half and stitch the long edges together, leaving room for my head, of course. The fringe was an added bonus!

We had lots of yummy food.

The carrots (made by my sister) are cooked in broth with cream cheese (!), then chopped pecans and green onions are added, and a little lemon juice. I bet this would be good without the cream cheese, too.

What do you call an angry garden statue? A gnomad! (Thank you, Mr. S.)

And then we came home.

Linking up to Visible Monday and Creative Mondays! Have a good week, everyone!

Thursday - I'm also linking up my upcycled scarf-cape thingy to The Citizen Rosebud for Secondhand First. The scarf was bought at Buffalo Exchange resale shop.

Val

T3 - Plaid and Paisley

I'm struggling a bit to come up with something for Thoughtful Third Thursday. It's all about books, and although I've been reading almost constantly, I've only finished a couple of books in the past month. I ditched two books before I even got halfway through. Funny, they were both set in Washington State - my old stomping grounds. They were recommended by a colleague with whom I share lots of book and movie recommendations, but we don't actually have the same taste at all. Except I turned him and his wife on to Donna Tartt and Kate Atkinson, and they turned me on to Tana French and Gillian Flynn. Other than that we haven't been having much luck. I'll tell you more about the rejected books at the end of the post, for anyone who's interested in my sweeping and subjective opinion.

Right now I'm reading Kate Atkinson, One Good Turn. It's the second in her series of Jackson Brodie crime novels, and it's pretty good. I'm not a huge crime fiction fan, but I generally like her writing, although not always. She tends to throw in lots of characters and their musings and history while they're doing other things. It's easy to lose track sometimes.

The book is set in Edinburgh, so I decided to go with tartan for an outfit. Here's a quote from the book:

"The hotel was surprisingly cheap and unsurprisingly awful. Anything that could be decorated with tartan was, even the ceiling had been papered in a funereal Black Watch. On the walls were hung framed prints of Old Edinburgh and heraldic clan insignia mounted on wooden shields."

I mixed the tartan with paisley - another Scottish association. The design is Indian, but when it became popular in Great Britain quite a lot of paisley patterns were produced at mills in Paisley, Scotland.

The style of the book is kind of sardonic, wry, and self-deprecating. There's a bit too much death and blood for my taste, but I do like Jackson. The BBC has made a series of three Jackson Brodie books, and the character is played by Jason Isaacs - aka Lucius Malfoy of Harry Potter fame.

My shirt is a Michael Kors men's shirt, the scarf is Ray Strauss, which I bought from Bella at The Citizen Rosebud on Etsy. The yellow jeans are thrifted Shylo, and the suede leopard sneakers are Born.

Now, about the other books.

I started reading The Orchardist by Amanda Coplin, and I didn't like it at all. The style was very aloof and pseudo-poetic in a spare kind of way. Lots of sentences seemed very clunky and immature, and I just didn't get into the characters. Glad it was only a library book.

I read two books by Jonathan Evison, well, one and a bit. The first one I loved - The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving. It was a funny, sweet, heart-wrenching tale about a man's life being put back together (in spite of himself) after a tragedy. I definitely recommend this book, as well as another Evison book, All About Lulu. But the one I didn't finish is West of Here. I think it's more of a man's book, long descriptions about wild scenery and men moving through it. And mud. Just not enough human interaction to hold my attention.

Come on over to My Closet Catalogue or A Bibliophile's Style and see the other visual book reports!

Update April 30 - now linking up to 52 Pick-me-up for Yellow Fever.

Val

Black and white and red all over

It occurred to me this year that I've had major things happen in my life in years that end in 4 – it's been 50 years since my first big overseas trip, 40 years since I graduated from high school, 20 years since I met my husband.

So, of course I'm going to mark these anniversaries here on Muse Fondue. I'm kind of excited about this, and I've been getting ahead of myself writing posts and scanning pictures for these future dates (I can get away with a little skiving at work). But I had nothing ready for this post - no theme, no cute little story. I'm just winging it.

I did take some photos of a recent outfit that I really liked. It was so simple I don't know why I hadn't worn this before.

The skirt (Fresh Produce, resale) has one large pleat on the side to give it a little swing and fullness. I didn't wear tights or boots because we've actually had some nice weather lately! It feels like a trick, but I'm hoping it's Spring.

Snow leopard cardi - retail; belt - thrifted; snooty face - I was born with it.

The shoes are Cliff's White Mountain. I think I bought them at TJ Maxx a few years ago. They were plain black, but they were too boring - so I blinged them up. Another shoe transformation!

with veins

I painted the cross strap thingy and added some sparkles on the large buttons.

without veins

I won a prize from Bella at The Citizen Rosebud! I didn't even know it was a contest - I just commented as usual and she pulled my name out of one of her amazing hats, and sent me this package of red delight!

Just what a post-menopausal woman needs - my very own Vinnie's Giant Roller Coaster Period Chart & Journal Sticker Book, and Tampon Case!

Um, yeah, I won't go so far as to say that I wish I was still having periods, but you might as well make them fun. The cool gingham bag is mine, but I'll find another home for Vinnie and his helpful journal ("Really works!") and tampon case.

Visible Monday is on this week, so you know I'll be there with Patti and the gang.

Tuesday it will be time for a Shoe Shine at The Citizen Rosebud, so I'll be hoofing it over there, too.

Have a great week!

Val