April Showers

Oh how trite! Ol' April is milking the showers thing down to her last days of '11, isn't she?

The good news is the endless encompassing deadly white fog lifted about an hour ago...

The bad news is that it was washed away by a big, dramatic thunderstorm that is keeping me indoors.
I was all revved up for my spring fix-up and wall painting, headed off to Lowe's despite the fog, list in hand...
When the storm hit. So I stayed indoors. Really...tomorrow is another day, is it not?

I tried to take pictures of the rain on my windows but...OMG, blah...so here's the windowsill junk accumulation from the winter past, with just a hint f sad grey skies behind....

I do love the beach glass bottles!

Aren't the purple ones neat! They change color due to something (manganese?) in the old glass. I've read that purple bottles always date from 1900-1911---One hundred years!---because the trace element that turns purple was only used during that time. (urban legend?)

The darkest purple one is not a beach find, it is a dump dug find, from Illinois, from my dad's collection....

And the marbles, used here as stoppers,  are found on the beach also, tho I never find the really worn ones, maybe my sand is too soft?

These are cool old bottle bases....

And a few favorite, very white shells moved to a prettier location.

Every spring I weed out the windowsill collection, pare it down--usually  paint the darn window frames, boy, do they ever leak!
And start again....

So here's to starting again, getting ready for summer! And plans postponed, for now...

[Wonder if we'll have a rainbow...the sky is getting brighter, even as I write...I'm off to take a look!]

love


         lizzy

gone to the beach

linked to Sarah's  Good Life Wednesdays atA Beach Cottage

Day Lilies

Hi! I hope everyone enjoyed the holidays! Easter here at the beach turned out pretty nice! Look at these waves...

The fog stayed away and the thunderstorms held off til nighttime. A few daring souls even took their sand chairs down to the shore (bbbrrrr!)... 

My grocery store had these stunning lilies! Not at all my usual Easter flower, I am drawn to blue hyacinths and white tulips...But I think because Easter was so late, the lilies are in season.....

It was hard to choose, but very inexpensive, so I went with two bright bunches...

Casual day , mostly beach walking and relaxing....

For Easter supper, a spring salad of baby lettuce-greens, pears, walnuts, gorgonzola, with an apple-vinegar dressing. I  made brisket because the butcher stocks it for Passover and it makes such a nice pot roast casserole. With Hungarian egg noodles made with caraway and a sour cream....

Asparagus and brussel sprouts...made crispy cooked, in a smidge of olive oil.

And earlier, for what my Cape Cod parents called cocktail time---actually after beach hike snack time!--- I did  a big plate of devilled eggs (horseradish, blue cheese, capers, a bit of mayo mixed with the mashed up yolks for the stuffing...) and my usual cheeses and crackers...Sadly I couldn't find my special egg platter with the indentations for the eggs!? Something to look for at the flea markets in the weeks ahead....

Dessert was miniature lemon tarts, each with a couple of little pastel Cadbury chocolate eggs on the top---to make them look like tiny Easter nests.

Now I'm back to work on hearts and other fun things for Mothers Day gifts, weddings, teacher-hostess gifts...I'll be sharing them soon.

love

         

                   lizzy

                

gone to the beach....

All My Eggs in One Basket

Well maybe not all...

 

Happy Easter, Happy spring to everyone!

                   

Do you all decorate a lot for Easter and/or spring? Now that my kids are beyond the Easter Bunny age I don't decorate much for Easter most years.....

I love my collection of speckled eggs and old peeps, the fluffy Easter toys, not the candy marshmallow kind. I often find the old chickies inside the vintage papier mache eggs, relics of a long ago child's Easter basket, now treasured again, by me.

The eggs are a mixture of real, blown and dried eggs from the flea market, some hand painted robin's eggs from my mother,

...and plastic eggs from the craft store...[yes, plastic. I love the colors...]

But this year, since I have been finding the German papier mache eggs now and then, I decided I'd get out my collection and display them this year...

Recent flea market finds...

Often the best time to buy holiday collectibles is off-season, like don't try to find great Christmas stuff in December.

I found these two last fall...Turquoise! my fave!

And this cutie!

He came from one of my favorite etsy sellers: Joan at Anything Goes Here. Here is a link to her wonderful blog, telling about this adorable tiny red bunny egg and companion chickies eggs. They just had to come join my admittedly humongous collection here at the beach.
Here's the small egg from Joan with a similar large egg from a local antiques show (The big guy cost a fortune, geez...)...

So....Uh. Um..I opened the bin with the German eggs last week. OMG, I must own every old egg on the east coast!

These pix are just a fraction of the group.

I was a bit astounded. I think they reproduced in the bin! Each big egg held three or four smaller eggs...

Most are pre-WW2 German, a few date from my childhood and some from my first year in NYC when I lived near a once-long-ago German neighborhood...

And sleeping at the bottom were my bunnies!

I especial;y love the white homespun ones...

Bee Happy! Spring is here...soon?

love

                     lizzy

 gone to the beach.....

PS Be sure to check out Joan's blog Anything Goes Here. The photos and display ideas are wonderful! And her collections, oh my! Lucky for us she shares them, on her blog and in her shop! Her shop link is on her blog, so you can see even more treasured finds. Enjoy!