Now I Have a Way to Carry the Wig I Don't Own!

A short pit-stop yesterday into Salvation Army while running errands. Was in line ready to check out with some pillowcases and I spotted a big, tall, round suitcase. It was in a grocery cart, but not a cart being used by a customer, rather one that the employees push with items to be stocked on shelves. I asked the check-out girl if I could take it out. So vintage. And then when I opened it and saw the plastic liner (in a floral pattern so very different from the floral pattern on the outside of the case), I just had to get it. At $5.00 I'd have kicked myself if I'd have walked away from it. It stands about 13" tall and has a short wooden dowel in the bottom. A wig carrying case. How cool is that. I have no wig, but dang, just think of what I could carry in it! Home to Momma.

And here are the pillowcases. One is a quilted sham. Adorable. And there were two of the bright green and pink floral case; love finding two of the same since we have a double- and king-sized beds. (My sister jokingly threatened to boycott my blog if I show one more stinkin' vintage pillowcase I've purchased at a thrift store. She'll so be back.)

Ali Harper

I've had comments on my last post about the picture above my bed. It is a photo by one of my favorite photographers, Ali Harper. Check out her blog here, her website here, and her etsy store here (where you can purchase the photos shown above).

(And I'm doing her wedding reception next year at a winery in northern Georgia! The decor will be all vintagey. Needless to say, I'm in heaven!)

My New Sanctuary

Now that the house is back in working order, complete with new carpet in the bedrooms and craft room, I've reveled in keeping things clean and tidy. My bedroom, being in the back of the house, was the most often overlooked, usually becoming a place to dump and store things. But now it is my sanctuary. Calm, uncluttered. I likey.

Linen Finds Today

A stop at the Goodwill on my way home from Ace scored me some pretty nice items. Three vintage floral pillowcases to add to my collection.
This king-sized flat sheet for my bed. It is super soft and has the most beautiful shades of pussy willow gray.
A bed jacket. Don't need it but when I spotted the vintage manufacturer tag, at $3.00, well, it just needed to come home with me.

This Christmas tablecloth. Can always use these for entertaining, so I pick them up whenever I see them. This isn't an old one but it is so soft and worn that it just oozed good memories from some family's years and years of Christmas dinners.

500th Post Giveaway — Grateful for You ALL!

I so wish that to celebrate my 500th post I would have been able to craft something darling and delightful, but time was working against me. And so I scoured the Candy Spelling Gift Closet and came up with some pretty items that I think make for store-bought darling and delightful. (Actually I did manage to include a picnic "blanket" that I made, but a true Dawn craft would have been way more original!)

Enter by posting a comment here, one per person please (with your email address so I can contact you if you win).

If you post to your own blog a picture of my giveaway and a link directly to this post, I will enter you twice! (Let me know in your comment if you've done this so that I know to count you as two entries.)

This giveaway is open to those both domestic and international.

The giveaway consists of:
• a spiral-bound "Books to Check Out" journal. In it you can list books you'd like to read, favorite books and passages, and books borrowed or lent.
• a Victorian-decorated cigar box for storing baubles and goodies.

• a ceramic wall pocket vase.
• a felted and bejeweled cupcake ornament (I like hanging these all year round from lamps and furniture/cupboard knobs).
• a picnic "blanket." I made this one using a fabric shower curtain as the backing (great in case of moisture on the ground). The top is a patchwork of random material I had on hand. Not the greatest sewing job, but it was made with love!
• I will surely pop some extra surprises in the package as well.

The winner will be drawn on Saturday, August 1. No entries will be accepted after Friday, July 31, at midnight.

And once again, thanks to everyone who visits me! Am appreciative of each and every one of you.

Love,
Dawn E. Girl

500th Post . . . Look for a Giveaway on Wednesday!

Today is my 500th post. This blog thing has been such a blessing. Thanks to everyone for reading, commenting, for being a friend after knowing me only through words and pictures. Love, Dawn E. Girl

Image: My chair in the ken. Yesterday afternoon it cooled off a bit and there was a slow-moving, warm breeze. Perfect screen-door weather. I never got my nap in yesterday, but how could I sleep with weather like this.

Baby's Breath

Lots of baby's breath left over from the wedding yesterday = white, airy bouquets all over the house. One in the foyer and the other in Harleigh's bathroom.

Sunday, the day of rest

Yesterday's wedding and reception were wonderful! I'll have pix to share soon of the reception. Jenn and Jason are a couple whom you just looked at and wanted to squeeze them both. Such happiness, gratitude, faith, all rolled up in a sweet couple.

[Just two random pix from my windowsill this afternoon after cleaning up around Chateau Gahan. After a late night last night and an early morning today getting up for church, this girlie is ready for a good drool-on-the-pillow nap.]

Snuggling in Bed with my Two Favorite Noses

This morning, the last Saturday of my vacation week, called for major snuggle time (must say real fast like MCHammer saying "hamme' time") in my King-sized bed — a bed this size is a must for the owner of an Old English Sheepdog. Gideon's got this beautiful, big black nose that makes his face storybook cute. And Harleigh, well she has a beautiful regal nose, now complete with a piercing.

Yes, she's been wanting one for a while. The belly button ring was her first choice, but I have a thing about belly buttons (if I put my finger in my belly button I get light-headed) and so that ain't gonna happen. But the nose piercing seemed very Harleigh. I went with her to Psycho Tattoo and was impressed by the people there (was expecting lots of attitude and lack of respect — yes, stereotyping at its finest, I'm ashamed to say) and how clean it was. It looks adorable on her. She's a great kid, and this is all about her expressing herself in an OK way. Might be way different than how I would, but then again, I'm 49 and she's 17.

What's more fun than putting glasses on your pooch? He's a Renaissance man.

495 (and a blown head gasket!)

I'm at 495 posts with this one, so I'm feeling a giveaway happening at 500. Stay tuned!

So, I've been off all this week, taking vacation time to get ready for Jenn's wedding this weekend. It's been a scorcher here so most everything I've accomplished has been a sweaty labor of love. Harleigh was off this week from lifeguarding but wound up with a babysitting gig that had her spending afternoons, the nights and the next mornings with two little girls. During the day the girlies were at camp (the one where Harleigh is lifeguarding).

We peppered my "working" week with some fun mother/daughter time, but I owe her true vacation time, which unfortunately won't come in a full-week package, so she'll have to take a day here and there.

Yesterday Harleigh went to help out with a car wash that the senior guys are doing to help raise money for their senior trip to climb Mt. Everest. (What happened to senior trips to Six Flags??) She asked if she could take my car, something she rarely does, and I said sure. Then off I went to run errands in her car. When driving home, the temperature gauge hit "H" and so I pulled over, called my mechanic, then AAA, got towed, Harleigh came to pick me up, then I got the dreaded phone call from Jim the Mechanic. Blown head gasket. $800-$1200. I spent the afternoon and evening feeling really sorry for myself, for my bank account (which is forever being tapped for the mini disasters that plague us), and about life in general. Not a great day at Chateau Gahan. But grateful that it was me, not Harleigh, who had to deal with the car mess.

But here is something sweet to end this post on a good note. Today I have the bridal party luncheon at Miss Laleah's (and she can host a get-together!), then off to City Club of Buckhead to set up for the reception. Here is the hostess gift I found for Laleah. A hinged silver-plated fortune cookie. I made up a fortune, typed it, printed it out, tucked it inside. Then found this Chinese takeout box in my Candy Spelling gift closet, put some tissue inside along with some shredded tissue paper (which looks like Chinese noodles!), and have a great hostess gift.

Jenn and Jason's Wedding Reception

The couple whose wedding shower I did, asked me to do their wedding reception as well. With the help of Courtney, we're pulling together what I think is quite a meaningful and heart-and-hand-created event. Here are two pix to get you curious. For the centerpieces we are using books, covering them with white paper, and decorating the fronts, backs and spines with cut-out-portions-of and full paper doilies. For the candles, I've been buying cheap brass candlesticks at thrift stores and took today to spray paint them all white.

I took one of my vacation weeks this week to prepare for the wedding event coming up this Saturday. Courtney and I have the bridal luncheon on Friday and then do the reception set-up Friday evening.

After this weekend, my concentration will turn to Harleigh's senior year, her college choices, our office Thanksgiving Feast, and Ali's bridal shower and wedding reception. There is a folder for each and there isn't an evening that goes by that I'm not brainstorming and note-taking to make each and every milestone and event special.

Vintage Sheets

Been finding such fun vintage sheets as of late. Harleigh loves them and always has a great mismatch of vintage pillowcases to go with whatever I use for the sheets. Here is a flat sheet I found a few days ago. Of course I wash linens real well when I get them home, but in this case it didn't wash out the dried-on paint drops that Harleigh felt that night when she got under the sheets. Oh, lordie, I'm using someone's discarded dropcloths for bed sheets. What we Vintage Queens do!

A Giveaway by the Mr.

And if it isn't enough that Alice has a giveaway (see below post), her husband has one as equally charming! See his etsy shop as well! This giveaway also ends this Friday!

A Giveaway by the Mrs.

Here is a lovely lovely summertime giveaway over at Thoughts from Alice W. Beautiful blog and a way fun shop as well. But hurry. Her giveaway ends this Friday!

Today I Love

Type "yourname loves" in Google and hit enter. Make sure you use the quotes.

Apparently this is what Dawn loves:

• you
• life!
• herself just as she is, but she hates me
• Emily and Bruce
• compliments
• purple
• loves to golf, read a book, cuddle with the dogs, take pictures or get lost in a Sudoku puzzle
• her family
• California
• being a Mom
• creating loving gatherings for family and friends
• cooking and people with dry humor

Aside from the hating thing, Emily and Bruce, and golf, it seems that there are other Dawns out there like me!

Jack McCarley

I love my newspaper. Have always loved time alone in the ken, settled in my green chair, with my paper. There will never be anything like reading a newspaper. Modern times lure us all to our computers to catch up on the news, play games, look for sweet deals at our favorite stores. But nothing can compare to holding and folding the paper, fingertips gray with ink.

And I usually read it from front to back, methodically pulling out each section, occasionally ripping out articles that I want to Google more about (OK, I do live in 2009). And one section that I read with much thought and sentiment is the Obituaries. It's not that I'm at an age where peers are passing on. It's merely that there are stories there. I love seeing a picture from the 1940's of a man who has died in his 90's, wondering how the family chose that photo to depict him. Were they happier times? Is it his wife's favorite picture of him?

And then yesterday I came across this one of the late 76-year-old Jack McCarley and my heart sang with celebration of a man whose life story was summed up in this picture of him as a young boy. How dear is this face? Is he just the all-American boy straight out of the Little Rascals. His flannel shirt, hair combed to the side, perhaps for a school picture. I'm sure he had on a pair of dungarees with the hem folded up, and Converse sneakers. But doesn't his face tell so much more than of just a school boy.

The obituary talks about his love of the railroad, from the time he was a teenager. At 16 he began work at Tilford Yard, a train terminal in Atlanta. It goes on to say that ". . . he enjoyed going to work every day that he went." His life started in Alabama, his parents divorced and he, his mother and brother moved to Atlanta. He was in the Army Medical Corps and earned medals for service with his unit in Germany. After serving he returned to the train work he loved.

The obituary goes on to talk about how disheartened he was by the decline of the passenger rail service. (This struck a chord with me, taking me back to the train trip that Harleigh and I took up to Baltimore.) Here's another link about our trip.

Glad to have known you, Mr. McCarley, if only in this short snippet of your life story. And the railroads in heaven are lucky to have you on board.

I wanted an initial on my wall so badly . . .

I was in love with Mary Tyler Moore's single-girl apartment in her TV show. My very first apartment was the third-floor of a small brownstone in downtown Baltimore, across the street from The Johns Hopkins University and within walking distance to my first job out of college at The Baltimore Museum of Art. It was a tiny, tiny apartment, the kitchen so small that the refrigerator was in the dining room. But it had darling dormer windows and French doors that separated the bedroom from the living room/dining room. When my boyfriend at the time got me an Old English Sheepdog puppy, Wyeth, for Christmas, it was time to move to a bigger place.

Julie over at Hooked on Houses has a post on Mary's apartment, chock full of pictures. Take a look and go down memory lane.

Coming Home to Gideon

Our big lion has many places he camps out while we're away from the house. The sofa. On the floor near the front window. In his crate. Stretched out in the foyer. On the living room ottoman. But one of his favorites is my chair in the ken. Have no idea where he puts his head (on the arm??), but he loves how snuggly and cozy it feels (and the seat is really deep, so it accommodates his rather gangly frame).

Pix from Fireworks

Mom sent these on to me today and I thought I'd share. From Friday night's fireworks at my grandmother's assisted living home.

God Bless America!

Last night we watched fireworks from the hilltop venue of my grandmother's assisted living home overlooking Cumming, GA. The home allows only friends and family of the residents onto the property, and so we easily park and enjoy the show without the usual crowd. The elderly folk are wheeled out onto the sidewalk (or enjoy the view from the screened-in front porch) and love watching family and kids just as much as the show in the air. I've become a standard fixture at the event as the lady who does face painting. It tickles me to no end to start out by painting something patriotic on my grandmother's face then watch her encouraging all the little ones to do the same.

At 10:30 on our way home, Harleigh and I stopped at Waffle House for a late, late dinner. Grits, scrambled eggs, hash browns, raisin toast. Good stuff.

Then this morning it was off to Marietta for the Independence Day parade! We do it every year with our church's children's ministry director and her husband (who leads our middle and high schoolers). We're always in full regalia and the ones hootin' and hollerin' to get the crowd going. (LOVE having a 17-year-old who isn't embarrassed by being "fun" like that!)

I love America. Period.