My Pictorial Year in Review

2011 has been a great year. The older I get, the happier and more content I feel. My husband Matt and I have a wonderful little life together with our two cats along with the rest of our people-family. I'm looking forward to continued happiness and prosperity in 2012!

Here are the highlights of the things I've done and seen in 2011 (in no particular order):

It's Hot--Like it or Not

It's a scorcher here in Wisconsin! This was the scene before we got the air conditioner fixed late last week. Poor babies! They were so hot, they were both napping laying on their backs! Cute, but sad!

Unlike the cats, however, my plants are LOVING the heat, inside and outside the house. My Euphorbia Quadrangularius that I've had maybe a month and a half has sprouted several branches--one of them almost 7 inches long! I think if I looked hard enough I could see it growing!

I can't believe I haven't posted photos of my garden yet this year! It's really looking nice and everyone seems to be very happy and healthy.

I found this fun hippo planter at an antique store recently. How cute is he?!

One of my favorite plants is this fan aloe. It's been doing very well, despite frequent re-pottings to find a good fit.

A shot of most of the garden. Adler loves to come out and chew on the catnip growing in pots.

I have an absolutely beautiful cactus bloom that just started to open last week.

Amazing--I love cactus flowers!!

In-between taking care of all my plants, I've had a little time for thrift shopping :) These are my finds over the last weekend. My favorite is the pair of vintage owl mugs I got for $.69 each. I found a really great hand-woven wool table runner, a cool book on houseplants from the '70's, an interesting book about the desert (I adore the cover design), a roll of funky paper that I can frame, and a pair of brand-new baskets that can be hung on the wall. What a haul--and it all looks so pretty together!

New Additions

Fellow blogger Candy at SweetStuff Sassy Succulents posted about some new plants she recently bought. It got me thinking that I too have a few new plants I'd like to share. Also, like Candy, I am getting plant fever as the weather turns nice and my brain gets in gardening mode. Anyway, one of my all-time favorite plants is the Dracena. My sister was very nice and allowed me to dig this small baby from her large pot (above). I love it!!!!

I've also been on the lookout for a cactus with a long, dense, bushy growth habit, after seeing one in someone's home last winter. I have a few small cacti that will eventually grow this way, but I'm too impatient for that. I found this one at Home Depot, of all places. It's terribly root-bound, the roots and soil are actually coming out of the top of the pot, and was hoping to put it in the red planter I just found today, but it's no taller than the pot it's in now. Oh well.

Another great thrifting find we had this morning is this hand-woven wool tapestry. It's about the size of a placemat, and I plan to fashion it into a small wall hanging. I love the positive/negative bird design--beautiful!!
Last week (yes, Matt and I go thrifting almost every week--very bad habit!) I found this fabulous Scandinavian ceramic fish to hang in the kitchen.

I am a big crafter, and am always on the lookout for new and exciting fabrics. It's this amazing?! I am thinking it's vintage, but am not quite sure. It looks almost too clean to be old. Either way, it's beautiful. Luckily, I have about 3 yards of it, so I can make several things from it. I'm thinking a really great bag for summer.

This wonderful planter I actually passed up a few weeks ago (am I crazy?!) and later realized I should have bought it and went back, and was so happy to see it was still there! Lucky me!

And undoubtedly, the most precious new addition to our home is a little girl cat named Birdie. We adopted her from an animal shelter and she has really settled in nicely. As you can see, she has made a fast friend with Adler :)

Life is so good!

A few new things

A few days after I photographed my pottery collection, I was browsing around a nearby thrift store on my lunch break. The first aisle I always go at this particular store is the pottery/planter section. I didn't really see anything too exciting, so I moved on to check out the kitchenwares. I'm looking through the coffee mugs and something catches my eye on the top shelf. That's an odd-looking mug I momentarily say to myself. Realizing what I'm looking at is an amazing piece of pottery, I quickly grab it, take a good look at it (and the $1.99 price tag!!), and promptly put it in my basket. This is by far the most exciting find I've had!

On a different note, my cat has been having fun crawling into my large tote bag I use to carry around my gear during my work day. I carried him around in it for awhile then hung the bag on the door knob. He soon jumped out, but not before I could snap a few photos.

I like how the colors in this photo are so simmilar to the ones in my bag!