Over the Top.

So, round these parts we don't go all out for the holidays.  Unless it's Halloween or Christmas, there are no decorations, no fancy dinners.  It's just me and the guy, sometimes the roomie, so usually it's just another day.  A day that we happen to have off from work.  On the other hand, birthdays are pretty fun!

This year mine was a bit extravagant- over the top, if you will.  Food, thrifting, fabric, fun- all rolled into one fabulous weekend!  We kicked it off on Friday night with the most amazing Mexican food we've had in a long time.  And chocolate, there was a ridiculous amount of chocolate.  There were M&M's, Godiva Chocolate Pretzels and my sweet honey made me the yummiest cake.  I think it's pretty funny that I went on a chocolate bender, considering when I was a kid, I hated chocolate.

My guy also gave me this awesome Betsey Johnson Dia de los Muertos ring.  Yeah, I know, I have such conservative taste, huh?

Then we went thrifting at one of my favorite stores ever, the one that only sells craft stuff.  Just heavenly!  I bought a ridiculous amount of vintage fabric, about 11.5 lbs actually.  On the way home we scored some expensive dishes for next to nothing, it was just pure luck.  I knew that they looked familiar, so I looked into it a bit more.  They're a discontinued and highly sought after style of Denby Dishware.  I couldn't believe our luck when I saw replacement sets go for $95+ per place setting.  And we got 6 place settings for $8!  And that's not 8 bucks a piece, that's total for the whole set.  Craziness.

Back at home, when I started unfolding all the fabric for the laundry, Chunk appeared out of nowhere and burrowed in.  He didn't seem to mind when I kept piling it on, so I left him for a while.

So, yeah, I guess this is was 26.5 lbs looks like- 11.5 lbs of fabric and 15 lbs of cat.

After short stints of sleeping and failed attempts to burrow all the way to the bottom, he just resorted to planning sneak attacks on everyone nearby.

Followed up with the yummiest breakfast for dinner, celebration drinks, and cuddles with a movie, I had the best birthday!  A big thanks to my honey for making it all fabulous for me.  Love you, Cakes.

I had such a great time, I just had to share it with you.  Now I've really got to get ready for my stitching escapades this weekend!  I'm giddy with excitement.  I hope that everyone out there has a craftastic weekend, I know I will!!!!

Home Skillet.

I had a lovely weekend celebrating my birthday with friends.  We sailed the high seas with my fav, Sailor Jerry, grilled the yummiest food and my honey made me feel extra special with flowers.  (So far, the lovely flowers have been knocked over...twice.  And I just walked into the kitchen to get some water and found Boris rubbing his head in them, so I don't know how long they'll last.)

On Sunday, Dillon and I went to a huge antiques fair.  I fell in love with so many things, among them an old army sewing kit complete with everything- the thimble, buttons and various kinds of green thread.  It was all sorts of awesome.  However, I walked away with one tiny thing.  And I could not be more in love with it.

Dillon bought me my very own home skillet!

It's a souvenir spoon from the 1901 Pan-American Exposition, a World's Fair Type event, held in Buffalo, New York.  Most people would know about it because that is where President McKinley was assassinated.  He was shot at the Temple of Music and died a week later.  I've done a little bit of researching online and have seen a bunch of spoons from the expo but only one like this one, it belonged to the library at California State University at Fresno.  So I'm going to have to look into it a bit more.

I had seen lots of spoons that day.  I always halfheartedly look through that kind of stuff to see if there is one for a place I've been.  My love of tiny things must have come from all of the hours spent looking at my great-grandma's collection of tiny spoons and thimbles when I was a child.

When I found this, I had been thinking to myself that I need to start actively looking for Niagara Falls stuff.  After so many years as an tourist destination there are a ton of souvenirs and I would love to have a collection to remember my childhood with.  Not just spoons of course, but you get the idea.  I kid you not, the very next spoon I picked up was this one!  It was a sign.  I had to have it but we weren't planning on buying anything so we just kept moving.  However, I couldn't shake the nagging feeling that it was meant to be.  So, my honey made it happen.  He's the greatest.

Based on a few other pan shaped souvenirs I saw online that only thing I can figure is they were playing on the whole PAN aspect of the Pan-American Expo.  HA HA, I love it!  Silly pun humor, these were my kind of people.

The front.

I'm going to reach out on a limb and assume the the gentleman at the top represents the Seneca Tribe.

The back.

Apparently, the building depicted here was lit up in with multicolored lights and made for quite an impressive display.

I'm super happy that this little home skillet lives with me now.  It might just be the oldest thing I own.  I don't think my man realizes how much it means to me but it's very special.

Thanks for looking and reading my long, detailed, boring account of my life.

Snapshot Friday!

Today, Snapshot Friday is a little different.  Why?  Because I said so...and it's my birthday, so you'll have to just deal.

A long time ago, I developed a love...

... for cake,

... for getting into trouble,

... and for cussing like a sailor.

 OK, so my love of dirty words didn't really start that young, but I'm definitely blaming my love of cake and sweets on my early exposure.

Thanks for humoring me on this Snapshot Friday!  I hope that you have a lovely, creative day.