~You know I even think that she smiled like you, She used to just stand there and smile,

And her eyes would go all sort of far away, and stay like that for quite a while~

-the cure

Lakewood was wonderful, and we all came away with treasure. My son, Finn, found a penny and some lovely crushed bottle caps on the ground, and those were gently tucked in his pockets. We purchased three outstanding little marbles from a vendor for him and a comic book at another. He said to me, with a great big sigh, that this was his Best Day Ever.

And then about thirty minutes later he wanted to know just when I'd be done so that he could go home. My finicky Finn.

My daughter, Ella, was busy showing off her pretty dress and haircut to the

'Ladies Who Like to Coo'. Ella can always find these ladies, no matter where we go. Ella also purchased three marbles and a tiny tin cup with a kitten on it. Actually, I really wanted that cup to stick a Lumpling in it, but Ella has claimed it. I was lucky to even get the picture of it!

I found this great bunny with his egg cart from a nice lady for only a couple of dollars. The ribbons were so lovely that I couldn't leave them! The velvet one is vintage and hand dyed.

This is Ella's adorable cup. She'll have to watch her mama's sneaky ways with this one. I really like this.

Here is a picture of almost all of our loot. The picture is missing the comic books, marbles and a group of antique glass head pins from Germany that I scored.

That bowl is gorgeous! It's huge and full of crazing and now I have it all washed on on our German Easter tablecloth in the dining room. I really wanted to purchase something from the guy who had it. He was all scruffy with a pipe hanging out of his face and he had jazz playing. When you walked up to peer in his boxes, he would grumble out around the pipe, telling you to start digging and find something. Hell yeah, I'll dig for a bowl like this!

The tin cups make me smile with their age worn look. There was another tin cup in the bunch that was very nice, a little bit heavier than these, but the man running the booth looked slightly alarmed when I asked him how much he wanted for it. He gingerly took it from my hands and said, "well now...I think that I need to keep this one" I smiled, and assured him that I understood, because I feel the same way with the Lumplings... I don't quite want to part with them. He hurriedly offered us a deal on the group of four matching tin cups, I think to appease what he must have seen as a crazy family ravaging his table.

We had corn dogs and IBC root beers in the brown bottles for lunch, followed by a sinful funnel cake. My poor children had never had funnel cake before! Hans has been paying for eating that corn dog. With all of his surgeries to remove the cancer and put him back together again his digestion is totally different and we just never know what will hurt him. Note to us: Corn dogs are not a good idea when you only have half a stomach.

I've shipped out all of the Lumps thatI worked on this weekend and they were so cute that I felt a pang while packing them up. But I know they will make someone (and maybe lots of someones) smile.

Go out and play!

I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it. -Mae West

In the morning we are going to Lakewood Antiques Fest in Atlanta!

Lakewood happens only one weekend a month and it's huge, filled with vendors indoors and out. I like the vendors outside; they are usually less expensive and have more of the junk treasure that I enjoy.

I have a list, and oh, how I love lists, of things that I want to find. I need more tiny buttons for Lumpling eyes, more vintage fabrics for Lumplings dresses, a shallow drawer to make into a ribbon organizer, a table for my patio, and it goes on and on. There are many times that Hans and I leave Lakewood with nothing in our greedy paws, and that's ok too because I just like to experience it.

It takes a special breed to run these antique booths. I like the button ladies, with their millions of both shiny and dull buttons all organized in little boxes and old jars. They always have one big bin of buttons that haven't been organized yet and you can buy scoops of these for cheap!

Some of my buttons become faux flowers and live at the kitchen window:

My kitchen window holds many of our tiny treasures. Here is a wee metal dish with snail shells and glass critters nestled with other memories.

I hope that our kids are as excited about the outing as I am. Hans and I have been talking it up all day. Hans, of course, keeps telling them about a man who makes donuts fresh there. Usually, Hans and I make it a date day and go without the munchkins, but tomorrow will be special. Lately, the kids have really been having a good time pointing out things when we go to the local antique stores or thrifting, so I think that they are ready for a longer treasure hunt.

My foot is still swollen and very painful to walk on, but dammit, I'll just have to take breaks. Well, breaks and pain killers. Mm, those painkillers might make me a bit looser with my money. I'm usually pretty thrifty!

I'm up to my eyeballs in Lumpling fluff as I'm trying to finish a special project to go out by Monday. Then I can round up a new herd for the site. I love hearing from people when they get their new Lumplings. It takes a special kind of person to like Lumplings and to adopt them. A person has to be a bit off kilter, like me. And since I've grown up feeling isolated from a lot of people because of my likes and offbeat humor, it's amazing to realize that there are so many people out there who actually get it. I definitely receive a lot of blank stares when people see the Lumplings for the first time too.

And there are posies, round and sweet...

Her mind lives in a quiet room,

A narrow room, and tall,

with pretty lamps to quench the gloom

and mottoes on the wall.

-Dorothy Parker

Tiggy Foxtrot having a yowl

Tiggy is our crazy roly poly cat. She enjoys eating, meowing loudly and giving dirty looks.

Today, Hans received his new painting (I'm pretty sure that he's posting pictures of it on his blog...See the Hans link on the side there!) to add to our collection. Over the years Hans and I have proven to be dangerous collectors and we tend to go overboard. This is a picture of some of my old glass ball floats that I collect... if it's glass and a ball, then you can assume that I covet it.

I also collect sheep. Below is a picture of a glittery sheep...I'm pretty sure that I gasped when I saw him on a shelf a few years back. Glittery things do that to me. Hans likes to give sheep painting and drawings to me on special occasions and I now have the most beautiful collection which gives my heart a thrill!

Our Akebia vine is in bloom! The Akebia has to be one of the best plants that we've ever come across. Prolific and hardy, she rewards us with these beautiful little blooms every spring. They are supposed to smell like chocolate, but I've never picked it up...maybe my sniffer is broken.

Speaking of chocolate! Our friend, Kasra, just returned home from France and sent a beautiful package to us with mustards for Hans and chocolate for me. Kasra knows my soft points all too well. For my birthday, he gave me sheep figures and textiles from morocco that I admire every day. And now I will admire them as I stuff my face with fancy chocolate!

Now that lilacs are in bloom
She has a bowl of lilacs in her room
And twists one in his fingers while she talks.
“Ah, my friend, you do not know, you do not know
What life is, you who hold it in your hands”;
(Slowly twisting the lilac stalks)
“You let it flow from you, you let it flow,
And youth is cruel, and has no remorse
And smiles at situations which it cannot see.”
I smile, of course,
And go on drinking tea.
“Yet with these April sunsets, that somehow recall
My buried life, and Paris in the Spring,
I feel immeasurably at peace, and find the world
To be wonderful and youthful, after all.”

-t.s. eliot

Overnight the wisteria vines have pushed out their heavy racemes. Every year I'm caught off guard when I see the first bloom. For me, it's a punch in the gut of memory. The house that I grew up in had wisteria vines tearing away at it from every angle and I loved the destructive beauty. My first and best friend, Tracey, would gather armloads of wisteria and drape them around her room...across her curtain rod...on her bedside table. She has been gone, her life cut so very short for over eleven years now and I think of her every single day, but I still feel that punch of remembrance on the first day of wisteria's bloom.

My egg cup obsession is still holding strong and they are now popping up as pin cushions around the Lumpling studio.

My little guys arrived from Loloko!

For right now they are sitting on the papier mache bunny that I've been working on, but one day they'll have to move if I ever get back to work on finishing the bunny. His ears are a sweet hand dyed flannel that I like to pet.

This week marks the anniversary of my friend Ryan's suicide. He was young, troubled and had a penchant for violence, but he was also a sweet punk rock boy and I wonder who he could have been if flesh and steel would have never met that night.

Puppy Fluff and pearly whites

Our neighbor, Susan, bless her golden heart, has rescued five puppies and the mama dog. Our town is pretty teeny and we don't have a humane society so I think that she's going to be the foster doggy mom until homes can be found.

But the puppies keep escaping!

Yesterday, I saw what I was sure was a tiny ewok running through the backyard. I get outside and corner the puppy feeling pretty proud of my wild animal rustling skills when Susan comes and tells me that there are five pups and not just the one that I was terrorizing! So she patiently caught them all yesterday and bathed them. But I just saw a furrball outside the window, so I'm pretty sure they have flown the coop again. Puppies are darling, but I'm just at a stage right now where I don't want to deal with poop.

When Hans and I first started dating I had five dogs and thirteen cats. My cats would all follow behind me if I took a walk and I just loved that. But now I have two cats and it feels like the right number.

My three year old had her first dentist visit yesterday and didn't flip out once! You never know with her...she can be fine one second and then the next you have to duck to avoid flying objects.

Our six year old is a pro at the dentist now and knows how to be calm and sweet until the end when they let him get a toy out of a basket. And now everyone has pretty shiny teeth!

I messed with the amyrue site today some with the header image and 'about' pages. I should be sewing Lumplings for the next herd, but there is always this evening!

Baby, it's spring outside

One must wonder if this is a 'yick' or a 'yum' face that my wee girl had when presented with the idea of an apple and rhubarb tarte tatin today.

We had glorious spring weather and Hans cooked sweet potatoes, corn, bread and garlic out on the grill. I limped (something wrong with my dang foot..long story with no ending in sight) into the kitchen and made a rhubarb and granny smith apple tarte tatin had just the right bit of tart for Spring.

Today was a perfect day for visiting friends and we saw our friends Laura, Kevin and their darling baby girl, Sadie. My daughter, Ella, gets all greedy and tries to keep all of her toys from Sadie. But now, Sadie is older and can talk, which means she can tell Ella just what she thinks about that kind of behavior. By the end of the visit Ella was hand feeding Sadie fortune cookies. And Sadie, I'm sure, felt the power and knew that she had tamed the Ella.

Our neighbors, Ms. Pat, Jackson and Nate came up for a spell and My son and Jackson rode their bikes in a billion circles on the driveway. I watch them until I feel too dizzy and must look up at the sky.

And finally, Hans' mother came to have dinner with us and chase the kids around the backyard. Hans' father has been in the hospital for four weeks now with an infection, so Hans wanted to cook his mama some dinner.

And tomorrow the children visit the dentist. So I'm going to start crossing my fingers now and hope that we don't have any fits (me or them!).

The Lumplings have all found new homes! Adoption day is always hopping around here. I get very nervous, of course it can be said that I'm a nervous person already, and my organizational skills get tested. There is a flurry of typing and making notes on my graph paper that I keep near the computer. But it is most exciting and now we print out the adoption certificates and pack them up safely with lots of tissue paper and a sturdy little box.

Earlier in the day we hit a local show of Arts & Antiques in the Garden, where I was hoping to score some unique plants or vintage items, but unfortunately, it seemed smaller than last year and didn't have a thing that we wanted. I left, sighing and empty handed.
A local antique store did have a few treasures for me in the form of three tiny tea cups.

Here is one of the tiny pin Lumplings in the larger tea cup.

Yesterday, Ella and I made a sock bunny out of one of her baby socks and it is the cutest damn thing. If I can wrestle it from her, I will get a picture and post it. I'm thinking that I need to make more, call them Sockling Bunnies and stick them all over the house. They are a good size to stuff with catnip and see if it can entice my fat cats into playing too.

For now I get to sit back with my sweet tea and some Lloyd Cole playing and finally relax.