In honor of Winnie-the-Pooh Day...

Yesterday was A.A. Milne's birthday. Born Allan Alexander Milne in 1882, he was most famous for creating Winnie-the-Pooh and all the other denizens of the Hundred Acre Wood.

In his honor, we at Collage picked that theme for tonight's stocking.

For me, the things I have been working on lately fit together perfectly.

I pulled out vintage books, including the one where Pooh first appeared,...

...added bags made from vintage Waverly bonded Glosheen fabric samples I found last fall....

...and coordinating bookmarks....

...plus the remaining magnets made from vintage wooden dominoes and children's book illustrations.

These items, plus a lovely wool felted Owl and adorable little red sweater, go up for sale at 9:30 pm Eastern.

New year, new music

Nothing like new music to give me renewed energy. Took most of these from my recent favorites on YouTube. Now I can listen to them everyday without much trouble at all.

Save handmade

I know I'm late at getting involved in this just because I haven't had time to do sufficient research on it, but I just found Handmade Toy Alliance, became a fan on Facebook and voted to save small business from the CPSIA.

If you want to find out how to help, click on the cute bear above or follow this link.

And the winner is....

.....Tina at glam.spoon.

All of the vintage goodies shown here will be jetting their way to her, once she sends me her address and I get to the post office.

After checking out her site and her Etsy store, I can only imagine what she will do with it all. (I may just have to send her some tartan scraps, unless she's tired of it at this point -- check this dress out).

Congrats Tina and thanks to all of you who promoted my blog on your own. What a wonderful thing the crafty blogging community is.

Resolving resolutions

I've gotten a start on Red Hen Studios' New Year's resolutions.

1. I'm adding a post every other day instead of once a week.

2. The contest winner will be announced tomorrow. I have one more late entry to tell you about -- I was mentioned on Babbling Brook. Thanks Heather.

3. I made a dent in the list of blogs I have to visit. I got side-tracked and found even more lovely sites to add to my blogroll later.

4. If thinking about the redesign counts, I'm well on my way to a redesigned blog, lol. I would love to do something with images from this vintage book I bought on Etsy recently.

5. Added that handy widget off to the right there. You can now subscribe to my blog and have every post I make sent right to you.

How is everyone else doing on their resolutions?

Music makes the world go round

I've had great luck at the thrift stores lately finding gorgeously illustrated books in excellent condition.

Hit the jackpot last month when a retired music teacher dropped off her old textbooks.

Most of them are from the 1950s and 60s, and other than a little shelf wear on the covers, they look unused.

I've had fun looking through them and now have them listed in the "Vintage Books" section in my Etsy store. I hope someone enjoys them as much as I did.

At a consignment store, I found a few opera librettos, most in two languages and with great Art Nouveau cover illustrations.

They are in the "Vintage Ephemera" section.

In the book section, I also just listed "Dandelion Library" flip books (two books in one) with titles like Bambi, Beatrix Potter, Babar, Uncle Wiggly, Petunia, and Grimm Fairy Tales.

And under the new "Supplies and Howto Books" section, there are some retro cool knitting and crochet pattern books.

Hope goes home

Geez, where has the last week gone? Oh I know -- cleaning up after the holidays and the kids already having a 2-hour delay and another whole day off school because of snow! (Just when I thought I'd have more relaxing days....)

Back to school also means Hope has to go home after a few weeks here. She has sa slight booboo on her leg that needs to be repaired (For some reason, her mom doesn't think the SpongeBob band-aids my boys "fixed" her with should stay there permanently.)

Before she left, Hope was a very busy girl. The snow day meant sledding in the backyard. She is in the sled with E and the handmade teddy bear and afghan he got when he has surgery at Shriner's Hospital.

Since proceeds of Hope's sale will go to Shriner's, we had planned on taking her with us to E's follow-up appointment In December but it snowed that day too and we stayed home.

Here Hope is sharing her journal with my after-school "daughter." I think she liked the quiet time. Boys can be so rough and loud!

Once I broke into an old steamer trunk (one of those rambunctious boys locked it way back when), Hope got to meet my handmade doll. An aunt gave her to me one Christmas. I always loved that this aunt always gave handmade gifts.

And before she was packed up with her suitcase and journal, Hope kept me company while I did some work on the computer. I don't know who enjoyed looking through all these vintage children's books more, her or me.