Kirkland Farmers Market

My beautiful C. modeling her new chenille hat!

       Every Wednesday during the summer months Kirkland has a wonderful Farmers Market held in the square. The kids and I love to go and check out the many vendors! There are lots of handmade items to choose from, flowers, frogs (yep you read that right), jewelry, produce, baked goods, soaps ect... This week we made a few fun purchases. C. got this adorable vintage chenille hat! I am kicking myself for not buying the matching dress when I had the chance and am keeping my fingers crossed that the vendor will be there next week and still have it!

     There are so many beautiful flowers at the Kirkland Farmers Market and they are all so well priced! Huge bouquets like this one go for ten dollars!

    Believe it or not the Farmers Market also had frogs this week! Of course we had to bring some home! Here is C. patiently watching the frogs while she waits for me to leave the kitchen so she can dump the entire years worth of frog food into the tank in one fell swoop!

The manual that came with our frogs said they have a life span of 4 to 5 years and that we only have to clean the aquarium one or twice a year! We are def. going to put both those theories to the test at this house!

Grocery List

      I found this small blue erase board with a stand at The Container Store and think it is just perfect to have in the kitchen for keeping a grocery list!

Class Handprint Painting

     We were the big winners at another super prestigious art auction recently! C.'s school had an art auction and we were the top bidders of her class project! How adorable is this painting with all of her classmates hands or thumbprints on it? C. is so proud to have it hung in her room!

Dale Chihuly

Art by Dale Chihuly

     I mentioned a while back that we attended the Pratt Art Institute's auction but I have yet to show you our big win(s)! Today I will show you this pretty one! The above painting is by Seattle's own Dale Chihuly! I will admit right off the bat that I got a bit carried away with my paddle at the event! I kept raising it and raising it never really expecting to win! Everyone was doing it! The bidding was extraordinarily fun and for a while there it seemed I could just join in with impunity never really having to spend a dime! Also in my defense, the people who had a winning bid were rewarded with a lovely balloon proudly tied to the back of their folding seat while those who kept their paddle on the table had only a bare chair to show for it - so you can just imagine how that was pressing on me too!

   When I actually did 'win' this piece I was taken a bit off guard and was, frankly, horrified to the point of slight nausea. I am trying to be much, much, more frugal these days! I thought I was for sure going to be in for it from Mr. Z. once we hit the privacy of our car but he actually likes the piece very much! I couldn't help but overhear him talking with himself not-so-privately about it on the drive home and so I know he feels "it's for a good cause, it's for a good cause, it's for a good cause." In fact, absolutely everyone who knows anything about art congratulated me profusely and couldn't get over the amazing deal I got on the piece! And so that's how we came to own an original Chihuly which really is quite exciting!

Dale Chihuly. Image from Wikipedia

Yes it's true that we own a Dale Chihuly painting whereas the man is most famous for his glass sculptures but that is just a tiny non-essential detail! His glass work really is fantastical though and I am afraid my appetite has been whet for it!

London picture (c) Linda Garrison

This amazing glass chandelier by Chihuly is hung at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

It would be so cool (and so improbable because of the typically extremely high price tag) to own a Chihuly seaform like the one pictured above!

Or better yet an entire collection of his macchia bowls! 

Bird Lighting

    Friends and family, prepare yourselves and start designing your cages!!!!! The Gloster breeding progam is back in the works! We had a little hiccup in getting this enterprise off the ground when we discovered that the original Thomas and Kathy Gloster Canaries were actually more like Thomas and John since it turns out we had two male birds. To make a long story short, suffice it to say we now have a definite, confirmed, Kathy Gloster!  And things are going very well in there! VERY WELL if you catch my drift! As for John he is doing quite well back at Wings of the World from whence he came.

  It did come to my attention that I have been missing another critical component (the first being that you do indeed need to have birds of the opposite sex being housed together in order to breed) to my bird care regime. Indoor birds do best in general and at breeding when given natural or full spectrum light exposure. As such, the gloster canaries have been set up with an Ott Lite task lamp.

     As for Kiwi the love bird we certainly do not want him, or the vividness of his plumage, to suffer from a lack of vitamin D either. For his cage I settled on a clamp lamp set up with an avian full spectrum bulb from Zoo Med.

And since Kiwi is such a spoiled rotten little bird he also has a summer cage, or 'cottage' as we like to call it, on our porch where he often reaps the benefit of good old fashioned real sunlight too!

Marble Topped Side Table

     Up until a few days ago we had a very old white wicker round table placed beside the daybed in the dining room. I moved that piece onto the porch so there would be a suitable place outside to set up Kiwi- the- Lovebird's summer cage. This move left a very exciting vacancy in our dining room which lasted for a good couple of hours!  The vacancy was filled with this marble topped side table from Haley's Cottage which has a formality I prefer to the wicker in this room.

   
     While at Haley's Cottage I also picked up this sweet blue-washed, sparkly, and ribboned frame to begin accessorizing the table!

Vintage Pizza Stone

This European vintage pizza stone came from Haley's Cottage. It is such a cool size and patina! I like the rustic air it lends to the kitchen backsplash!

     Since the pizza stone is so old it is purely decorative. These days my stove is purely decorative too since I haven't been doing very much home-cooking!