A Quick Note on this 26th of December

     Christmas has come and gone already but we still have more celebrating to do. I will be on a little blogger hiatus (although I know I only post once a week anyways) as we are having our little mini winter vacation starting tomorrow. So far its been a lovely couple of days with family and over eating and lazing about and I expect the next week to be pretty similar. Here are some things that will be included in the coming days' activities:

• Snow shoeing
• Snowmobiling
• Snowy woodsy walks
• Eating delicious food
• Watching HGTV
• Watching Food Network
• Playing with kitties
• Seeing my baby niece
• Photographing snowy Minnesota
• Mini road trip to Northern Minnesota
• Having drinks with Grandma and playing Mexican Train Dominoes
• New Years Eve celebrations with best friends

SO it's probably going to be a pretty fun week off of work. I'm hoping everyone is having a fantastic holiday and I'll check in with lots of photos next week! Also here's the best picture I've ever taken of my niece:

Christmas Break?

     Now that I'm officially an adult and no longer a student, "Christmas Break" isn't really such a thing. I got extremely luck with my first nursing job in that I don't have to work on major holidays like Christmas Day and New Years Day.. etc. I was able to get 6 days in a row off the starting the Friday after Christmas and I have a nice little mini-vacation planned for Tanner and I. Starting with snowmobiling and staying at my parent's house out in the woods to going up north to Silver Bay to stay with Tanner's grandma and hopefully do a good amount of exploring, snowboarding and eating ridiculously good food. I've had the travel bug bite me and I'm eager to explore. We have a nice little trip in the works for next May as well. But anyways, we go up to Silver Bay almost every year after Christmas/around new years. Here are some photos from Christmas 2010/New Years 2011 that I shot (or Tanner shot of me) with my Pentax 35mm film camera. I hope everyone has a warm happy place to be this year and people they love to enjoy it with.

Vintage Glasses Galore!

     I have this vision of my blog being awesome and flawless and featuring all the cool things in my life and my clothes and what not, and then it doesn't happen. I want to do these things but it's difficult living in an apartment (not a cute one at that), not really having anyone to take photos of you during daylight (which in Minnesota now a days is 8am to 4pm and both my husband and I work), and being lazy contributes to the mix as well. I have a lot of cute things to show you guys but I am a perfectionist and a very picky photographer when it comes to myself.
    So today I was looking through old pictures for inspiration, and I came across some photos from last April. My great-aunt passed away over a year ago now, and last spring her kids were getting the house ready for sale and invited the family over to see if there was anything we wanted. I found a lot of vintage treasures there. One was a beautiful old mirror that I absoultely adore. I found a lot of vintage fabric and scarves. Also a dress from the 60's era that I have yet to alter for proper fitting. But what I was going to show you today were these lovely eye glasses from the 1950's/1960's era. My great-aunt had kept these since then, they had her name and phone number on them in case they got lost!

The blue background is actually the dress that I got from her:

The dress is hanging from the lovely, lovely mirror I found. I ended up painting the frame black this summer which makes it just perfect for me. It's probably one of my favorite- and most frequently used- household items. I did a blog post all about it here.

Natural and Organic Jewelry: The Wolf Wife Etsy shop

     Through mutual friends I've met this wonderful lady, Kyrie. She makes natural and organic jewelry from materials such as bones, shells, etc that she finds and sells them in her etsy shop, The Wolf Wife. I just wanted to highlight her craftsmanship and share with you all these beautiful little treasures. All of the items are ethically made, as she describes, "All natural materials for my jewelry are ethically sourced, meaning no animal was harmed or killed to make my jewelry. I find (or friends find and give me) animals that have died of natural causes, or I stumble upon old bones and shells, and I respectfully repurpose them."

Bird ribcage hoop necklace with feathers and leaf charms.

Hip socket bone necklace

 Vintage silver locket necklace with shells

 Jaw bone necklace

 Last but not least, my favorite, Tiered crab claw necklace

     I strongly encourage you to check out her Etsy shop at https://www.etsy.com/shop/thewolfwife. Seeing as the holiday season is here, one of her pieces might make a lovely gift for the forest nymph or siren in your life! Her other artwork/photography can be found at http://www.kkotlowski.com/. Thank you for supporting local artists! 

All images are property of Kyrie Kotlowski, owner of thewolfwife Etsy shop.