small shore town love

We had an absolutely delightful long weekend at our new family shore house... the kind of weekend where I forgot to take lots of pictures because I was too busy relaxing/laughing/stuffing my face. (Yeah, I have renamed the weekend Caloriefest 2010 and it was NOT good for my diet. Oh, well.)

I did manage to snag some photos of this gem of an ad for a local dive bar. Small shore town, I adore you.

It's true — their ATM is always broken. Now, that's honest advertising if I've ever seen it. And don't forget, they "got the greatest cheesesteaks," but you'll have to go to the end of the world (and then one block to the left) to get one. Fantastic.

This is pretty much what the rest of the weekend consisted of:

Nick dug holes. I lounged around with a great book and zero people coming between me and the ocean. Heavenly.

happy Mother's Day

Aren't moms the best?

my mom and me, circa 1984

Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there.

hop, hop.

Our Easter weekend was filled with making the apartment pretty for my in-laws, a family party in Lancaster, an egg-hunt for the kiddies, too much food, egg dyeing, church, lounging in the sunshine with a good book, and even more good food.

photos by me

The eggs are a bit imperfect, but I still love how colorful they are. The dye doesn't cover them as evenly when they're cold because there is still condensation creeping through; next year I have to remember to let them get to room temperature before we break out the PAAS.

How was your weekend?

feel the love

Happy (almost) Valentine's day! Now that our Valentines have hopefully arrived in the mailboxes of our friends and family, I can share them with you.

I'm normally not a pink-and-gold kind of girl, but for some reason, I was really feeling a Marie Antoinette-esque color scheme for this design. After all, it's happy and lovey and Valentiney, right? Plus, I'm not gonna lie — I do enjoy the metallic ink when it comes to Gocco projects. It's sparklyyy.

I chose to design our card around a quote from Vincent van Gogh, one of my favorite impressionists. Using Blossom cover stock and A6 envelopes from Paper Source, I screen printed the design with my Gocco and gold ink.

See? Sparkly!

Sending Valentines may become my new tradition — it's not like Christmastime, when everyone expects several holiday cards in their mailboxes each day, so I've loved the genuine surprise and delight that our friends and family members have displayed after receiving our Valentine's Day cards.

Happy Valentine's Day, all! Enjoy the weekend with someone you love.

a very Claremont Christmas

Has everyone recovered from the holiday craziness and gluttony? Last weekend was such a lovely long weekend spent with family; Christmas was delightful, as always. We didn't win the Gingerbread House Decorating Competition this year (I demand a recount!) but I think our house still came out great. See?

This year, we bought pre-made gingerbread houses from the grocery store, and we all shared candy and icing... except, there was one twist that Kim added this year. Each couple could bring two additional "wild card" items that only they could use. The only rule was that they had to be edible. Our items were Juicy Fruit gum (which we used as siding), and we planned ahead and baked our own gingerbread to add dormer windows and a chimney! Things did turn out slightly wonky and the windows were waaaaay out of proportion with the rest of the house, but hey — we tried. And our house smells really good whenever you walk by it :-)

We ran out of black nibs for our roof... to cover the empty area I suggested we use the blue icing and call it a tarp — our gingerbread contractors pulled out of the job before it was finished ;-)

We had a blast opening gifts and just spending time hanging out. Nick and my brother bonded over potato peeling...

And we later put on our holiday finest to get a little family portrait by the tree.

I have off again today after a few days of work and we will be enjoying another long weekend to celebrate the new year. Nick and I will be heading out for our customary New Year's Eve dinner at our favorite fancy Chinese restaurant tonight, followed by the ball drop in our town and some midnight smoochin'.

I hope you all have a wonderful New Year's Eve, whether it be festive and fancy or low-key and lovely. Happy New Year to you!

PS- my "Merry Christmas" post was actually my 200th post on Claremont Road! I'm movin' up in the world... ;-)

brown paper packages tied up with... handmade bows and leftover ribbon?

In past years, I have always gone overboard buying pretty gift wrap for Christmas. Of course, a $5 roll of gift wrap usually wraps 3 or 4 gifts before disappearing, so I have always ended up spending $30 or so just on gift wrap, bows and ribbon each year. This year, while carefully budgeting our money, I decided to get a bit creative and save some dough while still having some pretty little packages to sit under the tree.

I started out with these DIY instructions from How About Orange on making bows from magazine pages (or any other scrap paper you may have lying around). I grabbed an old Glamour magazine (say hi to SJP!) and got to work.

I tried to pick pages with bold colors or prints — mostly ads that had less words and more images. Working with the easy-to-follow instructions, I got down to business and had a handful of pretty bows in no time at all. (Okay... about an hour or so later.)

Voila!

I had also asked Nick to pick up some basic brown postal wrap from our local hardware store. One roll of 75 square feet (30" wide) was only $2.50! Several wrapped gifts later, we still have plenty of paper left to spare. Using the brown paper along with satin ribbon I already had on-hand from some invitation and stationery projects in the past, I wrapped each gift and topped it off with a handmade ribbon.

I also printed out some blank tags using ivory card stock I already had. I printed them so they'd have a little brown circle on which I could punch a hole to make it look like a vintage tag, but you could cut any paper down to 3.5" x 2" pieces and cut angled edges on one side. I hand-wrote each tag with colorful markers to coordinate with each bow.

Total cost for all of our gift wrapping this Christmas: $2.50. I'd say that's a big "win"!

Merry Christmas wrapping to you :-)

behold, the golden Christmas boot

Every family has their Christmas traditions. There are the decorations and ornaments that have been handed down from generation to generation, recipes that are carefully prepared each year, holiday movies that are watched and songs that are sung. One of my most prized Christmas traditions?

The Christmas boot.

Isn't it delightful(ly tacky) and gloriously spectacular? Some years ago, my Nana was going through her Christmas decorations and passing some things along to me to decorate my new apartment. When she asked me if I wanted the golden ceramic Christmas boot, complete with fake poinsettia flowers bursting from the top, I did not hesitate for a second. Indeed, Nana — I want. that. BOOT!

I don't remember her ever displaying the boot during the holidays, but I have made sure to put it on display each year since she became mine (all mine!). It never fails to make me giggle at its quirkiness and flashiness, and it makes me think of my sharp, eccentric, gold-loving Nana. She passed away in 2008, but her memory surely lives on...

Through the golden Christmas boot.

give thanks.

letterpress card via YeeHaw Industries

Things will be a little quiet on Claremont Road over the next few days as we'll be celebrating the lovely (and delicious) Thanksgiving holiday with our families.

This year I'm thankful for my wonderful husband, loving family, delightful in-laws, caring friends, good health, and cozy home. And, I'm thankful to you, dear readers, for taking the time to read whatever I happen to be rambling about at any given moment on this here blog. Claremont Road is almost one year old and it has been such a fun year getting to know you all.

Here's wishing you a delightful long weekend with the ones you love, and all the turkey/stuffing/mashed potatoes/yams/pumpkin pie/cranberry sauce (the canned, jellied kind, of course) your little heart desires.

Happy Thanksgiving!

xoxo
Brooke

the Drapers

We're big fans of Mad Men on AMC, so we decided to be Don and Betty Draper for Halloween this year. We were both able to pull our costumes together mostly with things we already owned, so that always makes it more fun for me than getting something store-bought that comes in one package. Oh, and I look pretty funny in a blonde wig with my super dark eyebrows (which I attempted to make more blonde-ish with yellow makeup, but succeeded instead at making them sort of green), but I don't mind adding a silly factor.

Nick bought the Fedora at Target; I bought the wig and white gloves at Halloween Adventure; we already owned everything else. I wore two skirts underneath my dress to give it a fuller 60s look without spending money on a petticoat.

What did you dress up as for Halloween? Do you go the store-bought-in-one-fell-swoop or pulled-together-on-your-own route?

remembering

My maternal grandfather was in the Navy during WWII. My mom speaks with such pride about her father and his time in the service and I am sad that I was never lucky enough to know him or my grandmother.

My grandparents on their wedding day in the 1940s

I have thought about them often over the years, wondering what they were like and what our relationship would be like if they were still around, but I think about my grandfather especially frequently on Memorial Day and Veterans Day. My uncle (my mom's brother-in-law) told me recently that my grandfather was, hands down, the nicest, most generous, most giving man he has ever known. It made him (and me) a little misty when he was talking about him. I have no doubt that he was a man who would have done anything for anyone, including his country and his fellow Americans.

Thank you to all of the fine men and women who served and continue to serve our country today. I am humbled to think that anyone could ever be so selfless and brave. Thank you.

some Easter color

I know I'm a wee bit behind on posting these pictures, but they're so bright and colorful (and today was rainy and miserable) so I figured better late than never.

We spend Easter weekend with my husband's family in Central PA, and one tradition that we will forever partake in is the dyeing of the Easter eggs. We don't get too fancy — PAAS and Doc Hinkle's — but I love the bright colors and the lack of decorating pressure :-) No Martha Stewart aspirations here. Just good ol' pretty and bright eggs.

The eggs below were still a little cold/wet from the refrigerator when we dropped them in the dye, so they came out a little spotty. For next year we have to remember that room temperature eggs work best for consistent color!

Have I mentioned how much I love my little Panasonic Lumix TZ5? It takes such awesome close-ups. It will have to do the job until I can afford a D-SLR.

Even my father-in-law got in on the action! He took his striped design very seriously.

What's your egg dyeing/decorating method of choice?