New to the blogroll ...

My google image searching has netted an abundant catch of blog baubles this morning. I find that this is The Number One way of scouting out new sources of inspiration, delight and plain old fun. Try it, you'll like it!


ishandchi: Aussie creative Vivian shares her spot-on eye for design and color, both her own and that of others. She lives in Sydney in a cottage she's named "Betty", and derives inspiration from "blogs, interior magazines, fashion photography, the sixties, fabrics and Japanese art." The fact that she's named her house "Betty" is such a tickle. Oh, and her etsy store? Loving it like lemonade on a hot afternoon.

One selection from her clever assortment:

Vintage Chandelier - Pink

8" x 10" Archival Paper Print

happy loves rosie: I didn't see a single thing on this hap-hap-happy site that I didn't love, starting with the cheery masthead. It's a busy site, but I like busy. It's full of red, which I think is fast becoming my favorite color. It's got lots of nods to fun, colorful vintage images (especially women's and home magazines). It's just downright exuberant, maybe even over the top, but in a totally charming way. Happy Loves Rosie puts me in mind of all things Cath (Kidston), which is never, ever a bad thing. Do you want a brand new blog or banner design? Happy does those too ... check it out.


brown button: Like a well-edited magazine. Drift from post to post, each one different but enough to make you stop and linger, though you want to follow the impulse to keep on turning pages! (Does anybody else do that with a new magazine or is it just me?) The pictures, the pictures, the pictures, oh the pictures! A real treat from yet another Aussie, who also runs a well-edited on-line shop full of delectable treasures like these plates from Netherlands-based Greengate:

Finally, this one's not a blog, but a flickr photostream worth exploring: Vintage Pleasure. I particularly liked her My Corners and Inspiration, Vintage Fabric and Vintage Magazine sets.


And now I've got to stop and consider the necessities of moving on with the rest of my day. Showering, tidying, returning e-mails, making a plan or two for the Labor Day weekend. As a car-less chick, I find it difficult to plan things too far afield, and of course many of my friends with families take off for the shore or the mountains for the last days of an all-too-short season. That funny feeling of having been left behind becomes less abstract and more tangible when these holiday weekends rear their head.

I'm afraid some of the oh-no-here-come-the-holidays blues are creeping in. (You too can worry yourself silly for fun and profit!) Maybe I'll see the indie "post-modern romance" 500 Days of Summer to take my mind off of it. If nothing else, the soundtrack includes some Regina Spektor, who is a talented charmer.

So today I put my cynical crystal ball in the back of the closet and forget it.

Happy Labor Day Weekend, everybody.