summer reminiscing

I hope all of my friends in the US had a wonderful Thanksgiving (and that my lovely international friend had a fantastic Thursday!)  My holiday was about as perfect as I could wish for-- lots of time relaxing with family, many, many delicious meals, and it was all topped off with a tree-trimming party at my apartment.  As I'm writing this, I'm curled up on my couch under a blanket, enjoying my Christmas tree as I wait for my tub to fill for a hot, foamy bubble bath.  But today I'd like to go back in time a bit (insert TARDIS sound here) and share some photos from the end of the summer.

My mom and I went blueberry picking at her local blueberry farm!  We had read on their website that it was a pretty sparse year for berries, but we weren't discouraged-- and sure enough, we came away with enough blueberries for a pie!  Actually, I want to share a kind of odd experience from that day, because I just couldn't believe it was happening.  My mom and I were picking blueberries, minding our own business, and this couple comes along and starts picking blueberries right next to us.  Like... right next to us.  This blueberry farm has three huge fields full of blueberry bushes, so my mom and I looked at each other like "Ohhhh-kay, this is a little weird."  So then the woman in the couple starts picking from the same bush as my mom!  First she went on the opposite side, then she came around and was literally shoulder to shoulder with my mom.  Why?  Just--- why?!  It was the blueberry picking equivalent of going to a sample sale-- if somebody else has it, it must be good!  We had a wonderful time, though, and finished our excursion with homemade ice cream from the farm's ice cream shop.  

 

My mom has a beautiful flower garden in front of her porch, and I love sitting on the porch with my knitting and watching all of the birds and woodland creatures that come to visit.  My favorite visitors are the group of hummingbirds that hang around.  There are three females and two males, and they're so used to my mom that they fly to eye level a few feet away from her to say hello.  I've always thought of hummingbirds as just whirring wings and a long skinny beak, but they have a lot of personality!  There is no battle more ferocious than two hummingbirds fighting over a flower.  Conversely, there's nothing cuter than a plump little hummingbird preening on a fence post!  Eeeeeep!  So adorable!

mossy fallen tree limb in the woods

yarrow-- one of my favorite wildflowers

I hope you are warm and cozy on this gray Saturday!  

♥

flower crowns

 

Hi friends!  Today I would like to share a project that I did as part of my floral design class.  I created two flower crowns with fresh flowers!  I absolutely loved making these, and two of my lovely coworkers were kind enough to model for me.

 

Orange isn't usually a color that I'm drawn to, but these incredible orange roses just enchanted me.  I kept this crown simple to let the roses remain the focal point, only adding some greenery and a touch of baby's breath

 

 

Color was also the inspiration for my second flower crown.  Since the orange crown is so bright, I wanted my second crown to be a bit more wild and moody.  I fell in love with these deep plum purple carnations, and accented them with purple waxflowers and sprig's of baby's breath.  

 

 

I so enjoyed making these crowns.  Floral design is incredibly inspiring to me, and I can lose track of hours while I'm working on a floral project.  Creating with flowers is both soothing and exciting to me, and I can't wait to share more of my floral designs with you!

special thanks to Rachel and Alex for being such beautiful models!

♥

hand-tied bouquet

Hi there!

I've always loved flowers-- I grew up spending a lot of time outside, and when I was in college, I went up to the High Line almost every week to get a little time with nature.  Flowers have always been a huge influence on my fashion design work, too.  I recently enrolled in a floral design class on Nicole's Classes, taught by Chelsea Fuss of the lovely Frolic! blog.  Today I'd like to share the first assignment with you!

The first assignment was to make a hand-tied bouquet.  The flowers I chose for my bouquet were yellow and pink ranunculus, purple mini-carnations, pink spray roses, yellow freesia, white waxflower, and spirea.  

I wanted my bouquet to look lush, but maintain a fresh, garden-y feeling, so I also put in a few unopened buds from the carnations.  The wispy waxflower and slightly wild-looking eucalyptus, as well as the curvy spirea, also give the bouquet a more organic look.

I had purchased enough flowers for a couple bouquets-- here is the second one.  I was especially pleased with the pink ranunculus in this bouquet- I love how full and round they look! 

 After about a week, some of my flowers were starting to look a little worse for wear, so I took out the ones that still looked fresh and rearranged them into this cute little row of mason jars.  

I'm currently in the third week of the class and absolutely loving it.  It's so soothing and lovely and inspiring to be working with beautiful, natural forms and textures.  I can't wait to share more of my floral design work with you!

♥

snippets

Hi!  Here's a peek into what I've been up to lately.

All of a sudden, Queen Anne's Lace flowers are popping up everywhere!  One of my favorite things about my commute is seeing what is growing in the gardens in my neighborhood.

 
The Buckster fell asleep with his tongue out.  Heehee.

 
 It's been cool enough this week to have tea in the morning.  Yay!

 
 I walk past this bird cage every day, and usually there is a parrot in it.  But yesterday morning, he was joined by this squirrel, who was enjoying a snack of parrot food!  The parrot didn't even seem bothered about it.  When I walked by this morning, there were two sparrows in the cage with him.  Maybe he likes the company.

 
I went to the knitwear and yarn trend show, SpinExpo, for work, and I loved these two swatches.  The bottom one made me want to start crocheting a blanket in these beautiful, creamy neutrals with fuzzy angora bits here and there.  So pretty!

 
It's always a good day for a cat sweater.  One of my coworkers brought this one back from Europe, and when it wasn't used for work, she gave it to me!  It makes me smile every time I look at it.

 

Sometimes Cocoa decides it is time to snuggle right now.  And sometimes he doesn't care too much if Bucky is in the mood for snuggling.

I hope you're having a lovely week so far!

♥

spring spring spring!

"Spring is the time of plans and projects." -Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

Hello hello!

As you may have noticed, it's been pretty quiet around here lately.  Two possible explanations would be that I have been traveling the world on a secret mission and had to maintain radio silence, or that I have been trapped in a time-space continuum paradox and had to avoid contaminating the timeline.  However, neither of those explanations is actually the case.  It's just that in the winter, I can't stay awake past about 9:30 at night.  The sun goes down and I can't resist the siren song of my warm, cozy bed.  Now that we're well into spring, though, I have a lot more energy and I'm hoping to get back to posting more regularly.  Really.  I am.  In the meantime, though, I've been posting relatively frequently on Instagram!  I'm JulieRoseSews over there, too.

Here are a few of the pictures I've posted over there lately, to give you an idea of what I've been up to.

One of my favorite thing about spring is seeing all the flowering trees.  My walk to and from the train to work has been beautiful for the past couple of weeks!

I went home to my mom's house for Easter, and the daffodils that my dad planted a few years ago have spread throughout the whole yard.  It was wonderful to see these cheery signs of spring that he planted.


Bucky and Cocoa remain cats of leisure.


I'm still knitting hexipuffs for my busy bee blanket!  I knit this little guy out of Koigu KPPM with thin stripes of Claudia's Handpainted Yarn.  Ridiculously, this is the first striped thing that I've ever knit.


I've also been trying out some art journaling.  This spread was inspired by the lyrics from this song by Of Monsters and Men.  I think everybody feels like that sometimes-- like their internal world is moving at a wildly different speed than the external world.


Another journal page, which is kinda-sorta a self-portrait.


I started on a project I've been wanting to tackle since I moved into my apartment-- sewing new slipcovers for my two living room chairs.  My original plan had been to use the old slipcovers (not pictured) as a pattern, but the more I looked at them, the more I realized that they were probably just sewn as a one-off, with lots of weird little darts and tucks and oddly placed seams to make them fit onto the chairs.  I decided to drape my own muslin pattern instead, and I'm really glad I did.  (Friends who sew:  yes, I totally did fix that bit of sagging and pulling on the back panel.  It lays nice and smoothly now.)  I washed my fabric this afternoon, all 8 1/2 yards of it, and tomorrow I'm going to begin cutting and sewing!  Yay!


Last but not least, Bucky would like you all to know that he works very hard and needs lots of naps.  After all, he and Cocoa helped me drape the new slipcovers.  It's no small task for them to make sure to plop themselves exactly where I am trying to pin or mark at any given time.

I hope you're all doing spectacularly well and enjoying this beautiful spring weather-- finally!  Hooray!

♥

pennsylvania flowers

Happy Saturday, lovelies!

Today I'd like to share a few photos that I took at my mom's house before I moved.  

 

 

Today I'm trying something new-- I'm making my own candles in the shape of little bee skeps!  

My first one is cooling at the moment-- I'll show some pictures when they're finished!  Bucky is contributing to the project by sleeping in a box on the kitchen floor.  He's a helpful guy.  

Have a wonderful Saturday!

♥

summer blooms

Hi there!

I hope you're all enjoying the beginning of summer (or winter, for friends in the Southern Hemisphere) and staying safe through all the crazy weather we've been having lately!  Thank you all so much for the many sweet comments and emails I've received after I posted about my new apartment and new job.  You guys are so sweet.  ♥  Everything's going really well.  I love my new job, and living in my dream apartment is... well, it's like a dream come true.  The kitties love it here, too-- they spend their days lounging on the windowsills, watching birds fly by and watching ships and tugboats on the bay.  

Today I'd like to share a few photos that I took at the Highline a few weeks ago.

 

I love the simplicity of these white flowers-- and the undersides of their petals are pink!

 

 

 

It is so wonderful to be back in the city every day for work, close to so many of my favorite places and enjoying the bustling energy of New York, and I love going home to my quiet, calm apartment in the evenings.

How have you all been?  I'm so behind on blog-reading!  I'm going to make some refreshing mint iced tea and catch up.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

♥

daffodils and a new home

Hi!

I hope you're all doing well-- it's been a little while since I've posted.  But more about that later.

First, I'd like to share a few photos of one of my very favorite flowers-- the daffodil!

In what felt like only a few days, the weather here has gone from chilly and gray to sunny, warm, and beautiful!  The daffodils are in full bloom.  Some are big and showy...

...and some are teeny-tiny!

     Ok, so about the radio silence coming from my blog lately-- I've spent the last few weeks travelling back and forth to New York interviewing, and I'm going to be starting a lovely new job in just a few weeks!  Yay!  And since I'm going to be working in the city, I need to live a bit closer.  I had looked at some apartments a few weeks ago, just to get a feel for what exactly I wanted.  Of course, there was one apartment that I absolutely fell in love with.  Top floor, amazing views, cute neighborhood, 

cat-friendly, bright and sunny, reasonable commute-- everything I would have included if I was to describe my ideal apartment.  I was happy to see that my dream apartment does actually exist, but I was sure that it would be gone by the time I was ready to move.  I kept checking online to see if the listing disappeared, but somehow it stayed available.  When I was hired and started looking for a new home, I was sure the apartment would be gone, and that the online listing just hadn't been updated yet, but I called the real estate agent who had shown it to me, just to check.

It was not gone.

I'm moving in next week! 

YAY!

I'll share some photos of my new nest over the next few days, but posting will probably remain erratic until I'm settled into my apartment.

I hope wonderful, exciting things are happening in your life, too!

♥

snippets

dewy spiderweb-- this ivy is gone now, it was cut a few days after I took this picture.  I hope the little guy or girl who made this beautiful structure has found a new home and is enjoying redecorating!

snuggly cats.  Aww.

Hydrangeas are one of my favorite flowers-- I love the soft cream and pink of this one!

Zucchini bread made from our garden zucchini.

The park fountain.

♥