The Mad Hatter Vintage Flea Market ~ 2015

It's the middle of summer, and we are already feeling the excitment and madness of this years' fall event!

Yes, it's the middle of summer and we are head over heels planning our seventh  "Mad Hatter Vintage Flea Market." This year's event features 30 + vendors selling vintage home and garden goods, wonderful antiques, handcrafted goods and unique finds and jewelry. Shoppers will step into a storybook fantasy setting that will delight all their senses, and most importantly they will find an array of one-of-a-kind items, reclaimed and repurposed vintage finds, fabulous food, live music, and lots of decorating inspiration in one of the Northwest 's most beautiful seasons, which is of course our Indian Summer.

Celia and I hosted our first Mad Hatter event in 2009. It was a dream of ours to create a "wonderland shopping experience" for our customers. We are so exicted for this upcoming event and look forward to seeing trucks and trailers loaded up with vintage goodness, some traveling hunderds of miles to take part in this "madness" we love so much! Together we create a community of like-minded friends and artists, all who share the love of junking. It is then the transformation begins. Tents are set up and festooned beyond your wildest imaginatin into a deliciously magical setting. As we get ready for two days of inspiration, shoppping, fun, food, and music and a few surprises!! But, it doesn't stop there, the transformation continues as our curators don their wildest Mad Hatter and friends costumes and get into character....The crazier the better!! And, the customers love the theater of our show as much as we love pitting it on!!

The Mad Hatter is a beautiful collaborative effort, a celebration of things that have endured the test of time!!

Fun begins, Friday evening, September 25, 4pm-9pm & Saturday September 26, 10am-4pm
Admission $5
Five Mile Prairie Grange
West 3024 Strong Road, Spokane, WA.

Get into the Swing of Spring!

Seriously, is Spring ever coming?? Our mornings are cold, cold, cold....but my thoughts are about Spring!

Last year, we found a great old glider swing at the thrift store in town, everything was in working order...except no cushions, or pillows. As you have probably guessed, we love yellow and stripes....it speaks Spring! We found some great vintage fabric with birds, just enough to make a couple pillows and think they completed the look we were wanting for this vintage Swing......picture perfect!!

Hope you love how it turned out as much as we did!!

oxo Glad & Celia

Linking up to
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The Love Letter

                                                   

                                                            Richard and Arline Feynman

Dear Friends,

I've been anxious to write to you all week. I would love to share with you a love letter from the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman to his wife Arline.

It's said that he carried this letter for two years after her death. It was worn down, folded & refolded. So, this means the letter was written but never mailed, and he had it with him for two years. A letter of love! Gives me goosebumps!!!

This is a gorgeous letter written by a person who is hard-wired for logic, yet knows that his connection to something ephemeral (her memory, her being) is real to him.
A scientist taking a logical approach to grief, and allowing himself to feel the entire ebb & flow of love, in the presence of death.

The letter leaves me wondering who this amazing woman was...

Also, it was also interesting to me, that every letter he ever wrote was addressed with name and date, even to his wife. This letter touches my heart, as I'm sure it will yours too. It may even prompt you to write a love letter to your sweetheart.

To Arline Feynman, October 17, 1946

D’Arline,

I adore you, sweetheart … It is such a terribly long time since I last wrote to you — almost two years but I know you’ll excuse me because you understand how I am, stubborn and realistic; and I thought there was no sense to writing. But now I know my darling wife that it is right to do what I have delayed in doing, and what I have done so much in the past. I want to tell you I love you.

I find it hard to understand in my mind what it means to love you after you are dead — but I still want to comfort and take care of you — and I want you to love me and care for me. I want to have problems to discuss with you — I want to do little projects with you. I never thought until just now that we can do that. What should we do. We started to learn to make clothes together — or learn Chinese — or getting a movie projector.

Can’t I do something now? No. I am alone without you and you were the “idea-woman” and general instigator of all our wild adventures. When you were sick you worried because you could not give me something that you wanted to and thought I needed. You needn’t have worried.

Just as I told you then there was no real need because I loved you in so many ways so much. And now it is clearly even more true — you can give me nothing now yet I love you so that you stand in my way of loving anyone else — but I want to stand there.

I’ll bet that you are surprised that I don’t even have a girlfriend after two years. But you can’t help it, darling, nor can I — I don’t understand it, for I have met many girls … and I don’t want to remain alone — but in two or three meetings they all seem ashes. You only are left to me. You are real.

My darling wife, I do adore you. I love my wife. My wife is dead,

Rich.

PS Please excuse my not mailing this — but I don’t know your new address.

Hello 2015....You have to make your own happy!!

Lately I've been thinking about what makes me happy....and it was a revelation that I have everything I need in life to make me happy but sometimes its the lack of awareness to appreciate it.

This New Year I want to enjoy every minute of living.

The most wonderful gifts from God, are my six children and without their awareness they have given me the greatest gift.....Their Love....Their Contentment....Their smiles....Their laughter.

They have taught me to recognize moments of happiness that are only mine.

Ava, our youngest grandchild has taught me about appreciating all the little magical things in life, she has taught me about being truly happy!

She has taught me that when her needs are met she is content. She brings a smile to my face and contentment in my heart.

I'm sure you've have heard the song, "Standing knee-deep in a River" (Dying of Thirst) well, I don't want to be that person, I want to "quench" my thirst for "the good life," and acknowledge the good that is already exciting in my own life. Taking the time to appreciate friends and family in my life. I want to have a grateful heart always....to delight in laughter, reading stories to my grandchildren, making a new cookie recipe, or a new healthy soup and salad for dinner for my family, to drink the best coffee with a friend or try out a new tea sitting in my kitchen as the sun come through windows....I want to embrace all these little things that make me truly happy.

My wish for you this New Year is to find what makes you truly happy. Discover what delights you, and makes you smile....recognize it, embrace the moments of happiness that are yours and yours alone.

 I can promise you there will abundance in your life.

 Abundance in 2015

Glad, oxo

All photos taken for me by my sweet friend, Cary Burnett

Linking up to: http://www.thoughtsfromalice.com/2015/01/sundays-at-home-no-42-weekly-link-party.html