An Artful Adventure

Fancy Flea and The Extravaganza

Sorry I know it's been awhile since I last posted.  I have been having the hardest time beating off this sore throat!  Prior to getting sick, I had the lovely opportunity the last two weekends to spend time with friends shopping and visiting.  A couple weekends ago was my first visit to The Fancy Flea in Lakeland FL.

It was not a huge market, but the crowd was outrageous!  I could not believe how full the street was!  The Fancy Flea was in a beautiful part of downtown Lakeland.  There where people there shopping, walking their pets, people sitting having lunch at local restaurants strumming on their guitars in the beautiful weather.

It really was a pretty flea!  Lots of lovely shopping treats and details.  I LOVED this tent with the burlap canopy!  Considering I am IN LOVE with burlap and white lace right now, I DIED OVER THIS.  Can you imagine the time involved in making this.  So pretty!

It was wonderful meeting up with good friends.  Above is a picture of me and Karen Hillman at the booth of the talented Paris Rags.  I got a cute skirt here that I could not resist.

It was also nice meeting new friends!  I was SO EXCITED to visit the Vintage Soul booth at the Fancy Flea!

What a lovely talented lady!

I bought this lovely hanging lamp shade.  It was just too sweet!

After we shopped around Karen took me to a wonderful lunch.  It was a wonderful day! I am going to try really hard to maybe set up at The Fancy Flea in April.

(Judy, Karen, and Erica)

BUT my flea market fun did not end there!!!  This past weekend I meet up with Molly, Karen, Judy, and Erica for another exciting weekend at the Mount Dora Extravaganza!  Molly and I drove up on Friday and meet the girls.  Karen believe it or not had a wonderful picnic lunch set up for us complete with china and silver! . . . . . at the flea market! 

With fresh flowers! . . . . At the FLEA market!

(Me and Molly)

It was really adorable though.  Because I was not 100% well, I did not get a lot of pictures!  We had a wonderful day at the extravaganza then that night went to a lovely dinner, and then back to Karen's cozy cottage for a little wine and crafting.  We got cupcakes to celebrate Molly's birthday, and I brought a few gifts for her.  The next day we went to the Garden Gate for tea.  It was nice, BUT I will say I was a little disappointed.  They had limited options for tea, and NO SCONES!  Can you believe that!  No scones!  Despite no scones it was lots of fun.  Here are some pictures of the treasures I got over the weekend.

Molly spotted this hat box for me!  Love it!  And another satin glove box to add to my collection.

The hat box worked really well to store my treasures in while I shopped lol.

Of course I got lots of white lace and dollies for the house. 

And some neat lace and satin pieces for crafting.

I found some really neat old fabric.  This booth had a LARGE piece of vintage light blue french ticking fabric that I passed up, but now I am wishing I would have got it lol.

Some cards.

Some Millinery . . .all that I could find :(

LARGE burlap bag $5

Some trinkets and jewelry.

Lastly more linen and satin. 

Thanks so much for stopping by!  I hope that everyone has a lovely Thanksgiving! xo

 

And the Winner is . . .

Thank you all so very much for your sweet comment and encouragement!  My little one has been under the weather so unfortunately I am a day behind announcing a winner for my giveaway.  I have spent the morning tallying everything up over a nice cup of pumpkin cream tea.  YUM.  Thanks to everyone who entered! 

Our winner is . . . . Mercedes Scott from All Things Pretty!

Thanks again to everyone!  Mercedes I will be contacting you for your address.

I hope everyone has a lovely weekend.

 

Mad Hatter Halloween Party!

It's hard to believe last week at this time I was busy BUSY getting ready for Molly's Mad Hatter Halloween party!  It was so much fun I hated to see it end!!  The party was thrown for the girls in our Pretty and Vintage Things Florida group.

I was SOOOOO excited Molly said I could be in charge of the candy buffet!  I have always wanted to do this!  We had chocolate chip taffy, gumballs, orange slices, sixlets, and of course all the usual goodies like Peanut butter cups.  I made a BRIGHT collection of French Macarons for the center of the buffet.  They where filled with lemon buttercream, pumpkin spice buttercream, chocolate, and peanut butter and chocolate.

Molly and I had so much fun decorating!  I have a confession. . . I can be a bit, well nutty when it comes to decorating.  So I even decorated UNDER the table lol.  I simple fix for the glare of a mirror is taping up vintage music sheet inside the frame!  Molly made the glitter "Treats" banner which was the perfect touch!

I decorated the jars with tattered pieces of lace, millinery, feathers, handmade tags, and this one has a key.

Candy was not the only yummy treats we had!

Vanna White here presented a fabulous menu of stuffed mushrooms with sausage and cream cheese (YUM), roast beef with horseradish, a super yummy warm cheese dip with crackers, fruit and punch.

We where also spoiled with red and white wine, AND Champagne!

Ok I am hungry now!  I got some great photos of the girls getting dinner ready in their over the top costumes BUT sad to say they all turned out blurry! 

Molly's party was inspired by the recent feature in Better Homes and Gardens.

I think she did a great job grabbing inspiration from the article.  The adorable drink me labels on the glasses where a cute print out they had offered.

(Jeanne, Molly, Karen, and our new sweet friend Sarah)

We had so much fun chatting around and eating that we did not start the craft project until late.

The photo above is of the sample project Molly made.  It was an altered album to store different recipes in.  Unfortunately I had to leave early and was not able to start my project.  But it was so cute!

The table was set up with vintage china and silver all filled with lovely ribbons, trims, charms, and other embellishments for the girls to use on their album.

My favorite part was probably the costumes!

(me and Karen)

We all dressed up to go along with the feel of the party.  I decided to go for a really thrown together sorta boho mix matched feel lol.  I made a big bright pink top hat and paired it with a neutral layered skirt that I made and a black top.  I then embellished with bright accessories and a curly blond wig.

I also helped my friend Jeanne make her costume.  She purchased the gray dress and we worked off of that.  Her inspiration was a darker inspired Cheshire Cat from the recent Alice in Wonderland movie and a slight Alice feel.

I altered the sleeves on the dress (they poked out funny and had a 80's looking flap on them with a button).  I tied in a Alice feel by including lots of bows.  I dyed a piece of white muslin light blue for the waste, and I made a necklace with with blue lace bows, and a black velvet bow.  I attached a blue bow to the cat ears, and a really tarnished vintage jewelry piece that really went well with the gray. I made a blue lace cuff with a blue cameo, and she also had a big feather tail with a blue bow.  BUT my favorite part was the skirt I made to go under her dress!  It was a gray tulle skirt that I embellished with blue dyed muslin, and lots of ruffles of lace and tulle.  So fun! 

EVERYONE LOOKED SO DARLING!

Here are some of my favorite photos of some close ups.

This was a cute unposed photo I got of Molly while see was talking.

Karen took this photo of my anklet.

Love this photo of Jeanne and Karen's stripe stocking!

What a WONDERFUL party!  Thanks so much Molly!!