The high sea and ships...

As I've mentioned before, I've really been into images of old ships lately. Prints, figures, pins, pendants, anything that has a nice ship on. The other day on Etsy, I found this beautiful wooden ship bookends for sale by the seller ponyparty:



Sadly, I didn't buy them and they quickly sold. However, the other day I went into this vintage housewares store around where I live. I'd never been in before, but it seemed pretty nice from the outside. The store turned out to be very good and full of interesting stuff. Most of the things in there had kind of a distressed country home feel. (I'm not sure if that makes any sense, but that's what I'm going with!) Old needlepoints framed, tons of old china, fun chandeliers, old apothecary jars, and tons of other things. The very first thing I saw in the store was these:






Ship bookends! I obviously decided to snatch them up after missing out on the wooden ones. These are made from plaster and are slightly chipped along some points and have a few small sections that are glued back on. However, I love them and was pretty excitied to find them. I'm not sure where to put them yet. If you have any idea of how many books Kinsey and I have, you'll already know that they will not be used as bookends!

I'll leave you with a ship card we have in the shop. Have a good week!

New Items in Shop and Tales from the Forest...

So if you've visited our online shop recently (tributary.etsy.com), you've probably seen our latest creation. Felt state pins! Here's some photos:







The pins are entitled, "My heart's in....(fill in the state here)" . Each pin is completely handsewn and features a small embroidered heart within a special city. These pins can be custom ordered for specific states or location of the heart. I've done a total of six states so far, and hope to continue if they take off! Also, we've been busy sewing away lately and have many new clutches and such to list. We will be listing new things as much as possible throughout the week. Just listed in the shop, is the first ever clutch I've done featuring water. It's inspired by our recent trip to Ricketts Glen State Park and depicts two trees along a stream. Be sure to check it out.

In other news, we just got back from a camping trip to Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. We try to go down at least once every year. It's a beautiful place and driving along Skyline Drive is a wonderful time! For those of you who have not been, you must try to go sometime. It's a 104 mile road with tons of overlooks that look out into the Shenandoah Valley. All kinds of wildlife and flowers populate the area as well. The picture at the beginning of this entry is of myself on a small overlook hike we did. It was very peaceful and quiet at the top of the rocks. The campsite we picked was about six yards away from a portion of the Appalachian Trail and a small stream.



It was a great trip and was full of a few "firsts". First of all, while we were preparing dinner, we heard what sounded like a handsaw. We looked around and saw that the people who were camping close by to us, to our disbelief, were cutting down a tree! I'm not sure why they thought it was okay to cut down trees in the first place because this is a NATIONAL park! And what's worse is, that the man didn't even use the cut down tree! He declared it was "too green". It was definitely a sad event to watch for two tree lovers like Kinsey and myself. Lastly, while we were eating our delicious dinner cooked over the fire, a huge buck with magnificent horns came down to our campsite and stood a mere two feet away from us. The buck just stood there staring at us and our food. We weren't sure what to do, because we never had been in this situation before. We just stayed very calm, didn't look at the buck in the eyes and started putting away some of our food. The campsite had a steel "bear box" for storing food, so we let the doors slam on that which caused a loud bang sound. This scared the buck away and he galloped swiftly down to a nearby stream. Needless to say, that's definitely something we won't forget anytime soon! Since deers have been on the mind for us lately, here's some appropriate finds we found on Etsy when searching for deer:







This gorgeous necklace is by gogingin for $34.



This cute little necklace is by greensquirrel for $12.



This print is by the wonderful berkleyillustration for $15.



This card set is by snew for $4.75.

Happy Monday!

Hiking and Waterfalls...

Temperatures have been pretty steady for almost the past week at 90 degrees or higher. So what better way to spend a day off than hiking in the cool mountains. We headed up north for Ricketts Glen State Park and hiked a trail called the Falls Trail. This route takes you past 21 of the 22 waterfalls in the park. It's a pretty steep and sometimes slippery trek, but is definitely well worth the sweat. We, of course, had our camera along and as you probably guessed ended up taking around 150 pictures. The coolness of the mountains and dampness from the falls along with huge trees and moss covered rocks, made it a perfect spot for inspiring new ideas. The waterfalls varied in height from 11 feet to the largest being 94 feet in height. For some reason, we tended to like the smaller ones the best. Here's some views of one of our favorite waterfall, Murray Reynolds, which measures in at 16 feet.




At the base of the fall, the water was incredibly deep and beautiful. Wouldn't it be a perfect spot for swimming?





Here's a shot of me standing on the top of the waterfall, which is something that you really couldn't safely do on a lot of the other ones. This waterfall sort of wrapped around and sent the water flowing down along the side of the rock. Obviously you need to really be careful about watching your step where the rock gets slippery.

Here's some other pictures from our hike:






A few areas throughout the trail had these stone steps that you had to climb up. They looked really nice against the lush green scenery.






We ended up spending 4 hours or so on the trail. It was very relaxing. Our lunch consisted of the season's first tomatos which we made into bruschetta. Who doesn't love the taste of the first tomatos of the year?




As a result of this wonderful nature outing, I made four new clutches today with forest scenes. Two of them were inspired from a combination of our trip to Ricketts Glen and our honeymoon to Acadia National Park. Here's a sneak peek:




Also, check the shop later today for a completely brand new product design. It will be the first in a hopefully continued series.

Summer in Pennsylvania

So we're in the middle of summer and surrounded by the sights and smells of warm days. Of course, if you've been reading our blog, you already know that Kinsey and I are big fans of growing food. For the past two weeks, we have been harvesting a pretty steady supply of cucumbers and peppers.

Here's a photo of one of our Bush cucumber plants. They grow to be about four inches or longer and are perfect for making into pickles. I haven't done any yet this year, but plan on making a few batches a little later in the season. These plants are very fast growing. We harvested our first cucumber in less than 30 days.



Here's a photo of our hungarian yellow wax peppers. We planted six plants and they really know how to produce! We've been harvesting many, many peppers from them. They tend to have a pretty hot flavor, (although I have a low heat tolerance, so it may not be that hot), but they seem to be pretty good thrown in anything like eggs, stir-frys, salads, and such.




Aside from gardening, we recently went and picked some really beautiful wildflowers at a local farm. Here's some photos to share.

This is my favorite photo Kinsey took of us in the wildflower patch. I don't know what it is, but I really like the composition.



Two smaller arrangements on the living room windowsill.



Cutting some flowers.



Aside from all the activities outdoors, we have been making many things! Here's one of my newest felt pins, which is inspired by my current obsession with making clutches with little forest scenes on.



Well, that's all for now. Keep checking the shop for new items to be added!