Thompson Family-Life

Around Atlanta: The Silver Skillet

I was looking for fun vintage roadside attractions online last night for a guest blog I'm working on, and came across one right in my own hometown.. a restaurant in a time warp, straight from the 50's. Apparently Ethan has already been but I had never heard of it! It's called the Silver Skillet. I loaded up the boys and took them for a breakfast-lunch (they serve breakfast til 2:30) today. I don't know about you, but I could eat a nice greasy breakfast for every meal of the day. Yuuuuum. ; )

It's always a harrowing experience taking the boys anywhere in public, especially out to eat.. but I do it often. Because I just like eating out. And it's always a good excuse to get out of the house (do your kids go absolutely batty indoors at home? Mine can't go literally 5 minutes without bickering... sigh.) So my solution is always.. "Let's get in the car! And just go. Anywhere."

The Silver Skillet was as awesome as I thought it would be. Nothin' fancy. Good 'ole Southern breakfast. The nicest staff and they even let me take photos. Which in itself is quite a wonderful thing for a blogger (you bloggers know what I mean.) I can't tell you how many times I've been at a restaurant or shop and if I even dared take out my camera, they were on me like flies.. "No photos! No photos please!!" Is it just me or are people getting crazy paranoid? I mean, I'm a paying customer. I could very well be taking photos so that I can blog about them and send people your way. Usually I do ask before I start snapping away (like I did today) but sometimes they're still against it. Don't they want new business? I understand, especially with shops with original art maybe? Don't want people to copy the ideas? But in a restaurant?

Ah well, I guess that's a discussion for another day. 

I got some photos of the boys.. after I tried a few "just smile nicely boys" shots that always turn out forced, fake and awful, I just said "do what you want" and this is what I got. Much better than the fake smiles. Although some of these faces only a Mother could love. ; )

They had all of these awesomely awful horse prints all together on the back wall. I wanted to get better photos of them, but the glare on the glass didn't help and I didn't want to get all up in people's business while they were eating. (I might be taking photos, but I'm always respectful of other people and discreet at least!)

I loved the boomerang pattern on the original formica tables.

New Kit! "Retro Kids" (& a BOGO sale!)

You can find this new paper pack kit here! This kit was inspired by my Custom Correspondence Printable Kit for Kids!

The details:

12 Patterned Papers in 12"x12" and 8.5"x11" (with white border for printing) formats.

Print these out for your paper crafts or use them in your digital creations!

All files are high-resolution 300 dpi.

This kit comes available with a Personal License option only.

Here are some crazy cute projects by the Kitschy Digitals Creative Team using Retro Kids. All of the other Kitschy Digitals kits used in these projects can be found in my shop.

by Cathy Pascual (seriously, how gorgeous is this page?!)

By Julie from Minitoko (LOVE the way she used my favorite paper from the set - the "Retro Kids" pattern!)

By Karine Courtemanche (How adorable does Karine look with her daughter?! All dressed up in their best vintage duds!)

By Ranie O'dell (I love how she used the papers so subtley and especially love how she used the new Paper Garden kit!)

 

By Maybemej Sporrong - Love how she combined all of the kits!

Another page by Julie

By Marie Lottermoser (um, can I go to Candy Land?)

By Georgia Visacri (these papers are so great for boys!)

And here are some pages by the Jessica Sprague Creative Team.

(seriously stunning, right?) By Mallory

by Monica

By Jo-Ann (you can find my Clothesline Kit here!)

Been wanting to learn how to use digital kits for scrapbooking? Check out this FREE class here! You can find many other helpful classes here at Jessica Sprague.

 Not into digital scrapbooking, but still want to learn how to use these kits? Check out this awesome tutorial that Katrina from Pugly Pixel put together!

OH! and guess what? It's Mondays in May today at Jessica Sprague!

Buy One Get One FREE!

I hope you all are having a lovely holiday weekend. We've already hit the slip 'n slide and now we're off for some lunch and maybe a trip to the park.

Have a lovely day!

Crochet Butterfly Purse//Vickie Howell's new yarn!

I'm so excited to be a party of Vickie Howell's blog tour celebrating her first line of yarn! It's called Sheep(ish) and it's made by Caron. You can find it in Joann stores now! You can also buy it online.

When Vickie contacted me I was a bit floored and crafty-star-struck because I used to watch her show Knitty Gritty on the DIY network many years ago. I loved her fresh take on knitting and I of course loved that she was a redhead. Because I'm obsessed with redheads. : )

She sent me some yarn to play with in the prettiest colors and also a sample hoop with all of the yarn colors. I love how saturated and vibrant they are! It's 70% acrylic and 30% wool and it's washable! For me that is a must. It has to be washable when you have kids. But if you love the look and feel of wool better than cotton or acrylics, then you have the best of both worlds with this yarn.

The pattern I used it this one from Etsy seller Speckless. I ended up making it too small, so it will be going to a little girl (not sure who yet!). The pattern reminded me of all the butterfly images you saw in the 60's/70's and I want to make one for me maybe in green hues and really big! Maybe with some big chunky yarn. I think it has a very 70's vibe to it. The pinks and purples from Vickie's yarn line ended up being more suited for a little girl. I love how it turned out and I made it in two days - a super easy pattern. I think it would help to line it with something so nothing goes poking out through the crochet. The fabric button is the closure.

Vickie also has some new FREE crochet patterns! Check those out here. I love this little poncho.

She also has a new online crochet course for beginners! Find that here.

Be sure to follow the rest of the Sheep(ish) Blog Tour! Some of my favorite crafty ladies are on the tour.

Thank-you Vickie for letting me a part of it!

May 25th: BlogHer.com (Kathy Cano-Murillo)

May 26th: LindaMade.com (Linda Permann)

May 27th: Kitschy Digitals (Danielle Thompson)

May 28th: DOUBLE POST DAY:

CraftyChica.com (Kathy Cano-Murillo) +JustCastingOn.net (Deb Steenhagen)

May 29th: Susan B. Anderson

May 30th: CrochetbyFaye.com (Robyn Chachula)

May 31st: CathieFilian.com (Yarn Wreath Project by Cathie)

June 1st: Craftzine.com (Review by Sister Diane)

June 2nd: Knitgrrl.com (1 Skein Project by Shannon Okey)

June 3rd: CraftyisCool.com (Allison Hoffman)

June 4th: Coquette Blog (Natalie Zee-Drieu)

June 5th About.com (Sarah White)

June 6th: Manhattan Craft Room (Brett Bara)

June 7th: BetzWhite.com

June 8th: TheCrochetDude.com (Drew Emborsky)

June 9th: Naughtysecretaryclub.com & Ilovetocreate.com(Dual post on the same day. Yarn-wrapped mobil by Jennifer Perkins)

June 10th: Craftzine.com (Ladybug Outfit Pattern by Vickie)

June 11th: StephanieJapel.com

It's a Work in Progress: crochet surprise

I'll share more about this project tomorrow, but I thought I'd share the progress.

And yes it does look like a butterfly doesn't it? ; )

Be sure to check out my new Vintage Craft group! Come and play!

Vintage Craft... wanny play?

(Join the Vintage Craft Flickr group here!)

So my friend Heather and I were talking last week about how we both can't ever seem to finish projects and we challenged each other to try and finish at least ONE project a month so that we can stop starting and stopping, and starting on something new, and so on.

You crafty folks know what I mean. : )

We both have a lot of vintage patterns lying around and that was our motivation for this. To create something from a vintage pattern once a month. How fun would that be?

Now I would be lying if I didn't say "yeh, that might not happen" to myself. Because as you can see from my sporadic posting here, life and family (and sick kids) come first and you can't always predict how life is going to go any given month.

But I think it's good to have goals! I too often say "eh, i probably won't have time to do that" and then I just abandon the idea. I want to at least try it. And I thought it would be fun to see if others wanted to play!

You can play by joining this Flickr Group "Vintage Craft" and adding your projects using vintage patterns. (See the group description to see what we're looking for.) Really it's for ANY crafts: sewing, crochet, knitting, embroidery, cake design (I say that because of this awesome cake my friend Virginie made inspired by a vintage cake design!), etc, etc. 

I seldom see people using vintage patterns in their crafts (lots of embroidery patterns I guess, but not other crafts...) Maybe I'm not looking in the right places, but I would LOVE to see how people use vintage patterns, or even reinterpret them in their own unique way! As you can see, my two projects below using vintage crochet patterns didn't come out exactly like the original pattern. It's always fun to tweak things to make them your own. (Although I'm definitely not opposed to making things exactly like the original designs because that is why we love them! They are awesome.)

 I personally like finding small projects because they aren't so overwhelming to finish.

So I hope you'll join in! I am going to try and post some of the projects from the group here on my blog from time to time.

You can share this group with everyone by adding one of these little buttons to your blog if you'd like.

 

 

 

 

 

I hope you'll play! : )