Summer Cloche Party

Marty over at A Stroll Thru Life is having a Summer Cloche Party. And we have all been invited. Yipee!!!

You know how much I like parties and I love cloches. So you knew I was going to be in attendance. Even if I am a tad late.

The problem is, I didn't prepare for this party. In fact, I completely forgot about it. I had such great plans for some new summer cloches to show you. Not really. I don't think that far in advance. I'm a spur of the moment kind of gal.

So I guess you will be stuck seeing stuff I've already posted about. But it might be worth a 2nd looksy. At least I think it is. But then I might be a little biased. Or self centered.

Anyways, let's start with my June bride cloches.

This is a vintage cake topper that someone placed inside a glass dome. My hubby got this for me last Christmas from an antique mall. I just love it!!! I used it on this years anniversary tablescape in June. Yup, I am a June bride.

This bride & groom figurine sits under a cloche on a home made cake plate for most of the month of June. I love using my bride & groom figurines to decorate with in the month of June. And they look even better under glass.

Now let's move on to July and my patriotic cloches. You already saw most of these cloches when I posted about my thrifty red, white & blue hutch, and when I posted more 4th of July decor.

Cheese domes make great cloches, but they are a little harder to decorate as they are kind of short & squatty. Kind of like me. Wait, I'm not short & squatty, I'm tall & fat. But you get the idea.

Under this cheese dome I placed a vintage flower frog & just stuck flag toothpicks in almost each section. Easy, peasy.


This small cup & saucer looks fabulous with a small cloche placed over it. Both came from a thrift store.

In this cloche I placed a reproduction vintage 4th of July postcard nestled in another vintage flower frog. I placed fire crackers on top of the base. Don't worry, I don't have any small children in my house. And no one smokes so I don't think think the firecrackers will be going off. At least I hope they don't.

I think this is actually a glass terrarium. But it still works as a cloche. It came from Goodwill last year. Inside I placed a green plant ball on top of a small white vase. In front I just printed out a vintage patriotic print from my collection of CD's and placed in front. I added a flag toothpick to the top of the ball. And instant 4th of July decor.

Inside this cloche I stacked 3 blue & white transferware cups and saucers. Luckily they didn't fall over when we had our earthquake a few weeks back. I love to collect blue & white transferware. All of mine comes from thrift stores, garage sales or antique stores.

This is a cloche that I made by gluing a glass knob on top of a glass dome that I found at the thrift store. I placed some vintage bottles inside & placed a small flag in one of the bottles.

Here is another cloche I made. This is a smaller one. I placed a small patriotic birdhouse that I've had for probably 15 years inside & placed on top of some ironstone saucers I picked up at a thrift store.
This cloche has some more vintage bottles. This time with 2 flags and a small wooden star sitting in front.

I found this patriotic creamer a few weeks back at a thrift store. I placed a small Uncle Sam (from Michael's) inside and placed under the cloche. I printed out some patriotic music onto paper, cut into strips & then curled the strips as a filler.

In this cloche I placed a vintage stencil with the number 4. I taped a small piece of patriotic paper behind so you could see the 4 better. Stuck it in a vintage flower frog. I found some grape vine at my local thrift store to use on the outside of a lot of my cloches. Placed this cloche on another stack of white ironstone saucers from the thrift store.

And did you notice the cheese dome in the background? I made a patriotic fan pinwheel & placed it under the dome. I did prop it up a bit.

Besides cloches, I love apothecary jars as well. And Marty said we could show them off too. In this one I placed my scrabble pieces. I finally found a scrabble game at the thrift store. They are hard to find. I need to find another one as there aren't quite enough letters to fill this jar.

This jar has some number balls. I hung a star from the lid to give it a patriotic look.

And this jar houses some dominoes that I picked up from a thrift store.

So far we have covered June and July. But summer doesn't end in July. Next comes August. August is one of the hottest months here so I like to decorate beachy for the rest of summer, to try & trick my brain that it is actually cooler than it is. But to tell you the truth, my patriotic decor is still up. I've thought about what I would do for my beachy decor for August, but so far I haven't gotten any further than the thinking stage.

Probably due to the fact that Summer has finally arrived here in southern California. We've had a cooler than normal summer up to this point. But yesterday it was like 110 degrees at my house. So that would make my attic (where my beachy decor is stashed) about a gazillion degrees. Too hot for me to venture up there.

Since I don't have any current beachy cloches or jar stuff to show you. I'll show you what I did last year.

This apothecary jar sits on the small cabinet at the end of my kitchen cabinets. I just filled it with shells. Doesn't get much easier or summery than that. Thanks to my son who was once obsessed with collecting shells when he was a child, I have quite the collection to display.

I picked up these blue canning jars last summer at a thrift store. I filled 2 with shells and the 3rd with small glass thing a ma bogs (can't think what they are called) that I got from Dollar Tree.

Don't have a cloche or an apothecary jar? Use a crystal glass or compote & fill it with shells.

Under this cheese dome I placed a summery looking bowl filled with shells & placed some glass beads around the base.

Have a collection of something? Put it under a cloche & it makes any collection look fabulous. I placed some of my vintage bottle collection under this cloche.

More jars, vases & compotes filled with shells.


Shells, shells and more shells. Can you have too many shells for summer?

Well I hope that you enjoyed my cloches, apothecary jars and just jars in general. Even if I did cheat a bit.

Street Painting Festival

A few weeks back I went to the annual street painting festival in Old Town Temecula. This is the 2nd year I have attended. I really enjoy seeing the artwork.

Today I will share some of my favorites.


I loved the colors in this flower.

I wish this photo of Pegasus came out better. The girl was still working on this so part is in the shade. I just love Pegasus.

This woman was still working on her art. The photos in the shade don't show up very well.

Loved this black & white one.

Hubby was enjoying a Pepsi while listening to a band playing music from the 40's.

It was really hard to see exactly what I was taking a photo of out in the bright sun. Sometimes I got the complete piece of art, sometimes I didn't.


This butterfly was fabulous. Loved the blue color.

Softer colors were used in the one, but still liked it.


I seemed to really like the ones with all the bright colors.


This was hubby's favorite. He loves how the dwarfs are looking down into a well.

They even had an area where kids could draw their own art masterpieces with chalk.

And of course there had to be a balloon man.

I thought this years Festival was much better than last YEARS. The artwork was better this year. More entries. The only thing I didn't like was the area they had it this year. It was kind of hard to walk around as there was quite a few people & a small area to walk in.

But I still love attending this annual event. Gives me a reason not only to see some fabulous art, but to eat at Rosa's Cantina, one of my favorite Mexican restaurants. And I also got to visit some of my favorite shops. I'll hopefully share those tomorrow.

So if you live in southern California, be sure to put this festival on your list of things to do next summer. They usually have it around the end of June. But if you can't wait until then, get out your own chalk & draw on your own sidewalk. Or you could just go to Old Town Temecula to eat at Rosa's Cantina or visit all their wonderful shops. You can even do a little wine or olive oil tasting while there. I promise you'll have a fun time whatever you do in Old Town Temecula.

And afterwards, you can travel up to my house for a swim to cool off. Just bring your own towel. And don't all come at once. ;)



Linking to:

Who you gonna call? Ghostbusters!!!

Sorry that I haven't posted in awhile. I've been very busy. Or maybe I was just too lazy. I'm going with busy. It sounds better than lazy.

For starters, I was busy taking care of my almost 3 year old grandson for about 5 days. Had a 4th of July pool party. And then I had to go on a ghost adventure.



This is the tale of my so called ghost adventure with my niece.

My niece works in the museum at the university that she attends. Now this museum happens to be haunted. Or so they say. On Friday my niece had to work there alone for the first time. While she was working alone on Friday, the fire alarm went off a few times as well as another exhibit that needs someone to walk under to set it off (no one else was in the building when it kept going off). When finally someone came to the museum, their flash kept going off when it was turned off. You know, weird stuff like that.

So after work on Friday, my niece asked if I would go to work with her on Saturday as she was again suppose to work alone. She was so spooked from the day before, she didn't want to be by herself.

Now I love me a good ghost story. And I love to watch ghost stuff on TV. So the prospects of going on my own ghost adventure was too much. I had to say "YES".

I've always wanted to be a Ghostbuster (are you singing the Ghostbuster song in your head? I knew you were).

So my niece picked me up about 8:45am & we got to her work around 9:30am. This was my first time to this particular museum. It has the largest collection of Egyptian artifacts west of the Mississippi river (at least that is what the website said).


First thing I noticed after arriving was that the building itself makes a lot of noise. Lots of creaking, moaning, and sounds like people running across the roof. Pretty loud stuff. It would definitely be a scary place to be by yourself just for the noises the building & glass windows made. Even if it weren't haunted.

Next we had to turn all the lights on. A couple of the display cases in the Egyptian section have to be turned on by hand. While we were going from room to room we entered one room in the Egyptian section that felt different than the others. This room definitely had a "heavy, depressing" feeling to it. The first time we went through it pretty fast so I hardly noticed. But the 2nd time I entered & lingered longer, I could definitely feel a difference from all the other rooms. Plus I got a headache while in the room. We called this room, the "creepy" room. This is the room that my niece hates to go in the most.

This piece was the one thing that gave me the heeby jeebies the most. It was in the "creepy" room. In fact now, I can feel it's creepiness. Can you?

One of the guys that normally works at the museum came in for a few minutes to pick something up. He also confirmed that the museum is haunted. He said they have a tape that shows some weird stuff. This guy said he had opened up a display once in the "creepy" room & took a mask off it's perch & sat it on the bottom of the display case. He walked into the next room & heard a crash behind him. When he turned around the mask was on the floor. No one else was in the room. And the mask had not be placed on the edge, there was no way it could have just fallen. Since they video tape all the rooms, they played back the video tape & it shows the mask turn over & fall on the floor. But no one touched the mask. Spooky!!!

Plus there is this small Egyptian figurine that is only about 1 inch tall & quite heavy. I was told it has turned over on quite a few occasions by itself. They have that on tape as well. But the tape was locked away so I didn't get to see it for myself. But my niece says she has seen the tape.

Can you now see why my niece is a bit spooked to work by herself? I know I would be.

This sarcophagus was one of my favorite items from the Egyptian collection. I kept expecting a mummy to jump out at me. But none did.

These Shabti figures were pretty cool. I loved the blue color. They were suppose to become servants for the buried person in the afterlife. I think I would like a gazillion in my casket.

Half of the museum is the Egyptian collection. The rooms are completely dark except for the display cases. So I think the darkness adds to the spooky feeling of the museum.

In the other half of the museum right now is an art collection by students. This half of the museum has lots of lights. So it is not so scary. But there was some weird stuff in here as well (art pieces, not ghostly stuff). They say that art is subjective. And boy are they right. Most of this stuff I probably wouldn't call art. A lot of it was pretty sexual so I won't show you photos.

The coolest thing was a metal walkway that looked like a metal detector. On the top was a pane of glass that looked like it was broken. When you walked through the detector & under the glass it would make a sound like the glass was breaking & falling on you. It was pretty cool. I have a video of it, but can't seem to get it to upload. This particular piece is one of the items that kept going off the day before when no one was in the museum except for my niece.

We had quite a few people visit the museum on Saturday. So nothing weird happened while I was there. I was a little disappointed. The ghosts didn't come out to play. I really don't know if I'm glad or sad about that. I sort of want to have a ghost experience. But I know it would scare the crap out of me if it really did happen.

My niece was very happy that I came to keep her company & that nothing weird happened. I don't think she could have taken a 2nd day of weird stuff.

Here is my niece sitting at the front desk at the museum. Is that a ghost I see in the picture behind her? No, it's just the reflection of me taking the photo. Darn it! I wanted a photo of a ghost.

As payment for going to work with my niece. She took me to dinner to P.F. Chang's China Bistro. No ghosts here either. Ghost hunting sure can make you hungry.

It was my first time eating there. It was pretty good.

We ordered egg rolls & crab won tons for our appetizers. We got there the last 5 minutes of happy hour. So we got $2.00 off each of our appetizers. I love to save money!

For our entrees we picked Sweet & Sour Chicken as well as Lemon Chicken. The Lemon Chicken came with broccoli. I love broccoli!!! Got the brown rice instead of the white rice. Dinner was pretty yummy. I would definitely go back (as long as someone else is paying since I can't afford to go on my own money).

This was my fortune. But someone messed up my fortune as I didn't get to see a ghost. Not a single one! So the day was neither lucky or memorable.

Or was I lucky that I didn't see a ghost? I guess it's subjective. Just like art.

I wish I had my niece's fortune. It said something about going on a fabulous vacation. She already had hers a few weeks back. I'm the one in need of a fabulous vacation.

I just can't seem to win.

Have you ever had a ghost adventure? Tell me all about it.