Karla Nathan – Page 13 – Karla's Cottage

The spoiling continues, and I felt pretty spoiled too

By Karla Nathan / July 18, 2024

After our scary movie night for Summerween, we took a trip up to Lincoln, NE to stay with Rich where he has taken a “I’m retired, but I will do a few jobs here and there” gig. And he loves it, it’s a gorgeous club, with a hard working staff, delicious food, and ambitions to be even better than it is now.

Poor guy. Rich is working his butt off at this out of town job, but for us, it was a fantastic vacation.

His job is at a country club, but for us it was a resort getaway.

He took us on a golf cart ride to see the sights. Pretty, isn’t it?

Pretty inside too. Just like this little Grandfairy.

Best part? Not just soakin up the sunshine and the luxurious atmosphere, but watching these teens play like kids again.

The dogs were glad to have Dewdrop back too, and happy to be vacationing with us while poor Rich worked late hours.

When not at the pool, we did some shopping for back to school stuff at Scheels, made use of the photo ops, and rode the Ferris wheel. We we saw the new Despicable Me movie, went to the dog park, and crafted.

I’m experimenting with new gills that are extra ruffly for my mushies. While the kiddos hit the pool, I made a couple dozen of them.

Dewdrop made a few too, I love having a crafting buddy.

It couldn’t have been a better vacation spot to visit.

Summerween

family, holiday decor, We're having a party

By Karla Nathan / July 15, 2024

Dewdrop came to visit! And Sugarwings is back from North Carolina, so I hung up a welcome back garland and planned a Surprise Summerween Party.

We made zombie finger cookies to snack on.

And carved watermelon Jack-o-lanterns,

I unpacked a tub of Halloween decor to set up when they got here after their 14 hour drive, and we relaxed by the glow of the pumpkins while watching a scary movie.

Our movie was Abigail, about a vampire ballerina, an excellent choice.

We left the decorations up for the week, so the party goes on.
I hate to think of it coming to an end. My plan is to soak up every minute of this visit and spoil these sweet, lil punkins, I mean, melons, as much as I can while we are all together.

100 mushies, but more to go

drawing, mushrooms

By Karla Nathan / July 11, 2024

I might have made a couple mushrooms. And the best part was playing with them afterward and arranging them on the shelves.

My goal was to have at least 100 completed, and there were already about 20 set up at my booth in Good Juju.

It took a few weeks of off and on crafting, because I felt like I wasn’t getting very many full days in the studio.

My friends meet weekly for an afternoon mosaic group, which is an ideal time to chat with buddies and work on small projects like these.

I often have other commitments on the Fridays the group gathers, so I got maybe 3 play dates to bring schroomies to there.

Then I was able to scoop out a few days of studio time.

Once I can set aside big chunks of a day, a lot can happen, quickly!

Zap, 80 little mushrooms in a variety of colors, done and ready to go.

I even had time to play around with some new techniques for the gills.

At this point, this style takes a bit longer for me, so I didn’t create many this way. I needed to get my goal met for a couple of orders. Once I have done a few of these honey comb gills, I think I’ll get quicker at it and can make more this way.

I will be sitting down to craft another 25-30 or so, because out of the collection I have finished, quite a few sold already and I’m saving the Poison Toadstools (black or orange, some purple or acid green) for my own Halloween display. Apparently, I did not set my goal high enough, but the order of 60 isn’t due til September, so I can look forward to more fun mushie days in the studio.

Thank you for the good, Good Juju weekend

Good JuJu

By Karla Nathan / July 8, 2024

Holidays and summertime both can be iffy in retail. So I wanted to shout out a big thanks to all the shoppers who visited us in the Old West Bottoms of KC to shop in Good Juju over the 4th of July weekend.

Great weather, great people, great weekend!

Big thank yous,

First Friday Weekend at Good Juju in the Old West Bottoms gets an Old West Theme in my Booth

antiques/junking, Good JuJu, paintings

By Karla Nathan / July 5, 2024

A few weeks back, I found a boxful of these floats. After keeping a bowlful for myself, I tagged the rest to take into our July First Friday Weekend. That is today!

If you are done with leftover potato salad and your fireworks have all been set off, you should celebrate the remaining part of your holiday weekend by coming in to see us at Juju.

My red, white, and blue is packed away, but I can still wish you a happy 4th.

Well, I need to get to work, I’ll leave you with photos of the space.

In Beth’s Booth at Good Juju

antiques/junking, Good JuJu

By Karla Nathan / July 2, 2024

Beth was feeling under the weather when we were setting up our booths, so I suggested that I finish the bit she had left to do.

It wasn’t a big job, she was mostly done.

All of her furniture was in place, I just got to play with her bags of goodies that needed setting out.

She had some interesting pieces, I like this KC memorabilia.

As much as I enjoy arranging my own wares, it’s even more fun when someone lets me play with theirs. Especially when the bags are filled with such nice things.

An appreciated gift

antiques/junking, Good JuJu, jewelry

By Karla Nathan / June 29, 2024

I went to the nice shop where I had my fancy violin appraised to see if they sold unrepairable instruments to use in craft projects. They said no, but they’d give me some when they got them! In the meantime, they had a few bits and pieces.

With some hooks added to the back of the half violin they gifted me, I could use it as a necklace display.

The necks add some class to the shelf too.

Here is the overall display, without the lights turned on. When lit, this baby glows. I’m so glad I bought it.

Other things I bought that I’ve been especially happy with? Silver and stone rings from the Gem Show. So much so, that I was going to pick up a generous amount of them at the June wholesale event. But durn, it was cancelled. Well, I looked up my invoices and got ahold of the guys I bought from then ordered a few over the phone. I also tried wholesale lots direct from India, it will take a while for those to arrive.

Maybe in time for First Friday weekend in August?

Our mall allows a mix of goods. Vintage, handmade, market. I don’t really deal in market items, but I do like to have brand new jewelry to sell. But only good stuff, real silver, genuine stones, not a bunch of cheap costume stuff. But still affordable.

I also appreciate being able to offer my handmade pieces. For those, I have similar rules for myself, only “good stuff” in the materials, silver, stones, and vintage bits.

Previously, I displayed them on separate levels of the same unit as I had my old jewelry sat up. But now that I have TWO!! delightful, LED shelving units, I can have vintage on one side of the entry, hand crafted/newer items on the other.

It makes sense because each attracts a different shopper. This way, the browsers have space to linger over what they want to see.

Both the left and right get the vintagey treatment, though. I don’t want a sleek, modern, jewelry store look at all. I try to fill the shelves with display items that are unique or old.

Seems like I am continually looking for a more enticing way to show off my goods. But that is what makes having a booth fun, I get to play with all the stuff. If I was simply plopping it down til it sold, then replacing it with more inventory, this wouldn’t be an enjoyable activity for me.

Finding one little treasure is enough to inspire a whole redo built around it, and that sure does bring me joy.

A kinda vacay

Food and Drink

By Karla Nathan / June 26, 2024

Rich is doing short time job in Lincoln, NE and I took a quick trip up to visit over the weekend. Since he’s been gone, I’ve not been cooking much. So when he wined and dined me in the restaurant of the club, it was quite a treat.

I felt very spoiled with the delicious food.

And it was a fun getaway with my guy. Although, I guess it wasn’t a getaway for him… I felt like I was on vacation, but he works there.

We stayed in his apartment by the golf course, but I kept calling it a hotel. I spent some time at the mini water park, worked on a pile of velvet mushrooms that are in progress, and took the dogs on lots of walks.

On our walks, I spied a couple of hearts.

You never know what you’ll find while on a walk. When I got back to the cottage, there was a bunny making itself at home in my planter.

My empty planter.

I think he had a snack too.
Well, I hope he enjoyed his meal as much as I did my delectable ones at the club.

A gilded afternoon

friends

By Karla Nathan / June 22, 2024

Days off seem to be far between for me, but this one made up for a lot of missed ones.

I spent an afternoon being spoiled.

First, a luxurious lunch with friends.

Then cake with champagne in gilded surroundings that were filled with remarkable collections of vintage beauty.

So much magnificence to see that I could’ve used up an entire iCloud storage allotment on my phone with photos.

Every inch was filled with something even more elegant than the space next to it.

And then, there was more.

And more.

Each displayed with artistic genius.

And with the thoughtful eye of an experienced collector.

All set out with a true love of special things.

Thank you, Marilyn, for your generosity and hospitality. Thank you, Melissa for the lovely luncheon, and to the whole group for a delightful day of laughter and fun.

Sugarwings is good at making a day special

family, Ryan, Sugarwings

By Karla Nathan / June 18, 2024

Sugarwings is spending the first half of the summer in NC. Before leaving, we add some extra nice days together.

On the anniversary of Ryan’s death that sweet Grandfairy offered to help cook dinner (including this Jack Skellington pie, wow!), then wanted to watch a zombie show with me, like Ryan and I used to do.

To go along with the meal we were making together, I ordered an onion blossom at Texas Roadhouse. We had one together on Ry’s last birthday, and he had decided that we should make a tradition of it.

Rich doesn’t want to make the day we lost our boy a day we mark, he wants to focus on birthdays instead. Which of course, I sure get, but no matter what, May 24th is a day we cannot gloss over. The date haunts us all week, even when we say we will go about our business and plan other things.

So this year, I decided I was going to honor Ryan with some of his favorite foods and shows. Sugarwings was there for me and every bit as sweet as that artistic pie.

When I picked up the crunchy onion, country music was playing on the outdoor speakers at the restaurant. Then, as I walked to the car, my boy’s lifelong, favorite song, Footloose, began to play. At that moment I looked down to see this heart rock, standing out from the other stones in the flowerbeds.

I was so glad I’d made plans with our Grandfairy to celebrate him that day. And grateful for the kid by my side while we honored him.

We also had some crafting days, I made some coffee filter roses. Not because it was one of the many jobs I need to get done, but because it sounded pretty.

Sugarwings worked with polymer clay and made blueberries for me. It’s hard to tell which of these is the real one the others were modeled upon, isn’t it?

We also saw a movie, and wore matching jammies to it so we’d be cozy.

Another day, we took the dogs to the park and saw this heart shining through the dappled shadows made by the trees.

I am missing this kiddo who enjoys small adventures with me. But I have even more reason to look forward to their return. There is a shot that Dewdrop will be tagging along to spend some time here in Kansas for July.

I think I see a few more adventures coming up in the second half of the summer.

Author name: Karla Nathan