Natural Selections

Emma over at The Marion House blog has a new feature where she's highlighting some of her treasured possessions.  This week she talked about her penchant for picking up rocks and shells and the like when she takes walks.  Since I've been short on time for posting the last few weeks, I thought that I'd show a couple of my own natural collections that are currently adorning my house.

Moss picked up in the mountains and kept alive under a makeshift terrarium, bleached out crawdad claw from the ditch, owl feather (I think) and two pieces of wood with circular woodpecker holes.

Set of rocks with water holes that form a mask.  Found up near Abiquiu on one of our annual Thanksgiving hikes.

Cow vertebrae.  Found in the Jemez on this trip.

(Ugh, that's a really great view of my floors which need refinishing like nobody's business.  They always look dirty, no matter if I just mopped them or not.  So frustrating!)

How about you?  What are your favorite souvenirs from nature?

Little Things

Just some little things from around the house on a Sunday morning.  I've had these brown bear salt and pepper shakers for years, but this christmas I actually wanted to use them for the first time.  I bought them at an estate sale, I guess back when I lived in St. Paul since they are souvenirs from the Gunflint Trail, which runs from the shore of Lake Superior up into the Boundary Waters Wilderness Area in northern Minnesota.  Now faded and pretty much invisible in the photo below, unless you know it's there, someone wrote Aug '65 on each the bear's feet.  I lived in MN for six years, three each before and after college, and there were great estate sales there.  Estate sales in Albuquerque often suck.  Things are ridiculously overpriced and often not very nice to begin with.  While my style has changed a lot since those years in MN, some of the pieces, like these,  still appeal to me.  

 Yesterday I finally got around to melting the nubs of old candles out of their holders, one of those tedious chores that I always put off.  I ended up with enough wax to re-pour a new candle into this marmalade jar.  Its a cute little kitchen candle now.

In the process the tip of my index finger got coated in wax and I was able to remove it intact, leaving behind a little wax mold.  Its a little weird, but also cool.  Again, I like it.

Display idea

I really liked this vignette seen on the inside front cover of the latest Flor catalog, though they cropped the image for the web.  Its better in the catalog because you can see the upper row of dolls, but I don't have a scanner, so unless you have the catalog you'll have to take my word for it. I like idea of hanging a group of items so closely like that, so that their color and texture really make a combined impact.  I do not collect dolls, or much of anything, but I'm filing this away as an interesting display technique.