I just had to update you on the progress of our raised garden area in the backyard!!!
Earlier I shared with you my happy happy hubby tilling it up and amending the soil with all kinds of wonderful things!
We are already starting to harvest zucchini and it won't be long we will be eating a fresh mess of green beans and tomatoes too! The zucchini plants are bigger than I have ever seen them and the veggies seem to grow big over night.

This is an amazing old bench the we actually rescued from someones junk pile. This is just as we found it with it's wonderful patina and chippy old paint. When i saw it on the junk heap I told Jay I just HAVE to have that for our yard....so I just coated it with layers and layers of clear spray paint to prevent further damage and prevent deeper rusting. I cannot imagine throwing this awesome treasure in the dump!!!!

This is our beautiful and quite treasured foxglove. We have tried for 3 years to plant and grow this amazing flower!!! Finally this year we must have picked just the right spot for it because it did not take it long to shoot up this wonderful bloom!!!! I am so so excited to have this in my yard!!!!! I love it because in Oregon where we moved from 6 years ago, it grows wild along side the road and in the forests there on the way to the Oregon Coast!!!
It is a biennial..which I am not quite sure what that means...if any of you know what biennial means could you please send me a note to jraeburk@gmail.com or just leave me a blog comment!!! Thanks so much!!! Hope you all have a very blessed day!!!!!

Ohhhhhhh isn't she just precious!!! This is my new baby girl "Miss Molly"....or Good Golly Miss Molly & Molly Girl for short.
She is a new addition to our home and I could not be more excited!!!! She weighs all of 2 lbs and is just a couple days over 6 weeks old.
I have not had a puppy since I was a little girl and I am just so so madly in love with Little Miss Molly Girl.
She is 1/2 Cavalier King Charles Spaniel and 1/2 Chihuahua. What we could not believe is that they people we got her from had already mainly had her potty trained....she whines when she needs to go potty and we take her outside into the grass....She is so smart!!! We got her this little HOT PINK sofa styled doggy bed and a little fat mouse stuffed toy.
You should see her when she gets ahold of it and shakes it around teeth like she is really killing something...then she will drag it around the house all puffed up like she is so so proud of her conquer!!! It is just precious and she will be a wonderful part of our family for years to come!!!!

Special Order Custom Designed Pillows!!!!

This is a custom ordered set of pillows that I graphically designed using a vintage altered art image and the names of my customers 2 sons.

Below are the ones I designed for her sweet little baby girls nursery. These are so much fun for me to do and I would just love to create one for you!!!

The price of these pillows that are fairly large pillows is $25.00 each with $8.50 S& H for one pillow, and the shipping will be $10.95 for 2 pillows.

To custom order pillows in your color choice ( I choose the actual fabrics unless you send me some you already have) just email me with a description of what you would like, whether it be a name of a loved one or some other saying like "home sweet home", your color choice, date you need it completed by....etc.

These precious one of a kind pillows are the perfect touch to any shabby cottage, Victorian or Romantic style decor... and they make a perfect personal gift for birthdays, holidays, anniversaries or any special occasion.

A New Type of Special Order I am doing now!!!

Here is a new type of special orders I have been doing lately. I had a request from a very sweet lady to create pillows for her two beautiful baby girls. They have the prettiest names, and they are so so sweet and just precious!
I very much enjoyed designing the graphics and them making these special pillows. Their Mother liked them so much that she wanted me then to create two more pillows for her boys.
These were fairly large pillows and I would love to create more of them for anyone who would like to have a special personalized pillow for anyone special in their lives. The price for these custom graphics pillows made with gorgeous fabrics in your color choices, and of course beautiful vintage chenilles is $25 each with $8.50 Priority Mail Shipping.
To order your pillow simply email me at jraeburk@gmail.com, or leave a blog comment for me.

Happy Happy Gardening!!!!!

This is my happy happy hubby Jay with his bright shiny new garden spreader and brand spanking new rototiller!!! He is obviously in his element prepping our raised garden area that we put in a couple of years ago just for our garden every year.
As I mentioned in my previous blog, last year I did a salsa garden and canned lots of homemade salsa.. my own special recipe!!! Mmmmmmm YUMMY!!! This year we decided on lots of neat yummy veggies to freeze and can and of course eat as much of it fresh as we can. We are planting corn, big and cherry tomatoes, green beans, turnips, carrots, acron and zucchini squashes, sweet banana & green bell peppers, cabbage and broccoli. I can hardly wait to try all the fresh cooked delights I will create in the kitchen with these wonderful home grown yummies!!!
This is definitely a real treat for me because the most I had ever grown myself as an adult is tomatoes. My hubby has taught me so much about gardening, and it is the biggest joy to watch him at work...you can see by the pics he has fun with it all!!!
He gets this gleam in his eyes and a child like enthusiasm ... it is a real kick to watch him!!! This is the first home he has ever owned, so he is so happy to have his own ground to plant whatever he wants in, and an old house that we are slowly fixing up to be just the way we want it....we both just love old vintage things, and this old house was built in the 1940's so we are having a ball with redoing it and still keeping the integrity of the era it was built in.

Thank Goodness Spring Is Here!!! HURRAY!!!!!

This is an amazing site we get to see while standing at our kitchen sink.... just across the road at our neighbors place. Last year I could not resist but to go get pictures of this lovely wisteria. It always has me in awe each and every year....the beauty of it and each intricate little flower on each draping group just overwhelms my senses. The color is so wonderfully beautiful fading from dark purples into lighter lavenders...it is just breathtaking.
This particular plant seems that it has been growing here for at least 30 years..It is a massive plant....God's beautiful creations never cease to amaze me...can you imagine the beauty awaiting us in heaven???
My sweet hubby and I love this wisteria so much that we just had to have some. So last year we bought a gorgeous antique arbor that has a wonderful patina to the old painted iron with rusty red bleeding thru the antique chippy white paint. We placed it just at the entrance of our raised garden spot where we grow our veggies every year.
I was told it may take a few years before the wisteria would bloom...but God has blessed us this year with 5 or 6 blooms coming out on it....I will get a picture of it when it has bloomed and share it with my blog friends.

A Few Examples of J. Rae's Shabby Cottage Designs Special Order Pillows

This is just a small sampling of the many special orders I have done for pillows over the last year. I have a lot of prints available from fantastic Victorian era artists such as Maud Humphrey, Harrison Fisher, Bessie Pease Gutmann, and Kewpie artist 'O'Neill.
I will be adding more prints to the right side to choose from. I even have prints available if you are decorating a little boys room and want more masculine style prints. The pillows range in price from $18.50 to $28.50 depending on the embellishments you would like added to them. I will add a few more of the choices to the right bottom of this page soon!!!

My Latest Creation: Shabby Cottage Hanging Heart Sachet Pillow

This is my latest creation. I made a long heart shaped pillow from Rachel Ashwell's Simply Shabby Chic line, and added a battenberg lace heart shaped doily to the center. I used adorable little colorized vintage prints of 2 little girls and framed then in varying pink satin ribbon roses and sparkling pink rhinestones.






I used a vintage rhinestone brooch in pinks and clear sparkling stones at the top center of this gorgeous sachet.

This sweet fragrant Shabby Cottage treasure is one of a kind and available on ebaY. I have many more treasures there as well. Simply go to ebaY & in advanced search go to "specific sellers" click on that and type in jaysgirl1964 and it will bring up all the items I have up for auction,
or click on the link to the right that says my ebaY items











I also used lots of rhinestones, pearly glass beads and buttons to embellish this Lavender Vanilla scented sachet pillow. I trimmed it in an awesome antique hand crocheted lace that is nearly 100 years old. I found this amazing lace in an antique store in Kennett Missouri.

Just HAVE To Share This With You From All Bliss Be Thine

I found this stunning creation when I was looking at some other blogs. I could not resist sharing it with you!!! This is one of the most gorgeous works of art I have ever seen. Isn't she just amazing?

The blog is called All Bliss Be Thine, and I have included a link to this blog at the right. Beautiful things there! Go and Enjoy!!! If you click on the images you can get a larger view!!!

New Stacking Sachet Sets With 3 Mini Pillowettes

I just love love love these stacking sachet sets. They turn out so pretty every time. They are fun to make too! This is what they look like all stacked up and tied with a ribbon.
They are filled with high quality polyester filling and REAL French lavender buds that I further enhance with 100% PURE essential oils. This set had lavender and vanilla essentials added to it for a wonderful fragrance.





This is what they look like separately when you untie the ribbon. I give each little mini pillowette it's own personality.
They measure 3", 4", & 5" in size.
They look lovely displayed together in the stack and tied with a ribbon, or separate them and put them in a pretty bowl or basket. They are small enough that you can put them just about anywhere for just the perfect shabby cottage touch!