Some goodies for my stash...

Happy Thursday! I hope you're doing well and enjoying your day. We had some windy and rainy weather over night, along with a tornado watch, but luckily it passed over and its pretty nice now, though getting cold.

Yesterday morning it was pretty nice out so I took a drive to SuzAnna's to spend the gift certificate that my husband gave me for Christmas. Needless to say, it was not difficult to put it to good use! The largest purchase was a wonderful shabby white primitive bench that found its way to the downstairs guest room. Its being used as a plant stand right now, since that room is one of the two spots in the house that gets really good light. I will share that piece with you in a later post. Following are some pics of the treasures that I came home with.

Some chippy architectural salvage (the

one in the back is curved, so consider

the possibilities), and

a burlap Valentine's banner...



I love the silver glitter...



An old plate with a ship, shells, old map

and old lettering. I think that this will look

good on the black hutch over our fireplace...

A chippy old iron base, and some

weathered drawer pulls...



An old lace-edged hanky, which I will use on

my grandmother's page in my dad's family book

(she used to crochet edging onto hankies),

along withsome old millinery...

 

Old pearl buttons and velvet ribbon...

This week, I also won these baby shoes on eBay, and wanted to share them with you. I love the little scalloped tops and the very soft leather. The shoes also came with...

...this old white baby's dress hanger. Such a find!!

Well, that's all for now. Thanks for coming by!

The pets we love...

Good morning friends! I hope that you are all well. This week I'm thinking about pets, and the joy they bring to all of us that have them. I,m also thinking about how much we worry about them when they are not up to par.

Do you ever have a week that just goes badly? Among other things in the past week, and in addition to the drama around dead car batteries and my toothache that comes and goes, we also had to take our little lady, Rosie, to the Vet for oral surgery the other day. (I thought about asking the Vet if we could get a cut rate if I let her deal with my tooth as well, but their cages are not big enough for me to be held in.) She is doing OK, but now our little guy, Ollie, is kind of lethargic. He had also spent some time at the Vet this week having had his annual exam, so I am hoping that his quiet mood is only because of that. These cats do not like being taken out of their home environment, kind of like me (sometimes, anyway).

Rosie...

Ollie...

Of course, the fun part about the dead car battery was that on the way home from taking Rosie in for the surgery, we stopped in at the grocery store to pick up a few things, and when we got out, the battery was dead. We ended up having Bob's sister and brother-in-law come and jump-start the car, and then made lemonade out of lemons by all going back to our house and immediately devouring half of the cinnamon-apple pie that I had just bought. And, I guess that looking on the bright side of things, the battery could have died next month while we were using that vehicle as our tow car behind the motor home on our trip to Florida. Needless to say, we are now the proud owners of a new battery in that car!

Well, that being said, I hope this post finds you and your pets happy and healthy, and having a great week so far!

Unstaged and unedited...

Good morning! Where have I been the last few days? Well...up in my studio working on the family book for my dad. Here are a few photos, neither staged nor edited, of some of the pages roughly assembled so far, along with the mess on the work table itself. Creation is never neat, is it?

Hats off to those of you who are avid scrapbookers! It certainly takes a lot of time to coordinate and assemble papers and doo-dads into a coherent page, not to mention all the planning of what will go on each page to begin with. There are only 20 pages in the little book that I am using, so that became a huge consideration. Also, trying to keep some logical presentation of the progression of this family has taken some thought. In any case, its been fun working with these old family photos and trying to match papers and ephemera with the era in which the photos were taken. I do not dare glue the pages into the book until I have prepared the captions for each and am satisfied that there will be no further changes.

I will share the completed version in a future post. Hopefully not too much
into the future!!

Have a great day.

What I've been up to this week...

Good morning friends. I hope that your weekend is getting off to a good start. As for me, its supposed to warm up here next week, so I am going to spend the weekend working on something that I will be giving my dad at his birthday party in March.

Yesterday I went through all of the old pictures that I had and made a bunch of copies. I then pulled out a bunch of things that I have been "hoarding" for quite some time now. As it turned out, I really don't need to buy anything, since I want to make something that is vintage and suitable for someone who is turning 90. Of course, I will be adding treasures as I move along.

Here is a glimpse of some of the stuff I will be using, all laid out on the guest bed in my studio...

Now all I have to do is put it all together. More to come!



Along comes a blog, and something to share...

Greetings from The Perch, and a very cold one at that!! It was 17 degrees outside this morning, and that's very cold for NC. I hope that if you live in a "real" winter climate you are not much worse off than we are. We are actually supposed to get a little snow again today. :~(

I have been reading blogs for about five years now. I knew that some day I would want to have one myself, so about a year ago I started to pay more attention to what kind of blog I would want to "call my own". I knew that it would try to convey a positive tone and hopefully not have any "uppity" airs about it. I never desired to make political or religious statements, as we all have our own views on both of those subjects, and I did not want to speak of controversial matters. I wanted to keep it simple and light, and I hope I come across that way. Likewise, I tend to gravitate to other blogs that incorporate a vintage feel for home, art, and everything else. But every once in a while, along comes a blog that is so special that you want to go back and read every post written since the blogger started posting. Even if that blog is very different from yours, and perhaps because it is.

When I receive a comment on this blog, I make it a point to see where it came from, and if that person has a blog of their own, I try to spend some time reading it. Recently, a wonderful introduction came to me from a comment placed by Sherry Smyth on one of my posts. While most bloggers appeal to their audience through the use of more pictures than words, Sherry writes beautiful narratives that always have something special to say, and usually uses just one beautiful photo to support the subject of the day. She is not afraid to share how she feels about subjects that are important to her, and also provides some of the most incredible videos. Sherry also sees such beauty in everyday things. Please take some time to read a few of her posts, and I guarantee that you will be richer for having done it. Especially read today's ("One More Day"), and be sure to view the video. Sherry is a beautiful writer, and the only question I have is: "Sherry, when are you going to write a novel for us?" You can find her blog here.
Well, not being Sherry, I did not have a beautiful photo to post today, so in keeping with the temperature outside, here are a couple of scanned old photos for you to play with.

Stay warm!!

My latest vintage photo craze...

Good morning to you!

If you like to collect old photos, what kinds do you collect? I must confess that I have always loved cabinet cards the best, especially those of young children. If you're anything like me, you probably have scads of them by now. So lately, I have started to collect pictures around subjects in themes, always looking for some new art inspiration. Though I still buy old cabinet photos, I have also been buying some CDV's (which are actually older than the cabinet cards and a little smaller), RPPCs (real photo postcards), as well photos taken in the 20's and 30's. I love to see the changes in fashions over the years, as well as the differences in what the photographers used as props and backgrounds.

Here are some that have recently made their way into my collection, shown with some vintage postcards that I have also formed a fondness for...

For some reason, I have been drawn to children

in goat carts...



And people sitting on moons...



And people sharing my love of lakes.

In cabins...

and in boats...

And what about children in photographers' studios?

I think that of all the photos that I own,

these three are amongst my favorites...

And I can't forget to mention the beach,

even if these were all taken in a studio...

And how about some trade cards to match?

I'm also working on collecting around some other themes. More on that later.

OK, Sue. FOCUS!!



Well, I finally finished...

Hello friends! Well, I finally finished the invitations to my dad's party. I rushed this morning to address the envelopes thinking I would take them to the Post Office in case they needed extra postage, and OOPS! its a holiday, so I guess I will take them tomorrow. Sorry, but I had to hide the portions of the card that showed my dad's last name, our address and that of my daughter, which is where the party will be held. I managed to find some cards at Michael's made out of corrugated cardboard with matching envelopes. I kept them simple, only adding a picture (do you recognize it from my earlier post?) and some black and tan checked ribbon to the front. I also created a little label for the back of the card. The stippled and stamped tags will be used for the guests to write down memories of times spent with Dad. They will be presented to him at the party. The inside part was the hardest as playing with Word on the computer is not my idea of fun (had to do too much of it when I worked). Give me good old paper, scissors, and glue any day of the week!

Here is what the invitations look like...

Have a great evening!

Some sweet photos to share...

Good morning friends!

Since I will be busy for most of today completing the invitations to my dad's party, I thought I would take a few minutes to share some recent photos that I purchased. These little kids are definitely "going places".  Enlarge and print out as you wish.

I love to buy pictures that have writing on the back, as it helps me to know the story of the lives of the folks in the pictures. There was nothing written on the back of the first photo that tells me anything about that little girl. But sadly, the little guy on the trike in the second photo was named JD Bryan, and in a different handwriting below his name, someone had written in "My brother, died at age 10". I'm not sure who added the green color. The boy in the third photo (yes, ringlets and all) was named Charles Frantz.

Here is another one for you. I don't think the kid with the fish in this photo will mind (yes, he is still alive, but I am sure copyright would not be an issue)...

His name is Ken. He is my dad!!