Hug Your Mom

Before I left work on Friday my boss came by. I looked up from my work to see her standing at the door of my office. 

"Enjoy your Mother's Day with your Mom", she told me. 

I began to respond with the standard response but inside thinking, well it's Mother's Day for me too and what I really want to do is just lounge around and I don't want to have to drive across town and spend my day hanging out with my Mom talking about all the same stuff we always talk about.  After all I have a busy weekend I have to put up the new booth and I have stuff to ship and listings and it's only two days and it's never enough and......then I remembered. 

My boss lost her Mom last year....and I realized what she was really saying....and then I felt ashamed. This was her first Mother's Day without her Mother. I bit back my tears and nodded and told her "yes, I will".  

When I got to my car I burst into tears.  I knew my boss would give anything to be able to spend Mother's Day with her Mom, to hug her, to hear her voice, to laugh with her, even to talk about the sames things one more time.  I realized how much my Mom meant to me and how much she has always done for me and how sad and lost I would feel if she wasn't there on Mother's Day. 

Suddenly the drive across town didn't seem so far and everything I needed to do was quite unimportant. I couldn't think of anything I needed to do that was more important than giving my Mom a big hug and telling her "I love you". 

A New Vintage Booth

I'm very excited to talk about my new vintage booth at a local antique mall. A friend of mine from work and I went in together on renting a booth and today we got it all set up.  I remembered to take my camera because I wanted to take pics but what I didn't remember was to use the flash. duh.... So the pics didn't turn out very well.  I guess the back wall of a mall doesn't let in much sunlight.  

Apologies for the terrible picture. I'm so excited about the booth I wanted to show it off.  There's a lot of work but I think it's a good start. 

As much as I enjoy my Etsy store and Ebay selling it's a lot of fun to work on a booth because I get to decorate and arrange things and I guess play around and show off my treasures a bit more than I do online. We still have a lot of work to do. We just kind of threw things in there to get started but I have a week off coming up and I plan to get it all in order then. 

The Pete Cat

So I'd planned to go to another auction tonight but I'm really tired today.  I didn't sleep well last night and it's all Pete's fault.  Last night when it was time to go to bed, the Pepper cat was in his favorite sleeping place in my office chair.  So instead of sleeping he wandered around and knocked things over and made noises and generally made a pest of himself.  When he finally settled down to sleep it was in the very middle of my queen size bed. It's amazing how a little cat can take up so much room on a queen size bed. So after spending the other half of the night kinda sidewaysish in the bed I woke up all stiff and cranky and not at all interested in the auction.

Pete he doesn't know what I'm talking about. He's a perfect angel and he has the picture to prove it.

Introducing Ella!

I've never been totally sold on my banner image for my Etsy shop OR my blog, but when I got started things were moving so fast I didn't have time to work on it.  I love the pic because it's kind of weird, but it seems a little sleepy and strange sooo... I started looking around for a better image and reading and digging and trying to figure out what kind of image would best suit my somewhat eclectic and not always cohesive style. It was quite a struggle and I can't say it was going well at all. I just couldn't seem to settle on anything. 

This is Ella after a lot of clean up.

Anyway, to make the story a little shorter because that part of it is not really that interesting.... I was sorting through some vintage books and papers when I was working on my ephemera give away and I came across an image of Ella and I knew right then she was going to be my new spokesperson. She had a perfect mixture of childlike glee with a little sass thrown in and a lovely art nouveau/deco charm.  Perfect!

This going to be my Etsy banner

It was a lot of work because the illustration was old and cheaply printed to begin with, but I think Ella cleans up nicely.  The illustration was black and white so I added a little color, simplified it a bit and voila! Ella is ready for her big debut.

Ad box

I'd love to get some feedback to make sure I'm on the right track before I spend the rest of the day working her into my marketing materials, blog banner etc... Here's what I have so far. Please let me know what you think.

My Auction Hangover!

Hello, my name is Elise and I am an Auction Addict!!! O my I get such a crazy ridiculous rush from bidding.  I guess some people need skydiving to get their heart pumping, all I need is to hold up that little card with my number on it.  Boom, boom, boom I feel my heart just thudding in my chest, my eyes are wide. My vision blurs at the edges. I feel a little woozy.  Oh and that's just when the card goes up, if I win?? Well forget it, I'm gone! I can't even hear the next bid, all the voices in the room are muffled and sound like they are far, far away, my heart pounds I hear a roaring rushing in my ears and a warm flush creeps up my neck and into my ears. My head feels all warm and kind of swirly....and ...and (come back Elise!)   And that was over a box of magazines!

The box had 10 issues of Life magazine from the 40's and 50's. I'm a sucker for old magazines.

One of these days I'm going to buy something really amazing and I better have paramedics standing by! 

This is my favorite lot I bought. It's a collection of vintage stick pins and a few other misc. pieces of vintage jewelry.

So with all that adrenaline surging and the excitement and the thrill of the treasure hunt and the fact that the cheap stuff doesn't sell until the end (10:30-11:00PMish) I don't usually get home until after midnight and THEN I'm so hyper and pumped up and I have to look through my boxes and bags and bins and see what I got and look stuff up and ...... well I think you get the picture.  I'm bouncing off the walls when I get home so sleep is completely out of the question and then sometimes 2-3 hours later I finally crash and then I wake up the next morning exhausted.  I mean wiped out. I feel like I've been hit by a truck and then backed over and run over again!  I need my sleep I'm too old for this crazy party lifestyle!  

I call this a bonus. I didn't even notice it in the box I bid on.

These are what I was bidding on.  All of these are from the 1960's. The astronaut Snoopy was made to commemorate the 1969 moonwalk!

So a little of the hair of the dog that bit me...here's a few pictures of my newest treasures.

Aunt Martha's Workbasket

Sales have been slow, so shopping has been slow, but despite that I still managed to squeeze in a few estate sales and even a visit to the McKinney Trade Days! Now that was fun. I went with a couple of friends on a nice sunny spring day and had a blast sifting through booth after booth stuffed full of vintage and antique goodies.

I picked up a collection of vintage Aunt Martha's iron on transfers and I'm excited to share them, but even more excited to share what I learned about Aunt Martha's and the company's publication, The Workbasket.  I am always interested in vintage home crafts because of course, I'm a crafter, so I feel an affinity with those women of yesterday, also sharing their creativity and in the process attempting to make a little extra cash for their families.  

Aunt Martha's earliest transfers were for quilt blocks. 

Later she added the familiar images we find on vintage tea towels, pillow cases and more.

After doing a little digging I found out that "Aunt Martha" aka Clara Tillotson, was a real entrepreneur and played a big part in making home crafting what it is today! Not only did she create a very large line of popular iron on transfers that are still in production 70 years later, but she also started The Workbasket Magazine.

This is a monthly feature for women to share their ideas for crafts and money making ideas.

Just a few weeks prior to my transfer purchase I had picked up a couple of 1950's copies of the Workbasket. They're full of lovely needlework projects, but what really intrigued me was the focus on crafts that could made and sold to make money.  It's not  a new phenomenon for homemakers to search for ways to bring in a little extra cash,but the Depression made this a much wider phenomenon. I guess this was Clara Tillotson's way to spread the entreprenurial spirit to other women and help them to find a little independence and pride in their accomplishments.  

These are cute! I might have to try this.

Aren't these adorable?

Of course women's lives have changed a lot since the 1930's, every bit as much as our crafts.  But what hasn't changed is our need to express creativity and our desire to improve our families lives. Certainly with the recession we face today we can all relate to the struggles of our foremothers. So the next time you browse the glossy pages of Belle Armoire or Threads or Bead and Button, remember it all started with the humble Workbasket and one hard working woman named Clara Tillotson. 

The Indelible Artie Shaw

It all started out innocently enough. I just wanted to add some background music for my blog that would help set the stage for the vintage theme of my blog and Etsy store.  In searching for terrific music for my blog I found some TERRIFIC music.  I am now hopelessly hooked on rediscovering the music of the 1930's and 1940's.  

One of my favorite discoveries is the music of Artie Shaw.

Is this man a ROCK STAR or what!!

Artie Shaw was a band leader in the swing era.  His first big break was "Interlude in B-flat" for the clarinet.  Now I know what you are thinking, when I was growing up in the 1970's, the clarinet was NOT cool.  No self respecting rock and roll band had a clarinet player. The clarinet was an instrument for band nerds (I can say that, I was a band nerd) and it made a horrendous skwawking noise when played badly (which was often in the High School band).   Drums were cool.  Saxaphones were cool. Trombones were cool.  Clarinets were not cool. 

Had I been born 50 years earlier and seen and heard Artie Shaw play the clarinet I would have had a different opinion.  Artie made the clarinet cooler than when cool went to Cool Town! 

Did I mention Artie was cool?  See for yourself.

To hear the video without the blog music interfering, just click the pause button (the one that looks like two bars) on the music player to the left.  It's pink, you can't miss it!

Big Dump, Little Dump

I guess I started rescuing trash at an early age. When I was six years old my parents lived in a mobile home park. This was in the days when mobile home parks were still OK places to be.  It was safe. It was full of kids. It was heaven!  

There were a couple of places nearby where people used to dump their trash.  There was one place that was very big with a lot of trash so we called it "The Big Dump"  and another dump that was smaller, but closer by and we called it "The Little Dump"   (we were not very clever children)  These weren't the kinds of dumps with people watching because these were dumps that weren't supposed to be dumps in the first place.  They were secret dumps! Which made them even more exciting places for children to scavenge around in. 

Of course we weren't supposed to go there, it was dangerous and all.... but that didn't stop us.  It was one of my favorite places to go because I would always come home with treasures.  One day a group of use went all the way out to The Big Dump. I think some big kids went with us and it was very exciting.   We scouted around and looked for cool stuff to bring home and I really scored big! I found a beautiful statue.  It was a woman seated on a chair. It was made of porcelain (of course I didn't know that at the time) and it had flowers on it and it was painted and I just couldn't believe that someone would throw away this beautiful, perfectly good statue.  

I carried my treasure home beaming all the way. I was so excited to show my Mom what I got. I knew she would be so pleased to have this wonderful statue.  I skipped and walked and ran all the way home and when I got there I excitedly barged in the door "Mamma!  Look what I got!"  I beamed up at her proudly.  "I found this beautiful statue.  I can't believe someone threw it away." I held it up for her to see. "The only thing wrong with it, is the head is broken off!"  

Chicken Dance!

Last week at work the discussion turned to the Chicken Dance. I don't know why. It was one of those spontaneous things that, at the moment, amused us immensely. One of my co-workers decided to actually DO the chicken dance.  The highlight was watching him shake his tail feathers.  I should have known he would have mastered the chicken dance because at last years company Holiday party he entertained us all with the "Lawn Mower". He's a real mover. 

A couple of my younger co-workers didn't know what The Chicken Dance was so I looked it up on YouTube to show them what the young generation is missing. Now  I know why this CRAZY fad died out.  Although I have to admit, it might be one dance I could actually master.  Shake your beak, right????

A Light Dusting of Snow

So it's been a pretty crazy week here in Dallas with weather we don't see very often.  I've lived here a long time and we get ice storms most years but they usually pass quickly. Not so this time. After two days of missed work our office opened late yesterday only to be further stymied by a downed server that left us unable to work.  They closed the office early and told us to check before coming in tomorrow.

I spent the evening watching the news and felt encouraged when weather forecasters told us to expect "a light dusting of snow" in the early morning hours. I went to bed confident that I'd be going in the next day and hoping I could start to catch up.  

Instead I awoke to this..... 

This is the view from my front balcony. The turquoise van is a taxi that was stuck!

An hour later I found out my office was going to close again but I wanted to get some pictures. We just don't get snow very often and I wanted to see if it was really as bad as it looked.  It was.

These are my treacherous stairs. The only thing worse than these stairs are these stairs in the snow.  I fell in the snow last year and bounced down the last three steps.  Thank goodness for the ample padding on my rear.

From my back patio. Now this is lovely. I'm just glad I don't have to drive in it.

Add caption

 I'm so glad I don't have to drive in this. I guess I get another day to get all my vintage goodies sorted out and ready to put in the shop!

Tough Week

It's been a tough week. Januarys are always this way.  Things at work get busy and I have to talk to a lot of grouchy people and that makes me grouchy.  I don't like being grouchy. I kind of like to be cheerful and positive and to have a good attitude. It makes things easier. 

So, it wasn't an easy week.  I'm tired.

I came home and watched Judge Judy on DVR. I always like watching Judge Judy because she gets to say all the things to stupid people that I don't get to say.  "What, are you stupid or just playing stupid?"  "You're an idiot",  "There's something wrong with you!".  **sigh**  She has the best job in the world. 

So the favorite part of my week is the end when I get to go to estate sales and hunt for more treasures to put in my shop.  I got off work a little early today so I decided to stop at a sale on my way home. I had coffee with a friend from work and then stopped in at a sale I found online.  They called it a "hoarder" sale so I thought it would be terrific. 



The first room was a little bare, but that happens sometimes. It was 25% off so that meant it started on Thursday so I expected it to be a little picked over.  I headed out to the garage where I was greeted with piles and piles and piles and piles of clothes on tables.  So many clothes and lots of them still had tags! I couldn't believe all the clothes! I picked through it a little but they were all 2x and 3x and nothing vintagy. Bummer, I went back in the house.

A box of purses. OK, now we have lift off. I dug through it a little and there were some very nice purses, again many with tags still on them. I looked around to see how much they were but when I saw the sign my heart sank "PURSES IN THIS BOX $40" .  The purse I was looking at had a tag on it for $14.95.

Phooey!

I headed back to the bedrooms.  Mistake. I was greeted in one room by bins and bins and bins and bins of bras and underwear.  Yup, you got it, tags still on them.  HUGE granny panties.  Vanity Fair.  See there's just nothing that exciting about Vanity Fair just because it's Vanity Fair. Bras in a 42DDD! 

I looked around a little more and found some more purses for $20 each.  At least one had a tag for $17.95.  A table full of greeting cards, none of them older than a few years, a box of socks, a bunch of eyeglass holders, shoes, some really crummy jewelry and some other junk. 

So I decided to go to another sale.

I turned left onto Coit and headed toward the highway, but on the way I decided to take Hillcrest instead so I turned right.  Only I should have turned right on Coit so when I turned right on Hillcrest I ended up in Plano a really, really long way from where I intended to be.  So I decided to GPS it and when I put the address in my phone I realized it was the same sale I went to last week!  They had found some more stuff so they added on another weekend. 

Phooey!


So I figured out where I was and decided to take Preston over to the sale but since I live on Preston I had to pass my apartment and the closer I got the more I just wanted to go home.  So I did.

Some weeks are just tough and that's just the way it is.

A Different Kind of Vintage Yumminess-Loose Meat Sandwiches

Authentic Loose Meat Sandwich

My family and I used to travel to Wichita, Kansas periodically. Not that there was anything particularly exciting to see there, but that's where my family came from and we still had family there. I was quite young and don't remember a lot about Wichita, mainly I remember my Aunties house and all the interesting trinkets and the good food she cooked.  

One time we visited a local restaurant that served loose meat sandwiches. It was a curious sort of restaurant with a large bar that wrapped around the central cooking area.  It was kind of dark, and busy and bustling.  I was very young at the time, probably only 6 or 7 years old. I don't recall much of the experience except that I really liked the loose meat sandwich.  

I've thought of that visit from time to time over the years and wondered if the restaurant is still there but mainly I thought about that sandwich.....

So here I am years later in the internet age and I thought I'd see if I could find a recipe and sure enough a Google later and I was knee deep in loose meat options.  I found one that boasted to be "THE authentic" version, so that's the one I picked. 

And here's the recipe with a few (low fat) adaptations.  

I really hated to change a thing but the recipe called for a high fat ground beef and added lard or Crisco!!!  I guess that's proof it's a vintage recipe.  Sorry but my arteries can't take it.  

1 Lb. lean ground beef 

2 Tablespoons cooking oil

1 small onion diced finely

2 teaspoons of salt

1 Tablespoon Mustard

1 Tablespoon Vinegar

1 Tablespoon Sugar

1 Cup Water

Add oil to a pan and cook onions until tender and starting to caramelize.  Then add the salt and ground beef.  Brown the beef stirring it and breaking it up.  Cook until it's nice and brown and starts to crisp up a little.  Add the mustard, vinegar and sugar. Mix it up nicely and add water to just cover the meat.  Let it simmer until the water is gone.  

Serve it up on a toasted bun with mustard and pickles. YUM!! 

Hello, is This Thing On?

I guess it's just the way things work when starting a new blog, but sometimes it all seems so strange, to write to thin air as if there's really someone on the other side.  I am used to writing things, I filled many notebooks over the years with my ramblings but never expected an audience and so I never really worried about how it sounded or if it was worth writing or if anyone would be offended.  I think about all those things now and it's left me kind of stumped. 

So I put a lot of pictures up instead. 

I know there are at least a few people out there reading. I look at the stats on blogger and it tells me that some people have read my blogs (or at least looked at the pictures).  I don't know if they liked it or not. I don't know if they are coming back and reading more or if a single visit was enough.  

I was reading the forums on Etsy late, LATE last night, far past my bedtime but it was after all, New Years Eve, so ringing in the New Year online with my fellow Etsians seemed like the thing to do.  I've never been one for going out on New Years Eve.  Something about all that revelry kind of makes me tired.  

As I was saying, I was reading the forums and I read a thread about starting a blog and what people were writing and such and I added my own pathetic whine to the mix.  About how lost and unsure and completely stumped and perplexed I was about the whole blogging thing.  I guess it helped to write it because sometime after that I just decided "what the heck" I was just going to write like I used to write and if anyone reads it, that's great and if not, well I still enjoyed writing. 

That is, after all, the reason we write? The reason we create, draw, paint, sing, dance etc.... 

I don't need an audience for any of the other things I do, so why should writing be any different.  

I blog, therefore I am. 

An Illustrated Tale of Mom, Parker and Me

I went to an estate sale with my Mom today.  I like to invite her along at least once a month because she doesn't get out much.  Ever since she retired she stays at home more and more. I don't think it's good for her and I worry, but she's kind of stubborn. (she's a LOT stubborn).

Mom

So I called her yesterday and asked her if she wanted to go and she was so excited. It made me feel good that at least I can get her out of the house for a little while.  There are so many things I ask her to do that she won't do. I'm glad that estate sales seem to be one thing she enjoys.  

She never really buys anything.  Every now and then she'll buy an odd trinket or two, but mostly she just goes with me and looks around and we talk about the stuff we find and then she tries to pay for everything.  If I let her pay for everything then I have to buy lunch.  At least if I do it that way I don't feel like a heel. But if I pay for my stuff then I let her buy me lunch and I guess that's Ok. 

The last time we went to an estate sale together she bought a brass nutcracker. I'm not sure why she bought it, but she likes to buy brass things.  She ended up leaving it in my car and I brought it in and haven't ever given it to her. It's somewhere in my apartment.  

Nutcracker

We went to a nice sale today out in Parker Texas. It's not that far from where my parents live and it's close to Southfork Ranch, the TV home of J.R. Ewing.  When I was a teenager we used to drive around out in the country out in Parker and Murphy.  There wasn't much there but country roads.  There was an old church right at the bend in the road before it went across a bridge and we used to think it was haunted. I'm not sure why we thought that, but there was something kind of creepy about it.  We really used to scare ourselves half to death every time we drove by that church at night. 

Old Church (not scary)

The bridge was nice too. It went over a creek with tall trees growing along the bank and it was very pretty. Sometimes we'd stop the car and walk across the bridge and sit on the edge for a while and just look down at the creek.  It was kind of nice to have beautiful countryside so close by.  

I don't think the bridge is there any more. Or the church.  

Southfork Ranch

We drove out to Parker. There's still countryside, just not as much of it.  It was a fun sale.  The house was packed with stuff and it was all disorganized and I had to dig through closets and boxes and step over things and my Mom got tired pretty early on and spent most of the time sitting on a couch in the front room.  

I picked out some nice vintage shoes, some old books a couple of tablecloths and a few other tidbits and we went and had lunch at the Olive Garden. I used my GPS on my new cell phone to get us there.   I had what  always have at Olive Garden and she had what she always has and then I took her home.   I wanted to get home because I had a lot to do, but I wanted to walk her to the door and give her a hug. She said I didn't have to, that I could give her a hug on the sidewalk and she could make it in her own front door herself.  Well that wasn't really the point but I wanted to get home so I gave her a hug and got in my car.  

She said she had a great time.  

I did too. 

Say Hello to My Little Friends

There's a guy on Ebay who has the most adorable cat named Mercedes who shows up in all his pics.  She's really really cute and kind of looks like a penguin the way she stands on her back legs.  I stole one of his pictures, I hope he doesn't mind, but she's a real star and I wanted to share.

He sells a lot of buttons and I guess she loves to check them out. 

 

Here's a link if you want to see more  Mercedes

So I wished my cats would do cute stuff like Mercedes and help me sell things by looking super cute and adorable. Instead my cats like to jump into my pics and knock things over, block the light, get hair on everything and stick their tails in my camera lens! 

Today it looks like I got my wish!  I was taking pictures of some tablecloths both of them jumped onto the table and started sniffing around at the centerpiece.  They looked adorable I snapped some pics and decided to share.  Look out Mercedes, Pete and Pepper are on their way to Hollywood!!!!

This is Pete. He was being very sweet and actually asked permission to get onto the table. (not really-I made that up)

This is Pepper. She was the first one on the table.

Now we have both cats posing together.  I love Pete's nose right in the flower. "Awwwwwww"

and here's a better one of Pepper. I think they make a great team.

Last Weekend was the Bomb!!

My daughter was here for a visit so she and I and my mother all went estate sale shopping together and not only was it a fun "girls day out" because we were all together, but we found some really fantastic sales.  I went a little crazy.  I really love it when I hit the half price reduction and there's still a lot of great stuff in the house. 

So the coolest thing I found was a part of an old WWII bomb.  Yes, really!  Well at least I think so.  The guy at the sale told me that's what it was and even though I wasn't sure I believed him I bought it anyway because it was pretty cool looking.  When I got home I did a little digging and if it's not a bomb, it sure looks like one.  Here's what I got.

  

And here's the kind of bomb I think it looks like. 

Did you know you can buy replica bombs? 

I'm not entirely sure it's a bomb part after all, I'm no expert in these things, but either way it would make a great lamp! 

I Want to Travel the World

I've never had the opportunity to travel the way I always dreamed of doing. I guess that's why I'm so drawn to things that conjure up images of travel to exotic destinations. I love the look of old luggage, I'm fascinated by vintage souvenirs, postcards, travel maps and anything that's a reminder of a special holiday.  

I like to showcase items in my Etsy store with a theme but when I decided to choose travel as the theme there were too many to choose from so I decided to put them here.