Saturday, November 28, 2009

Do You See Him There ??



Do you see him there??

Years ago Brother had a big yellow cat. He named him Yellows & Yellows. Yep, Yellows & Yellows.
That was when he was maybe about 25 or 30 years old, long before our parents died.  Now he'd had other cats but all of his life he fondly remembered Yellows & Yellows and talked about that kitty all the time. He loved all of the cats that I had rescued over the years and I still have his Wallace who is now 12 years old. Anyway, a few months after brother passed away this gentleman started visiting me. He won't allow me to get more than about 3 feet near him but he's not a shy one. He peeks in the window at us from the porch. He has no problem letting me know in a quite a loud howl that his bowl is empty and he wants food.   He is a beautiful boy and I've named him Yellows & Yellows. I worry about him. My neighbors are not cat lovers but I can't deny him food. Sometimes I see him over by the tree where Brother was attacked. I always feel that Brother is still close to me and watches over me. Who else would he send to care for me while he's off visiting places that I can't even imagine but Yellow's & Yellows.



 

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Happy Beautiful Thanksgiving and the Aprons I Promised




It has been a beautiful mild day here and I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving just as we did. I never started out to collect aprons; it's just that I seem to run across them quite often and I love them. When I was young every woman had an apron or more likely a half dozen or so.

My aunt's wore aprons when they cooked Sunday dinner after church. They had plain and fancy aprons which they wore depending on who was coming for dinner. My Grandmother and Mammie Roger's wore aprons all day, everyday. Their aprons were longer. They always wore long mid-calf length dresses, always. It was not the proper thing for women to wear slacks or jeans. I remember that all of the house cleaning was done right after breakfast at Mammie and Grandmother's.


                                                                 





The meals and house cleaning were done in pretty print aprons but at Grandmother's when lunch was finished she would put on a proper apron as she called it. A proper apron was a long white apron with pockets large enough to hold her crochet thread or embroidery, She made all of her aprons on a treadle sewing machine and the pockets were always trimmed with lovely crochet lace.  The afternoon was time for stitching. I don't think she ever spent an idol moment, except when she slept and I'm sure she dreamed of the next sewing project that she would be starting. Thus began my love affair with aprons and linens and quilts.
 

I found this little beauty a few months ago, the apron  has a row of sweet Christmas trees across the hem. It doesn't show well in the picture but the tress are cross stitch, topped with a green ribbon bow.



I'm always amazed at the work that went into these aprons, even these newer machine made ones can be very intricate.




I guess the red ones are my favorite but I collect any color or pattern that I can find.







I remember Mammie and Grandmother using the hems of their aprons to open the door of the wood stove. I do wish I had some of their aprons for my collection.



And now this next picture is a little bit off of the subject.




Please pop over to my autumn Halloween blog at Familiar Sprits http://familiarspirits.blogspot.com/ to see the story and more great pictures of this fantastic stock car. You won't want to miss this it is incredible.
Have a wonderful safe weekend; it's back to work for me tomorrow but if all goes well the keeping room make over will start on Saturday.
Thanksgiving blessings to everyone.

 
                                                                                

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Sunday, November 22, 2009

Happy Sunday before Thanksgiving


Can you believe that we are just days away from Thanksgiving??
There was very little treasure hunting for me this weekend. I had to work all day on Saturday! It was our companies very first log home seminar and I have to say it was a beautiful day and I really enjoyed getting to spend time with clients that had traveled from as far away as Arkansas and Ohio.
The event was quite a success and we will be offering more of these seminars next year. I did get out to one sale on Friday and picked up some neat old bottles. I don't have pictures of those yet but I guess by now you are all wondering about this little gem of a truck. No it's not mine but I would love to own it. That truck is an antique lovers dream. Oh to think of hitting the estate sales and auctions behind the wheel of that little beauty. Rumor has it she is for sale, I honestly dreamed about her last night. Anyway I know the owner so if you are interested just drop me an email and I'll pass the information along. I also took some pictures of a stock car that was all decked out for Halloween. Yep I know it's over but it's just a little over 11 months until it's here again. I'll be posting those pictures later in the week and believe me you will love it. I'll also be posting pictures of some of the aprons in my collection. With Thanksgivng day almost here I'm reminded of how important aprons were, maybe that's why I love them so much.
I'll cose with another picture of my dream truck.

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Great Week End Finds and The Perfect Chair


Can you believe that Thanksgiving is almost here?
It seems like just yesterday I was wishing for the first signs of autumn and suddenly it is almost Thanksgiving.
I went to an estate sale yesterday and it's a good thing that space and money are limited here or I would have had to make 10 trips to get everything home. Anyway I found some great treasures and I'm posting pictures of just a few today.
 
This is an old print of the first Thanksgiving. I fell in love with it. It will hang in the dining room over the mantle I think. We are starting to redo the dining room. It won't be ready before Thanksgiving since most of the projects get done around here on the weekends but it will be done by Christmas.
This chippy robin's egg blue chair also came from the sale. I can't pass up an old rocker and this one was just my color and I had to bring it home.

.
And this sweet little piece of Pfaltzcaff is holding sweet scented vanilla candles on one of the cupboards.

Maybe my favorite find was this beautiful hand crochet bed cover. I love old linens and this just had to come home with me.

Then there were boxes and boxes of sewing kits, most from the 80's. I bought 7and it's so hard to decide which one to start on first.  I'm thinking it
will be this cross stitch runner but there is also an Amish quilt wall hanging that is calling my name. I may start them both, sometimes I like to have several projects started at once. I don't get bored and since I have no patience at all I seem to stay more focused on getting them finished.


This old milk can found it's way to my porch too, where will I find places for Christmas decorations??

My dear friend Fran stopped by and gave me this adorable set of kitty placemats. Fran is a cat lover too and such a good person. I am blessed to have her as my friend.

I unpacked one woodland Santa, just to see if he could survive my little Sugar Bee and he's made it a week and she hasn't touched him. I'm wondering what's going to happen when the trees go up. She does love sparkly things.
And speaking of trees, I also found this tree at the sale.
Now I'm a primitive lover but when it comes to Christmas I do love a bit of fru-fru.

This was such a delighful tree with the glistening gold net ribbon and the gold angels. It has dried baby's breath which is old and yellowed so I'm replacing it with new snowey white and adding maybe some soft white birds to spruce it up.
I almost forgot, I also got a fantastic old quilt top. I didn't get a picture but I'll get one next time. I hope to be back later in the week with a link to a wonderful site. My daughter's company has started a line of garden planters that are just out of this world. You'll love them.  And I'm also starting some luminaries. If they turn out good I'll post some pictures. I hope you all have a great week.

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Miss Imma Bivis

Hi Everyone, I hope you are having a wonderful weekend. I'm almost finished putting away the indoor Halloween things and still have some Jack's and witches from the porch that will be coming tomorrow.


I wanted to introduce you to Miss Imma Bivis. Imma turned 10 in August. She was my first rescue from the feral colony that I adopted at my old house. Over a three year period Mother and I found homes for 123 cats. Imma was a wild little thing and it took some time but she soon became my constant companion and best friend. She's healthy, happy and quite the house mom around here.

 Now she's not real happy about the flash when she's trying to nap.

Ok Mom one more picture and that's it!


This little girl is the light of my life and you would never know it but she is very spoiled.


I'd been wanting an old barn light for a long time. I found this newer one at a shop a few weeks back. They were having a sale and this thing was so covered in dust and cob webs but it cleaned up to look too new. A little paint and destressing and it will be just right. I'll post more pictures when I get it done.
It's always hard to pack away decorations for me. Especially the autumn ones. I just love the colors so much and too be honest I have a few pumpkins and gourds that stay out all year. I found this little guy at Micheal's a few weeks back and I'm pretty sure he will stay out through Christmas anyway.
 
I really think this little birdie may stay a while too.


I'm so glad the cats don't get on the mantle, you see Sugar Bee thinks that all feathers are hers. These guys would not stand a chance if she ever goot near them.


I also found another great piece of ironstone for my collection last weekend.
And I also wanted to share a picture of this little bear. Now I'm not a bear collector but every now and again I will find one that just ends up coming home with me. I found this guy last year and decided that after Christmas he was just to sweet to pack away for a whole year and Brother really liked the bears and one little snowman that I'll post a picture of later. Anyway I decided I'd leave the bears and the one snowman out for the year. Now I took the scarf and mittins off this little guy in the spring. You know it does get hot here in N.C. and Brother  later remarked that the bear seemed to have a very sad look to him and to be honest I thought so too. Now today I brought out his mittins and scarf and to be sure I believe he is smiling again.

Have a great week everyone; I look forwarding to reading your posts.

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Beautiful Halloween

I can't believe that October has come and gone. It's been a busy weekend and we did have a great Halloween. The weather was so warm and nice and after having showers all day it cleared nicely and we had an almost full moon and just beautiful evening.
Halloween actually started early for me when my daughter emailed pictures of my Grandaughters Halloween/Birthday party and sleep over on Friday night.

Then yesterday afternoon my friend Brenda and her son and Grandaughter stopped by in their amazing vampire costumes. I thought they looked super. Chris is Brenda's oldest son and he made quite the handsome Vampire, Brenda came up with the idea and she looked fantastic and Morgan; Chris' daughter was just so darling. What a wonderful idea, a vampire family. They were on the way to the mall to celebrate the evening. Thanks for stopping by guys and I hope you had a wonderful time.

Next are some pictures from Kasey and Megan's party. The Halloween sign on the wall in the background was their own idea and they made it from crepe paper without any help from their mother at all. I thought it was amazing; I think we have some young crafters in the family here. They are both very sweet and talented girls. My daughter is such a good Mom; I think she had has much fun as the kids did.
                                                                   There were lots of great treats, punch and snacks as well as an Itialian dinner. The crepe paper curtian was also an invention of the girls and guess whats hiding behind the curtain??? You'll see below.
That's our Megan in the Jester's costume and our sweet Kasey in the white blouse on the love seat. Here's a peak behind the curtain in the picture on the left.


I'll end my post with this picture of the vampire family. I hope you all had as much fun as we had. 

Blessed Soltice

As we welcome the coming of new light let us spend time reflecting on the days and loved ones past. Remember that we are a part of what life...