Something Old, Borrowed, or Blue. Nuthin' New!

I am not very good at 'scaping things.
As in, tablescaping, mantelscaping (I think
I just made up that word), or even landscaping.

In my world, things mostly just sort of land someplace,

and that's often where they stay.

For instance, this oil painting by my Aunt Lillian landed on our sunroom
windowsill several weeks ago . . . and yes, it is still there, and kinda spooking me out.
See what I mean?

*********************************

But today it is raining.  All day.  It's  damp and ugly outside,

and occasionally smells like wet dog inside. 

Yes, Dion, I'm looking at you.

So, I decided to mantelscape the Parlor so that at least one room

at That Old House would have some pretty going on.

I didn't take a before picture, because the before was a bare mantel.

I still have many of my cousin Janet's things waiting for their

permanent homes, so I took some of them and did a quick 'scape.

A crazed white ironstone pitcher holds fake hydrangea blossoms.

Our own hydrangeas are in bud, but not blooming yet.

Isn't that bird darling?

On the other side of the mantel, a small painting

by my cousin Bill, Janet's brother.

I leaned it up against a gilt mirror from the apartment.

We are not lighting fires now until the Fall, so another

of Bill's paintings fills the blank, black firebox with color.

 As the afternoon wore on, the day got darker (duh!)

and the rain steadier and heavier.

Note to self:  Next rainy day?  Put out some candles!

Yes, it is dark and dreary this Tuesday afternoon.

But at least everything is nice and green outside.

 If I drank heavily in the afternoon, these pictures might look like this: 

But I don't, so they don't.

Have a lovely rest of the day, and visit Marty at A Stroll Thru Life for more Tuesday posts!  -- Cass

Click here for Table Top Tuesday!

All Keyed Up

So hands up, friends.
How many of you remember when this:

looked more like this:

Okay, so maybe not exactly like this, as this keyboard, above, is pre-1926.

You remember Smith Corona typewriters?

This one is from L.C. Smith -- before it merged with Corona.

A few weeks ago, I acquired this odd old typewriter

from a guy who had a car trunk full of them -- all sorts.

"I need to get rid of these," he said.  "You want one?  Two?  Ten?"
He explained that he still had 65 old typewriters at home, and was tired of restoring them.

I took this wacky, gorgeous one, which is probably an office model that was used for ledger work.

To me, it looks like a piece of sculpture; it is art.

I have a long history with typewriters.

In fact, the best thing I ever learned in high school was how to touch type.

It was on a manual typewriter, and I remember how my pinky fingers ached at first, using the shift keys.

Thank you, Mom, for insisting on that elective course, even though I didn't want to be a secretary.

The first time I spent more than one hundred dollars on something, I was 18, and I bought

a portable Smith Corona typewriter at Abraham & Straus department store.

I sprung for the electric, although I could not afford the extra ten bucks for the automatic return.

I met Howard when we were both sitting at manual typewriters in a radio newsroom,

and we conducted our early courtship with typed notes we left for one another.

Howard brought an big old hulking black Underwood manual to our marriage;

it sat on the counter at the store we owned for awhile in Pittsburgh,

and I banged out letters, menus, essays on that during quiet times.

I still have a stack of recipes I typed out on that Underwood.

They are squirreled away in the fold out desk of our dining room breakfront.

The ribbon had been recycled several times; our budget was very lean,

and cloth ribbons get lighter and lighter with each use.

Remembering XXX-ing out mistakes?  Yeah, I had a lot of those;

my fingers always ran ahead of my brain,

which meant I was often unsticking keys that had jammed together because I typed too quickly.

Now why did I write out a recipe for Scalloped Rhubarb?

As I mentioned to Anne today as I was putting together this post,

typing gives you a more visceral connection to your writing than does a computer word processor.

In the same way, writing by hand is more immediate and personal than using a typewriter.

 Would I go back to writing with a manual typewriter?

Ha.

Not on your Nellie.

Word processing on a computer is like magic.

And I can always print out in Courier to fool myself that I've actually typed something.

To Mr. L.C. Smith and his Brothers,

thanks for the beautiful, wacky big typewriter that's going to sit on the radiator

next to my beautiful, wacky (and now old fashioned) desktop computer.

Computers may be faster, more efficient, labor saving and all that jazz,

but they are not as pretty as the old machines, are they?

For Howard and for me, typewriters hold a special place in our life.

Words bought our houses, put food on our table,

educated our daughters; words are how we made a living.

Years ago, Howard and I bought a big poster of an old typewriter

to remind us of our past.

It's next to the computer, maybe a reminder to me of real writing,

as opposed to the writing I do that floats off into the clouds and is so easily lost.

Now the poster will have a fierce old typewriter to keep it company.

Next week:  Another typewriter culled from that car trunk.

This one will remind you of Hemingway . . . .

Have a lovely weekend!  -- Cass

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WHOOOOO You Lookin' At?

Once upon a time, back in the 70s
when I was just a wee babe (stop laughing,
it's rude), I collected owls.

I embroidered them, was gifted with them, wore them as jewelry,

macrame'd them (don't be judgin'), grew pothos out of their terracotta heads, and 

drank my coffee from mugs emblazoned with their images.

Okay, I still drink my coffee from one of those mugs.

But eventually I gave most of my owls away.

Turns out that when I wasn't looking, the owls staged a comeback.

Hello.  I'm back, and I'm jonesing for a nice plump mouse.  Or a Big Mac.

If you search Amazon for owls in home decor, you will get an amazing listing of the critters,

and also a listing for a box of Raspberry gelatin; I have no explanation for the gelatin,

but the owls?  They are back in style.  Were they ever out?

Last summer, Carol of Serendipity blog gifted me with this charming guy:

He is living in our beach house, keeping watch over the master bedroom.
He makes me smile when I see him!

This old owl seems to be giving us the cold shoulder.  Eh, be that way.

Anyway, the first table lamp I ever bought for myself, at the Bloomingdale's Furniture Outlet Store

on Long Island in 1975, was a white ceramic owl with a mottled gold & brown hard drum shade.

I still have it - with a different shade - but the lamp is on hiatus waiting to be rewired.

When it returns to the family fold, my 37-year-old owl lamp will find it has a new friend.

Whoooo is also old enough to be vintage.

This big hefty owl lamp was in my cousin Janet's apartment in Philadelphia.

He, too, is destined for rewiring, and a new shade, and then he'll take his place in the study,

among the books and the dark cozy corners.  Where owls belong.

He's quite the dude, don't you think?

And that's it for this Wednesday.

Visit Faded Charm blog for the White Wednesday party!

Click here.

Anne and I are loading an old wing chair into the red minivan,

and heading off to Pennsylvania to see about getting it reupholstered.

This is the acid test for mildew sensitivity ---

being cooped up in the car with this particular dampness challenged chair.

There is not enough Febreze in the world . . . .

Wish us luck!

Now excuse me while I go and  catch  eat my lunch. -- Cass

Earrings, Mamas, And A Damp Dozy Dog

I never did pierce my ears.
When all my friends in junior high were letting the scary ladies
at the Piercing Palace shoot holes through their earlobes,
my mother's words echoed in my head:

"You will have enough problems," she said, "with the holes

God gave you.  Don't go looking for trouble."

Piercing my ears seemed even less exotic after watching those friends cope with

ear lobe infections, and with running alcohol-coated thread through the new holes

while they sat along the side of the gym waiting to use the parallel bars.

A classmate of mine, in her gym bloomers, flossing her ears.

The shrieking from the Piercing Palace might have had some influence on me as well.

Anyway, this has never posed a problem for me

except for when it comes to buying earrings.

Because most earrings now are made for pierced ears.

This is where Etsy comes in.

I rarely check Etsy, now that so much of its stuff comes from re-sellers

peddling cheap Chinese goods.

Shame on you, greedy Etsy management.  You are not fooling us.

But then there are sellers like Michelle, who sells costume jewelry from the 70s and 80s.

Click on her name to visit her on Etsy.

When I visit, I buy.  Because Michelle doesn't charge a lot, and I like that.

 Are these great old lady clip earrings, or what?

"Mom," asked my daughter Anne, "do you realize how huge these earrings are?"

 Why yes.  Yes, I do.  That's why I bought them.

I figure the bigger the earring, the smaller I look.  Right?  Right???

I bought this pair, below, because I love white earrings in the summer,

and most of mine are just round plastic discs.

So these are now my fancy ones:

 How big are all these earrings?

I put a nice large cashew in amongst them.  Yeah, those gold round ones are killer.

 Mmm . . . I just ate the cashew.

Speaking of killers . . . Mr Dion DiPoochy had to have

a good scrubbing over the weekend, when a mis-step landed one

of his furry paws right into one of his own lawn sculptures.

After tubbie time, Anne wrapped Dion up in big soft bath towels,

and cuddled him in her lap to dry him off.

And he didn't want to leave.

He settled in and sacked out.  Anne took a few pictures with her phone.

His eyes may be open, but trust me . . . there's nobody home.

He is out like a light.

Dion doesn't wear earrings.

At least, not since his Pet Girls

stopped playing Dress Up with him.

But you know what?  Neither of our daughters has pierced ears.

Do you think it's because their Mama told them what my Mama told me?

"You'll have enough trouble with the holes God gave you."

And ain't that the truth?

Happy Tuesday, my friends!  -- Cass


And thank you, Graphics Fairy, for the vintage image of the lady with the branch.

Dishes -- Are 60 Too Few? Are 6000 Too Many?

It's Sunday, and I'm not really here.
I am working today at the antiques center where I have a booth,
but late last night I decided to join in The Tablescaper's 
3rd Annual Where Do You Keep It All? blog party.

But because time is tight this weekend, I'm cheating.  I dug out a 3-year old post

about the old cupboards and cabinets at That Old House, and the treasures they hold.

-- Because --

 "My name is Cass, and I am a dishaholic."

An old walnut cupboard -- rumored to have been built by Abraham Lincoln's father --

is at the end of our kitchen, and holds a crazy ragtag collection of dishes that are used regularly.

Since June 2009, when these pictures were taken, the kitchen has been redone but the cupboard

is still there.  Still full of dishes.  Even more full.  'Cause dishes?  I have a lot.

Open the doors in the bottom if you dare,

to find stacks and stacks of Christmas dishes, and

even Christmas flatware (wrapped in the yellow plastic).

There is very little upper cabinet storage in this kitchen.
Things get put where they fit.

I think there are 7 different patterns represented on these shelves.

In the dining room, the big pine breakfront does its bit for the cause:

There are oodles of Mikasa Far East; I bought service for 8 the year after we married,
and then a few years ago began snatching it up on Ebay; I think I have service for more than 2 dozen.

Wedgwood, rummage sale tea cups, and assorted glassware,

and behind the doors underneath?  Noooo.... don't look!

I warned you.
Stuffed with white Thanksgiving china (embossed Della Robia type borders),
and in the upper right corner, a stack of old Limoges plates with pink roses.

Look to the left of the Limoges -- clear fish platters!

Mikasa Ribbon Pink china hides behind a side door:

The rest of it is tucked behind the Christmas dishes in the old walnut kitchen cupboard.

Across the dining room, my grandmother's china cabinet,
a hodgepodge of bits and pieces, including. . .

yes!  More of that old Limoges -- some plates, and bouillon cups.

A small stack of Far East dinner plates rests on the sideboard,
waiting to be tucked away in the breakfront:

We used those plates several nights ago, when we had a dinner guest;
I try and use the dishes we have, so that they are more than just pretty faces.

And speaking of pretty faces . . .

Mr. Dion DiPoochy, in a portrait from June 2009.

Today, June 3, 2012, was not a happy day for Dion.

After his dinner, he took a walk outside and his little legs got a bit shaky,

and he landed a foot plop in the deposit he had just made on the lawn.

He did not enjoy the subsequent scrubbing in the tub, but he did enjoy the

almost 3 hours he spent in Anne's lap, snuggling and drying off.
He did not wake up until Howard walked into the room with a mug of wonton soup.

Look for pictures of Wet Dion on Monday.

Ssshh . . . please don't tell Mr. D. that we shared his tale of woe.

Visit The Tablescaper 

for more shares of where things get stashed in households

that are overly blessed by china and glassware!

And have a lovely Sunday!  -- Cass