An Empty Nest Tablescape with Thrifty Bargains (and one Tiffany candlestick!)

Happy Thursday! As usual I am late in logging into Mr. Linky's lists of blog-party-animals, but I spent part of today on the telephone, pretending to be my 23 year old daughter.

Why, you ask?
Our daughters arrived in London this morning . . .

. . . and Alida's ATM card would not work, and she couldn't reach her bank by phone; they block calls from overseas!
So she emailed us for help.

Problem fixed. Moms can do anything. But I had to impersonate my daughter to the bank.

If I land in jail, send me a cake with a file in it, but make sure it's baked from scratch and includes some major chocolate. I want my cellmate Big Gertie to be happy with it.

Chase Bank had frozen the account for security reasons. Alida called the bank last week, to let them know she would be in London and would need to use her ATM card, and the bank said, "Sure, hon, you can access cash with your ATM card anywhere in the world!" Well... apparently they meant, "You can, but (ha ha!) we won't let you."


Anne didn't call her bank ahead of time, and had no trouble using the ATM. Hers is a much smaller regional bank. I'm thinking there might be a lesson there.

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Anyway ... on to happier things! For more of Tablescape Thursday (lots more! It's the 40th week of Tablescape parties!) go here! For Thrifty Thursday stories, click here. And to look at Vintage Thingies Thursday, put your cursor here and click!

Thanks to Susan of Between Naps On The Porch, Leigh of Bloggeritaville, and Suzanne of Coloradolady for hosting these three fun blog parties!

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For the next blissful week, Howard and I are Empty Nesters again.
Tonight, a cozy dinner a deux:

We'll begin with shrimp cocktail in my Grandmother's etched glass dishes,
very vintage (the glasses, not the shrimp):

It is leftover shrimp, but a little shaved ice, shredded lettuce,
Crosse & Blackwell cocktail sauce and juicy lemons will redeem them!

A bit of champagne, to give the leftover shrimp a boost, in flutes that were a gift
25 years ago from my in-laws, from Bloomingdale's in Chestnut Hill near Boston:

Then dinner: very simple! Turkey cutlets, in a lemon wine sauce with some fresh thyme from the garden, on Wedgwood Patrician dinner plates -- I only have two of the dinner plates, both from Ebay:

These dinner plates are smallish -- which is good; I can fill them
and we can pretend we are having a larger dinner than we are!

With the turkey, a Gewurztraminer, because I get a kick out of using my old German wine glasses with the green ribbed stems; I think they go nicely with the green-bordered Wedgwood. Besides, it is fun to say "Gewurtztraminer."

I got these glasses 30 years ago, after Howard and I got back from a wonderful 3 weeks in Germany; I bought them on a deep discount at Fortunoff's -- an amazing New York area chain that just this year went out of business. I will miss Fortunoff's!

For some mood lighting -- candles -- 88 cents at K-Mart. We'll put them in mismatched holders:

A heavy crystal candlestick, one of a pair from Tiffany's, a gift from the radio station
in New York City where Howard worked for nearly 20 years as a reporter and anchor:

And the other crystal candlestick, also one of a pair, a Christmas gift to me from Howard,
back in the day when our gifts to one another were exceedingly modest:

It's from Big Lots, and cost him $3. How great is that?
I love these candlesticks, and went back to Big Lots and bought more for gifts that year!

The flatware is my Georgian pattern silverplate, that I have gotten on Ebay in bits and pieces:

No shrimp forks, the little salad forks will have to do:

And the napkins -- old linen (a few wear holes at fold lines) with handmade lace edging -- very soft and sweet.
From a church rummage sale on Eastern Long Island, years ago.

Dion DiPoochy is confused. He sees dishes, but no food. What's up with that?
Hardly worth licking one's nose and getting into full begging-eyes mode.

Now for something completely different. . . our poppies are blooming!

How wild and over the top are these crazy blooms?

Look what is inside the bloom! Dig those crazy stamens!
(Is that what they are? Is there a science teacher in the house?)

Can you believe that something that just yesterday looked like this . . .

. . . can look like this today?

Hmm... maybe there's hope for me! -- Cass

Don't forget to visit the other blog party posts, and comment if you can!

That Old House Celebrates Memorial Day with a Stunning Transformation!

Welcome to Memorial Day at That Old House! It is also Metamorphosis Monday, so be prepared to be amazed and astounded at this remarkable transformation. . . .

We've gone from this:

to this:

:-)

My daughter Anne, using $6 worth of Dollar Store decorations
and a staple gun, transformed our front porch into a patriotic medley!
Children do indeed have their uses.

Come and join us for a day of porch sitting, and some steaks on the grill later on!

Thanks to Susan of Between Naps On The Porch for Metamorphosis Monday (click here!).


I want to thank my Dad, my father-in-law, and both my brothers for serving our country in the armed forces, and to thank all past and present who have served. Our freedoms come with a price, and I am grateful to those who pay that price on our behalf.

God bless America. -- Cass

Floored! A Sunday Favorite Re-Run

It's Sunday Favorites again, and I've dug up a post from Friday, February 20, about the original floors in That Old House.

Click here to see what other bloggers are re-posting today. Thanks to Chari of Happy To Design for hosting Sunday Favorites. Just click here for more!

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Happy Friday! Kelli at There Is No Place Like Home
is graciously hosting "Show and Tell Friday," so visit her here if you want to share more Show and Tell blog posts. Click here to be whisked away!

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When I walk on these floors, when I gingerly move furniture so as not to cause damage, when I look at them in sunlight and see the evidence of the hand tools that formed them years ago . . . but especially when I get out the dust mop and go over their worn surfaces, I think of the thousands of times someone else has done just exactly that same thing. And I am floored.

A few people have commented (thank you!)
on the floors in That Old House.

Well, we can't take any credit for them; they have been here for a long time, and are a mixed bag of early and late 19th century wood, and a little early 20th century replacements.

To have some of the original flooring is a wonderful blessing. In our parlor, the floorboards are up to 16 inches wide:
There are also wide, original floorboards in the attic, the front upstairs hall and the pink bedroom.

I love the marks left by previous owners; they were so practical. The knots in the pine shrank faster than the wood around them, and so some of those knots fell out. Our predecessors cannily cut a square plug, and snugged it into the open hole:


Between the boards, where there was gapping from shrinkage, some talented hands inserted long thin slivers of wood.

Amazing and painstaking work. I don't know who did this, but I'd like to shake his hand! Here's a closeup (click, below, to see it really clearly):

Years ago I rented a circa-1800 house. It had original floors, but with wide shrinkage gaps, and I will never forget spending many hours on my knees, cleaning out those long, schmutz-filled channels. Yuck. I really, really appreciate the guy who filled in these gaps!

It's comforting to see that people long ago had little mishaps, too. Evidence: the burn marks on the wood floor, just past the fireplace hearth!

I am glad that the families who lived here before us took such loving care of the house in their stewardship. I hope we can do the same.

Have a wonderful weekend!
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And on this Memorial Day weekend, we remember our armed forces,
their dedication, and their many sacrifices. God Bless. -- Cass

A Walk Around That Old House

Come with me as I saddle up Dion and take a stroll around That Old House.
Please forgive the slow pace; Dion needs to read his pee-mail along the way. . . .

It's Outdoor Wednesday, hosted by Susan at A Southern Daydreamer; click here for more outdoors posts -- there are loads of gorgeous gardens to ogle! And it's also What's On Your Wall Wednesday, our hostess being Barb from Grits and Glamour. A click here will bring you there!

Ready for our walk? On goes Dion's macho Harley-Davidson leash, and we are off!

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It is a perfect gift of a day -- sunny, warm and breezy. Let's walk clockwise as we leave the sunroom . . . and Mother Nature has come through handsomely for us, with the first iris blooms of the season:

Right next to the house, a gathering of iris plants!

Iris blossoms are so over-the-top, no elegant restraint in their makeup.
They are flowers, and darned proud of it.

Around the front of the house... do we have window boxes on the porch?

Nope, just flats of impatiens waiting to be planted!

And...

a big sprawling angel wing begonia that I hope is big enough to distract you from the peeling paint:

Dion de-coding secret messages left in the fading azalea next to the porch steps:

If you squint your eyes and don't look closely, the porch looks pretty good, with its Boston and asparagus fern hanging baskets, and when I plant window boxes and some foundation plantings other than dandelions . . . it will go a long way toward distracting from crooked shutters and faded paint!

Crab grass and other assorted greenies masquerading as a lawn in the side yard:

And our mystery.
This is my "What's On My Walls" section; look closely at the side of the house.

There are no shutters on this side, although their hardware remains. But that's not the mystery. Enlarge the photo below, and notice the clapboard siding. It is original (ca. 1832) to the house:

Do you see? At the top of the wall, the siding is narrowly lapped, and as you come down the wall, it widens, until it gets to the level of the bottom windows, where it's widest of all. On the rear part of the house, built 50 years later, the clapboard is of uniform sizing.

I figured this couldn't be just sloppy carpentry, so I did some research and discovered that it was most likely done on purpose.

This side of the house takes the brunt of the weather, with the upper floors more exposed to wind and rain, so the savvy fellow who built this house gave his upper clapboards minimal exposure to the elements, while allowing maximum exposure for the lower ones which would not take such heavy weathering. It was a common practice.

Clever, no? And it worked; those cedar clapboards are still in good condition after all these years.

Well, let's keep walking, toward the back of the house.
A little patch of Lily of the Valley is fading fast:

Further along the back wall, a grindstone leans against the old stones:

And I present to you the world's ugliest conifer. What the heck is it?

Across from the wall, a sprawling rose bush is ready to pop hundreds of dark red blossoms:

The bleeding heart is still going strong:

Along the wall, another iris has burst forth!

Nearby, a clump of chives cuddles up to rampant spearmint:

(You can just glimpse some gazania and cosmos Alida popped into the border yesterday.)

Annie tidied up the ivy . . .

and now we need to tidy up the tidying:

Back to beauty; in a nearby pot, a hibiscus begins its summer show:

And Oriental poppies are almost ready to pop!

Time to go back inside. At the edge of the granite slab that serves as our doorstep, a basket of pansies has been valiantly blooming since March, and showing no signs of stopping:

(You can just make out the pink begonias Anne tucked in along the conservatory border yesterday.)

I hope you enjoyed our stroll around That Old House,
and the "mystery" on the side wall of the building!

Dion has decided he wants to stay outside for a little while.
This will last until he realizes that I am inside, where the refrigerator lives.

Enjoy your Wednesday! -- Cass