Hats!

One of the best parts of the royal wedding is the hats! It makes me want to start collecting fascinators, even though I have no real opportunity to wear them. I do have a collection of vintage hats and am amazed how timeless some of them are and I've pictured a few I think could be worn to a wedding today.

This brown one is a favorite of mine. The color is very flattering.

I have never managed to wear red like this, but I do love it. The bauble is a nice touch.

This is another favorite, but is more of a headband than a hat. I love the detailed velvet leaves. I've never quite worked out how the netting is supposed to go, but I think over the hair to the back of the head...maybe.

Quite a few have feathers.

This one looks surprising well on. One just has to be careful not to drag the feather through doorways.

I'm not likely to add to my vintage hat collection at this point as they are from family and a family friend, but I am so tempted to get some new head pieces!

Royal Wedding Day

Despite the recent track record for such marriages and being American, I was quite excited for the royal wedding. I treated myself to two commemorative 1 pint mugs from Emma Bridgewater as I couldn't decide which I liked best. They are the perfect size for my daily latte and having two means Jeff can use one. (Don't you like how I justify another piece of EB?!) On the big day, I had my latte in this one.

It's hard to see here, but one of my favorite touches on this one is the heart motif on the handle. They have both been getting a lot of use.

I found the old biscuit tin in my Grandmother's basement and the newspaper pages in some of my Great Aunt's stationery and I ended up tucking them away in a drawer in my house since they amused me! Now, I have two cute mug boxes to keep some treasures in.

I got up pretty early to watch the TV coverage, though I'd set the Tivo too, so I didn't have to be up at 4am and I didn't miss anything. I loved all the hats! It was fun seeing everyone arrive, like Rowan Atkinson. The horses are a favorite part for me too. Did you spot the loose one?

Hurrah for William and Catherine!

Happy Valentine's Day!

This is a scan of an old Valentine from my little collection. It is articulated so when you raise and lower the loop of her bow, she puts the card into or pulls it out of the envelope! Her eyes/pupils move at the same time, so she makes 'flirty eyes' at you as well.

If you like vintage valentines, you can see some more in this old post of mine from 2007.

Wishing you all a happy day!

Summery Eats, More Decorating, More Garden Pics

Saturday, I picked so many cucumbers in the garden that I set up to do two batches of pickles! Here are the results, 16 pints of Bread and Butter Pickles. Today, I picked enough cucumbers to do another (single) batch. We have already eaten some ourselves and I have mailed out some to family for a mid-summer treat.

The pickle juice makes a delicious potato salad. I like to whisk together some with Miracle Whip, finely chopped pickles, finely diced sweet onion (like Vidalia) and add the warm, chopped potatoes to that. When I have the stamina and it's not too hot, I also add chopped hard-boiled eggs, but it was too hot for that this time. Here is my latest potato salad alongside the slow cooker which was cooking up pulled pork. Other than picking some zukes to go alongside, dinner is made for a few days!

Over the weekend, in between the pickling stages, I managed to finish cleaning and arranging all of my new EB pottery. I thought I'd post a few more pictures now that the seconds marks are removed from the Hellebore plates, bowls and mugs.

The ivy/holly teapot is at home with some of my little xmas things.

The Hellebores take up most of the bottom shelf in my china cabinet.

We are already making use of it, especially those lovely pasta bowls!

It is so hot and dry in the garden that it's amazing the veggies are doing so well. Sometimes, I have to go pick things that have gotten ahead of me like cukes and zukes and stack them in the compost bin like cord wood!! I think it is thanks to the plastic mulch and the drip lines right at the base of the plants. Here is the vigorous cucumber patch that is providing us with so many pickles.

A view of the tomatoes which are all tied up for the time being. Still only green tomatoes...

String beans, flowers, gourds, pumpkins and squash.

Zinnias.

Some jalapeno peppers ready for picking.

Eggplant, still just flowering, setting fruit.

I let a lot of my herbs 'go by' as I enjoy the flowers, like on this oregano.

It has been so dry for so long here. I checked the weather data for the last 2 months, May 13-July 13, and found we've only had 3.62 inches of rain in that time.

I'm not even sure we had that much as it fell as localized scattered showers and may have skipped over us here. This is the graph showing the distribution of the rainfall for the same time frame.

We may get some rain over the next couple of days, but it is predicted as localized 'heavy' rain and thunder storms. Not what I like. At all. This could make a mess of the garden and knock a lot of things over and erode the powdery soil. I miss the occasional gray summer day with steady light to medium rain that refreshed the air and kept the lawns and plants looking lush with a gentle, deep soaking. It seems like we only get all or nothing in recent years.

Kitchen Styling

Years ago now, I had the fun of designing a layout and installing (with Jeff and my father) kitchen cabinets into what was a bare room with a stove and a fridge in our 1920's house. I fitted things around the existing windows and woodwork, so there was (thankfully) no ripping out other than a few short lengths of chair rail. Ever since then, I have been looking for a plate rack to go on one remaining bare wall. I finally found one that would be well suited!

Here is a before picture showing the small stretch of wall above my dry goods area/rolly cart.

Jeff did some measuring and affixed the metal hanger to the wall. (We settle for 'more or less' measurements in an old house!)

And then he hung the rack for me! (That's the July 7th batch of pickles below the shelf.)

It was set up just in time for decorating with some new Emma Bridgewater pottery I'd ordered from England in the recent sale. I love the way the new pottery mixes and matches with my mostly vintage hand-me-downs and the few newer things I've collected.

On the top shelf, the striped mugs are espresso sized. The polka dot pitcher is a 2 pint sized measuring jug. I plan to use the Union Jack creamer for cream/milk and the 'baby' mug for sugar. (At some point I will have to get something with the blue stars motif to go with my striped pieces and they will represent the 'stars and stripes' so I do not appear unpatriotic!) The little glass compote in the picture below is my salt cellar, with an espresso spoon for scooping. The dish was from my Grandmother, along with the basket and the mini cutting board (which I had given her when I was little).

I just love the vintage look of the Happy Cows mugs...here's a close up with a couple of older Britains metal toys.

Not all of my new things fit on the new shelf! (It was a very nice sale!) Some of my new things will go in the dining room or pantry. I bought a half price ('first') 'Christmas' teapot to go with the robin and berries mugs, bowls and small plates I've had for 5 years or so. The pieces mix and match so well and I actually think they are fine for any time of year.

I got a bunch of 'seconds' of plates and pasta bowls and mugs in the sale in the Hellebore pattern. The seconds were much less expensive and I don't have to worry about stacking them on shelves or putting them in the dishwasher since they come with some blemishes to begin with. I was so excited with my new things that I took the picture before I even washed off the grease pencil seconds marks. I splurged for 'firsts' on a matching teapot and jug though, for extra nice display purposes as well as use.

And the pasta bowls. Won't my homemade pasta be even better served in these?! The two little French bowls can hold fresh, grated cheese and olives to go with the pasta! Or pickles, when I am serving other things.

A certain tea towel ended up in my cart too...

The pottery from England was packed very securely with compostable brown paper, so after unpacking, I hauled the boxes out to our bin in the garden to throw all the paper in. Of course, the dogs thought this was great fun and that the box was a toy for them. Saffy claimed it for awhile and then finally let Silas have a turn too.

Perhaps they thought they were going to go for a ride? They do get wheelbarrow rides when they hop into that, so maybe they thought it was something similar. Such silly dogs!

There are still a few finishing touches I'd like to get to at some point in the kitchen, like maybe replacing some doors and putting some kind of rack/hooks? on one wall of the pantry, but for the most part the kitchen is done. Anything that wears out can hopefully be replaced with something very similar. For example, we had to get a new faucet this spring. It was impossible to get the same one as before, but we got a new one with an even taller spout than the last one and it is actually even better to use! I like when new things are better then old...often times I feel like it's very much the opposite.

It takes me years to get house things done, but fortunately part of the fun of housekeeping and decorating is the process. Now, I'm going back to arranging and rearranging my new pieces of pottery!

Pantry Styling

One of my favorite features of my house is the vintage 1920's pantry. It retains the original cast iron sink and built in cabinets. While I love it, it's been challenging to work out how to use it. Part of me wants it to look like the 1920's still! But I also want it to be a very usable space and not like a museum.

Finally, I think I'm starting to get it organized the way I want. At first, I didn't know what to put in it; canned goods, dry goods, linens, kitchen tools? Soon, I established an under stairs closet as the canned goods storage place. A rolling cart with storage then held the dry goods. So, I started to think of the pantry as storage for all decorative kitchen and household items and tools. Part of my trouble at first was just putting too much stuff in it. I've removed almost all my vases and cache pots which are now stored in the basement on original, rustic shelving in the 'root cellar' room. (Possibly, a whole other blog post subject matter, if it ever gets cleaned up and organized. LOL!)

The sink is charming to look at, but sloppy to use and lord help you if you drop something in it!!! It makes a delightful home for a very large plant that overwhelmed my mother and ended up with me, not that I really have any room for it! I water it by turning on the tap. I fill my watering can at this sink, but don't use it much otherwise. I have the original drain board for it, but am storing that in the barn at the moment.

The glass fronted shelves are in pretty good shape, considering. While I use the clear glass nested bowls (on the left) almost daily, the other stuff is for occasional use and decoration. This flash photo makes the wood brighter than it really is. The striped fabric showing to the left of the sink is part of our patio cushions. I have them squished in the corner for storage.

Here is a detail of the middle section with my pitchers, cake stand, wire baskets and new compotes.

And this photo shows the drawers and door for storage beneath the glass fronted shelves.

Mixed in with the things I use are some vintage kitchen tools and some vintage boxes of extracts, silver 'Jiffy Jems' and some bottles of food coloring. Don't worry, I do not use them!!! My Grandmother found them, lost at the far back of one of her cabinets when she was cleaning out and knew I'd like them.

The Jiffy Jem jar is kind of cute because it was designed to be a shaker bottle after you were done with the jems that are too large for the holes in the top. They were made by an old Boston/New England food company, but I don't know a date or anything specific about Jiffy Jems. Looking at the pic, I guess I should clean it a little!

The food coloring is by a company called Burnett's and the 'color kit' was possibly introduced around 1939, but I don't know how long they produced it.

I love the tiny, labeled glass bottles inside! They are 2.25 inches tall.

Opposite the built in shelves, I have a dry sink style piece of furniture which is a handy place for the Panini press and holds linens.

We have added a few modern cabinets opposite the original ones that match those in the adjacent kitchen.

The little ceiling light appears to be original, with a vine and grape motif. I know it needs a cleaning, but every time I take it down is a chance to break it!

I do have an amusing story about the pantry. When I randomly picked a farmer out of the classifieds to come till our garden, it turned out that his family were the descendants of the family that built/first lived in our house. His relatives only lived here briefly before moving to another home, but he said that the grandmother never forgot her pantry and always missed it and reminisced about it, wishing for another one like it! I invited his family into the house to see it for the first time! I'm not sure they were all that impressed after hearing such praise of it for so many years, but I think they were happy to see it still there and appreciated.

Recently, I got an inexpensive used copy of a book called The Pantry: It's History and Modern Uses . It has some inspiring ideas for people with pantries or those who want to build a new one as they have come back into fashion. A fun image in it is this war-time ad for Ball Canning Jars stating "Now I am really PROUD of MY pantry". (I've posted a cropped version of it.) It would be fun to find a print of an ad like this for my pantry wall!

I'm not really sure the best way to treat the wood beyond basic washing (using very little water). I would like to figure out how to best maintain the finish. I still need to figure out how I want to line the shelves. I have contact paper on them, but only stuck down in the corners as I didn't want to be scraping it up at some point. (I think there are still some scraps of very old contact paper underneath it.) It has begun to roll along the edges. I am thinking it would be fun to have vintage shelf edging paper, but have to look into where to buy it. Also, I should sew a 'skirt' for around the old sink to hide the legs and pipes beneath it. I need to figure out how those are constructed and attached. Some new ones seem to be attached using Velcro. I did have a scrap of light fabric attached with magnets for a little while, but it wasn't quite wide enough so I was just using it to see what a skirt would look like. If anyone has ideas about maintaining the old finish, liners or edging, or sink skirt patterns, please let me know!

It's Summer

The temps soared into the low 90's F today like someone flipped a switch. It feels more like July than May! The dogs just mosey around the yard, stand under the hose, drink a lot and spend most of the time napping. When they twitch, I wonder if they are dreaming of playing in the snow?

I'd forgotten about this video of them in the snow a couple of years ago, but I found it and uploaded it to youtube this week.


I have so much gardening I want to do, but I have to pace myself when it is this hot. Even watering, weeding and some transplanting seems like a major workout. My teatime treat to revive me has been an icy glass of Pimm's and ginger ale with some lemon and mint!

Yesterday, I tried to give the dining room a summery look as I tidied up. I put some glass net floats in the wire basket for a centerpiece. You can see one in the above picture. I always thought of them as Japanese net floats, but looking up their history online starting at Wikipedia, it turns out they were first made by the Norwegians. The two I have on the table actually are Norwegian, based on their markings.

Saffy and the Carpet Sweeper

I was doing some rainy day cleaning this morning, vintage style. On a whim, I pulled my grandmother's "Bissell's Grand Rapids Bisco-matic" out of the pantry and started carpet sweeping the rugs instead of vacuuming. I guess I hadn't actually done this with the dogs in the house before. It really set them off and Saffy had A LOT to say about it!

Silas just barked, which was really loud on the video, so I cut that part out. After 'talking' to it for a bit, Saffy grabbed one of her toys and seemed to be trying to figure out how to play with the sweeper.

The sweeper dates from the late 1940's and in period ads from newspapers, visible online, it is shown as follows.

And this is the description and price.

My grandmother used it just about every day. It really does work! It even gets the dog hair up, so Saffy and Silas might have to get used to it.