Category: just stuff.

I was chatting with my handyman/neighbor Ken the other day about vintage stuff.  He has an old portable manual typewriter that he still uses!  I was explaining that I’d love to borrow it sometime to stage a desk, and he said “would you ever want to use a Laurel & Hardy hat?”

Huh?  A Laurel & Hardy hat?  What is that?

Well, it’s a Derby or Bowler of course!

This belonged to Ken’s grandpa.  As I love to remind Ken, he’s ‘getting up there’ himself, so I imagine his grandpa hasn’t been around to wear hats for a long time.  I googled it and read that this hat style was popular from the 1850’s through the 1920’s.

The hatbox still has the postal label on it and a C.O.D. price of $5.98.  C.O.D.  I bet there are a few of you out there that don’t even know what that is.  Cash on delivery.  Can you imagine having something sent to you this way now, where the postman has to collect the money from you?

And here is a picture of Ken’s grandpa (on the left) in the hat!

Well, I’m kind of assuming it’s the same hat.  Ken isn’t sure.  But unless his grandpa had several Bowlers, it’s probably the same hat.

Anyway, of course I told Ken that I would love to borrow this sometime to stage a dresser or armoire.

Meanwhile, I took a few photos of it and then a few more with the pink hat stand I bought at an estate sale for my friend Michelle.  Since Michelle has a millinery background, I knew she’d love a vintage pink hat stand.

Ken however thought the pink hat stand was ALL wrong for his granddad’s hat!

I think it’s kind of fab, don’t you?

 

It is incredibly handy having a friend that is super creative and owns a fabulous shop and studio space in Stillwater.  I’m referring to my friend Michelle who owns Rose Mille.

The other night we got together for a craft night to make fairy crowns.  I brought the wine, my hot glue gun and an idea from pinterest, she provided just about everything else!

The idea for the wire and buttons came from pinterest, but Michelle thought to add the Dresden trim around the bottom.

It was awesome crafting with Michelle.  She knows lots of stuff and I learned from her.  This was not her first fairy crown.  Plus she has an excellent eye.  Here is her crown.

While we were playing anyway, we also decided to make some fairy wands using some of Michelle’s supplies and her fabulous German glass glitter in black (which you can order on her website, here).

I was originally hoping the crown would work for the gargoyle, but it was a bit too large for him.

I also tried it on Cossetta and on my buddha.  No dice.

But truthfully, this crown wouldn’t hold up outside anyway.

For now I think that Lulu will sport the crown.

 

Sometimes I bite off way more than I can chew.  I have all of these ideas, but no time for the execution.  That darn day job really eats into my time.

Remember the front hallway from last winter?  We got as far as ripping off the carpet and I meant to get it painted before spring, but the opportunity to participate in Junk Bonanza came up, and it got pushed to the bottom of the list.

Then, I had a brilliant plan to turn the summerhouse into a furniture photo studio.  I was optimistic and thought I could have it done before my Carriage House Sale.  As if.  Instead I barely got the furniture out of there and cleaned up to sell.  It’s sitting there vacant at the moment waiting for a paint job.

I’m also debating how to deal with that rear wall.  The plan, as you may remember, is to turn this into a furniture photo studio.  That back wall will be the backdrop.  Do I create a fake solid wall back there?  Do I  remove the window and create a real solid wall back there?  Do I devise multiple interchangeable backdrops?  Do I paint the floor, or leave it bare wood and use various rugs in my photos?  So many possibilities.

Then there is this dresser that my friend Cathy nabbed for me.  FREE.  Needs a lot of work!

I am planning to strip it because I really want to give it a MMSMP chippy finish, and I don’t want the current horrid color to show through.  I have no idea if it will have been worth so much effort, but aren’t those knobs pretty darling?  I’d love to paint this one red, but since my first red dresser still hasn’t sold after 9 months I’m hesitant to do any more red.

I also think it would be fantastic in yellow, so I might just do that.

I also want to revamp this cupboard that was in the summerhouse.

There is a bit of a story behind this guy, I’ll share it with you when I post the before & after.  But for now, just know I’m thinking of adding some vintage wallpaper and trying to make the top look a little less fresh.

So there you have it.  So many projects, so little time.  I hope to get a few things done this week, so I better get crackin’!

Mr. Q and I celebrated our 25th anniversary in the big city, a.k.a. Minneapolis.

We started our day with coffee and freshly baked cinnamon rolls on the deck.  It was a perfectly gorgeous day.

The next stop was a wedding in the park.  Have I mentioned that Mr Q is a wedding officiant?  I’m sure I have.  Anyway, he had a wedding to perform on our anniversary at Minnehaha Falls at high noon.

Perhaps some would have found this the perfect chance to renew our own vows on our 25th anniversary.  However, we had already taken the opportunity to renew our vows earlier in the week when our neighbor friend Brooke, age 9, offered to marry us.  This was shortly after Mr. Q performed a wedding for Brooke and her balloon animal monkey.  It was a lovely ceremony.

I always enjoy visiting the falls, so I wandered around and took photos while Mr. Q took care of business.

If you are local, you know that we’ve had a lot of rain and Minnehaha Creek is overflowing its bed.

Perhaps you also heard about the dude who decided to kayak over the falls recently.  Having seen the falls up close and personal, I can confirm that he must be completely cray-cray.

This would have been his view as he started to head over.

Seriously folks.  Google it to see video proof.  He came out with nothing worse than a bloody nose.

Not only have the falls been in the news with the lunatic kayaker, in addition President Obama visited this week.  They were prepping for his visit while we were there.  I’m pretty sure he didn’t kayak over the falls though.

After Mr. Q’s wedding was over, we headed into the city proper to have lunch at Hell’s Kitchen, perhaps an ironic choice for an anniversary.

 We had the Purgatory Punch, a combination of pinot grigio, lemonade, blueberry and mint infused simply syrup.  Sounds iffy, but tastes delicious.  After a lovely lunch, we headed back home to the burbs and took a nap.  Hey, we were exhausted!

I have to say, our big city anniversary was a great success.  It wasn’t the trip to Paris that I had always assumed we’d take for our 25th, but who needs Paris when you have Minneapolis?

Today Mr Q and I are celebrating our 25^th wedding anniversary!  Holy mackerel.  Right?  Where did the time go?  Look at us, omg, we look so young and thin!

Mr. Q and I have been through a lot together in 25 years.  But I thought that today I would tell you the story of how very close we came to not having these 25 years together.  You see, about five months before our wedding, I got that phone call.  You know the one.  The one you hope that you never, ever get.  In the movies, it always comes in the middle of the night or something, but in real life, it comes when you are least expecting it and in the middle of something mundane.  In my case, I was at work.  The phone rang and it was someone calling from the hospital.  My fiance had been in an accident.  I should come right away.  And I should let someone else drive.  That’s all they would tell me.  I asked, ‘is he OK?’ … the answer, ‘just come’.

So, my friend Sue drove me to the hospital.  When we got there and I told the ER staff who I was, they said “oh, come this way, we have a nice quiet room where you can wait for someone to come for you.”  What?  A special room?  A nice, quiet, special room?  A room where they can break the bad news and you won’t freak out all the other patients?  Of course, this is what was going through my head, and it wasn’t all that far off.

You see, Mr. Q had been driving home from work, and he was hit by a Mack truck.  OK, maybe it wasn’t literally a Mack truck, but it was a large semi-truck.  He had a severe head injury and was in a coma.  There were really no answers to any of my questions.  Will he be OK?  No one knows.  Will he ever be the same?  No one knows.  How long will the coma last?  No one knows.  It was a very scary time for me.  Twenty-five years later and I still can’t even write about it without tearing up.  Thank goodness for our friends. We have many friends, and every single one of them was invaluable to me during that time.  I am still grateful to this day for all they did for me.

In the end, Mr. Q was in a coma for eight of the longest days of my entire life.  Once he came out of the coma, he remained hospitalized for many more weeks while he relearned how to speak, eat and walk.  As time went by, some people suggested I should delay our approaching wedding, but I refused.  I knew I wanted to marry this man and I didn’t want to wait.

Twenty five years later, I know I made the right decision.  It definitely hasn’t always been easy, but it has totally been worth it.

I love this man with all of my heart and don’t even want to imagine a life without him.  I hope that he has inherited the longevity gene from his mother’s side of the family, whose members regularly live into their 100’s.  Because I really want him to stick around for more than another 25 years.

Over the years, Mr. Q has worked very hard on his recovery.  He’ll always have side effects from his brain injury.  Most of them are not apparent to those who don’t know, but I see them.  But he  has somehow managed to find a positive side to having a brain injury.  He has dedicated himself to helping others deal with their own brain injuries.  He has facilitated support groups, served on the board for the Brain Injury Alliance of Minnesota, written columns for their newsletters, been a speaker at various conferences about brain injury and he has had two books of essays about brain injury published.  Now, one of his essays has been included in the new Chicken Soup book, Recovering from Traumatic Brain Injuries, and the book is being released today. This particular essay, How I Learned to Walk, is about how the thought of being able to walk back up the aisle with me at our wedding was the motivation that kept him going through his rehab.  So it seems especially fitting that the book is coming out on our 25th wedding anniversary!

If you are located in the Twin Cities area, please consider attending the book signing that will be held this coming Saturday in Stillwater by Valley Bookseller.  I know he would be thrilled to see a nice turn out for the event.

 But as for today, Mr Q and I are going into the big city to celebrate 25 years of marriage!  We’ll probably do some walking, and some eating, and some talking.  All things that Mr. Q can do just fine now, thank you very much.

I like to think of myself as being careful about not ‘collecting’ too many things.  This is clearly a delusion on my part, but please play along.

But I have learned that if you start to collect something, before you know it you’ll have tons of it, and then it will go out of fashion.  Now what?  You feel bad because you once loved these things, but you don’t want to display them anymore.  So you tuck them away somewhere or you ‘get rid of them’.  Sounds sinister.  Like a transaction taking place in a dark alley somewhere.

Pssst!  Hey you … want to buy some chintzware?  Good quality stuff man.

So like I said, I try to be careful.

If people ask, I don’t collect stuff.  But in reality, I can’t help myself sometimes.  Maybe the true story is that I try to never pay more than a few dollars for the stuff I collect.  Like my vintage clocks.  Almost all purchased for less than $5 each.  Or my aqua and white pottery.  Almost all purchased at garage sales for less than $10 each (or dug up out of the neighbor’s yard).  Thus when I get tired of these, I don’t feel bad about getting rid of them.

Which brings me to my chintzware.  If you don’t know what chintzware is, to simplify things, I’ll tell you that it’s basically china with an allover pattern that is transferred on (not hand painted).  It was popular in the 20’s and 30’s, but fell out of vogue in the 40’s and 50’s.  There was a resurgence in the 90’s prompted in no small part by Victoria magazine (as my reader Victoria commented earlier) and people started collecting vintage pieces and new chintzware began being produced as well.   And in a similar fashion, I think it has gone back out of style today for much the same reasons it did in the 40’s and 50’s.  People are looking for more clean lines and Scandinavian design once again, and less of the shabby chic floral look.

But … I have my little collection.  And I still think it’s lovely.  I keep some of it in a glass fronted cabinet on my front porch, and some of it in my summer house.  And although I’m not trying to add to my collection, when I see a gorgeous vintage tea pot in the Lord Nelson pattern called Rose Time for $10 at a garage sale, I buy it.  And it was extra fun to realize that I already had the matching creamer and sugar bowl.

Another of my favorite pieces is one that my friend Sue also found for me at a garage sale.

I especially love the birds that are included in this pattern.

This pattern was produced by Crown Ducal and apparently they didn’t name their patterns.  I do particularly like the designs that include birds as well as flowers.

This pair of plates are in another pattern with birds that is made by Royal Tudor Ware.

Shelley names their patterns, and this tea cup is in a pattern called Rock Garden.

 This tiny little creamer is one of my favorites, and the pattern is naturally called Hydrangea and it was produced by James Kent.  My friend Jeanne brought this one home from California for me knowing how much I love both chintz and hydrangeas!

I think the English pieces are the prettiest.  I try to stick with mainly English pieces, but chintzware was also made in Japan.  This sugar and creamer are Japanese pieces.

As you can see, these are not as detailed or colorful as the English patterns.

I do have a couple of reproduction pieces that are not vintage.  The differences between vintage pieces and reproductions are easily discernible, I think.  The new pieces are thicker and not as delicate as the vintage.  The colors seem to be a bit brighter and to me they just simply look ‘new’.

This is a reproduction of Sophie by James Sadler.

While researching for this post, I saw this exact teapot being sold on eBay for $269.99 and the description says “Very Rare Exquisite English Sadler Sophie Yellow Chintz Teapot Mint in Box”.

The ad includes a picture of the mark on the bottom, which matches the mark on the bottom of my reproduction teapot.  In other words, this is a reproduction being sold as ‘very rare’ on eBay for a crazy price.  I hope no one was taken in.

So, there you have it.  My chintzware non-collection.  One of these days I might sell it in a dark alley somewhere, but for now I think I’ll hang on to it.

Did you notice I have a new avatar?

If not, meet Quandie!

My new avatar is compliments of Monica a.k.a. Kit Kat.  Does this girl have some talent or what?

She brought this for me the last time we went garage saling.

Are you digging the blonde hair?  The jaunty scarf?  The fabulous multi-colored tail held at a proud angle?

I love them all, but my absolute fav part are the wings.  Hello!  Yep, I’ve got wings!

 

Yesterday I came home from work to find a small package in the mail addressed to me.  It seems so rare these days to get an unexpected package in the mail!  The return address was that of my friend LeeAnn a.k.a. Annie in New York.  Since I know that LeeAnn is a super talented artist, I knew there had to be something fab in that little box!

And look, there was!

Aren’t these lovely earrings?  Handmade by Annie, and one pair in my favorite color, aqua!  I just love them.

But better than the earrings was the lovely card that accompanied them.  The artwork on the front is by Annie herself by the way, but what meant the most to me were the words inside.  She sent the earrings just to let me know how much she enjoys my blog!

How fab is that?

It was funny timing, because I had just been thinking that perhaps my blog had gotten a little stale.  Yet another painted dresser, ho hum, yawn.  Don’t I have anything interesting to say?  Isn’t my life more exciting than this?  Does anyone really care what color I decide to use on a desk or how many vintage alarm clocks I have?  Sometimes I wonder.

But, now I am reminded that someone other than me gets some enjoyment out of this thing.

And so, I want to pay it forward.  Would you enjoy receiving a small box in the mail with a treasure inside?  How about these earrings I made using vintage religious medals?

And also these cute Scottie dog hair pins made out of vintage buttons?

All you have to do to put your name in the running for this giveaway is to leave me a comment on this post by Friday, May 2 at noon.

Don’t know how to leave a comment?  It’s easy!  Just click on the little dialogue balloon that is to the right of the title of the post, “paying it forward giveaway.”

I will pick a random winner using the very scientific ‘names in a hat’ approach on Friday.  Good luck!

 

Just a quick post to say I am teaching another MMS milk paint workshop this coming Sunday, April 27, at the Round Barn in Andover.  Class starts at 12:30 and costs $65.    It’s going to be cold and rainy here in Minnesota on Sunday, so why not come get cozy in the fabulous Round Barn and learn about milk paint?

You will learn all about it; how to mix it, how to finish it, how to work with the chippy factor … and it is hands on.  You will mix your own paint and work with a couple of colors.  I will share all of my milk paint secrets with you! 

All attendees then get 10% off any milk paint purchase the day of class.  The class generally takes about 1.5 hours.

If you want to sign up, just give the Round Barn a call at 763.427.5321.