Family Heirlooms.

My grandmother's on my mom's side

lace table cloth. I love it for Christmas.

Candles lit and teacups ready for tea

after a scrumptious meal made by dh.

The dining room hutch that matches the

table and chairs. This belonged to my

dad's parents, my other sweet gramma and

grampa. I feel family around us at dinner.

And in the corner, their hutch they got

when they were first married way back

in the early mid 30's. Honored to have it

in our dining room, holding special items.

Is your home filled with family heirlooms?

~ Chy

Heirloom Shadowbox.

I love rainy days at the Antique Mall.

Even more, I love getting amazing

ideas for projects I can create. This

one caught my eye and I'm attempting

to find the same items in my stash of

treasures. Wish me luck with this one!

~ Chy

Winter Treasures.

As I put items out for Christmas, I'm documenting

exactly where I place them. Loving our hope chest in

the living room that was my grandmother's, and then

passed along to me. Inside is all our Winter treasures

that will be out through the season. I love to switch

around what I display each year so it's new and fresh.

~ Chy

Antique Booth.

We've now had our Antique Booth for 8 months

now and it's going not too bad. Sales are going

okay and we're having fun keeping our booth

stocked and tidy. Always fun to treasure hunt.

Recently we moved the big items in our booth

to the two outside walls and that opened up the

middle, giving more space and an open feeling.

Now we can put refinished furniture in. Excited!

Guest Room Update.

Slowly, piece by piece, we are 

unpacking our art and decor to

hang throughout the house. It's

fun to uncover our packed treasures.

Bare wall in our guest room. I really

wanted to try and cover the switch plate.

So I hung this sweet find and

hung two vintage dresses on it.

Perfect height to cover up the plate

and display all at the same time.

House Bookcase.

We gifted this to our community preschool

a few years ago but it's now back in our home,

tucked into a corner of our guest bedroom.

Holds many special tiny and sweet treasures.

Do you have a special spot for your treasures?

Do you have a collection or two on display?

And now, the Treasures.

 We had a busy day and then, because

we were in the City, we rewarded our

hard work with a trip to the Antique

Mall. And found 3 small treasures.

An urn for flowers, a tiny pair of

leather doll shoes and a china plate.

This plate is from England and is part of the

J & G Meakin line. The markings on the back

suggest is was made sometime after 1912. It's

a thicker plate and just right for our house.

Teeny, tiny doll shoes. The clerk was

fascinated by their small size and asked

me what I'd do with them. I told him I

collect miniatures and he was intrigued.

A close up of the flower urn. I might

paint it to match another gardening

item I found the other day at our

charity shop. Will decide another day. 

Have you been thrift or antique shopping?

Have you found any great deals or treasures?

Treasure Hunting.

Our term for shopping at the Antique Mall or

at our local charity shop is "Treasure Hunting."

It's so much fun to peek through booths, moving items

aside so we can officially "hunt" down anything that

may compliment our new home or fill a wish. Look

what we spotted in one vendor's booth: Mrs. Beasley!

I forgot to check the tag but a quick look on eBay and

we discovered these dolls are worth around $200 now.

No worries .... we didn't buy it. No room and truly, I

never wanted one as a child. She's kind of spooky.

Love the bins full of vintage door knobs and hanging

brackets. And I LOVE this cabinet. But it's not for sale.

This dressing table was amazing and a cool $625. Love

the mirrors that can be positioned so the individual who

is dressing can see their outfit at different angles. The

final picture is my favorite booth ~ a sweet lady from

the U.K. Jane is the vendor and she always has lovely

items that I will often buy. Great prices and true antiques.

Do you like to Treasure Hunt in your community?

Do you find great items for your home or garden?

On My MInd for Awhile.

I read a lot of blogs, every day, throughout the day. Some of my favorites are listed on the right side of my blog, but some I haven't added yet and just google them each day. Others I find when I do a search while eating lunch or waiting for a client. It's something I love to do and really keeps me grounded in so many ways. 

But ....

I bet you knew there would be a BUT!

Yes, but .... I have to confess, I feel a bit out of place in the vast Blogland that I so cherish and participate in daily and this has been on my mind a lot lately. Like, really, quite a bit. Enough to have me ponder it at night and think about it during the day.

If you've read this far, you may now be wondering what my quandary is. So now I'll spill my thoughts and try to make sense of how I feel. Feel free to continue on if you'd like. It could get a bit messy .... and please know, this is not a complaint about how others live, just a observation of my own life and why I may not fit in to the trends that others have embraced.

I grew up with parents who were teens when I was born. They committed to making their little family work and a few years after I was born, my brother arrived. Perfect little family, one of each and lovely parents. It was hard and I truly remember both the good and the bad. I know we had very little money to start and we lived in a series of small basement apartments at first. Then one day, my dad was able to scrape enough money together to put a down payment on a property to buy a real house and that was the turning point. We moved constantly so that they could gain equity and in time, my dad loved the process so much, he became a realtor, then in later an owner/broker. They carved an amazing life  as they continued to move up the status ladder but kept their roots close. Through all this, my mom was very conscious of what we had and what we didn't have, our needs and our wants. We lived sparsely, really an early version of being minimalists. But I will confess, I always felt that our homes, as lovely as they were, really were not "homey" or warm. Walls were always painted white, (one house even had white carpet ~ oh, the horror!!) we weren't allowed to hang up anything, except a few key pieces of abstract art my parents acquired over time. No color, no personality. I suppose it was easy to keep tidy and clean but from a young age, I would gaze out the window at everyone else's homes and wonder why I always wanted to go visiting. Even now, as an adult, I love driving down streets at night, when inside lights are on and you can peek into the lives of the homeowners. I suppose that's one thing that I love about blogging ~ a chance to see what it is like for others in their own homes, far away but close enough to feel connected. Fun on cold winter nights.

This is where I feel like I don't quite fit in. My true confession .... I'm not a minimalist and I personally don't have any desire to be. I admire those that can really embrace the lifestyle. I'm not a hoarder by any means and I regularly donate to our local charity shop. But truth be told, I love to have a home that is warm, comfy and gives us the freedom to enjoy the activities we love. This means we do have stuff, or as some say "collections" that they possess. I like that, along with "treasures" ~ a term we use when we take some time to visit our local Antique Mall or the charity shop. I guess at this time in my life, I feel like I'm not measuring up because I'm not into giving away all my worldly possessions and moving in to tiny house. We started with a very tiny house for the first 4 years of our marriage (before children), then a bit bigger house with a garage, then the same size but different community, then the house we lived in for 24 years and then finally this house that we personally designed and built from the ground up. We could actually fit our first house into this current house 2.5 times. Does this make me a bad person? Am I so far out in left field that my blog will never be interesting to others because I'm not focusing on some of the topics that do fit the current trends? Is it wrong to love our space and our treasures, in addition to our healthy, our family, our careers and our passions? I'd so love to know as it's a wonder in my brain. To be fair, our home doesn't just house the 2 of us but also our daughters and our grandson and guests who sometimes stay with us. It provides us space for our creativity in our various art mediums that we have been gifted with. It gives us space for meetings, space for writing, space for family dinners and gatherings. We've always lived in tight quarters until now. For this last half of our lives, treating ourselves to more space didn't require a debt load, although for now, we do have a bit of a mortgage, something we were done with previously. We'll pay it off before we move again and maybe by then, we'll be ready to downsize. I'm loving the space to breathe, to spread out, to create and to have privacy.

Because of the nature of my job, my passion, I give, give, give, give all day long. Coming home to this amazing sanctuary is almost like a reward for the compassionate care I, along with my team, provide on a daily basis. Maybe that's not the right term but that's the only way I can describe it.

Our space is not crowded and I often rotate items so that it's not all squished together. I store items for seasons and bring them in for that time and then they go back to storage. Maybe I have a bit of minimalism in me ~ I love clearing out cupboards and drawers and recycling! Maybe I'm in the middle between the two ideals. But the truth is, I love my house that is not a tiny house and I love the sweet items we've gathered over the years. And although I feel like I'm supposed to apologize for being in this space and place, maybe it's not an issue. I hope this doesn't make me a terrible person in any way, 'cause really, I'm quite lovely!

So that's the quandary in my head and my heart. I'm not sure if I need to re~examine how we live or if we need to even go there. I'm not sure if I'm out to lunch because I haven't embraced the minimalist life or if some of us are just not needing to go there. Whatever the right answer is, I hope in time it comes to me so I can make peace with what the heck I'm supposed to to do with all these conflicting thoughts circulating in my already full brain! That's all, on a rainy Friday night.

Do you ever feel like you don't quite fit in to the trends?

How do you live your life, your way, without worry?

Annual Dollhouse Show.

Each year, we attend the Annual Dollhouse

Show in September. It's such a treat to

meet others who are passionate and very

creative about their own dollhouses. 

I save all year to put aside $100 just to spend

on whatever I'd like to add to the houses we have.

This year, it was the 20th Anniversary of the club

that puts it on and it was another great show. My

haul above looks small but it's quite a bit of stuff 

for the very small sum of $21 altogether. Over the

years, I've collected so much so there wasn't as much 

that I needed in terms of big items. Tons of smalls.

Left picture: I loved this tiny bouquets for the planters.

Right picture: a sweet print to frame and a metal tea set.

Left picture: pretzels, cinnamon buns and donuts. Yum!

Right picture: festive wreath, jump rope, tea towels.

Left picture: watermelon, fruit, baby items, ladybug leaf.

Right picture: stained glass, photo album, musical notes.

Left picture: flower basket, eggs in a basket, turkey.

Right picture: stitched rose, festive sign, wallpaper sheets.

My best find of the day was this sweet gazebo

that one of the members was selling due to her

impending retirement from dollhouse crafting due

to her declining health. I know this gazebo is a

kit that sells for about $110 plus shipping and tax.

But I scored it for a tidy $15. It's just like the

one I envision having in our back yard, one day,

down the road. For now a dream but at least

my dollhouse will have one to enjoy. Not a bad

haul at all for a total of $36 for the day. Perfect.

Treasure #1.

We had a great time at the Boot Sale

on Sunday morning, a very sunny day.

I promised to write about all the treasures

we found and here is the first item we bought:

This beautiful framed print we haggled 

on ~ a "Welcome" picture for the hall.

In the picture, there is a girl reaching

up to pull on the door knocker. From the 

back, she reminds me of the young girl 

from the movie and stage play "Les Miz".

A perfect addition to our vintage look.

And from $15 to $10, I love it even more!

Boot Sale #2.

A trip to the Antique Mall Boot Sale in June

netted quite a hall. The value of all these items

was over $220 ~ the value the vendors had

listed them for, not the true worth of course.

I had saved and saved as this was the largest

boot sale of the year, so I knew we'd find some

amazing treasures. We left home early and I

had a tidy $200 tucked away in my wallet.

But after careful and fun negotiations, our

final total was a very lovely $160. Success!

A pretty petite point, two tiny English tins,

sweet rose votives, a pretty pair of frames

with attached planters and finally, a colorful 

print for our bright and color filled guest room.

A tiny ballerina dress, a yellow floral patched

pillow for one of the window seats and a frame.

Sweet smocked dress, a pair of Irish salt and

pepper shakers, two vintage books for our

growing collection (pink and purple), a

tiny box from Russia (I have matching ones

from my trip there at 16), a vintage planter,

a unique round biscuit tin and a painting.

Love this painting for our master

bathroom. It has all our colors in it!

On my wish list forever, a Boston Fern

plant stand and here it is! It was listed for

$45. I'm sure this is the same one at the

last Boot Sale that was listed then for

$85. I offered $25 to start and it was

accepted! I had many comments and a

number of gasps as we walked it out to

our car. So happy with this purchase.

A shot to show how big the frame

is. And a steal at just $8.

It's actually a chalk board and what caught

my eye and made it endearing was the

vintage glass knob on the end. When I saw

the price tag, I was sure it said $100, which in 

my head I was justifying because of the work

that would have gone in to it to turn it from

an old frame in to a working piece for our

kitchen. And the know is well worth that

amount. Then the lady who made it and

approached me and said I was welcome

to make an offer as she could see I was very

interested. I took the tag in my hand and it

was then that I realized it said $10, not $100.

I was going to just pay that and she said

she would let me have it for $8. Sold!!

She was happy it was going to be loved.

Close ups of the smaller items that

rounded out the larger pieces we chose.

The black iron pieces are a hanging plant

stand that we are going to put on the porch.

Such soft colors in these matching frames.

Trying to decide where to put them now.

A tiny teddy for my tiny collection.

And a depression era green jar with lid.

Finally, the first piece we picked up ~

another wish list item to cross off!

Have you attended any Boot Sales lately?

Is it something you have in your community?