One Gorgeous Embroidered Piece

The item you see pictured here is actually a rather small embroidered piece, found at a thrift store.
It measures just five by seven inches.
Every one of those little blooms is, I guess, a french knot.

 I think a lot of work went into this.
And I think it's beautiful.

Volks - Swagenn

Tina, Lori and I were very lucky to have been invited to go to the home of a very dear friend, who, along with her sister (my friend for more than fifty years!) , treated us to a wonderful (and Weight Watchers-friendly) lunch last weekend.
When we pulled up to the house, I saw her son's Volkswagen bus parked there, and I could not resist taking a few pictures to share.

You may remember that I love me some Volkswagens, especially vintage ones!
This one looked pretty great to me:

I LOVE the color!

Love his clever personalized license plate, too.
Just spreadin' the VW love, one vehicle at a time......
(Thank you SO much, ladies - we all had such a fabulous time, and a delightful visit with you!)

Fawning Over It

I found this original painting of a deer and a butterfly at a thrift shop.
The artist's name is Jean Crist.

Look at that little fawn's face!
Isn't it the sweetest thing?

Patterns From The Past : Simplicity 9672 - Skirt, Belt And Stole

Today's pattern from the past is another cute one!

A skirt to make with or without a ruffle at the bottom, and also a cute lace-up belt, and a stole to stitch in a matching, coordinating, or  contrasting fabric.

That's Susie Blakeley on the left, above, and Lucy Angle in the center, I believe - in a wig. 

(If you know the name of the gorgeous model on the right, please comment and let me know! )

I love it in the three colors of calico as shown in the photo at top from my vintage "Simplicity Fashion News" booklet, 

but look how cute it would be in gingham, 

as shown on the pattern front:

And what a cute belt, too!

(This one is from 1971.)

A Winged Bird

This hand made painted wooden bird was waiting for me at one of my favorite local thrift stores.
Could. Not. Resist. Him.
If you pull down on the lever at the bottom....

His wings spread out!

Down:

And up again!

He's a keeper, I think - he won't take up much room.
I'm hoping I can just hang him on the wall or on the side of a cupboard some place.
Yes, I think he'll be "hanging around".........

Didn't Have One Of These......

I picked up this vintage office stamp at a thrift store last week:

I even had a cute little wooden rack already (also a thrift find, of course!) to put it in:

I love the idea of using it to stamp my price tags for our booth at the shop!

A Platitude With Attitude

Doesn't she just look like she's saying,
"Because I'm the Mom, and I said so!",  or something to that effect?

Doesn't seem to have much of a mouth on her, though, so I don't know......
Definitely got a bit of a 'tude, though with those arms and that stance.

Ethyl Phegley's Painted Tiles: Three more have found their home with me!

Good morning, Tina here. 

I had the most delightful day yesterday. It started out with a special social meeting at the Placerville Shakespeare Club where we celebrated our history by honoring our life members and with some of us dressing in pioneer (or other historical) garb.  I wore my dress which I had made for my costume as Louisa Veerkamp in our performance of El Dorado's Gold last October.

We had a speaker, Ken Deibert, who is a local historian and has a column in two local papers. I was lucky enough to sit next to him and shared a stack of old Placerville postcards I brought along. Chatting with other ladies at the table, I realized I had worked with one of them years ago at the Courthouse. All in all a wonderful, informative and friendship filled meeting!

Then, in the afternoon, the piece de resistance. I meet with my newest friend James, a gentleman and fellow history-buff from Carmichael, California. He had found my post on Ethel Phegley through an internet search, and he commented, wanting to contact me about some tiles of her artwork he owned. After a few mishaps in cycberspace trying to connect with each other, we finally connected through email and a phone call and agreed to meet. (All in one day! - Do you think we were excited about this???)  James drove all the way to Placerville after he got off work to meet with me, which I appreciate very much!

There are three tiles, the first one above is the Methodist-Episcopal Church, now called the Federated Church, which once stood on a corner at Cedar Ravine and Main Streets. It is the same subject as one of her tiles I already had, same view, but a different painting. It makes me wonder now how many tiles she did of her subjects, since I have two tiles of the Bee-Bennett house also, although the views on that tiles are a bit more different from each other.

Above is my favorite of the three tiles, the Old Chinese Josh House, which used to stand at about the corner of Pacific and Goldner Streets. I love the bright colors and the perspective, and the little people adding a touch of personality.

I love the way this worker looks like he is enjoying his bright fresh day, even though he is loaded down with what must be heavy produce!

One of the tiles still retains its original label, printed by Ethel herself, misspelling and all.

Above is a true prize, a painting of the original building which used to sit on Main Street across from the Cary House, where the Hangman's Tree once stood. More of Ethel's little people gather around. I like to think the lady with the cane on the right was Ethel, since she signed her name below. When I took a painting class we spent a whole class learning how to paint little people to put in our paintings, it is an art in itself!

A lady and gent, he with his top hat and coat, and her with her bonnet, muff and bustle. All in a few simple strokes.

I will leave you with a synopsis of James' tale of how the tiles came to him, and then to me:
He had a good friend who owned these tiles. James always admired them and his friend noticed that he always checked them out when ever he was over. One day his friend told him, I know you like these tiles, and if I am ever ready to give them up, I will let you have first pick. Time went by, about a year or so. One day as James stopped by his friends home to deliver some hay, after not seeing him for about three months, James walked into the middle of his friend finalizing a sale to a local art framing store, he was SELLING JAMES' TILES! James blurted out "Wait, you told me I could have first pick on those!" His friend stopped dead in his tracks and said "You are right!" and stopped the deal. James says five minutes one way or the other and those tiles would have been gone.

Then, as you know, James found me later on this blog and contacted me, and now here are the tiles at their new home with the others, and hopefully more will find their way to me if they are out there.

James is interested in old photos or postcards of Citrus Heights, Fair Oaks, Orangevale, Carmichael, Sacramento, Arbuckle, and Dunnigan. He likes street and town views, fire and police department related photos. He also collects World War 2 photos and he especially likes glass negatives. If any of you has anything he might be interested in please contact me and I will share.

Thank you so much James, I am ever so grateful to you, and I am very glad to have met you and I hope we two history buffs can forge a friendship that will aid our respective collections and brighten our lives in the future!

I have two other blogs about Ethel Phegley's tiles:
http://goldcountrygirls.blogspot.com/2009/11/ethel-phegleys-painted-tiles-of-el.html
http://goldcountrygirls.blogspot.com/2012/09/more-art-from-ethel-phegley.html

Pizza Bread

I made some pizza bread while the football game was on Sunday afternoon:

I got a little carried away on the toppings,
 and there was.... like, a LOT of it:

But that's okay, we love leftovers around here!
(Sourdough bread loaf, marinated artichoke hearts, fresh mushrooms, black olives, turkey pepperoni, and mozzarella cheese. OMG...good!)

A Few More Recent Finds

 Just a few pictures of random and assorted finds I have picked up lately.....
I found another great enameled flower pin for my collection - I love the bright green color on this one, and the little touch of aqua in the center certainly doesn't hurt:

And I got a very nice hand-painted tole ware tray with roses on red:

I also found a lovely floral pie plate:

 And I "picked" a pair of pretty pots:

An original clown painting in bright colors suitable for a child's room, "By Aunt Shirley" - how sweet is that?

Another nice plate with colorful petit-point flowers:

And, last but not least....
I was tickled to find this vintage Mouseketeers 78 record for a quarter!

Roll up the rug, and kick up your heels, let's do the Edelweiss Polka!
"We're the Mouseketeers, and we want to say hello....."

Patterns From The Past: Simplicity 5807 - A Sweet Little Jumper In Calico

How cute is this one? From another issue of Simplicity Fashion News, circa 1973:

(If anybody knows the name of this model, please clue me in! I still have SO many of them whose names I have been unable to determine!)

It would be pretty great in that red paisley print too, right?
Adorable.

Another Little Vintage Trinket Box

I found yet another little vintage trinket box to add to my collection.....

Like the others I have - the ones by Counterpoint that I have had since I was a teenager - and the ones I have found more recently.
I didn't have a floral patterned one like this, though.

You know, to......um.....
.....fill with little vintage trinkets!
Yeah - that's the ticket!

Cloudy No More

Hi: Sis Lori Here:

I have been busy with a new job that takes me a little ways from home and I am driving more at night.

I hate driving at night, but have been lucky that we have had unusually nice weather for quite a while and no rain to speak of. I was wondering why I could not see very well while driving. Well, here is what my headlights looked like, duh!!! That plus a low beam bulb was out. Now, how does one know that if you are always the driver???? So, having a few days off, I got some help and here is what we did:

This is the before:

This is the product I used, purchased at an Auto Parts Store, so with that and an electric drill, oh, and a new bulb for the lo beam, actually I bought 2 and just replaced both:

Here is the after!!!!! I think I will be seeing much clearer now while driving at night! What a difference!!!!

Snapshots From Disneyland

It has been two months since Lori, our friend Debbie, and I took our little trip to Disneyland. Here's a pic, below, of Deb and me that Lori took of us on Heimlich's Chew Chew Train in "a bug's land" at Disney California Adventure.
Do we look happy? Do we look like we were having fun?
Well, we were! I mean, we WERE at Disneyland, after all!!
I was actually pretty sick with a bad cold and cough - AND experiencing some pretty severe neck pain the entire time, but it was my first (mini) vacation in two years, and I was determined to make the best of the situation.
 Oh - and I couldn't talk , either. And when I tried too hard to carry on a conversation anyway, I would launch into extreme coughing fits. People around you just love that.
We kept joking about how I was doing my very best to "soldier on". (Cue Victor Herbert's music for "March Of The Toys" from Babes In Toyland, where the toy soldiers are marching.....)

I hardly ever remember to take pictures of my food - and I like to do it. And I like to see pictures that other people take of their food. Especially Disneyland food.
Call me crazy if you like - that will never faze me.
This is a Shrimp Louie Salad from the Pacific Wharf Cafe at Disney California Adventure. It was fantastic:

The sourdough bread bowl bread is SO fabulous that we all carried around our leftover bread in a bag afterward because we couldn't bear to throw it away! ( We did stow it in our locker later, though. Sourdough bread is my absolute favorite. And that Boudin bread is the best! They even sell Mickey-shaped loaves. Wish I had some right now)
And this was my dessert - a gorgeous Mickey Mouse cookie:

Debbie is down there at Disneyland again right now. She and her husband are there for the Tinker Bell Half Marathon Weekend.
Hope you have fun, Deb - and I wish I was there with you!
And just in case you aren't familiar with the music I mentioned above, here you go - and you just try listening to it without wanting to get up and march around the room - I dare you!:

Wanted: Vera Stitch Bucilla Crewel Kit: Nasturtiums

Good morning. Tina here.

I have been thinking of starting a project I can work on while I am watching some of my favorite TV programs.

I think this fits the bill perfectly.

I have a collection of napkins in this pattern and colorway by Vera.

Fun stitching ahead...

Scouting For Finds

A plastic bag full of stuff caught my eye recently at one of my local thrifts. Inside was a vintage "Cadette"Girl Scout Handbook, so I picked it up to check it out. The plastic bag was stapled shut, so you couldn't view all of the contents.
I like the cute illustrations inside the book, dated 1973:

I was a Brownie  and a Girl Scout, and I  still wish there was a picture of me in one of my uniforms!  

By 1973, though, I was no longer a Girl Scout - we were still 4-H members at that time, though.

I saved so many things, I can't imagine why I don't have my sash or anything. I still wonder what in the heck happened to some of that stuff! I might have a couple of pins somewhere, but I think that's it.

I was very pleased once I saw what all was included in the bag, after getting it home.
Unused badges:

Quite a few of them (more than you see pictured here!):

And patches:

All together,  there are at least 65 of them.
 I don't know a lot about them, but I was happy I decided to buy the bag!