The Last Leg Of Our Trip

Well, I must admit that it's taken me a good, long time to get around to this, but better late than never - and I still wanted to post it, so here goes....
The very last leg of our sisters road trip in May included a visit to Spokane, and a really nice visit with Lori's sister-in-law, Betsy and her family. They welcomed us with open arms and a great dinner the night we arrived.
She and her husband Scott live in a really neat old house that was built in 1918:

Here's a pic of Betsy and me. This was taken across the street from her house - we actually were lucky enough to be able to stay at her mother-in-law's home while she was away - thank you so much, Darlene!
(The white house you see in the background is next door to Darlene's.))

Betsy took us around to a few thrift shops, which is always fun - and then we went and had lunch at Hogan's, a really cute diner with great food.

We had SUCH a nice time with them, and I also got to meet Betsy's daughters Megan and Maryn, and they are both delightful young women.
 I'm afraid I rather talked their ears off that evening, but they truly did not seem to mind.
I love old houses SO much, and there were so many things about their house that I loved!
A cozy living room, a marvelous old kitchen, nice front porch, great back yard - like I said, so many things!
 I would practically kill for a huge basement like they've got - oh, the storage space seemed to go on for days!
Believe it or not, another thing I was crazy for was this old linoleum tile:

I'd love to have a floor like that in my house.
But this one, below was my favorite!

THAT would be absolutely perfect in our kitchen!
Here's another picture of a similar floor:

And back in 2000, Armstrong was selling a flooring called Spatterdash, which I wanted SO badly.
 Here's a photo of an ad featuring it, which I shared in a previous post:

But we have not been able to replace our old and ailing flooring yet. Hopefully we will, one day.
Okay - back to the subject of our trip (yes, old houses will distract me , that's a fact!)

Betsy and Scott also took us out to dinner at Waddell's; it was SO good.
I had their Caesar Salad and it was fantastic, but my favorite thing was when I tried Lori's Sweet Potato Fries with their dipping sauce!
I would really like to recreate that stuff at home - it was seriously good!
When Lori and I were on our way out of town, we were able to make a quick stop to see Chaps.

 The line at the register was so long that I didn't get to pick up one of these yummy-looking pastries:

All I had time to do was snap these few photos inside and out, and we hit the road again.

The one last - and VERY important - thing we wanted to do on our road trip was stop and meet our friend Deanna in Oregon.
It made us SO happy that we were able to work it out!
It happened to be her birthday, and we took her some flowers:

We "met" her through this blog, which she discovered because she had done Google searches looking for certain vintage items, and she'd found that I had written about quite a few of them over the years!
She is the same age as Lori, and through this blog, we found that we had SO many things in common.
Lori had also been able to meet her sister Linda, back when she was working in the Bay Area.
I'm so sorry to say that Linda lost her battle with cancer in the summer of 2016.
Here is a photo I took of Lori and Deanna:

Deanna, you were an absolute delight - and we would have stayed all darned day AND night visiting with you, if we hadn't needed to - you guessed it - hit the road again!
Thank you so much for welcoming us into your home, and I do hope we meet again one day!
Because that would be a very nice day, indeed.
I bought the card seen below from Deanna, because I simply fell in love with her artwork!

 Isn't it just so wonderfully bright and beautiful?!
She sells gorgeous cards made with prints of her photographs.
Below is a photo of her set-up from a church bazaar; I'm sure you'll agree that her photos/cards are fabulous!

 So, I think that does it, as far as my posts about our trip - although, you never know about me - I could pop in sometime with something I'd forgotten.
 But I know that I won't EVER forget about the great times we shared on that trip with family and friends both old and new.
 (At least I finally got this post finished and published before the year was out; since it seems that I am hopelessly behind on pretty much everything!)

Antique Nasturtium Studies

Tina here, with a post to share some of my collection of original nasturtium paintings which I have collected over the years. These five are special since they have all been painted as "studies" which must have been presented in either a magazine, book or some form of class pamphlet for the budding artists to follow. I thought I might have a copy of the original study somewhere but I have not come up with it, so if I do in the future I will do my own painting and share it and the study with you as a new post. I have been wanting to try my hand at one of these anyway so it would be fun!

This lovely framed painting above appears to be an oil and it is in it's original frame. It is not dated. It is signed M. Weiserfluh. As you will see, the paintings all have the same blue bowl, and similar placement of the nasturtiums, but each artist has added his own touch, and some have added an extra bud or bloom or leaf here and there. That is what is called artistic license. One of my art teachers, Jim Estey, a teacher from high school, college, and later a friend, gone now, printed out for his students an actual "artistic license" which he had laminated, and I have always carried it in my wallet since with pride.

This watercolor above right now is not framed. It has it's own plastic cover protecting it from the elements in my dining room. This artist, only known to us as "KB.N" dated this 1916, so it is 101 years old. It sports extra nasturtium buds, leaves and a flower.

Please excuse my feet and slippers, I couldn't seem to get my photo program to cut and paste for me!

This is another watercolor, and again unsigned or dated. It appears to be in it's original frame, which all my framed paintings in this post are. Each of these paintings are at least 14 inches wide and about 9 inches long, a perfect size to hang over a window or a door.

This lovely gold leaf frame has seen better days and needs a touch-up at the corners that it is waiting patiently for me to give. It is another watercolor, and sticks pretty much exactly to what I think is the original study. It is one of my favorites of the five, and very well done. The artist is Ira Skipper, and it is dated '12. That is 1912!

 Last we have another unsigned oil. I am so sorry when I see a beautiful work of art that has gone uncredited for all these hundred years. I guess these artists just thought of these as their practice pieces and they weren't important to them. But here we are years later and they are antiques and I now collect them and hope to find more, and would love to find more information on the original artist who set up the study and perhaps even grew the nasturtiums which tumble out of the blue bowl.

Until next time, hope you enjoy these last few weeks of summer.

Poppies are a Sign it's Spring in California

Tina here.

Here at our home in Kelsey we have been waiting for our poppies to bloom. A couple of weeks ago we could see color starting, but then horrendous storms with pounding rain have hit a couple of times, winds at 50 miles per hour, even hail visited. The poppies retreated and it seems they may not come back. This is our 20th spring, and I think there was only one when we had no poppies.



These photos from March are of the rolling hills that surround Interstate 5, along the Ridge Route in Southern California. It is so unbelievably beautiful I can hardly stand it. I want to be there!

Two gorgeous examples of my two favorite colors, orange and green, with a such-a-perfect-blue-it-must-be-magic sky thrown in.



Honk, honk! Hey you drivers! Look up! You don't want to miss this! California Gold at its best! The Golden State is dressing herself up for Easter!

If you have a place nearby you where poppies bloom, such as off Highway 49 in the Gold Country, go for a drive, take a picnic along perhaps, and go looking for a florescent glowing hillside. One hint of how to find good places: they are usually south facing and very often will be near rivers or a body of water.



Roses in Winter

Good morning. Tina here. Lately here in the gold country we have had a lot of rain. The rain was so heavy it even had a special name, an atmospheric river. So we have been inside a lot.

However, out in the yard, a California phenomenon was taking place. Here in the midst of changeable days, wet and windy (up to 50 mile-an-hour winds), can't see past the hood of the car foggy, crispy frosty frozen fields, sudden flurries of snow, and "are we in a house or on the deck of a ship?" pounding sideways rain, some of our roses are determinedly blooming away

The bush of golden yellow climbers has two blooms.

My Joseph's Dream Coat rose below the front porch sparkles in the early dawn.



Another lovely climber is preparing to join its friends, a red rose in time for Valentine's Day?

As I sit in the living room this morning, looking out at the dreary weather, noting the rain has started up again, I think of the mid-winter roses and they bring a smile.



New Years Greetings from Tina and Jac



Good morning! Tina here. I hope everyone had a great Christmas!

I am going to share my present to myself which I just purchased from ebay. The seller purchased it at a garage sale, and lucky for me listed it just after Christmas as a buy-it-now. I could not resist.



This is a self portrait watercolor by Jac Turner, one of my very favorite local artists, who has been gone now for over twelve years. This was painted in April 1991, not long before I met him. Longtime readers of the blog might remember my post in August 2014 about Jac, and mentions of his art in March 2011 in my post on the Gutenberger house, and the May 2011 post about the M. E. Church in Coloma.

I want to wish all of you a very nice New Years, and I can't think of a better way than to show you than an antique (1909) postcard with my favorite flower, the nasturtium!

 May your wishbone always break in your favor, and may your New Year be bright!

Saturday Farmer's Market

I finally made it to the Farmer's Market this morning for the first time this season!
 (Which is ridiculous, since it started in May, but, there you have it.)

 Our cupboard wasn't exactly bare - but we did go to the supermarket as well, after the Farmer's Market.
Here's the flower vendor, with their booth set up under our lovely mural:

 And a close-up of their gorgeous sunflowers:

 My favorite thing to get at the market?
These babies, right here:

 (LOVE tomatoes!)

 We got our tomatoes from one of my favorite vendors, who also happens to be one of the owners of a thrift shop I frequent.
These beautiful flowers were hers, as well:

 We also bought some squash:

 It would be far too easy to spend a small fortune at this market, if I could allow myself to get carried away.
The grapes were reasonably priced, though:

 This booth certainly was colorful and pretty:

And here's a close-up of their pumpkins:

I am going to make sure I go at least one more time before it ends next month!
And I'm going to leave you with one more photo of Kristy's flowers:

Hope you're all having a wonderful Saturday!!

Some Of Tina's Nasturtium Paintings

When I was visiting Tina earlier this week for her birthday, I took some photos in her house.
She has an astounding collection of vintage nasturtium items, not the least of which are her original paintings and her framed prints. It has taken many years of searching everywhere she goes and also online in order to discover all of these treasures.
I just wanted to share some of them with you in today's post.

Most of these are hanging in her master bathroom.

Acrylic or oil paintings do quite well in bathrooms - you may have never thought about it - but, why not?

After all, if you have a large collection, you should be able to enjoy your artwork on the walls of every room in your home.

These paintings and pictures are not hanging in a place where they would sustain any water damage.

Her bathroom was recently redone, and it's just gorgeous!
Tina adores nasturtiums, just in case you hadn't already guessed.

This is one of the smallest:

Color, color everywhere - I love seeing all of her marvelous vintage things whenever I visit!

Stay tuned because I will be featuring another of her collections soon!

It's A Southern Sort of Book Club Meeting

Good morning Tina here.

Last week I went up to Camino for a luncheon meeting with my book club group (a side line of the Placerville Shakespeare Club). We are called the Blue Stocking Sisters. A "blue stocking" is defined as a woman with considerable literary or intellectual ability or interest.  We mostly read the classics, and try to read at least one Shakespeare piece a year.

This day we were discussing our reading of "Gone With The Wind"by Margaret Mitchell.

We met at the home of one of our members, which sits on a wooded piece of property in the heart of what we in El Dorado County call Apple Hill. Her home was absolutely gorgeous. Tall slanted ceilings met high above with skylights in the center. As you walked in the front door a two-sided fireplace met your eye, and beyond was a cozy room with plenty of seating, and two antique stained glass windows drew your gaze immediately. Along every wall and in every nook were Hawaiian and oriental nicknacks. This family spends part of each year in Hawaii at their second home.

Janet and Bernice were the hostesses. Mother and daughter. They recently have begun living together in the house that Bernice (the mom) has lived in for over fifteen years. The stained glass windows were found by Janet's father (who is now deceased) in an antique shop in Southern California, and they were in pieces. He painstakingly restored them, and they grace this wonderful home, one letting in light from the east and one from the west. They are incredible!

We were seated around a table with a beautiful magnolia blossom strategically placed so we could all get a good sniff.

As we settled in and soaked up the southern scent, we were offered our choice of sweet iced tea, an Arnold Palmer (iced tea and lemonade - non-alcoholic, if you add bourbon it is called a Tipsy Palmer), or a mint julep with a touch of Kentucky bourbon from a very old bottle that Janet found way in the back of Bernice's cupboard, forlorn and forgotten. (Guess what I had? It had a bit of mint in it.)

One of our number, Pat, always loved the movie Gone With the Wind since she was a child, and her daughter helped fuel this passion with gifts such as almost every book about the movie ever published, and these two delightful dolls shown below, dressed in two of the most iconic costumes Scarlett flaunted on screen.

I think the little Madame Alexander Scarlett is contemplating a sip of Pat's mint julep, while the taller one feels she might be too young to imbibe. Below Pat shows one of the costumes from her 1939 movie book.

We had a wonderful lunch (I wish I had thought to take photos) of a succulent ham, juicy fruit salad, buttermilk biscuits, potato salad to die for, and a chocolate pecan pie that just about left me speechless, served on vintage china, with the prettiest silverware which sported a single rose wrapped around the stem.

Out of the many tchtochkes (a Slovic word meaning trinkets) my favorites were two frames filled with
mysterious long feather items. They turned out to be hatbands crafted in Hawaii, and collected and worn by the same gentleman who rescued the stained glass windows. I saw at least sixteen different ones framed, and apparently he had more of them. They were very beautiful, although I am concerned about what happened to the birds.

The time came to say farewell, and after that meal and the julep, I thought about a nap when I reached home.

                 

Ishi and Robbi apparently had the same thing in mind and acted on it.

Next week I will once again take you along with me on a trip with the Wagon Train.