The potatoes are ready for Big Martha's Mashed Potatoes. The apples have been roasted for Roasted Applesauce. The pie crust is in the fridge for Pecan Pie.
I love to read recipes, love to look at recipe books, love to collect vintage recipes. You too? You'll love a post from Liz at Mabel's House...it's very good.
Wishing everyone a happy and pie-filled Thanksgiving.
My most blog-worthy item from our recent church garage sale...vintage Avon perfumed talc. There was a whole box of Avon stuff but I didn't pay that much attention to it for the first few days. I finally really looked at the items while waiting for my daughter to look around. I'm not even a "pink" girl but this pink is pretty and the "Here's my Heart" graphics are sweet.
My mom is always buying dangerous lawn chemicals at estate sales...saying stuff like "You can't buy this anymore". hmmm....I wonder why Mom? I think it might be the same for talc...for decorative purposes only.
I got the good news last week...I'm a certified math teacher. Big sigh of relief (and a big thank you to everybody for the always positive input). I know the whole teacher + apple thing is probably annoying to most teachers but I couldn't resist this apple at the thrift store. When I have my own classroom, it will be cute.
Thanks for the Penny love this week. Things are settling down a little bit with our other dog and two cats...slight downgrade in the growling and hissing. I've done a little shopping for Penny on etsy and will share the tiny treasures soon.
Finally, I created a tutorial for a regular-size patchwork clipboard that I'll be posting tomorrow. It's very easy and, best of all, very giftable.
I love November. I love November except for two things; leaf blowers and holiday ads. They each bring me to the brink of insanity.
How are you supposed to keep things in perspective and not be marketed to...especially with kids? It's hard. One of the best things that works for me is to plan. Take a few days to look through magazines and books. Gather a few ideas I'd like to try and put them in a folder. Then, before December, I put all of the "idea" sources away so I'm not tempted to try "just one more thing". One of my favorite bloggers is bitter betty and she has a very wise post that I'm going to print and stick on my "to do" list.
November. The weather here is gorgeous. The trees and streets in our neighborhood are a mess of pretty colors. My blog anniversary is today (really!). My birthday is in a few weeks. I love Thanksgiving. I love November.
Now, about the picture. Have you ever seen such tiny flower frogs? They are only about an inch in diameter...today I'm going to make a tiny bouquet with stuff from my yard.
At about this time last year I bought a sewing machine and, unfortunately, a washing machine...on the same day. It was clearly a case of bad appliance kharma. Fair or not, these type of purchases are considered "mine". As in, "but you just bought a brand new washing machine". If bigger purchases come in groups of three, I was primed for a third buying opportunity. It came the next day at our church garage sale; and I had to show remarkable restraint.
I don't have a lot of useful talents but one of them is immediately spotting the good stuff at a sale. I walked into the church basement and saw a jadite place setting. The place setting had a sign that said "We have many more dish sets; $10/set". I looked at the set and it was the real thing...Fire-King...dinner plate + cup and saucer. I asked our head garage-sale-guy. They had well over 50 sets that came from the cafeteria of a church that had merged with ours. Talk about bad timing; there was simply no way I could come home from the church garage sale with $500 worth of jadite saying "I can explain" to my husband (well, really, I could (and have done so many, many times) but you know what I mean). I asked Sister to set aside 5 place settings for me and I'd be back to pay for them when the garage sale opened. I was back bright and early...followed quickly by a dealer that snatched up every remaining place setting.
It's all good. Our church and the St. Vincent DePaul Society did very well with the sale and we've used our 5 place settings on several occasions including breakfast on Christmas morning...a tradition I'm keeping for many more to come. Plus, I get to look at it everyday.
I'm off to help set up for the garage sale this weekend. I have no idea what I might find but I haven't made any big purchases this week just in case.
The pale blue and deep purple flowers, the green on the leaves, the dark brown pattern, and the big bright yellow flower...the colors on my new plate are so dang pretty. The kind of colors that you could design a whole room around. The kind of colors that could make you change your whole idea of "fall" colors. The kind of colors that make me want to take the same colors and make something from them.
I'm a big Johnson Brothers fan and have collected lots of different pieces at thrift stores and estate sales. They are so pretty to me and, no matter what the pattern, they seem to "go" together. I found this square plate in the garage at an estate sale in my neighborhood last weekend...it's called "Fairwood" and it's my new muse.
Can I ask an is-it-just-me question? I love getting and reading comments on my posts...like a letter from a friend, they are the best kind of mail. But...lately most of the comments are just links to business sites. Not exactly spam-worthy but still. Is it just me? Is it something that others are seeing with the new typepad? Have I gotten myself on some list by accident?
