Vintage Clothespin Bag

Mondays (and sometimes Tuesdays, if needed) are always laundry days for me.   

And, because it is laundry day, I've decided to share with you one of the Christmas presents I received this year from my Uncle Stan and Aunt Barb.  It's almost April already, for cryin' out loud, it's about time I give this fun, little vintage goody a post of its own!

It's a clothes pin bag to hang on the clothesline and I just LOVE it to pieces!  AND it was full of vintage clothes pins too!  Some were the spring kind, some were the older kind with no springs.  The bag and hanging wire are both in very good shape, considering it's most likely 50+ years old.

 

 

 

Now, if I just had an old fashioned, 4-lined clothesline like the one in the next photograph.

 

Photo found on Pinterest

The other neat thing about this vintage clothespin bag is that it can be found in my 1950 Montgomery Wards catalog, which was also a Christmas present from my Uncle Stan. 

 

 

 There it is...letter V.  Only $.89 and includes 72 clothes pins.

 

Well, the dryer is about to buzz.  Until another time, have a happy, vintage day!

Embroidery--Buttonhole Stitch Fun 2

Well, I've been trying some different things with the buttonhole stitching that I've been embroidering.  I wanted to do French Knots in between the circles, so at first I tried this...

 

 

Using two shades of gray to "fill-in" the space.  Like some sort of coral sea creature.

 

 

But the gray bothered me and the coral look bothered me, so I undid all of the French knots.  Let me tell you...it is a huge pain to snip out little French knots.  I spent more time trying to snip them out then stitching them in the first place!

 

Then I tried this...kind of a astro-spacey look.

 

 

I didn't like that either.  Out they go!

 

Now I am just back to circles. 

Lots and lots of circles.

 

Now, if I could just get over to Hobby Lobby for some more of that pretty turquoise color, I'll be good to go!

 

That's all for today.  Until next time, have a happy, stitching day!

Stitching Fun--Buttonhole Wheel Stitches

Last weekend I had some uninterrupted hours to myself, so I started a new stitching project.  Sometimes it's fun to start something and just "see where it takes you".

The pattern is one I found months ago on Pinterest.  After printing out a copy, I taped it to the window and traced it onto a piece of off-white muslin that was originally meant to be a quilt block.

 

 

Once traced, the cloth went into a larger sized hoop.  I placed the tape dispenser into the picture to give you an idea of the project's size.

 

 

To make the buttonhole wheel stitch you come up on the outside line (which I didn't take a picture of, sorry), then, while holding the thread fairly tight with your thumb, you put your needle down into the inside line.

 

From the bottom, poke your needle back up on the outside line being sure to place your needle inside the "loop" that the thread has made.

 

Pull the needle up and slightly to the right (the direction you are going).

 

 

Repeat the steps to create more stitches.

 

My explanations are not the best.  To be honest, I find Mary Corbett's video tutorials to be the best tool in learning new stitches.  Here is a LINK to her buttonhole wheel stitch tutorial on YouTube.

 

After a few hours, this is what I ended up with.  At this point I wasn't too sure what I was going to do next.  I thought about adding some feather stitches like little vines around the circles, but quickly decided against that.  I thought about making the smaller circles little daisies, but no. 

 

 

Finally, I took a hot iron to it and erased any distracting pen marks.

 

 

Where to go from here, I don't know.  But it will be fun to play around with it in the weeks to come!

 

Thanks for visiting!  And as always, have a happy, stitching day!

Vintage Ad Wednesday--Easter Cakes

This time of year I'm always ready for Winter to pack up its snow, snirt, and slush and leave.  I'm ready for Spring and here is a little Dexo ad to get us in the spring-time mood.  Cakes are one of my favorite treats and I just love the look of this cheerful Easter cake.  This Dexo ad comes from my April of 1950 Woman's Day.

 

 

Here is another lovely Easter Cake from the same magazine.

 

 

Ahh yes, Baker's Coconut.  Coconut cakes always remind me of my Grandma Eva and her Bunny Cakes.  She made a couple for my brother as his birthday was sometimes close to Easter.

 

 

The cake is trimmed in with those big, waxy, candy eggs that were basically pure sugar...haven't seen them in forever.  Not even sure you can still get them.

One of these days, maybe I will try to make a Bunny Cake.

That's all for today.  Until another time, have a piece of cake and a happy, vintage day!

Embroidery--Practicing Buttonhole Stitch

Waaaay back in February, I once again, caught the embroidery bug.  Wanting to learn a couple of new stitches, I got out my supplies, tuned into the youtube, and watched a few tutorial videos.

 

 

I finally got around to using my Artiste floss from Hobby Lobby.  The colors are just so springy and pretty, and just what I needed to get through these long winter blahs!

 

I wanted to learn the button hole stitch and after awhile started this little circle.

 

 

I also practiced the raised fishbone stitch.

 

 

I got a little crazy with the buttonhole stitch and the wheat ear stitch.

 

 

I think this next one is called the double feather stitch.  I added the little, fluffy flowers at the end of each stitch.
 

 

Just a little more practice with the double feather stitch and some French knots.  Sorry for the blurry photos. 

 

 

In the end, I ended up with a mess of different stitches that actually looks kind of cool.  This cloth will be my practice cloth and I will keep adding stitches to it as I go.  Someday, I will iron it up and post it for all to see.

 

That's all for today.  Until another time, have a happy stitching day!

Vintage Ad Wednesday

When we were kids, my mom always kept a 7-up and a "real" Coke in the fridge in case of sickness.  And 7-up was the only pop I ever remember seeing at my grandparents' house.  Grandma always let us have one with our Schwan's pizza.  Ahh, the memories.

The 7-Up ad below is from June of 1948 found in my True Story magazine.

 

I'm loving the matching yellow headband, socks and T-shirt look.  I just might have to get myself a pair of Keds this summer!

 

I got this nifty 7-Up bottle awhile ago.  It looks a lot like the one in the ad above, except mine is filthy, and needs a serious bottle scrubbing.  But I still love it.
 

 

And yes, I call it "pop".  My brother laughs at me because where he is living it's called "soda".  And we drink our pop with slush burgers and toasted cheese sandwiches.  If you are thinking, "what the hell's a toasted cheese?" it's one of these.

 

 

And a slush burger?  It's a Sloppy Joe.

 

 

Those both look good!  Is it supper time yet?

 

That's all for now.  Have a refreshing, vintage day!

New Table Cloth

A couple weekends ago I stopped into Vintage City and saw this cute little red and aqua colored table cloth!  It's a square rather than a rectangle, but I think it works well at an angle. 

 

If you Google "Vintage Red and Aqua" you'll get about a thousand results.  There's no denying it, red and aqua seems to work together, and decorating with them is a popular trend.  I never thought I'd decorate with the two colors, but now I totally see how they work!  I'm not going to go overboard though, just a couple little aqua items should do.

 

Now, because I only have one other little item in this aqua-turquoise color (the tea cup in center of table), I'd like to come across something that will match the table cloth.  A turquoise bowl or vase, perhaps, or maybe something in that mauve-y pink. . 
That's the fun part, the hunt...the search for that perfect item that says, "pick me, pick me!"

That's all for now.  Until another time, have a happy vintage day!

 

Flea Market Finds--March

After missing the local Flea Market back in February, I wasn't about to miss the one in March! 

 

Here are my finds...minus one cabinet key that I put into my purse after purchasing because I didn't want to lose it.

 

A February 16, 1952 Saturday Evening Post, in rough shape, but it's a Norman Rockwell cover.  I couldn't pass it up!

 

 

I was given a "bundle" deal on the children's Elephant Hankie, the laundry sprinkler, and the egg crate.  The hankie makes #4 in Daughter's circus hanky set, so she was pretty excited about that! 

 

 

The Bossie's Best Butter box was a happy find for me.  I like anything "dairy" related, especially things with cool graphics. Other than the fact that it's from an Aberdeen Mo. creamery, I really don't know much about it.  Some folks on the internet say this particular box is from the 1920s....I'm skeptical, it's in pretty good condition, but I suppose it's possible.

 

 

The Alice and Jerry book is full of neat-o illustrations.  I'll try to share some of them soon. 

 The Sun-Rise bottle was an impulse buy, bought because of the unique shape and details on the bottle.

 

Whew!  And that wasn't even the end of our day!  We also stopped by Vintage City and picked up a couple of sweet little things there.  I'll share those with you soon, so stay tuned!!

 

Until tomorrow, have a happy vintage day! 

 

 

 

Vintage Ad Wednesday

Now that I have a better scanner, I'd like to try Vintage Ad Wednesdays again.  Today's vintage ad is from my copy of True Story magazine from June of 1948!  There are so many great ads in this magazine, I can't wait to share them with you!

Please take note of the daffodils in the lower, right corner.  They are so bright and cheerful!
Colorful ads like this one are always such a fun find!
 

 P.S.  Either that bowl is really small, or Rice Krispies were a lot bigger back then haha!  They were probably "enlarged to show texture" (isn't that what they say now-a-days?).

That's all for today.  Until another time, have a snap, crackle poppin' kind of day!

Cookies for Choir

This week it was Daughter's turn to bring snacks to choir.  Since St. Patrick's Day is just around the corner, I made Shamrock cookies and musical note cookies.

 

 

I baked on Saturday evening and frosted on Sunday evening.  We ended up with 41 Shamrocks and 37 Musical notes!  Yea!

As always, I used the Wilton Royal Icing recipe.  You can find it HERE.  And this time I only mixed the frosting mixture for 7 minutes with my electric hand mixer.  I should have done 10.  But the frosting still turned out pretty good.   I achieved the darker green dots by adding them while the flood frosting was still very wet.  Just a dot of frosting will do, as it spreads a little bit when dropped onto the flood frosting.  The dark green frosting was also quite thin...about the same consistency as the flood frosting.  If I had three hands, I could have taken pictures! Ha!

 

 

I was a tired cookie maker by the end of the day.

 

That's all for now.  Until another time, have a happy day! 

Vintage Chrome Table

Last weekend, a beautiful, 1950s, chrome, pedestal, kitchen table came up for sale at Vintage City (my favorite little vintage shop).  A table like this has been on my wish list for quite some time, therefore, there was no time to waste.  I bought it sight-unseen!

Well, actually...

Hubby stopped over to Vintage City to look it over, and he said it looked great.  Next thing I knew, we had a new table! 

 

First, we had to remove the built-in table that had served us well for 10 whole years.
 

The old table came out easily and wasn't as difficult as we thought it might be. We risked ruining part of the floor, but it was only screwed to the flooring with three screws!  Why didn't we try doing this a long time ago!?

Here we have put the legs back onto the new table.  It's fairly easy to take the legs off and put back on for travel or storage. 

I love the fact that it's a pedestal table.  If someone needs to sit at a corner, there are no legs to get in the way. And it has a leaf! 

For our first meal at the vintage table, Daughter and I had toasted-cheese sandwiches and soup.  We talked about and wondered what the first owners of the table might have had for meals, including their first meal.  Did they live on a farm or in a town.  Was it a small town?  Did it come from a cute little house on the outskirts of Willow City?  I suppose we'll never know.



And here is our new little table decorated with a vintage tablecloth!  I did some rearranging and put our wine rack in a different spot and placed some vintage goodies on the lower shelf of the china hutch.  I put Grandma Eva's Pyrex bowl on the bottom shelf too.  We'll see how that works.


The tablecloth is a Simtex and I bought it awhile back at (you guessed it) Vintage City.

While browsing the web for information about Simtex, I stumbled upon an awesome blog called Tabletop Time.  The author collects vintage dishes and sets up numerous, beautiful table settings to photograph!  It's fun to see all of the color combinations she uses.  I think it would be so much FUN to decorate a table!

So, that's one of the things I have been up to this past week.

Hope you all have a great week and until another time, have a happy, vintage day!

Shelf of Vintage Goodies

The area above my computer desk got a make-over the other day.

 

I forgot to take a before picture, but this old picture (with my kitty in it) will have to do.

 

 

Decorating this wall is a bit difficult because of the light switch.  As much as I love the art print, framed in black, it just doesn't mesh with the vintage feel I'm going for, in the kitchen.

 

So, off to Hobby Lobby daughter and I went to buy a shelf.  We found a shelf that would have to do.  It's a bit larger than what I originally wanted.  But I suppose a larger shelf just means more space for goodies, right?

 

We also looked at reproduction signs at Hobby Lobby.  They have an awesome selection of repro signs!  As much as I'd like to have something NOT reproduction, "real" vintage signs just aren't in my budget.  Besides, it would be a challenge to find a "real" vintage sign that speaks to me...it could take years.
 

 

This Pepsi sign seemed perfect.  It had the dark blue color on the top and bottom that would match my blue kitchen wall perfectly.  A person can't go wrong with red, white, and blue decor.

 

 

And it fit inside the frame's brackets.  We wish the sign was just a bit smaller, but it works.

 

 

Also found at Hobby Lobby was this really cool "chalk" paint. 

The paint I bought was a little too red, so I added a little yellow craft paint and it came out just right!

 

 

I used the little sanding card to distress the paint afterwards.  That's something I'd never done before and I found out it's not as easy as the experts make it seem.

 

Here is the finished shelf.

 

Now, let's just hope I can keep my kitty off of the shelf.  I want so badly to put my little star bowl up there, but if it fell and broke I'd be really blue.  So the cream colored bowl will have to do.

 

 

That's all for today.  Until another time, have a great, vintage day!