Dream on...

This lovely Dream sign is a Wendy Addison piece. made of glass glitter...my favorite medium. The tin types that grace each end are not family members of mine, but lovely just the same. The one on the right is a beautiful lady in her lacy gown. Not sure of the age, but appears to be the Civil War era.
Behind the Dream sign are my Witt grandparents, Archie and O'Delphia around the time of their marriage, abt 1930.
To the left is my beautiful mother. Look at that dimple. What a babe!
The photo to the left, partially hidden is of me and my children on my wedding day, 1995.
The tree topper in the center has bells hanging off of it with wire and glittery do dahs. It is probably from the 1920's. This was a yard sale find a few years ago. I took this photo using the museum mode on my camera and think it looks warm, while sparkly! Yummy! 

More mantel treasures

Here is a photo of myself with Tim and my children just before we were married 11 years ago. The baby picture of Noah, my grandson.
The little photo is nobody I know, but the clothes the couple are wearing are beautiful. This I found at a flea market this past weekend.
To the right is one of my creations. A cardboard hat box that was bright colored and not my taste. So I covered it with vintage sheet music, made the tube on the top, added the folded paper shape on top and the sides, the glass glitter star, and an old photo of my grandparents on the front. Then tinsel added. Sounds simple, but it was an all day project. A fun one though! I like to incorporate my family photos in my projects as much as I can.
The sheet music box to the left is a Bethany Lowe piece. I like to collect her designs. 

WINTER MANTEL

Here is the fireplace mantel decorated for Winter with a variety of treasures that I enjoy.
The lamp in the back side to the right was my grandfathers, he did his homework by the light it gave out. It burned kerosene back then. It is now electrified.
The glass domes hold white glitter covered houses. There are candlesticks with creamy white candles in them for a warm glow when they are lit.
Family photos in the old frames...so precious, especially the one of my grandson, Noah, in the vintage looking coat and hat, when he was about a year old.
I'll post some closeups of some of the other treasures. 

There's a Hole in The Roof, Dear Liza, Dear Liza

Here is the hole in the roof after the tree was removed. But now snow is on it's way so tarps will need to be put up to cover the hole. It is a little COOL in the house! Ah well, it's an adventure! Tim will be the one who does the work on the repair. I am guessing we will be moving out of that end of the house for a time. So much for having tea parties or Farm Girl Chapter meetings here. But we will rebuild more to suit our needs, so this is the plus side of this whole thing. Maybe I can finally have a closet that is bigger than a box! Next pictures of the guys trying to cover the hole! Stay tuned... 

A Christmas Tree Arrival a Few Weeks Too Late

Last night as I finished up the dinner dishes and headed to my office I heard a loud crash and felt a jolt. The sound of breaking glass sent me to the back of the house toward the back porch. I ran and opened the sliding door to get my husband as he was in the garage. Then I saw it...a tree laying over the back part of the garage and just over where my husband was. Thankfully he came to the door and said, "Where did it land?" He knew it was a tree down. I did not know. We quickly ran to check the front of the house and there it was...a tree had fallen onto our office and bedroom.
My first reaction was one of freaking out because my laptop was covered with about 20" of black, dirt like insulation. Since my life is in this thing I did not want to loose it. I have photos, my family tree, other genealogy data, a library of books and misc. matters of importance to me. Tim grabbed it and dumped it off. Later he blew it out with the airhose, using the compressor. So far it is working fine...abeit a little scuffed up from the ceiling hitting it.
As this was our office it was full of electronic equipment, including a brand new Epson photo printer and Magnavox pc/tv flat screen. That black insulation was everywhere covering books, photo albums, files, and misc goodies. I am a bit of a pack rat, although organized, a pack rat, it's true. So this room was pretty overloaded with my treasures.
A phone call was made and with in a short time there were a group of guys from our church care group here helping us clean up insulation and moving things out of the room. These guys did a great job. We now have stuff stacked all over the house. But things had to be moved as we had a prediction of snow coming. The snow was only spitting a bit, but there is another prediction of it for today.
First thing this morning the guys came to take the tree off of the roof. So it is now piles of logs in the yard. Tim and a crew are out there now trying to get it ready to cover with tarps. There is now a thick snow falling and everything is covered. So I hope it is not long before they get the house buttoned up. I may post a few more photos...as I took about 100 of them of this event.
The neatest thing about all of this is that I was about five seconds from sitting in my office chair, right where the tree came though and knocked the ceiling down...it certainly would have done much damage to me if not sending me to meet my maker. Which would be okay, but my children still need me, so the time for me to go is not yet. I had spent most of the day at that desk working on learning how to use my new printer. So the fact that I was not at my desk just at that moment is amazing. What I call "God's favor." 

Wire...Everyday Things, great book

This magnificient book was on my doorstep when I got home today after a day thrift shopping. Yeah! I first saw it in our local library a few years ago. I checked it out a couple of times because I enjoyed it so much. Decided I could not live without it and finally got around to locating it to buy for myself. I actually had it listed on "Want it now" on ebay...but never got any responses. My guess is that once you own it you won't want to sell it! So I had to bite the bullet and pay full price for it, plus shipping. I found it on the Alibris site, a place for out of print or hard to find books.
If you like industrial and useful things made of wire then you would probably enjoy this book. The authors are Slesin, Rozensztroch, Menard, Cliff, and De Chabaneix.
The book includes everything from primtive to fanciful and useful to decorative everyday things.
I stood it up on one of my antique ice cream parlour chairs for this picture. If you like wire...then I recommend this book.
Things I found at the thrift shops: vintage Christmas tins, a bag of oriental wind chimes (with little bells that I will take off to craft with), holly transfers, two unusual shaped jars for my studio, two glass hurricane lanterns (but as it turns out they are not the size I needed, so I'll find another use for them).