Filling Up My Dance Card

I mentioned finding a couple of dance cards in Grandma’s keepsakes and David gave me a puzzled look.

“You’ve never heard the expression ‘My dance card is full’ or ‘I think I have room on my dance card' or any of the other dance card expressions?”

“Yeah, but I thought dance card was just an expression not a thing.”

I showed him this one and he was…well, he was less than impressed. I guess I get that. I have to agree with him that in today’s world, for a woman to carry around a card at a dance and schedule dance partners seems like it would get in the way of fun at a school dance. But in 1944 dancing was just dancing. It was ballroom type that had definite steps that some did better than others. Maybe it was a way for a popular girl to mean it when she said she’d dance with a guy before the dance is over?” No “dirty dancing” either!” The other dance card I found, which is put away upstairs and I’ll share photos at another time; had the types of dances listed so a girl could write in the boys who fit the style best. It had waltzes and the Charleston but NO TANGO!

This was the Junior/Senior prom for CHS. I’m not sure what high school that was, but Papa graduated from California High School in California, PA, so it makes sense that Grandma would know some people there. The Lee Barrett Orchestra performed. Can you imagine and orchestra at a high school dance? Don’t think for a minute that my romantic brain isn’t picturing and Astaire and Rogers prom!

 Senior  class officers and Prom sponsors were listed on the last page of the book, but other than the orchestra and date, no other credits are in the dance card.  More clues may surface as I go through some of the other things I have.

This prom was the year after Grandma graduated and a month before she and Papa married. The only name on her dance card, for just 2 dances, is Allen Russell, not family or anyone I ever met. I wonder if it’s a friend who was going into the service after graduation? I am quite sure it’s Grandma’s dance card because I recognize her handwriting. The answer to that question, I’ll never know!

So, anyone else who didn’t realize where the references to dance cards came from, they really were part of our American culture!

See and share more wonderful bits of history at The Coloradolady's Vintage Thingie Thursday!

Happy National Pretzel Day!

Credits: For Us by Pretty In Green

Today is National Pretzel Day! What a cool holiday to celebrate my favorite salty snack! David brought me a one-pound bag of twists yesterday so we could celebrate. Well, I’m the one who asked for them, but he brought the pretzels he likes too, so we’ll celebrate Pretzel Day together! The spicy brown mustard hasn’t been opened yet; today is the day!

Vintage? ish?

Okay, I usually consider “vintage” to be anything older than me because I’m almost antique-age, but I’m making an exception here because there is not one person in this book who isn’t retired from what they did when the book was published

This was a fund raiser for the Detroit Tigers charities in 1974, technically 12 years shy of antique, but I think still vintage.

Each member of the team, including coaches, front office and the broadcast crews, had a page that had two favorite recipes, usually as prepared by their wives when they came home, but occasionally as prepared by them. Ernie Harwell offered a recipe for gazpacho, which I think I need to try, and John Hiller’s wife had tips for low cholesterol meals after her husband’s heart attack.

My favorite Tiger, Al Kaline, had two recipes offered by his wife, Louise. Clam and Crab dip? Our Kaline could definitely eat with the man for whom she was named!

See more fun vintage treasures at The Coloradolady for Vintage Thingie Thursday!

Thursday Thoughts

Good gloomy Thursday! All right, it’s gloomy in Toledo, but the sun always shines in Cyberspace, right? I guess it’s not so sunny if you have a cyber-nightclub, but in this cyber coffee shop, it’s always sunny.

I was awakened in the middle of the night by a flash of light and a breeze coming in the open window. It’s not a vivid memory, I sleep soundly, but I recalled it when I looked outside and saw wet pavement this morning. I remember hearing the rain start and saying to David that he should probably close the window. The window is on his side of the bed. Only, David wasn’t there. He’d gotten up for some reason and was coming back into the room and made a comment about “fat raindrops.” I said it sounded like hail. He looked out the window and studied the downpour. He confirmed it was hail and it was coming down hard, making a lot of noise on the metal roof on the enclosed porch off the bedroom. I asked him where Carla was because she gets scared from the sound of rain on the metal roof and the hail was very loud. He said she was downstairs…and that’s the last I remember. I suspect if there was any more conversation, I was talking in my sleep.

Remembering dreams from the middle of the night is much more interesting than remembering reality when the weather wakes me.


Yesterday was Pi Day, 3-14! To celebrate, for lunch I made a perfectly round, and perfectly fat-free, pizza Pi!

A full Pizza Fit ‘n Free is a perfect fit for my new 8” plates!

Pizza Fit ‘n Free  is fat free pizza that tastes just fabulous! The pizzas are shipped with very tasty sauce and the fat free cheese. I added a strip of turkey bacon and a couple spoons of sautéed onions and bell pepper. There is just a trace of fat in the toppings and it adds just enough to make the cheesy gooey. A plain cheese pizza if still great, but the cheese doesn’t get so gooey without the trace of fat the sautéed veggies and turkey bacon added. It was fantastic and a whole pizza id s just 6 WW points!


Since I was going to be preparing the toppings for my pizza, I went ahead and chopped the whole onion and bell pepper, as well as cooking three more slices of turkey bacon to make Quichettes. They turned out great!

Real simple recipe too!

Ingredients

3 strips of turkey bacon cooked medium crisp and cut into squares
1 diced bell pepper
1 diced medium onion
1 tsp. margarine
1 piece string cheese, diced.
1 cup Egg Beaters
2 TBS grated Parmesan cheese

Sauté onion and pepper in margarine. Mix cooled bacon, onions and pepper with string cheese cubes and Egg Beaters. Add Parmesan cheese and stir until blended. Pour evenly into sprayed 12-cupcake tin. Bake for 20 minutes at 350 degrees. Makes 12 Quichettes



Remember my mug cake recipe?  I made a very tasty variation. I omitted the cocoa and used 2 Tablespoons of raspberry jam in place of half the Splenda.

I admit it’s unquestionably uglier. I suspect the raspberry and almond flour combination is what made it turn grayish teal. But for the taste, I accept it as a yummy blue raspberry cake!  Next time I'll add a drop of blue food coloring so I can know I meant to do that!


Okay, so there’s the new “what’s cookin’” stuff. How about something old?


Here’s a neat little piece.

It’s a pin that looks like it was never taken off the paper it was displayed on. It says “souvenir of Newfoundland" and on the back of the British Flag the hand is holding has Great Britain engraved on the back.

detail

Newfoundland was originally part of Great Britain and became the tenth province to join Canada on March 31, 1949. So, this pin is at the very least that old. It was in the box with the trinkets Papa bought back from WW2 and Newfoundland was one of the places he was stationed for a while in the early 40s. I read several postcards he sent grandma in 1941 and 1942 which would have been when he was 18, shortly after he enlisted and when Grandma was still in high school. So my best guess is that it is from the very early 40s.

See more unusual and common vintage pieces at Vintage Thingie Thursday, hosted by Suzanne at The Coloradolady.

Links

Pizza Fit N’ Free

The Coloradolady

Vintage Thingie Thursday – Ration Coupons

I’ve said before that I love vintage paper things! These ration books belonged to my great-grandparents.

sponsored coupon book cover

I’m going to dome more research and find out how the ration coupons were used. I just can’t imagine…

See more antique finds at The Coloradolady’s Vintage Thingie Thursday!

Meet Me Monday Night

Been a busy day for me and I spent it lazy in my jammas! Well, Jeans and nightshirt. Only kinda looks like in my jammas. I’m wearing my wedding gown!

And I am a typical woman in any excuse to pull out

one of the pictures from our wedding reception...

I haven’t worn the hat and veil since the day of our reception, but I really wanted to buck the rules of the Wedding Industrial Complex and find a suitable shirt to go with David’s Tuxedo shirt for the day we celebrated with our friends and family that I could wear again and again. What better way than an oversized t-shirt that I can use as a nightshirt?

Yeah, I’m still rebellious against “the establishment.” I said before that I eloped and didn’t “walk” after high school diploma or college degree was earned. I value prize over pageantry. I got a cool nightshirt and bonus; an awesome husband too!


After David got the heavies out of the future woman cave yesterday, I was able to move things around a bit and better organize my sorting. I actually got another good bit taken out of sorting boxes. And I now have an interesting vintage find that I’m really debating if it’s something that would be a fun laugh Vintage Thingie for Thursday or if it would be too risqué. Remember my grandfather was a sailor in World War 2! I have a few days to think about it.

While you’re here, if you haven’t already and have a moment, check out today’s Monday Mug Shot. It was an interesting little chill that day in June 1994!


Now, let’s tackle those Monday questions!

1. What is on your bedside table?
2. Hardback, Paperback or E-Reader?
3. What is your 'go to' drink of choice?
4. How do you like to spend your birthday?
5. Finish this sentence - I would never be caught dead in ...


1. What is on your bedside table? Lots of stuff and not very organized right now. My bedside table is actually an assemble-it-yourself round accent table, so it’s kinda small and just a table top, no drawers. It’s going to be replaced with this:

 

 Having a couple of drawers will really help unclutter things! On top will be my cellphone which is my alarm clock, my Kindle or whatever book I’m reading at any given time a candle and the kitty cat soap dish Rina gave me for Christmas when she was in second grade which I use as a trinket dish.


2. Hardback, Paperback or E-Reader? Usually my Kindle. It’s the only way I’ve ever been able to read a book like everyone else, no dyslexia! I LOVE my Kindle!! But I’ve read and still read any good or important book in whatever format is available at the time. I read the first two Harry Potter books in paperback and the rest of the series in hardcover. I have the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People in paperback and on my Kindle.


3. What is your 'go to' drink of choice? In the morning, I gotta have my coffee. I’m a water gal the rest of the day with occasionally a Ron and Frank’s hot chocolate or a specialty hot beverage of my own creation for an afternoon treat.


4. How do you like to spend your birthday? I celebrate my birthday as a festival that runs from 5:00 the Friday before my birthday until midnight the Sunday night after it. If my birthday is on a weekend, it’s Friday the weekend before until Sunday the weekend after, for a 2-week festival. During my festival, I try to spend time with as many of my friends and family as I can. Sometimes it’s dutch, sometimes someone pays my way, sometimes I pay theirs. It’s not about presents, but presence!



5. Finish this sentence - I would never be caught dead in ... a coffin on display. I’ve always found that to be a morbid part of funerals. When I’m gone, I’m not in that body, I’m on to something better. Put up lots of photos of me alive and happy and celebrate me. If I’m not smiling it won’t look like me anyway. And I want the money that’s not used for a fancy coffin and grave to go to a plaque at a playscape and upkeep for the playscape. When people come to “visit” me, I want them to be surrounded by the sounds of happy, laughing children.



Join us for Meet Me on Monday every Monday, courtesy of Heather at Acting Balanced

Vintage Mug Shots

I hope you all enjoy this as a treat as much as I did putting it together!

First off, I didn’t have any pictures of Grammy scanned when I talked about the women in my family last weekend, so I want to share a couple photos of my great-great-grandmother.

This one is my great-great-grandparents. Grammy was born in 1885, so the photo was probably taken in the early 1900s.

Wonda Pugh

This one is Grammy in the mid to late 60s

And here is Grammy with me in 1966:

Here is my last vintage family photo, the four generations of women before me that were alive at the time of my birth:

Circa 1949

Top to bottom: Grammy, Mums, Grandma and Mom

Now the photos are definitely vintage, but they are not my Vintage Thingie Thursday piece . This is my Thingie for the week:

Monogrammed cups for Wonda and Opal Pugh.

I wanted these cups when we cleaned up Mums’ house, but Grandma trumped me. “You’ll eventually have them, but for now, they’re mine!”

As I’ve said before, Mums was only Opal Pugh until 1922, so they have to be older than that. If they were etched after 1910, there’s probably another one in the family for my great grandmother’s sister, Garnet.

Family Lore: the girls were both named for gems. Had there been another sister, she would have been Ruby.

There you have it, a couple of my most treasured heirlooms and certainly the best “mugs” in my collection!

See more vintage treasures at The Coloradolady, Vintage Thingy Thursday.

Treasured Re-Find

1956 May Birthday Angel Bell

NAPCO S1307E

This was from my great-grandmother’s home. I liked it for several reasons. First, her dress is peach and I could just imagine seeing her on a trinket shelf in my dream kitchen. Second, it’s dated 1956 and definitely has the look of that time and it whispered to my love of household vintage things. Third, and this was a biggie, it wasn’t Mums’ taste. She like the modern look and had a lot of oriental-influenced knick-knacks. Also, her birthday was in December and this is a May figurine. I love a good mystery.

This re-find is part of the good of the White Tornado project. She was wrapped up in my boxes from Michigan. As the White Tornado is officially in the future woman cave now, there are boxes from Grandma, which include boxes from Mums that Grandma didn’t go through, and boxes of my own. I had the little bell from Mums’ house that I planned to research and get the story, or as much as I can, about how it was that this girl was in my great-grandmother’s house and then promise her a decorative home in my living room in Michigan to eventually be a sweet decor piece in the dream kitchen. She lived on a shelf in my Michigan living room for 4 years and was carefully wrapped and packed up to come with me when I moved to Toledo. Well, she lived the next 5 years carefully wrapped in that box in the storage area of our home!

You can see where the wings were connected.

She is a 1956 angel bell made by NAPCO, the National Potteries Corporation. The wings are no longer there, they must have broken off sometime between 1956 and 1992 because I never saw her with wings. NAPCO began production of glass and ceramic collectibles in 1938 and was at its peak popularity in the 50s and 60s.

My May girl has the appropriate transfer mark to be a real NAPCO piece, so she is the “real deal.” NAPCO was based in Cleveland and the products were made in Japan. Now it starts to sound like a piece Mums would have bought, except that the old fashioned girl in the frilly dress just didn’t seem like Mums. Had it been a slender Japanese woman in a kimono holding an exotic flower, I never would have questioned it being in my great grandmother’s house. I had to put together the last piece of the puzzle.

That last piece wasn’t difficult. In the maternal side of the family, the custom is that when going through an estate, items that were gifts are first offered to the person who gave them. I own things that aren’t so much my taste the same way. I have a Virgin Mary night light because I asked for it from Noni’s house. I’d given it to her as a Christmas present years before. On Mom’s side of the family, you don’t have to ask, it’s automatically offered. It represents a connection between you and the person who passed. As I said, the NAPCO brand was Mums’ taste, but not the figurine and there was still the December birthday and a May bell. Her mother was born May 9, 1885. It was a gift that Mums gave Grammy and when Grammy passed in 1975, it was offered back to her.

I’ll call my wingless angel Wonda, that’s my great-great-grandmother’s name. Grandma, also Wonda, with an o not an a, was named after her. Now that I traced the puzzle back and have a reasonable history for her, Wonda is an even more meaningful piece of my family history!

See more treasures and mysteries solved at Vintage Thingie Thursday at The Coloradolady!

A Cute Find From Grandma's

Grandma had a stereo that played LPs, cassettes and 8-tracks.  No, I didn't take that home with me.  I did take a Reader's Digest series on cassettes, Sentimental Journey, and a set of individual big band stars on cassette.  I still have cassette in the car.  I also have a record players that older than Grandma's stereo was.  I'll show that on another Thursday.  But Grandma didn't have an extensive record collection and her big band stuff was on cassettes or LPs that had long been overplayed and discarded because the songs UI know she and Papa enjoy4ed in their courting and early marri3ed days I only found on cassette.

There were a couople of records thqt I took hojme.  One was a lt3er made Frank Sinatra compilation and the other one, which I just thought was fun was this:

The Grasshoppers and introducing the Chipmunk Song!  Obviously a kids record  I did some reseach and searching. This record on the Spin-O-Rama label was released in 1959.  It is in really good shape and the markings in the empty areas of the vinyl tell that this is an original release. 

Since neither Grandma nor Papa collected old records, my guess is that it was bought in or around 1959.  My Mom, an only child, was 14.  It leaves me confused!  But, when I was 14, I read Diamond D and the Dreadful Dragon for a Forensics competition in school, so it might have been something Mom had for school.  I don't know.

Unfortunately, this is one I'm sure I'll never know.  It's still a neat find and I'll give it a spin on my turnatable some day.

See more fun vintage things at The Coloradolady for Vintage Thingie Thursday!

Nani Is A Happy Little Princess!

I’m posting my first post of the day a little later than usual today. Pop was over this morning to see what could be done with our crashed bookcase. It took him about an hour to go from shattered pieces to shelving unit anchored to the wall! It took me the better part of the day in 2007 when I assembled the other identical bookcase and David constructs with words, not wood! Assembling a unit from a kit, even a unit that had splintered a few screw holes and taken a chunk out of the bottom of one shelf when it fell was very simple work for my Dad, who has worked in construction since the early 70s. He’s already said that he’ll come back when I get the rest of the kit-furniture. I’ll prepare a nice lunch spread to say “thanks!”

After Pop finished putting the shelves in and put away his tools in his car, we had minestrone. I was both anxious and a little nervous about Pop tasting my first try at minestrone. I thought it was good, just a few tweaks away from great, soup is my specialty, but the opinion of the senior minestrone maker in the family was the true test. He liked it! He really liked it!

After lunch he wanted to make sure he had the directions to Sofo, MY Italian market, so he could stop before he went home. I enjoy the fact that both Pop and my brother feel the desire to stop at MY ethnic store when they visit. I have the edge there!  Sofo is a truly awesome place for Italian groceries!

So far, the popcorn popper is the only thing on a shelf, since that was the tallest appliance and it was used to place the first shelf. After a couple of serious moving, bending, lifting and stretching days upstairs, I promised myself, and David, especially David, that I was going to relax today. Just like working out, rip, then heal to build muscles, I rip then heal to restore strength.

Happy Chocolate Day!

Today is Chocolate Day!  Chocolate Day is celebrated on the third day of Valentines Week. So I think I’ll eat my rose tonight.

David has been bringing home little gifts when he finds ones that just scream me. At this time of year, there are lots of those! At the end of January, he brought me a Dove rose. I know the rose is 3 Weight Watchers points. I figured it out right away, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to opening it. It’s so pretty and so sweet and romantic and once I eat it, it’s gone! I think official Chocolate Day is a good day to finally open it. There WILL be more chocolate, likely even more chocolate from David!

The past couple of nights we’ve had another treat he brought me.

He knows me well! That little black forest cake was the perfect size for us to share for dessert for two nights.


Last thing I’ll share for now is a vintage thing for Vintage Thingie Thursday!

I have three peach-tone glass dessert plates from Grandma’s. You don’t really see the peachiness until there are a few stacked together, but they ARE peachy!

I confess that it was a set of four, but I lost one to a knock off the counter that also claimed one of my dollar-store glass plates. Obviously the peach dish was a bigger heartbreak!

I don’t know exactly how old these ones are. What I do know is I hadn’t seen them before we found them in the back of the cabinets that had many other old dishes. I spent a lot of time at Grandma’s house and did a lot of foodie things with her. So, I’m fairly sure they pre-date me! I do know they are pretty and totally match my peach and green kitchen future!

See more Vintage Thingies at Suzanne’s blog, The Coloradolady, every Thursday!

Links

Chocolate Day

Sofo Market

The Coloradolady