Cleaning Treasures

The coolest thing about cleaning and organizing is not the ultimate reclaiming of rooms that have spent the last couple of years as essentially storage rooms. Do not get me wrong there. The prospect of getting our kitchen annex back to usable additional prep space for the kitchen and having a working office/studio for my projects is exciting. We have three rooms that have been stacking places for the boxes of things we’ve accumulated and two years of disarray in our lives. Between losing my Grandma 2 years ago and the legal responsibilities that went with being the administrator of her estate and the huge cleanup at her house, which is the biggest source of the many boxes all over my house, and my health trials last year, I’ve had no time, no energy, to keep up.

Last year the dust had settled, some literally, from Grandma’s estate and I’d planned test-surgery-recovery for my back that tuned into a half year of tests with symptoms of my eventual MS diagnosis getting worse. During the 2010 cleaning at Grandma's my back, hip and knee on the right side had gotten pretty bad and I was relegated to sit, sort and shred at Grandma’s house with David, Dave and Laura bringing me boxes to “quick sort.” Quick sort is if I thought “maybe” put it in my box to take home, no reading, no reminiscing. We were all traveling a good distance on weekends to do the clean out and time really was an issue. Well, it ended up being BOXES, not box, with David asking a few times, “Where are we going to put this stuff?” Well, for the most part that answer was the upstairs office and the kitchen annex. I chose to reclaim the kitchen annex first since it’s on the main living level of the house.

I started cleaning Tuesday and I’ve gone through 4 of the boxes from Grandma's house as well as half the cupboards in the annex. I was telling my Dad last night that it would have taken the 10 years ago Nani about three days to finish the annex but the mobility-challenged Nani of today is thinking 2-3 weeks. I may need chairs and help lifting the heavier things, but I have the necessary drive to achieve! I just have to make sure I employ the necessary brains to take breaks.


Today I have a treasure box to share for Vintage Thingie Thursday!


It’s such a pretty little cardboard box. The edges are definitely worn and no question it’s old. I don’t remember seeing this at Grandma’s house, but I’m sure I was the one who decided it should come home with me because I don’t know that Dave would have just assumed I wanted it, he might have, but neither David nor Laura would know the significance of what was written inside.


The name written on the side and in the box is “Opal Pugh.” Dave would have known that was our Great Grandmother, with whom I was very close. She was born in Sutton, West Virginia, in 1906 and was only Opal Pugh for 16 years. She married by Great Grandfather in 1922. But that’s not Mums’ handwriting and the crayon markings under her name make me believe it might have been a trinket box from when she was little. Tori and Rina had trinket boxes that I gave them to have at our house when they were little. It was someplace to keep little things they collected, rocks, prizes form cereal, those kinds of easily lost things. Maybe this was a box like that for Mums.

When I opened the box this is what I saw



There is a crocheted hat pin cushion,

Crocheted string pincushion

a beautiful white silk handkerchief with royal purple trim

Silk handkerchief, SO soft!

and a crocheted band in variegated oranges. The band might have been a choker, which was a common accessory at the time, but there isn’t anything to close it. That closure may be something that fell off.

Crocheted string, maybe a choker?

So the box itself is at least 90 years old, but I think closer to 100. My Great Grandmother would have been 105 last month, she’ll have been gone 10 years in July. The items inside could have been put there at any time, but I’d guess the things were probably put in it maybe sometime around Grandma’s birth in 1925. It’s a guess, but that handkerchief is the softest and finest silk I’ve ever laid hands on!


Thanks for joining me in my treasures and guesses today!

See more vintage treasures at The Coloradolady, where Suzanne hosts Vintage Thingie Thursday every week!

Nani, Nani, Nani

My new electric best bud!

I actually was going to do one of my potpourri entries yesterday with a few briefs, but the first one ended up so long! I’m just very pleased with the progress of Wife 1500 so far. If it’s working for me, you might find a kernel or two that works for you too. Yes, a pun with the kernel comment there. hehe


Now to finish what I started yesterday!

First off It’s another Crazy Thursday at Scrap Bird! This week you can pick up my Project 365 template sets for half off. That’s only a buck! Four templates in each set, that’s 2 months of Project 365 layouts with your choice of paper and elements but done the easy way! Just place the paper above the layer, create a clipping mask and you’re good to go! You can see many samples of those layouts by clicking “365” for the posts with that label.

365

One Step At A Time Layout


I got the first layout with One Step at a Time from my CT! This one was done by Jana, one step at a time is baby’s first steps! I kind thought in the back of my mind that this kit would be good for this kind of layout and Jana definitely proved that thought right! She did just a great job!



Sweet Thanks

I got this very nice thank you from Linda, Tirza’s Treasures!

It’s presented as a sincere thank you for awards and nice comments. It doesn’t have to be passed on today or ever, but it can be. Very cool sentiment!

I get many awards for which I am so grateful. I do, sometimes a little while after receiving it and sometimes right after, acknowledge all of them, but I don’t always pass them on. It’s not that I want to spoil the fun, but I sometimes just don’t have the necessary time to do it. But I do appreciate them all just the same.

Now, I’d like to pass the sincere thank you to everyone who reads this. Thank you for taking a few moments from your day to stop in at my cyber-coffee shop and read a little! Thank you for thinking of The Chronicles of Nani!



FINALLY!

More mundane but, to me, exciting news! In the wake of the feel-good donation to Locks of Love, and finally moving my hair care to Ohio with the rest of me, I’m going to savor the fruits of wedded bliss! I’m getting my teeth cleaned! That’s not nearly as corny as it sounds. My teeth badly need cleaning. I’ve been near-broke and uninsured for a few years! With “I do” comes “add my wife to the policy!”

I am almost militant about brushing and I am what my old oral hygienist thought to be rare, I floss every day! I’ve been told my smile is one of my better physical traits and right now my teeth could really stand a face lift! So next week will be my first visit to my Toledo dentist. They’ll do X-rays and the initial consultation to decide what the cleaning and caring plan of action will be to get me back to smiling confident that my smile is my best best-feature it can be!

A week later will be sorta bittersweet. I’ve had the same optometrist since eight grade. It was reading glasses then, but he is also the one who recognized my dyslexia and helped me with eye exercises to overcome it and make reading easier for me. He taught me how to put contacts in. He gave me an explanation that a young me could comprehend about exactly what astigmatism is. (He used the baseball-football analogy)

But Dr. Levin is in Northville, 70 miles away now. If I need a new prescription, that’s a long way to drive with unreliable vision! So, in two weeks will be my first visit to an optometrist who isn't Dr. Levin or one of his partners. I think this is even scarier than a new person cutting my hair!



Opposing Views and Paid Posts

I wanted to mention this just to let you know what I do behind the scenes! Anyone who has ever left a comment here knows that I only publish approved comments. This does a few things. The number one thing it does is gets rid of any need to enter a confusing set of letters before the comment posts. When I read it, I’ll figure out if you were a real person or a machine. I’m an accomplished hunt and peck typist. That means I’m pretty quick and even accurate if I put my mind to it, as long as what I’m typing are words as I know them. When I have to type in those security combinations, I usually have to do them 2 or 3 times. A machine would probably do a better job of faking being a human than me! I understand how it works as a security measure, but since I read them all before they appear, I don’t care if I’m deleting gibberish from a bot. I don't like the security codes and I don't think I need to put anyone else through it here.

The other more important thing comment approval does, is it let’s control-freak me have...control - over the content of my blog. This is important because I don’t allow comments that hurt or slander me, my readers or my sponsors. Yes, I’m protecting the generous sponsors who support my caffeine habit by letting me do a little promotion for them through compensated posts. As I say in my disclaimer on the bulletin board, I choose opportunities to promote products and services that I think are a good idea or in the case where I’ve used it , a good product. A good clue is that if there is a link in the text for a non-scrapbook post, it’s a compensated post. When I am recommending a product or service on my own without compensation, the links will here on out be after the post. For the most part they usually have been anyway, but I'm going to do it that way from now on so you know if it's a sponsored post or my personal testimonial. I'll never say I've tried a product unless I have, sponsored or not. If you disagree with a product that is a sponsor, please feel free to leave a comment, even leave an email address and we can trade emails about anything you think would be a better product. I do read every comment and I always check out links you share. However, if the comment is on a compensated post and especially if it recommends a competitor, I won’t publish it. That’s contrary to the contractual agreement with my sponsor and my own personal business ethics. But if you want to chat about it “off-blog” leave me contact info and we can chat over the coffee I can afford after doing the post!

Well, there are my little bits and bits for this week. Exciting weekend scheduled!!

Snippets

Memorial Day Weekend, 2006

It was a nice Tuesday today! I paid some bills and while out doing that, got a a new job lead source! I also, feeling lucky from my errands run, jiggled a little at the connection on the computer for the bike and it powered right up when I plugged it in! YAY!!! Now I can set the resistance to “uphill!” 5 minutes and not just my legs, but even my butt was tingling! And the sensors on everything worked too, when I asked for the results of my 1-mile mini-ride, it gave me high marks for speed, calories burned and heart rate. Aside from the crippling pain in my knee, I’m in pretty good shape for too round! LOL


As you know, I collect “shorts” for my blog and post a variety blog every now and then. Well, except that I just had to put a little stand-alone post about my plans to roast Chuck for dinner after implying that we’d have 6 more weeks of winter. That was topical and needed to be presented first thing...the day after. :) Hey, I live with a newspaper man. It may not be “live” but I take the time to make sure the facts are right.

Well, and that’s my story and I’m sticking to it!


Read Any Good Books Lately?

I’m reading “Slouching Toward Fargo,” by Neal Karlen. David borrowed it from a coworker and let me read it after he was done. Yes, he warned his coworker that I’m a slow reader. This one, even though it’s a baseball story, has started really slow for me. It's not just the dyslexic slow. It’s a “not feeling it" slow. It’s written in first person and the beginning of the book is very much about the writing business. I can so get why David would enjoy that, a combination of “talking shop” and a personal passion second only to trains...well, maybe after trains and poker now. But the “shop talk” for a shop I’m not in was a little drudging for me. David promises it gets better, more baseball and less about writing. I’m giving it the benefit of the doubt.

I've left the link for Book Swim on The Chronicles’ bulletin board. The click is still worth 50% off your first month there! I’m thinking I might see if David would want to give it a try. I don’t read quick enough. It’s like someone who watches one movie a month joining NetFlix, but between the two of us, maybe. I know I was avidly searching the house for a new book after the holidays. I wasn’t going out through a foot of snow with a nasty cold to even go to the library at the beginning of the year. It would have been nice to have a book delivered to my mailbox!


Guest CT Spot

Oh, this one isn’t me looking. (although if you’re interested, Digitalegacies Designs still has a couple of openings!) This is about me BEING! I am a guest CT member for Tirza’s Treasures for the month of February. I was originally going to be her guest for January, then I got my own store. It was Linda’s suggestion that I might want to postpone my CT agreement until I got settled at Scrap Bird. I SO appreciate her wise suggestion! It really did take the better part of January to get into a rhythm as a pro designer. But now, I’m so happy to get this CT position!

I made the offer to CT for Tirza’s Treasures during the SAS designer contest. Linda was forced out of two contests thanks to Ike and a power outage that kept her from making the deadlines. Her kits are fabulous and I offered that when, not if, but when, she gets a store, to contact me about CTing. So now I get top play with some really great kits (that I didn’t have to make first!)

The first kit I’m working with is “Soft As Steel.”

Isn’t this a gorgeous kit?? Such perfect colors for a spring weekend combining the awakening greens with the cool steel of the rails and dusty industry of a limestone plant!

This is my first layout with Soft As Steel.

Credits: kit - "Soft As Steel" by Tirza's Treasures
Fonts - Ma Sexy and Chalkboard

I’m using this kit for all of the pages from our railfan trip in Canada Memorial Day of 2006. See? I am making a little headway in catching up!



FBR Anyone?

I’ll finish this entry with a reminder about a feature that hasn’t had any love since Thanksgiving! I guess, it’s kind of okay, since I’ve been so tied up with getting the new settled in my world, but I’m a well-adjusted job seeker by day and newlywed-pro scrapbook designer-Donna Reed by night and I’m ready, willing and wanting to take a Friday challenge again!

If you aren’t familiar with Friday By Request, you can check out the guidelines for making a request here. There is also a link to every request I’ve done since August 2006, 52 entries on Blogspot or Yahoo that have been requested by you the readers of The Chronicles of Nani!

I welcome your new challenges for 2009!