Friday, November 13, 2015

Being Thankful for Sunshine and Turkeys!

I'm Thankful today and everyday...but today the sun is shining!

It's still trying to be Fall here in Chicagoland. Hard to think we will be sharing turkey and pumpkin pie in less than two weeks. We should be thankful for anything other than snow. Last year we had 10 inches on the ground this weekend. Many people did not get Christmas decorations and lights out last year because of the miserable November weather.

This year, most of the trees have emptied in Chicagoland with our continuous fierce winds and dry conditions. Our one maple has hung on and just this week began its Fall show, while the sister tree, branches to left in forefront is already empty.


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You can see the bushes are barely hanging onto any leaves at all. The forsythia and bridalwreath have still not turned and while everything else is empty. This entire year has been wierd, weather wise.


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I took these before 8am on Wednesday. The NEW chairs were my funky choice this year in bright lime green and the sun has already mellowed them. Love the matching one for the Grand.

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Hubby added a NEW resident turkey this year...and me a strange shadow....lol.

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Here I have clipped "mysterious" out of the picture. Turkey has a big pot of lemon grass and a real large pumpkin anchoring him down. The winds have been crazy this week. Power was out again last night.

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This is the front yard, despite three serious frosts, and my marigolds are blooming like crazy still. The NEW flower bed with perrenials around the tree is doing great. I planted 7 hostas and 4 coral bells and transplanted REDO a sedum and a large hosta. We will see how it looks in spring. Hubby totally did a REDO in composite (GREEN) of the front deck railings and stairway this year, I haven't taken complete pics yet, because he is still tweaking it. We are thankful it is almost done in time for Christmas.

For the inside, I'm thankful for these OLD antique images, which have been on my computer for a few years, I know they were free, but I have no idea where I got them from at this point, so simply enjoy! They are OLD postcards, at least 100 years old. It always amazes me how they can be so brilliant, still.

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I love this one...our house has been a gathering place for many the last few years. This year we will be only seven, which will be strange, no baking four to six pies this year, lol.

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This little pilgrim has such a sweet face. And the Turkey seems interested in the invitation to his demise, lol.



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I have done a REDO some of these images for cut-outs for the table. But, my last tote of Fall has been completely awol this year, I will probably find it for Easter.

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NOW that is PIE, as my family would say....Love the towel she has underneath implying it is hot, hot, hot!

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Another OLD image of a Pilgrim lady off to church. The small birds and pumpkins in the background. The cottages actually look pretty authentic to the sketches I have seen of OLD Plymouth. 

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This card is actually postmarked, LONDON, Ontario...1910...which is great. Love the golden wishbone. Now to the inside of the house.

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I have had to do a bit of decor tweaking after Halloween. Our house is small by today's standards, 1400 square feet. So, when the plants come in from the outside, it becomes smaller! Here is the REDO Christmas Topiary on the front table from an earlier post. Hopefully it will fill in for the holidays or I will be improvising. Hydrangeas in a silver tray, a velvet pumpkin and a mottled dried gourd from the garden share the tabletop.


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Two little owls, have already found some comfortable holes to reside in.


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Another new resident (My hubby has squirrel wars over the birdfeeders) so we have a taunting resident squirrel, who has moved in. He feasts from an OLD orange margarita glass filled with acorns the Grandbaby collected last year. Here, another plant has stolen the display area.

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He is quite smug and happy here, and can talk to his cousins through the front window.



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Last year the day before Thanksgiving, Hubby came home with these NEW pilgrims at 70% off and a huge resin turkey. The colors are perfect even though they don't fit under the china cabinet.


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The colors are beautiful, and of course they quite happy with my other decor. Huge dried squash from our GREEN garden, Indian corn in a pitcher and leaves. Sorry for the glare on the pumpkin plate, but this corner of the livingroom is simply too dark to attempt natural light pictures.




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I've kept the small arrangement and OLD silver tray. I may swap out the runner though.

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I still have my Fall Printout for the mirror up---a few GREEN baby butternuts from our fence have landed here. I will have to work on finding the apporpriate 'Be Thankful' to put on the mirror.

But, I  am very Thankful for our Sunshine and Turkeys and very THANKFUL for my readers. My blog is now registering followers after almost 5 months. So I'm up to seven, lol.  If you haven't followed, please click the blogger registery...so I have some idea. I know there are more of you...for sure...as my mailbox is full all the time. 

All the opinions and photographs in this blog are my own,
 or I am in possesion of the originals, or are captioned as source unknown. 
I have not been paid or reimbursed in anyway for my opinions, posts or products used. 
Please do not use my own photos without linking back to this blog without my permission. 
Thank you for your cooperation, Sandi Magle


And THANKS always for stopping by, I will be partying at these fine blogs:




Sandi

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Wednesday, November 11, 2015

DIY Barbie Dollhouse: Week#5 The STAIRS and Landings. (Working with plastic Channel also!)

Week 5 Stairs and Landings

Why did Mattel make all those vintage elevators for Barbie houses?----two reasons, because of the room it takes to make stairs and the difficulties. Yanking a rope on a box(elevator), is way easier...but also non-permanent. So many Barbie houses end up in resale/thrift shops in various states of not working. I have yet to see one with a working elevator. We chose, I have to remind myself...CHOSE to make the stairs for this dollhouse and that is also why we made the house is 16" deep rather than 12"deep  like so many others. (We should have made it 18" deep!)

Seriously---I know the Grand is going to simply SLIDE the dolls up and down the stairs...for at least a few years. But with safety first in mind, Hubby and I decided we had to make realistic stairs and landings. We have nixed the handrails---because the dolls are so our of proportion and the angle is so sharp it would look odd and be very restrictive in the tight space.

Working from an OLD stash of acrylic scraps that have lurked in the garage for years, I decided NEW contemporary glass-look landings would be a great idea and a bit easier than installing a gazillion spindles. After all, Barbie is a bit contemporary, shabby chic, and mod all rolled into one. And 95% of the furnishings will be REDO and vintage.

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Here is the kitchen landing. Hubby slotted some wood square posts, added some knob tops and set in place to see how they will look. We had picked up some plastic slotted trim to carry the lighting wires in the house (next post). However this ended up being the miracle trim, I have used every bit of this trim for this and that.

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Here is the piece of miracle trim---from the end side on top of the measuring tape. It's aheavier flexible, paintable plastic channel from the bathroom paneling section of the lumber stores. We cut pieces to cover the tops and bottom edges of the acrylic panels, (they were sharp). I also cut the longer side off to match the short side with a scissors. These cut moldings with a few dabs of Gorrila Gel Super Glue finished of those railings in short time. This was about the easiest thing I have done on this house...and it looks great.


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Besides being tall and skinny---Ken is seriously useless...and is sleeping on the job, again.

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 Here are the posts, lined up at the top of the stair holes. Looking great! We chose scalloped trim, kinda kitschy, to cover the floor edges (also hides the lighting).

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Good thing Ken isn't adventurous that hole goes down to the next level.

Now the stairs. I do have to thank Hubby for all the intricate cutting and planning. He used a downloadable ap, Stair Builder Pro for designing the stairs. This is something he has used multiple times for doing my Dad's stairs, our deck stairs and the play house stairs in the backyard. He took the height of the ceilings, the measurements of the holes, and the scale-1inch to 6 inches, and plugged it into the ap...chose the design of how to fit them on the landings (we don't exactly have headers or beams)...and the ap gave him a picture and measurements of how to do it.This made designing so easy and the stairs fit well.

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Here is the actually drawing made from the ap, and the stairs. Scaled paper helps and makes measurements easy to sketch out.

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The risers are made from plywood, and the treads are from 1/4" craft wood stock. The tread wood is very soft, and easy to sand to the rounded edges. They are substantial and will last as well as real stairs and anything a child can dish out---even multiple dolls sliding down the stairs!
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I filled the nail holes and lightly sanded, making sure to smooth off any residual glue. The treads are glued on with that super wood glue that is all over everything at this point.

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The backside of the stairs shows the actually simple construction. One stairway will be seen from the back, so we finished that off too.

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Two coats of white paint/primer. And then a quick spray of white enamel after.

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Ready for installation. The stairway final reveal will be done in next post with the lighting.

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Yesterday I started painting so much of the trim, while Ken napped.

ONE THING we would do differently is paint all the wood trim before installation, but I wasn't home and Hubby started putting up all the unpainted wood trim. The primed or plastic skinned trim will need a final coat to match also. The house is flat on the kitchen table now to finish the wiring and moldings and more painting touchups. I so need my kitchen back, soon.

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So, now there is lots of fussy painting and clean-up to do. Here are the stairways set in place before finishing. A total reveal will be done with the lighting in our next post, just like a real house...a reveal, chuckle.
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Here is Hubby, crawling on the floor to get the stairway shots. That mess behind is our recyclables...we are so behind on normal life.

Thanks always for stopping by, and I will be happy to respond to your comments or questions.


All the opinions and photographs in this blog are my own or I am in possesion of the originals, 
I have not been paid or reimbursed in anyway for my opinions, posts or products used. 
Please do not use my photos without linking back to this blog without my permission. 
Thank you for your cooperation, Sandi Magle

Sharing at these fine parties:

Sandi


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Sunday, November 8, 2015

NOSTALGIA: Antique Show Finds: Grannys' Ornaments

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NOSTALGIA! (2015 post revisit)

Sunday was a great day to visit a Antique Market at the Gray's Lake County Fairgrounds in Illinois.  E snagged a cute little table...for $10 outside...there was a fierce wind and it was cold despite the brilliant sunshine in Chicagoland. So we headed inside.
 (NOTE: this is November 2020 NOW---and I still don't buy for the Blog!)

I'm new to blogging and have decided to NOT buy for the blog, but only for myself, which is hard when you see so many wonderful things. I forgot the camera and the phone so no pictures of the show...but it was packed with Christmas.

(NOTE: this is November 2020 NOW---and I still don't buy for the Blog!)


But, I was on a search for these OLD Gurley wax ornaments from the 1950s.

Franklin Gurley was a candlemaker and started the W&F Maunufacturing company, and commissioned by an oil company (now ExxonMobil) to use up excess paraffin from oil refinery production. The Gurley's first products were marketed under the name Tavern and you will remember the wax lips and teeth we had in the 1950's for gag gifts and costumes. Then they began a small business making decorative and figurative holiday candles. Eventually this became the Gurley Novelty Company. They were very inexpensive and the ornaments soon followed. Gurley products were mostly sold in dime stores because they were so cheap during the 1940-1960's.

With the resurgence of 1950s vintage, they are collectible again and still quite inexpensive. Though  holiday candles, Gurleys were seldom burned because the paraffin burned very quickly and made a pool of colored wax on the tablecloth or table. The ornaments were very thin and fragile, were painted and embellished with old silver glitter, and they melted if stored in the attic or a garage.
 


My husband and I come from different backgrounds and styles. The one thing we had in common was these wax Christmas ornaments from our grandmothers. Between us we had more than a complete set.

Somewhere along the line in our marriage all our treasured wax ornaments melted in storage. Each year since, we would decorate the tree and talk about who this was from, and on what trip did we get the pineapple, or star, or glass ornament, etc. But always the tree was missing our 1950's wax ornaments from our grandmothers.  

My favorite was always the soldier. My family is Danish on my grandmother's side and Danes are partial to black-hats and redcoat soldiers. It is a recurrent theme in all Danish memorabilia. 

My oldest cousin, liked the angel, but she was white-blonde just like her.


 Yesterday at the antique show I saw many---in various states of yellowed, chipped, slumping and deglittered.


 Finally I found these. I think the only one missing now is the the reindeer, which seems elusive even online. They aren't perfect, but neither were Grannys', we are talking late 1940's early 1950's here.


 Hubby says the snowman was always his favorite...big smiles from him when I spread out my booty.


So our childhood memories are returned home to us. I'm sure they belonged to someone's grandmother. So, I will be fine calling them Grannys' ornaments again. I haven't cleaned them yet, or yet, decided to REDO or restore them.

What are your favorite childhood ornaments? I know we all have stories connected to these special holiday memories. Please share or post a link to your own Old, New, Green or Redo Christmas favorites in your comments.

All the opinions and photographs in this blog are my own or I am in possesion of the originals, 
I have not been paid or reimbursed in anyway for my opinions, posts or products used. 
Please do not use my photos without linking back to this blog without my permission. 
Thank you for your cooperation, Sandi Magle


Thanks always for stopping by, I love to hear your comments.

I will be sharing at these parties: 


Sandi


 
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