In…

Recliner Man was very good to me. I’ve got lots of Bells and Whistles on my new car.

Several years back, my folks had a big house fire that destroyed a lot of our family treasures. Among the treasures were most of our old family photos. My mom had a handful of old negatives that were water damaged, that I brought home with me. I was able to get them separated and scanned. This Christmas morning photo from 1961 was one of the saved images.

This was probably the best year for dolls, that we ever had. My older sister got a Shirley Temple doll dress as Cinderella from the Storybook collection. I got my, much loved, Chatty Cathy, and my younger sister got a Kewpie doll. Over the years Shirley’s dress became tattered and lost, and my Chatty Cathy met her end in a garbage can. I don’t remember exactly what happened to her but I’m pretty sure it involved missing limbs and a cracked open body.

I started looking at pictures of Chatty Cathys online, trying to remember which style she had been. There are a bunch of different faces, hair styles, freckle patterns and eyes. All the images I saw felt familiar but none of them really stood out as having been mine.  It was about this time that my younger sister sent the following photo of an old doll she had taken home from Mom’s basement years earlier.

The moment that I saw her I knew this was my other sister’s old Shirley Temple doll. What a thrill it was to see her again, and looking pretty darn good for a 50 year old gal! About this time I also found the doll I’d been looking on in an eBay listing.

As soon as I saw her, I knew she was the right one. She was even wearing the right outfit. I was pretty happy to see her again. I really don’t need a doll so I was quite content saving the photo to look at. Then I did  a dumb thing. Just for fun I put in a low bid, knowing with total certainty that I would be outbid by a figure at least 3 times higher than what I offered. I guess I just wanted to feel like I’d tried to hold on to her.  Imagine my surprise when I came back to the computer and discovered that I’d just bought her! I think the fact that the seller only posted this one photo, not showing much about the dolls actual condition, stopped a lot of collectors from bidding on her.

I’ve cleaned her clothes and given her a quick bath. She is looking pretty good. I still need to give her a better cleaning and shampoo and style her hair but she is looking pretty darn good to me. I think it is nice that I found her so near the 50th anniversary of getting my original doll.

Merry Christmas to all of you!

http://blitsy.com/rewardsref/index/refer/id/10500/

I remain convinced that my entire life is available on eBay and Etsy. All it takes is the right search terms and all the old memories display themselves on my computer screen. Some times I decide to buy the old memory and turn it into my new treasure. Other times, I save the images with thoughts of using them in a glue book one day.

Lately I’ve been tracking down some of my favorite childhood books. I searched a long time for the book with the Yo-Yo clown it in, but I was never successful since I couldn’t remember its name. I mentioned this to my sister one night and she knew right away that I was talking about, “Jingle Bell Jack.” From there is was a short search.

All the old images that were lurking in the corners of my mind were now in bold color and as delightful as they had been when I was 3 or 4 years old. I found a few copies of the book offered for sale but the asking prices told me that this was just going to be part of my image collection. I couldn’t find but a few of the pages displayed online and that kept me looking. Each listing I found seemed to share a different page or two, and I set my mind to find all the pages. The next thing I knew I found a listing for a crazy low price, and with 3 extra books to boot! Well, you know I couldn’t let that pass me by. Hello new treasure!

Another favorite book had been a collection of Fairy Tales with wonderful illustrations. It was a large collection of stories and my sister and I each remembered different ones from it. As a child I was convinced this was a rare antique since its copyright date pre-dated my mother’s birth year. I mean, parents are almost as old as the dinosaurs, right? As it turned out, we had both spent years looking for this book. Without a name to go by we were never able to find it. Recently I put on my best spiked Bulldog collar and decided to take on the search once again.

I found  bits and pieces of what we remembered, scattered across many different books. But nowhere did I find the large collection that we both remember. I finally figured out that the book was published by Platt & Munk, edited by Watty Piper and illustrated by Eulalie. Mr. Piper was a pseudonym for the publisher, Mr. Munk. As it turns out, Mr. Munk was a crafty salesman. He took his stories, and Eulalie’s illustrations, and republished them many times over, creating new collections under new titles. Sometimes he would change up the illustrations a bit, taking one out of this publication and adding one to another collection. I’ve yet to find the large collection that we had but I think I know the name of it now. My search is ongoing for, “Fairy Tales That Children Love.”

Oh my goodness, has it really been since Halloween that I last posted here? I’m getting worse at this all the time!

How do you like my car? I was driving down the road, minding my own business, when a driver coming from the other direction made a left hand turn in front of me, just as I was entering the intersection. BAM! This happened the day before Thanksgiving. He said that he had a turn light but that was impossible. Lucky for me there were two witnesses that stopped and gave statements to the police. This intersection has a leading green arrow and he wanted us all to believe that my green had ended and his turn just begun. It just couldn’t be.

It has been quite a PIA to deal with. Besides the inconvenience of the holiday, I just don’t think the insurance companies were on the ball. At the time of the accident the guy said he had insurance but couldn’t even provide the name of his company. Fearing that he really wasn’t insured I went to my company, State Farm, that same day to file a claim.  That night he came up with the information for his mother’s policy with Farmer’s insurance and I called them on Friday morning. Then I sat and waited.

Saturday I got a voice mail from State Farm saying that they wanted to talk to me. I called back 20 minutes later but their office was closed and I had to leave a message.  By Tuesday  afternoon I was calling and leaving messages again. I finally connected with the Farmer;s adjusted shortly before they closed for the day on Tuesday. She took my statement and info but wouldn’t authorize a rental until she had talked with their driver. So I waited longer. Wednesday afternoon I called Farmer’s back again and said I couldn’t wait any longer for a rental. Their driver was cited so there was no reason to postpone this. I’d already been a week without a car thanks to his bad driving. She authorize the rental with just enough time for my son to get me over to the rental place before they closed for the night.

I finally heard from State Farm on Thursday afternoon. Besides taking so long to talk to me, she had already talked with the other driver and made it sound like she was buying his story about having had the turn signal. She acted quite surprised when I said that the cops told me he was cited, more surprise when I told her that I wasn’t cited for anything, and even more surprised when I told her that Farmers had already accepted liability and were taking care of the claim. I’ve been with State Farm so long that I can’t even remember when we first signed on with them for all of our auto and home coverage, and this is the service I get when I need it. I’m going to start shopping for a new company and welcome your suggestions. (Judy, I’ll be checking your company out first, thanks for the suggestion.)

So I’ve been dealing with insurance, banged up knees, disagreements over what kind of rental car they should give me, and all the day to day stuff. Somewhere in there, the blog got lost for a while.

Happy Halloween everyone! I am having a nice quiet moment and thought that I should jump in here and send you all my holiday greetings.

We have Batman here at our house today while his sister is at the Vet’s office being spayed. Batman gets his trip to the surgery later this week. We thought he would be heartbroken if we left him home alone all day so the decision was made to bring him here and let him figure out how to be friends with the cat, Abbey. There has been a lot of barking but Abbey has remained pretty calm about it all. We haven’t figured out if Batman is barking because he is afraid of the strange new creature or because he really wants her to play with him.

The image at the top of the page is the cover of my second book of Halloween images. I’ve only completed a few pages so far. I decided that there were just too many waiting to be played with and that a volume 2 was needed.

Check out my brand new collection of Trick or Treat Bags. I had mentioned to my sister that I wanted to start a collection one day and she surprised me with this wonderful assortment. My mind is already turning over ideas of how to construct a book to display and protect these little beauties.

This was a fun set to do. It was another pocket page and I stuffed it full of goodies.

These little houses are vintage party favors. The roof pulls up to reveal a fortune for your guest.

This little envelope full of fortunes had instructions to wrap each slip in a piece of waxed paper and back it in a small cake to give to your guest. The other piece is just a tiny variation of an old paper lantern.

The envelope is a copy of an old package of seals. It said that it contained 12 seals so that’s how many little witches I cut out and put into it. The little candy box is a working copy to fold up and the Halloween Puss in Boots is like a little paper doll.

The next set of pages isn’t interactive but has lots of fun images to look at.

Billie and I gave our fancy Witch hats a trial run this week. We wore them to our monthly art club meeting. Just about everyone who entered the room said, “Hats! You should have told me!” It was a last minute idea to wear them but I’m going to try and remember to bring this up in advance of next October’s meeting. I think it would be fun to look around the table and see a coven of crafty witches working away at art projects.

More fun pages that move!

It’s another work day and that means another visit with the pups.

They were snuggled on the couch with me and had been sleeping for half an hour. Just as I was going to wake them and send them to their cages, a dog barked outside. In a flash they were awake and at the back door, desperate to go check out the yard and make sure all their toys, bones, and holes in the dirt were safe. After a quick race around they darted back inside and settled in on their blanket. Just another second or two and it was right back to nap time. I sure wish I could fall asleep that fast!

Happy October! It seems like there should be a chill in the air but we are still feeling summer’s warmth here in Phoenix. We hit the triple digits this afternoon. Cooler days are not far away though, the weather report is calling for upper 70s and low 80s by the end of the week. I’m more than ready for it. It is time to open the windows and let some fresh air in.

October is also a great time for being creative and playful. I’m planning a girl’s night out with 3 of my friends and we decided to make it a Witches dinner date. That meant a trip to the Dollar Spot at Target for a pointy black hat, and to Micheal’s for some purple ribbon. The hat was terrific, only $2.50 and it had a veil on it. It also had a couple of grey roses made from ribbon, but they were a bit wimpy and I ripped them off. I had other things in mind. After picking up a couple of new do-dads at M’s and getting my box of odds and ends down from the closet, I have a pretty sweet hat for my big night out.

It is hard to see in the photo, but I cut the veil into points. I liked the more wispy look that it gave.

I wish I had been thinking about blogging when I started the project. It would be cool to share a before and after shot with those old grey roses. You will just have to take my word for it, these purple roses are way better.

I made sure to add decorations all the way around. The skeletons  and the raven were left over from last year’s run to the dollar store. The bat and owl were new from M’s.

I’ll be sure to get a picture of the group in our hats to show to you later. In my next post I’ll show you the Halloween bracelet/necklace that I made.

The first set of harnesses was a success so The Boy asked if I could make a little Batman cape for his puppy, Batman. How could I say no to such a cute idea?

Who knew it could be so fun to dress up puppies? I didn’t want his sister, Sasha to be left out so I made a new outfit for her also.

Sasha seemed to like her party dress, but her brother took one look at her and decided that she looked like a toy. He took off after her, grabbed the ruffle in his mouth and kept running. Poor little girl didn’t know what hit her. The next project will be teaching Batman some manners.

The first Vet visit is later today. I’m anxious to hear how old the Vet thinks they are.