Five On Friday: White And Rusty Kitchen Things

Joining Amy today at Love Made My Home for Five-On-Friday Won't you stop by, if you have the time, and add your five to the mix?

I've been far too serious on Fridays lately, so I'm picking a lighter subject. I'm taking you on a quick tour of our kitchen and some of the rusty and white things in it.

1. The Portable Cabinet And White Pig:

The kitchen pig always holds court in the middle of the kitchen on a movable cabinet. The builder distressed and aged the wall cabinets a little too much. I plan to dry brush them, with a little white to lighten them, as soon as I learn how to do a better job of dry-brushing. 

For now, I try to add as much white as possible to lighten up the kitchen since it's in the center of the house and doesn't have a window.

2. Messy Dark Corner: 

You hear it all the time...don't keep a bunch of stuff out on your counters! I try, but it all just creeps back out. Most of it is white as you can see. The white helps lighten up this dark corner.

3. Rusty White Stuff With Holes:

Seems all my old enamelware has holes. This flour bin is worn almost through on the bottom right.

 It doesn't matter to me, I find it charming. I don't store flour in it anyway as these big flour bins were used back in the day when people made their bread at home and had to store their supplies for a long time between trips to town.  If you opened the flour bin up, you would find cloth placemats rolled up inside instead of flour.

This rusty white enamelware washpan holds my kitchen towels. If you picked it up and looked below, you would see holes in the bottom of it too. I buy my dish towels at Sam's Club. I love these plain white, sackcloth-type dish towels. 

4. Rusty Bottle Rack/White Lazy Susan:

Long ago in 1992, my older friend Sally from Oklahoma always served me "Okie Tea" from canning jars.  I was hooked and gave away all my glasses and started using canning jars. The small ones live on this bottle rack right across from the ice/water dispenser on the refrigerator. I use canning jars to store food in the fridge too. So many uses! 

5. White Preserved Roses:

I'm obsessed with these preserved roses with barely there color. I stick them inside things all over the kitchen. Here's a close up of a few of the roses. In the nest on the bottle rack...

In the old canning jar...

 In the pottery with little white pumpkins...

Well, that's my quick tour of the kitchen stuff. If you noticed I still have some of the little twinkle lights up from Christmas, don't be shocked. Sometimes the lights stay out and stay lite (along with the pumpkins) all year long.

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Five On Friday: Red-Foiled Candy

Joining Amy this week for Five-On-Friday at Love Made My Home.

In the supermarkets this week the Valentine's Day candy is out and on full display. For the first time in 23 years, I didn't cry when I got my first glimpse of the red-foiled chocolate candy. That's what my five is about this week.

One: The Hospital  On January 18, 1994, my father called to tell me he was in the hospital.  I was at work in the same town as the hospital, so I left quickly to go see him and stopped at a market to buy a deck of cards on the way there. They were putting up a big Valentine's Day display in the store, so I bought a large bag of red-foil-wrapped chocolate pieces for him to share with the people who stopped by to see him. 

Two: How To Win  At the hospital, his two older sisters had just left and my father and I were alone. We both loved playing Black Jack, so we started a game. Since we didn't have many coins on us, we decided to use the Valentine's Day candy as betting "chips". We finally ended the game that night when he had all the candy pieces. It was late, so I headed home...and that became our ritual. 

Every afternoon after work I (an over-worked, 40-something divorced mother) went to the hospital after other family members left and played Black Jack with my dad until he (usually) won all the chocolate pieces, then I drove the 30 miles home to the town where I lived and got up the next day and did it all over again. I hope, when I was with him, that I didn't show all the pressure I was feeling. 

One night, when he had won my share of the red-foiled "chips" yet again, I said:

"Dad, sometimes people let their kids win a game or two!" 

And he replied:

"Well...you know...they're showing their kids how to lose.  I always tried to show you how to win."

Three: Diagnosis  After almost a week of nightly Black Jack, my father had exploratory surgery. I was by myself in the waiting room when the doctor came to say there was nothing they could do. Later, I sat in his room staring at the red-foil-wrapped chocolates while he slept.

Four: 6 Months  Dad went home with hospice soon after the diagnosis. A friend drove him to his doctor's office visit on Friday, February 4th. Dad walked into the doctor's office perfectly fine by himself. Dad called me that evening and we had a long, clear conversation. He told me the doctor said he had 6 months to live. We agreed I'd be over the next morning with my daughters and we would make plans.

The next morning at 9, my girls and I arrived at his house (about 45 miles from where we lived) while the hospice nurse was there. We found that my father had no idea who we were, could not walk without us supporting him, and would eat only if his granddaughters fed him...and then only pudding and mashed potatoes. Dad died in the hospital the next day, Sunday Feb 6th, probably the shortest 6 months on record. I believe he willed himself to die. He won.

Five: A Sweet Memory  Since I wasn't much of a match for his card playing skills, I wondered at the time if he was bored while playing cards with me in those last days of his life. After his death, at his memorial service, I mentioned this to his two sisters. My aunts looked at each other and smiled, then told me when he was in the hospital he asked them not to eat the red-foiled chocolates because he wanted as many "chips" as possible to make our games last longer.

I'm sharing this with you as Valentine's Day approaches because I hope when you see those red-foiled candy pieces this year, it will remind you to slow down and love someone a little bit harder, a little bit longer, a little bit better. That lifetime you see ahead could easily turn into just 6 months or maybe even just 2 little days.

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Five On Friday

I'm joining Amy at Love Made My Home for Five-On-Friday.  My five this week are from a road trip we took mid-December. 

One:  I'll start with the pretty. A bank of Poinsettias in a store put a smile on my face. I love them all bunched together.

Two:  The Illinois roads were very slippery the afternoon we left. Out in the middle of nowhere this poor guy was calmly standing by his overturned car calling for a tow truck. We stopped to see if he needed help, but he just waived us on. I still wonder how he got out of the car.

Three:  This is one of our wheel wells on the pick-up truck. When we got a little farther south, the ice that had collected started to melt. We could hear "clunks" as the pieces fell off in chunks. We were in a drive-thru waiting for our order, and it was a little embarrassing when big chunks dropped off all at one time.

Here's the wheel well after all the ice melted. In the southern states like Texas, the roads are sanded to reduce skidding. In Illinois, they salt the streets. That's salt residue on the side of the truck. We stopped at a car wash as soon as the temperature was high enough.

Car washes don't usually operate when the temperature is below a certain point. In Texas they close when the temperature is below 42 degrees. 

Four:  Speaking of the drive thru. This sign should be perplexing, but unfortunately it's not uncommon.

Five:  Lots of eye candy from a stop at the little downtown in Franklin Tennessee, just south of Nashville. 

But the only souvenir I brought home from the road trip was this T-shirt. 

Hope you'll stop by Amy's for Five-On-Friday and add your five to the party.

Thanks for dropping by!

Five On Friday: Smitten

Friday again! Hope your week was a calm one. The older I get, the faster time flies and this past week really flew. Joining Amy at Love Made My Home for Five On Friday again this week...

Love this newly opened shop in McKinney called Home.ol.o.gy, which already has their shop decorated for Christmas. 

Love is not the right word...I think smitten works better. Just take a look.

ONE:  The flat metal reindeer on the wreaths outside the store's door had me at hello. Smitten! Luckily for me, the shop was closed when I walked by last night on my way to an evening paint class or I would be dead broke today.

The entryway is appealing all by itself. I wish I had gotten a better picture of the whole entry, but it was late and getting dark and my class was about to start.

TWO: Have you ever seen a sweeter sign? Smitten! I didn't mind being told the store was closed in this way. I loved the contrast between the dark wood doorway, the black and white tiled floor, and the straight up and down sign.

THREE:  Here's a shot of the chandelier hanging over the doorway outside. I was really smitten with that light! 

The contrast with the fancy chandelier and the dark wood was very, very appealing.

FOUR:  When I looked to see the store hours on the window, I fell for all the Christmas decor inside. The sparkly reindeer and the large white candle holders in this window made me want to come back real soon.

The class I was headed to was a painting class for Amy Howard's paint and finishes. 

The large candle holder painted an off white probably was my inspiration for choosing a white-ish paint called Linen for my sample board (a wooden tile) in last night's class. 

I painted the wooden tile linen with a little dark wax to age it. I think I will be attacking everything in the house with my new brush and linen paint!

FIVE:  I peeked in every window of the shop before I hurried to my class. I tried to get the best photos I could. Everything was so pretty and I wanted to remember it all. Amy Howard has a taupe color similar to the shade on this large candle holder below. I might just have to paint some things with that color too. Smitten once again!

Home.ol.o.gy

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Old Things Gathered: Yellow For Fall

Hanging on to old things is what I do. For this week's Five on Friday link party at Love Made My Home, I'm sharing five old things around our house connected by the color yellow for Fall.

Many of the old things I have were bestowed on me from older family members. Bestow is the right word...I looked it up. It is an honor to receive beloved family items and I appreciate them very much. 

be·stow

bəˈstō/

verb

past tense: bestowed; past participle: bestowed

1. confer or present (an honor, right, or gift).

One...Vintage Coffee Pot. This pot came from a collectibles store in Albuquerque and has been with me since 2002, but it's way older than that. Cowboys use to hang them over open fires to brew coffee for the guys. That's one of the reasons why the old coffee pots had a metal handle on top. 

Can you imagine taking the time to start a fire and brew up a pot so everyone can gather 'round and warm up before starting the day? 

Think about that the next time you are in the drive-thru line at Starbucks and it takes a few minutes longer than you think it should!

I have to wonder who had the better life? Those who gathered together first thing in the morning with warmth and companionship, or us hurrying off to work by ourselves with an ugly paper cup?

I use the old coffeepot for holding flowers, both real and faux. The real ones, like the sunflowers in the first pictures, require putting a mason jar inside the coffeepot to hold the water just in case it leaks.

Two...Vintage cabinet. It's still yellow, but I'm planning on painting it some shade of white. For now it's holding some Fall decor on top and dishes inside. 

I bought the little cabinet from a consignment shop 2 or 3 years ago. I always planned to paint it, just can't settle on a color.

Three...My great-grandmother's dresser and mirror from when she was a little girl. It has a crazy family history I'll get to some other time.

I know you're thinking "it's not yellow", but look inside the drawer with me. 

When I got the dresser from my father back in 1980, this wallpaper was lining the drawer. I never removed it...I wanted it to remain as part of its legacy. The dresser and mirror had been stored in a barn in Nebraska since the 1930's, and I believe the wallpaper was in there all that time. My father rescued it in 1977, when the barn was torn down, a few years before I could pick it up from him.

 I pulled a small piece out of the back of the drawer to look at it better tonight. I think I'll try to frame it so I can see it more often and try to research the pattern by the numbers at the top of the piece.

Four...An old painting from the 1880's. This painting is one of a pair. There was a tag on the back showing they were framed at a shop in San Francisco in the 1880's. It's in a dark hallway and it was hard to get a good picture.

Here's a close up of the vase and some of the flowers depicted.

The painter used a very soft yellow on one or two of the flowers, but yellow none the less. Can you see it?

My mother gave me one of these paintings 20 years ago, and then gave me the other one about 5 years ago. They stand about 4 foot high. 

Five...Old Family Quilt. My mother-in-law gave me this quilt last year. 

Her mother created this hand-stitched quilt with other family women and friends when my mother-in-law was a young girl. Each person chose their fabric, made a square, then stitched her name across it. 

Opal chose a yellowish-gold embroidery thread to stitch her name boldly across her square. Opal was long gone when I joined the family over 20 years ago, but I think I would've liked her if she was as straight-forward as her signature appears.

It's not yellow, but Mittie's orange square to the left side of the picture below is another bold statement I love. 

Depending on how it's folded, the quilt fits in with lots of seasonal decorating. The oranges and yellows fit right in with fall.

That's my five this week. Hope you'll drop by Amaze Me Monday, Willy Nilly Friday, and Amy's blog where you can add your five too. You can write about anything, but I'd love to see what you have around the house that you cherish -- if you're of a mind to show it.

Thanks for dropping by!

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