Tolentreasures

  What a fun night!    Cousins making memories! If we could only freeze them in this moment...   If they would only sleep in... But it's 6:30 and they are stirring... Hurry up, Coffee!   

What a ride this has been! Setting up and opening a shop, a winter of paint classes, all more craziness than usual... if that is possible.   I have loved getting the shop ready, enjoyed the entire process and really like working there.    The vendors work most of the weekdays, mostly the weekends are tied up for me for the time being.     Yesterday, I was on my own.   Worked at that REAL job in the early morning and then off to Time Works.   Busy day, I took paints and brushes. Didn't really accomplish much there. My two last customers of the day came in.   Wandered around and then.... The one woman brings two yearbooks to the counter.   Her voice is shaky.   She has just found her father's yearbook!   Not just the 1946 yearbook that he was pictured in... His personal yearbook, with all the messages from his classmates!   Stories from the...

It started with no coffee.  None.  Zip. So I jumped in my vehicle and headed to the shop and had to drive around a dead skunk at the end of my driveway.  I should have gone back to bed.  It did not get better.  Disappointed  in a friend's behavior that really hurt my feelings.  I should have thicker skin by this point in life, I guess.  But I am still counting my blessings,  time with some of my grandchildren... well spent.  Those little arms around your neck  a little boy laying in your arms in his blanket "color with me, Mamaw" are all the healing  a heart needs! And the ladies in the picture? A yard sale find for $1!  A pair just like that hung in our living room  throughout my entire childhood... I could not pass them up! 

The bedroom was bugging me, and I was getting company.  Mom and Dad  and  Amber, my neice.  TWO bedrooms were needed.  What to do... Search the stash!  So,  the "headboard" was found in the garage.  One of my cupboard door benefactors  had insisted that I take it.  I whined that I didn't want it,  I had no use for it.  However,  I was told if I didn't take it,  I could not have the rest.  So, it has sat,  in the garage  for a lot of years.  The nightstands were a $5 each yard sale find.  Chalk Paint it all and  add the little shelf on top, complements of JWS and it was good to go.  The frame  and  cute little wallhangings, yard sales.  The quilt,  a long ago pass on from a friend.  The shelf unit,  yard sale find. Bentwood, caned rocker, another long ago ...

Last night, these all got washed and polished up. My grandmother's Jewel Tea dishes, Bits and Pieces of a set, many of them chipped, but such a nice keepsake of my Grandma's. My Dad's father passed away at a very young age. My grandmother was left with a 12 year old boy and a 10 year old girl to raise in the 1940's when single motherhood was not the norm. She became a nurse and raised them. Later she would remarry, and later she would develop what would seem now to be a very early form of Alzheimer's Disease. Long before any of us had ever heard of that disease, she slipped away from us. I was only 13 when she died. She was in her early 60's. I have so few memories of her when she was healthy. Those that I have, I cherish. She loved to garden and was a beautiful quilter. I can remember helping her with her flowers and I remember her reading to me in a seat in a rose arbor in her backyard. After she passed away, my step-grandfather remarried. His new wife never a...