Christmas long long ago on Rednesday & VTT

Please visit Sue at It's A Very Cherry World for lots more Rednesday fun!

Please visit Suzanne at Colorado Lady for more Vintage Thingie Thursday fun!

I thought I'd share some personal bits and pieces from Christmases long ago for this Rednesday and Vintage Thingie Thursday.

I found this darling Christmas card my mom sent out when I was a baby. My mom liked to save one of each card she sent every Christmas, to remember them. Did your Mom do that? I wish I could find some of the others, what fun that would be!

My mom sent out a slew of cards, between family, friends and business
acquaintances each year & she had the world's worst handwriting and
boy did she enjoy getting her holiday cards printed. I know you're
cringing if you're reading this Elizabeth, teehee!

My Dad is a Manufacturer's Rep for many companies - even still at the age of 92! Guess he knows his stuff, huh?! He traveled all the time when I was growing up and there were always the most fun postcards and letters for my brother and I.

From December 1960

Dear Sally,

Santa Claus
must be close
to here because
it's very cold.

From December 1960

Dear Sally,
I sure do
miss you fellers and
I hope to be
home when you
get this letter.
Haven't seen
Santa Claus here
but it's cold enough
to be the North
Pole. Wish I hadn't
forgotten my long
underwear.

(the envelope that went with the above letter, look at the funny return address!)
If not delivered in (my dad wrote) - 2 YRS
return to (my dad wrote) - A. Nutt
address (my dad wrote) - Tent #3
state & country (my dad wrote) - Hooverville, USA

Christmas 1960

Are you old enough to remember Western Union?
If you're as old as dirt like I am, you may have received one of these too.

Thanks for being a good little girl,
and minding your Mom and Dad.
My sleigh is loaded with lots of gifts,
to make you very glad.
I'll soon be leaving the cold
North Pole and heading down your way,
to leave these toys and things for you,
to have on Christmas day.
Merry Christmas,
Santa Claus


And my favorite thing of all, my stocking from when I was little.

Happy Sunday!

Helloooooo! I hope everyone has been enjoying a lovely holiday weekend!

We had a great time and a rather reflective and bittersweet time, with friends and family on Thanksgiving. One of my cousins was unable to make it - having just finished chemo treatment, he was felled by something they couldn't address during his cancer treatments, that ended up requiring two surgeries. He ended up having complications from the surgery and was too weak to join us. My father, ever the trooper, had oxygen with him and didn't look well; my Aunt told us that she had in effect, been ill ever since we had seen her Thanksgiving of 2009; an elderly family friend had only just gotten out of the hospital two days before. So very grateful that we had this lovely evening with them. And my cousin's 22 (or is it 23 now?!) year old daughter represented the youth contingent and made us laugh lots and made the evening not weigh quite so heavily on our hearts.

Thought I'd show you my finished paper cone giftie Thanksgiving thingamabobs! They were a hit. WHEW! big ... sigh ... of ... relief!

The inspiration for these was Heather Bullard's charming tutorial here.

On Friday we saw a wonderful new movie, "The King's Speech". If you're an Anglophile, if you love Colin Firth, if you love period pieces, if you love history, if you just plain love good movies, this is a must see! Oh and it's such fun to see Helena Bonham Carter in such a different role after just seeing her in Harry Potter so recently (she's so amazingly and delightfully creepy in HP!). OH! And Michael Gambon is also in The King's Speech and HP ... oh and and, so is Timothy Spall. Wonder if I'm missing somebody?!

Yesterday, I made baked egg custard for the very first time ever. Tonight we're going out to dinner with my dad to celebrate his 92nd birthday with my brother's widow and my nieces. Egg custard, made by his mommy (my grammie) are a standout memory from my childhood for me and I thought it would be fun to make it for my dad. Well, not only do I have tremendous memories of my grandmother bringing over custard for my dad, I also remember not liking it, at all. ACK! So it was very hard for me to make it, making something that I thought of as yucky and not having tried it again as an adult - I wasn't sure how on earth it should taste or what the texture should be???! So I tried some out on my husband last night. He says it's perfect but you know what? It's still icky to me. I was hoping, praying, that with an adult palate, it might have improved and I might enjoy it now. NOPE. nuh uh. no way. BLECH.

How do you feel about egg custard? Yea or nay?

Wishing you a lovely Sunday!

Happy Almost Thanksgiving!

I thought I'd share my Thanksgiving cards with you on this Thanksgiving Eve. I had a lot of fun making them! The photo is of the first batch - the batch with all the guessing and figuring out. WAH! I ran out of time to get some pics of the better, second batch, when I knew what I wanted to do.

Things change so many times at the Sally Card Making Factory - so many ideas flying around and the right one never seems to take hold unto the last moment. Anyway, I had initially been inspired by a Dalai Lama quote, something about roots and appreciation - so I knew I wanted to do a tree on my cards.

And then I happened upon Aimee Ray's book, "Doodle Stitching" at the bookstore (I already had her other book but not this one) and there was this darling tree pattern in it. I didn't have time to hand embroider so I did it on the machine and just cut snips of felt for the leaves and tacked them down with french knots.

And then I decided I wanted another quote for the inside - of course - how could it be otherwise?! The wonderful quote was now too elegant and lofty for my cutesy card. So the hunt began for a new one. ay yi yi.

I had the darling scrapbook paper on hand in the mountain of supplies and I had bought some upholstery remnants at the flea market and one became the grassy mound. And I used wonderful stationery from Paper Source - I usually make my own cards but it was really a joy and time saver to have PS stuff this time around. The most wonderful thing was that PS had craft colored paper for the inside sheet WAHOO! I'm going to be living at PS now.



And I'm still crafting as we speak over here. The number of attendees for Thanksgiving dinner keeps growing. Which is wonderful but - WAH! So today will be crazy busy. Here's a sneak peek of my cornucopia's, inspired by Heather Bullard's DIY tutorial. I didn't do a collage of vintage postcard backs like she showed, I just scanned and printed out a vintage manuscript and am using that instead. I'm using a vintage postcard and clip art for the tags on the cornucopia's.

Hope your holiday prep is all finished and you can sit back and enjoy your Thanksgiving!

I'm hoping to do a Vintage Thingie Thursday post tonight but in case I run out of time, wishing you all the most wonderful of holidays with all your dear ones!

Happy happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Monday

(image from Martha Stewart)

Do you watch Martha Stewart? Last week she made a baked pancake recipe and Saturday morning I made the yummy David Eyre's Pancake recipe. YUMMERS! I understand it's like a Dutch Baby, which I've always wanted to make but never got around to.

David Eyre's Pancake recipe here.

(image from Google Images)

Saturday morning was a special day around here - we went off happily to see the ten am showing of the new Harry Potter film. The second to the last film, boo hoo. The theater was nearly full and the woman seated next to my husband had been to see the film the night before too - opening night and then back to see it a second time. She must have been in her late sixties, to early seventies. Too cute.

Afterward we had lunch at our favorite Indian restaurant. Are you keeping track? So on the list of Good Things Saturday so far we have; yummy breakfast, HARRY! and yummy lunch. WAHOO!

And then we came home and guess what? My copy of Holiday Magazine arrived. Hurray hurrah!

Holiday Magazine from Matthew Mead is available here only.

(image from Google Images)

Sunday we finally made it to see "Social Network", so good. I had forgotten how fast paced Aaron Sorkin's writing is, he makes my head spin.

Lots more fun planned for the coming week, the Auto Show tomorrow, etc. I hope you're all having a great one and not too frazzled over the coming holiday - I am of course, completely fried and frazzled, being the Nervous Nellie sort. ARGH! When I log off here, I'm off to try to make Thanksgiving dinner gifties for friends and family - I know I know, ever the last moment.

AND tomorrow is my Daddy's 92nd Birthday! Happy Birthday to you Dad!

Happy almost Thanksgiving to everyone!

Countdown to Thanksgiving

Hellooooooo! Waving Hi to everyone!

I'm over here working on my Thanksgiving cards - getting the assembly line going and hoping to finish them today. Tuesday I was felled by a headache OUCH and so yesterday was inspiration crunch time and today is "make it work" day (don't you love Tim Gunn?!) teehee!

Here's a little sneak peek for you -

Won't you show me your cards too?! I'd love to see them!


Fun fun fun! Look at what I found! A little thanksgiving drawing of mine - I'm guessing I was in first grade??? Since it's approximately fifty years old, it can count as my Vintage Thingie Thursday too - or perhaps it's me that can count as the vintage thingie?! bwhahhahahhaha.

(It's all wrinkly and falling apart but I love it so!)

And I'm so happy I ran across this post this morning - now I know what I'm bringing for gifties for Thanksgiving dinner. Thank you Heather for sharing this darling craft with us.

Heather Bullard's DIY Thanksgiving Favors here.


Happy Almost Thanksgiving!

Turkey Tuesday

I'm doubling up on posts today - I'm hoping to be caught in the throes of creative inspiration tomorrow, making my Thanksgiving cards. I have two ideas, fingers crossed one of them works!

Make individual turkey pot pies (or veggie ones) for your tykes
at My Baking Addiction.

Found via A Few Of My Favorite Things

Make this turkey bread basket liner from Make and Takes.
Found via One Pretty Thing

You must run over to the Fiskars site and see this
darling childs Thanksgiving place setting. CUTENESS!
Found via Craft Gossip

Make this darling felt turkey at All You Magazine.
Found via Google images.

Make Turkey Luminaries at Family Fun.
Found via Google images.

Make these yummy and fun cupcakes at Amazing Moms.

Found via Google images.

Make your little munchkins this Thanksgiving breakfast from Pop Tarts.

Found via Craft Gossip

Make a darling Turkey place mat at parrishplatz.

Found via Google images.

And parrishplatz was inspired by Squirrel Acorns, here.

Monday blog love

Happy Monday to everyone!

Hope you all had a lovely long holiday weekend!

We saw two foreign movies, "Nora's Will" (the original Mexican title is "Cinco Dias Sin Nora" - Five days without Nora) and "The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest" (original Swedish title "Luftslottet som sprängdes" - literal translation: "the air castle that blew". As in "castles in the air"??? How'd that become a hornet's nest? Too funny.), the third installment in the trilogy of movies, from Stieg Larrson's books. Both movies were very good!

(I don't know why the video isn't loading???!
You can watch it here on YouTube.)

And we ate a lot of good food out ... one of the places we went is the new Culver City location for one of our favorite vegan restaurants, Native Foods. Their regular customers were invited for free lunch or dinner over the weekend, before it officially opens today to the public. We were allowed to have whatever we wanted and dessert too. (I had the Wasabi Bean Burger, the veggie soup and a chocolate cupcake - the hubs had the Reuben, save-the-chicken wings and pumpkin cheesecake. YUM!) They even added our "free" lunches onto our frequent customer cards - our lunch for the two of us was forty five smackers for FREE. And the place was nearly full when we were leaving and look at how full it got later in the day (in the video) so my gosh, what an enormous gift Tanya gave to her customers, huh?! Thank you thank you thank you Tanya!

Native Foods website is here.
Native Foods blog is here.
You can read Quarry Girl's blog post about the new location here.
Hot Off the Plate also has a blog post here about it.

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Pack-O-Fun Crafts Vintage Thingie Thursday

(Please visit Suzanne at Colorado Lady for more Vintage Thingie Thursday fun!)

I picked up a Best of Pack-O-Fun September 1959 - June 1960 issue a few months ago and thought I would share some of the November crafts pages with you today. It's so strange, I was born in the fifties but I have no memory of Pack-O-Fun. This book is so chock full of FUN (it's 280 pages long)! I know I would have loved them when I was a child.

Here are the more seasonal crafts included for the month of November:

A few recipes for vintage recipe lovers:

And some doggone cute vintage craft fun!

I had forgotten all about Little Lulu!

Super cutie button fun!

For bird loving seamtresses!

Here's one for our Suzanne, a multi-purpose Dachshund thingamabob!

WorkBasket Magazine for Rednesday

(Please visit Sue at It's A Very Cherry World for more Rednesday fun!)

This Rednesday, I'm sharing a craft magazine that belonged to my Mom, the December 1966 issue of WorkBasket Magazine. The cover is pretty beat up but the inside is intact and in pretty good shape.

Here's the instructions for the sweater on the cover,
love the project title, "Loveliest Ornament of All...
You, in Christmas Red".

For your little Elves ...

A "red" ad for Rednesday ...

A fun reindeer bookmark for book lovers


sweet embroidery transfer sheet
which for some reason, includes a Cherry Tree, with ax
... thinking ahead to February I guess???


whisper whisper I'm slipping in a little holiday green
with these vintage recipes
Enjoy!





and back to red, with readers recipes


LOL - pierce your own ears while you sleep
and then learn seat weaving in your waking hours!

Happy Rednesday to everyone!