Here’s Looking at You!

 

Life has been busy these past few weeks, but I managed to do a bit of thrifting.  With all this chilly, rainy weather we’ve been having here in Ohio, I think people are hesitant to schedule their yard sales until the weather warms up. But the estate sales have begun in earnest, since they are held inside. I hit a couple sales last week and came away with a few bargains.

 

The larger mirror was ½ off the $8.00 sticker price and the round mirror was $1.00. Not too  shabby. They’ll both receive a little paint make-over. I’d like to dry brush the larger one in pale blue and use it in one of the guest rooms. The small round one is glaring in its present gold state. I think a quick wipe of some walnut stain should do the trick and give it a more subtle, aged look.   I will probably use it as a base for one of my cloches.

Do you see the reflection of my vintage goat cart in the mirror? It will be for sale when I hold an occasional sale at the end of May.  I’ll be selling my things at a friend’s shop in Waynesville when the village holds its yearly antique sale. If you’re interested, let me know!

 

Nice ribbon and bow detailing on the top and the small balls at the edge of the glass give the mirror its character.

 

This hat stand was a purchase from a favorite vintage store up in Tipp City.  I needed it for the item you’ll see in the next photo.

 

I purchased this riding helmet from blogging friend, Lynn, at The Vintage Nest. She has some of the coolest items for sale on her website.  I’ve been wanting a helmet for some time now, so I was elated to find this one. It’s definitely a man’s helmet, based on its large size and  I like that it’s red and not one of the more commonly seen black ones.

  

I placed it on a shelf in the study, where it makes a colorful statement. And yes, I still need to clip the tag on its base…

 

Back in December, I hinted that I’d like an old microscope as one of my Christmas presents.  Needless to say, I didn’t get one, so when I saw this at the same store where I found the hat stand, Mr. Sullivan promptly offered to buy it for me. Only $17.00-  I’m a cheap date!  Guess he felt guilty that he didn’t buy it for me during the holidays. 

 

Do you remember using one of these  in biology class back in high school?  Eeewww… I can still recall that icky frog we had to dissect when I was a sophomore!  All I need is to find a glass slide to make it look like I’m back in class examining a specimen.

                                                                                   

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                                                                                                                  Hey, Y’all….

                                                                                                     

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     photo courtesy Universal Furniture

We’ll be heading to High Point for the semi-annual International Furniture Market for dealers and designers next weekend. It’s always so exciting to see the new introductions to the furniture and accessory lines we carry and to look for new vendors, too!   And you better believe I’ll be taking some nice, comfortable flat shoes to wear! My feet killed me last time. There is so much walking and there is no way I’ll be in heels this market- I plan on wearing more casual outfits to go with those flats.  We have the opportunity to meet cookbook author and Food Network star, Paula Deen, in one of the vendor showrooms. She’ll be signing her cookbook and posing for pictures with dealers. Can’t you just hear that vivacious laugh of hers right now? 

                         

                                                                                              

                                                                                                                    photo courtesy Universal Furniture

  I’ve been eyeing this daybed in her line for my shabby chic guest room.  It even has drawers for storage. I can never have enough of those!  In fact, I admit that I  have waaay too much stuff!  Why do you think I’m having a sale?   

                                                                                                                          

 

 

 

                                                                                                 Joining up with Linda’s Nifty Thrifty Tuesday Party

                                                                                                                      

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                                                                                                            Kristin’s Tuesday’s Treasures

                                                                                                                                                                               

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                                                                                                     Diann’s Thrifty Things Friday

                                                                                                     

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The Sullivan Clan…

 

Some of you may recall that I used this picture as my blog banner for quite a while. It’s the family homestead in County Kerry, Ireland.

The house has been vacant for many years and is slowly “going back to the land,” as the Irish say.  It now looks like this….

 

The family has traced its history to Peter and Mary Daly Sullivan, who came over from Ireland in the mid 1800’s.  They were Mr. Sullivan’s great, great grandparents. Peter and  Mary had seven children, including Peter the second, whose son, William,  is Mr. Sullivan’s grandfather.  William was married to Edith Arnold and they had seven children, one of whom was Kenneth, who is Mr. Sullivan’s father.  The Sullivans settled in both  Illinois and Iowa, where they farmed for a living.

 

  

Mr. Sullivan’s father, Ken, is the 12 year old boy on the far left. His brothers, Clarence and Ralph, are on on the right.  William (Mr. Sullivan’s grandfather) is seated next to his mother, Mary. He is holding two of his younger children, Louis and Dorothy.  

We knew that our son, Dan, definitely looked like a Sullivan, but we couldn’t quite figure out who! After we discovered the picture above several years ago, we decided that Dan looks very much like his great uncle Ralph, at the top right in the photo.  Everyone looks so somber in the photo, so it might be hard to imagine Dan with a glum face and no smile; but we feel he looks more like Uncle Ralph than anyone else in the family.

 

            

 

 

 

 

This is a photo of the Mr. Sullivan’s parents and siblings in the early 1950’s. Mr. Sullivan is the baby of the family, and is being held by his mother, Helen. Seven of his eight siblings are still alive and all but one live in the Dayton area.  The family had a pet lamb, who was included in center of this family photo.

 

 

And this delightful Irish couple, though totally unrelated to the Sullivan clan, is dancing a fine jig in celebration of St. Paddy’s Day!  They were a gift to me last year from sweet blogging friend, Dawn.

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We’ll be celebrating St. Patrick’s Day on Wednesday with an Irish-American meal of corned beef and cabbage.  I’ll also be making some soda bread, using an old Irish recipe; and even though it isn’t traditional, I’ll be adding raisins to one of my loaves.  No green beer for us- probably just a bottle of Murphy’s red ale!  We’re celebrating on Wednesday because Mr. Sullivan has the day off.  

~Here is an Irish Blessing for all of you~

 

 

May you always walk in sunshine.

May you never want for more.

May Irish angels rest their wings right beside your door.

 

 

                                                                                                                                            

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                  I’m joining Kathleen at her St. Patrick’s Day Blog Crawl on Tuesday.  Remember that on St. Patrick’s Day, everyone is Irish!!!

                                                                                                                                                       

Love Birds and a Call for Spring

 

It’s that time of year when we are all looking forward to a change in the weather and getting out of the doldrums of winter. Spring has been a long time coming and even though our resident groundhog didn’t see his shadow, it is still cold, rainy, and dreary here in Ohio.  I have a feeling we will be experiencing a few more weeks of inclement weather; so what better way to lift my frame of mind than to start decorating some of the rooms with spring in mind?

At the advent of spring, we expect to hear birds chirping in the newly leafing trees and we can often spot their hidden nests filled with eggs up in the tree boughs. With that in mind, I thought I’d bring out my wire cloche, fill it with sweet blue birds and a nest of speckled eggs, and set it on the cedar chest in one of the guest rooms.  

 

 

 

 

The cloche is made out of chippy white garden fencing tied up in  a frou-frou knot at the top. It sits upon an old mirror edged in metal.  I purchased the cloche from my friend Kathy at the Springfield Antique Extravaganza a few summers back. The two blue love birds sit in front of a nest fashioned from an old strainer filled with moss and speckled eggs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The vignette is simple. The cloche has been paired with a random assortment of accessories. I laid a vintage lace runner as the base for everything, then  propped a framed lithograph against the back wall of the chest. I added in Mr. Sullivan’s vintage black telephone, a stack of old books, a button bouquet, and an old hotel bell.

 

The room is lightly scented by a sprig of lavender tied up with string. 

 

The well-worn bell still chimes loudly.  Wish someone would come when I ring!

 

The husband saw this phone in one of our favorite vintage stores.  He received it as a gift from me on Father’s Day several years ago.  Think Mother Nature would take my call if she knew I was asking why she hasn’t sent us warm weather and sunshine?

 

The button vase was another purchase from Kathy at her vintage sale last summer.  She fashioned the button flowers onto some wire and planted them into an old silver-plated  bud vase.

 

 

 

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It took such little effort to create an area that gave me a  sweet smile.  And even if the weather outside is not spring-like at this time, at least this one little corner of the room gives me hope that there are sunnier days ahead for us. Birds will soon be chirping, letting us know that they are feathering their nests for their new families.  The grass will come out of its dormant phase and add color to the now drab landscape.  Flowers will bud and trees will begin to leaf.  Nature comes along in her own due course and we follow along right beside her…..

Linking to:

 

 Marty’s Spring Cloche Party

 

 

Vanessa and Heather’s Inspiration Friday

 

Debra’s  Vintage Inspiration Friday

 

 

Sherry’s Home Sweet Home

 

 

Laurie’s Favorite Things Saturday

Computer Woes and a Solution

 

                                                                                                                            

For two frustrating weeks, I’ve been dealing with a slow running computer.  I could connect to the internet, but websites took forever to load and things would just come to a complete standstill.  After much frustration, I finally decided that I needed to buy a new computer.  Now, my old Dell has given me eight years of good service. But then,  I took care of it by adding updates and new hardware; I regularly scanned for viruses; and I used the disk scanner and defragmenter on a regular basis. I just couldn’t fathom why I was having so many issues.  I guess, like the human body, machines just start falling apart after more than a few years, right?   So I figured I should just buy a new computer to solve all my problems. Little did I know that it wasn’t even the computer that was actually causing all of my issues. But you’ll read about that in a bit….

 

                                                                                                                      

On Monday night, I placed a phone call to son, Dan, for a little help. Here’s a picture of him on the day of his police academy graduation.  Kids these days know so much about computers. They start using them in grade school, so they are very familiar with them by the time they are young adults. Dan is no different. He’s taken apart his share of them and has taught me a few things. Unfortunately, he goes through information so fast and he does stuff that I can’t figure out unless he shows me all the steps.  I know he just shakes his head when I make him explain it all to me in baby steps!  Anyway,  Dan did the legwork for me and offered up some suggestions for a new purchase. I told him I’d send him my old computer to play with. 

On Tuesday night, I ventured out to Best Buy, made my purchase, and set it up the next morning.  But I couldn’t connect to anything!   AAAGGGHHHH….  I called our cable provider, Time Warner, who connected me to Roadrunner, our internet service provider.  The earliest service call was for next Monday. I wasn’t happy, but took it. But the more I got thinking about it, I thought I should talk to a tech person. So back on the phone I went, where a customer service rep reluctantly connected me to a tier 3 tech in Cincinnati.  This guy was amazing. He ran some diagnostics on his end and came to the conclusion that my outdated Time Warner modem could be part of the problem with my connectivity. I took it to the TW store to exchange it for a newer model, came back home to connect it, and couldn’t even get the thing to boot up correctly!  Now I had already spent over an hour with the tech and customer service, so I was not looking forward to another conversation with someone new, but a customer service rep at TW walked me through two set-up procedures. After 15 minutes, I had re-set my the modem and my wireless router and I finally had internet service!  Halleluiah…

This new HP computer of mine has Windows 7 loaded on it, so it is a whole new ballgame for me to have to play, after having had Windows XP on my Dell. It will take me a while to figure out the ins and outs of this new operating system.  I transferred over some files from the old computer via a flash drive and I downloaded all of the programs I’ll need, so I think I’m ready to go.  I downloaded Windows Live Writer, since I don’t like using Blogger to post,  and the download automatically recognized that I had the Windows 7 operating system. Because of the operating system,  I now have the newer version of Writer, which is so completely different from the one I had been using on XP.  Wow- I am having a heckuva time trying to figure out where everything is located!   Things are not in plain sight so I’m having to hunt for ways to access things that used to be so easy to find on the earlier version.   Writer has eliminated many of the fonts I liked to use and this post is the second I’ve written this morning because I lost the first one when Writer encountered a glitch and ate my draft.  I still have to find out where that darn “save draft” button is located!  Can you say frustrated really loud?!

So I guess I’ll be practicing for a while on Writer until I get familiar with it.  Have any of you experienced this if you’ve recently updated to the new version of Writer?  I thought new versions should have improvements to make things easier for the user…   Guess this old dog has to learn a few new tricks!