Old Stuff – This Old House 2

Shiny Brite Treasures

I was gifted this beautiful collection of vintage Christmas ornaments recently when a long time neighbor downsized and moved away. She is 94 years young, and still a dynamo – something to aspire to!

Always my favorites, the shiny brites remind me of Christmas’s long ago, when my extended family gathered at one of the aunts houses or the grandparents… and people actually dressed up for the occasion, cousins reconnected, the elders bickered and joked and laughed and fussed over their guests , the food was abundant and delicious and the laughter loud.

Often there was snow or flurries and because we lived in the burbs, we saw plenty of Christmas lights and trees lit in the windows on our drive home, hearts and bellies full.

Yesterday I started to wash these in warm soapy water, as they had been living in her barn in a big old tupperware container for quite some time and had acquired some dust, as you can see. Once I began the process I noticed immediately the paint was coming off the ornaments! UGH! Then I googled… and apparently the vintage ornaments were painted with a water based paint that would indeed come off in soapy water. So I stopped immediately and did what was suggested, clean soft clothes to wipe off the dust.

I am so tempted to start the Christmas decorating, our Thanksgiving feast will be the usual but with fewer people, as some of my kids now that they have kids are choosing to have a relaxing stay at home day instead of making the rounds. I thought this year I might divert from the usual and go with a more neutral theme, just greens and winter whites and beiges. But when I pulled out this box, I knew I couldn’t do it. Vintage Christmas it shall be. The only question is…. to wait.. or not to wait 🙂

Till soon –

The Old Days

“Back in the old days”….. funny when you realize you’re old enough to say that.

Growing up on Staten Island in the shadow of the Big Apple, I knew from a very young age I was meant for a more countrified life. And so I set my sights on getting out of the ‘burbs as soon as possible. In my case that was 19 years of age with an old abandoned race horse I had adopted, with not a pot to piss in, really, except for a few important things – a Ford pinto my father had handed down to me, my mother’s support to attend college and a job opportunity on my aunt’s horse farm to work off that old horses board and my own.

All these many moons later, I did manage to build the countrified life complete with horses, dogs, chickens, goats, rabbits, fish etc. etc. and this family I cherish beyond the beyond. But I won’t deny, and I wouldn’t have believed it when I was a teenager…. there are things I cherish about my time growing up in those ‘burbs. Our streets were safe and we played all kinds of games with the neighborhood crew. Stores were walking distance, the ice cream truck came regularly. Family lived nearby and we visited frequently.

A facebook page devoted to Staten Island in Days Gone By has been a joy to follow, with many people either still on Island or having moved on long ago like myself… reminiscing about some of those wonderful things you find in a community such as the one we grew up in. The thing about Staten Island is….. it was once truly a beautiful place years ago, a respite from city life and employment, a safe place to raise families. It does still have it’s charm… but sadly, poor zoning and corruption have allowed horrendous overdevelopment and many of the old green spaces and beautiful neighborhoods are being destroyed by truly ugly housing developments. An example is the farm house I grew up in on a pretty green lot.. now demolished and all the tall oaks and old lilac and white and purple mulberry trees long gone. In their place are two duplexes with zero curb appeal. No greenery.

Anyway… on that facebook page a popular deli was highlighted… Silvestro’s. My mom remembers it was a very busy place that sometimes was hard to get into because no parking spaces could be found on her way home from work and we weren’t exactly easy walking distance. On that facebook page old neighbors, friends and patrons of that deli happily reminisced about the deli, and in particular… its famous potato salad.

I grew up with a whole lot of kids in our neighborhood and school system and one boy in particular was an old soul, the kind of kid you just knew was going to be a very decent man in life. For me that was Charlie. From the time we were in grade school chasing each other on bikes or walking home from school talking about whatever thing seemed important at the time… to the weekends when I’d come home from college and Connecticut life to visit mom… Charlie would occasionally stop in to say hello if he saw my car parked out in front of 14 Miller. He was a steady friend, a childhood rock in a sea of rambling pebbles. That was before cell phones and texting and facebook, etc… so people didn’t have the ease of staying in touch the way we do now, if we so choose. I lost track of Charlie when life on the Island for my family drew to a close, but I didn’t ever forget him.

Facebook does have some great traits… one of them being reconnecting people, and keeping friends and family in touch. And so Charlie and I caught up with each other’s lives and it’s no surprise he is a loving father and husband, a career police officer and trucker.

So… that potato salad. I discovered through that deli facebook post on that Old Staten Island page… that for a while it had been Charlie’s grandparents deli, something I did not know back in the day…. and he shared with the rest of us that famous potato salad recipe. His grandmother kept it in a jar on top of her refrigerator at home and made it for the Deli and her family. I made it last week… notice she didn’t measure ingredients. As Charlie describes it.. she added a little of this and a little of that until it tasted just right…. And so I did the same.

IT.. IS… DELICIOUS. Simple and simply good. In honor of a dear old friend, Charlie.. and his grandparents beloved deli, Silvestro’s on Staten Island…. I’ll share it with you, too.

Till soon –

Christmas in the Living Room, Thanksgiving everywhere else

My usual tradition is to bring Christmas in the house the day after Thanksgiving – I mean I am chomping at the bit once the Turkey Day company has taken the tupperware home filled with Tday leftovers. The stuff stays up until just before the New Year, and it always feels a little like it was too short a Christmas season, with all the work that goes into setting it up, but for some reason I always want a clean slate come Jan. 1.

This year…. welp. I casually mentioned I felt like putting up the tree this weekend even though I knew that’s just ludicrous and really pushing the decorating envelope. BUT.. the kids said.. All our neighbors have their tree up and lights outside up already! (they live just over the hill from us) What? What. Really?…. Well.. then….

You know, I think we all feel like we need a little extra cheer this year… it’s been far too long, the pandemic misery, the political misery… I believe we’ve all had just about enough – and the spirit of Christmas is just the ticket to drag us up out of the trenches a bit. Heck I’ve already watched two Hallmark movies – They billed them as new, but they are the same story recycled over and over. The poor (single) girl who comes to be the nanny or whatever and eventually she and the Prince of the Kingdom marry… or the woman who comes home for Christmas to help the parents or her favorite Aunt with something, a dying business, the selling of the family home… enter the old flame. Still… something about those Hallmark movies, an uncomplicated sugary christmas drenched storyline that always has a happy ending, complete with fake snow on many locations… well it’s sure enough uplifting.

Our tree though. Sometimes we do a real tree, (we’re actually growing christmas trees up on the hill) sometimes a fake tree – (I don’t want to deal with keeping the dogs away from drinking the tree water… plus all those dead needles, too much fire worry) The fake tree down in the basement has seen better days. Not all of the lights light up and it’s a heavy son of a B*tch. Since it’s always yours truly dragging that thing out of the basement lest I want to wait till Santa’s a$$ is already stuck in the chimney, I have to do it myself. That tree needed a replacement.

I went out yesterday – thinking it’s before Thanksgiving, surely I can find a decent fake tree somewhere. Nope. What was available is mostly sold out and what was supposed to be available is stuck on a container somewhere, apparently. Walmart had a few cheap versions left and so I grabbed one – I don’t love it, but this will have to do for this year. I put a smaller charlie brown tree next to it to help it limp along – and at the risk of totally offending you because I am usually one of those who says – Oh COME ON, it’s not even THANKSGIVING YET, LET THE THANKS and TURKEY HAVE IT’S DAY- here you go.

This year I did things a little differently – the theme for my trees is usually – everything I have all at once all up on the tree. I decided to do more of a nature themed tree but since the tree is so clearly fake? It doesn’t look so nature-like. The small tree next to it has the ornaments I cherish most, the ones my children made when they were little. And my collection of OLD ornaments found at flea markets and antique shops around New England are in a big bowl on the ottoman. The rest of the house is still all about Fall and the Thanksgiving feast until the 26th.

I hope all is well in your neck of the woods – If you care to share your traditions, I’d love to hear about them –

Till soon –

Breaking things Up A Bit

I have several things to share with you today, but this…. this…. well, sometimes you just gotta laugh out loud, the bust a gut type of laughter, to get past a certain thing. Which is what I did yesterday morning when I tried on a few of my bathing suits and asked my husband’s opinion regarding which one he thought looked OK. We’re going on a family beach vacation in the not too distant future, I’m a water bug and I’m trying to plan. After the third try-on he says… “THAT ONE… that one is good, it breaks things up a bit. ”

Right there is when the peals of laughter coming out of my own mouth went rolling down the hall, bounced off the walls and fell flat on the mudroom floor.

(Fucker)

So… anyone looking for me this morning will have found me in the gym… Breaking things Up A Bit…

The day did get better – we went treasure hunting at Brooklyn Restoration in Brooklyn, CT, where 90-something year old Rudy still presides over an acre of outbuildings packed with old house stuff. I’ve blogged about this place before, when we restored Gracie (this old house) we visited often for old hardware and other odd stuff our restoration guru Jeff and my husband needed to bring her back to life.

My son was looking for a mantel for his fireplace and a door for his kitchen pantry – he and his GF did find a door, no such luck with the mantel.

Oooh, the old treasures in these sheds.

That’s Rudy – just before he took advantage of our ignorance/Kind nature/stupidity and did not give us one iota of a deal, but that’s OK, I’m still very happy with my finds.

These items below are my new treasures – old hand forged kitchen gadgets that now hang over the kitchen sink on either side of our farm sign… a ladle, a strainer, and what we are assuming was a grater of some sort.

Our good friends Jeff and Raven met us there to help sort out what we’d need for my son’s house, and we should have let Raven negotiate with Rudy. He has a fondness for her, they are long time acquaintances due to Jeff’s line of work (restoration), he knows they know what he knows, and he is more kindly to her in the price department. Live and learn.

After the treasure hunt we went to a local restaurant, The Court House, which I believe used to be the actual Court House in the town of Putnam, where we enjoyed nachos and burgers in abundance.

I hope all is well in your neck o’the woods –

Karen

A Palate cleanser

After the last post I feel I need to sprinkle some happy up here in this space. Let us not allow the *crazy* to infect every corner of our world, because truly there’s so much to appreciate and good works we can do and fun and adventure to be had, regardless. I find a lot of solace in the every day, in the routines, the natural beauty outside these old doors, my animals up on the hill, the family that gathers round the table and the dogs curled up under my desk.

Here on the farm the leaves are turning and beginning to blanket the stone walls and pathways. My gardens are depleted, but there is still much color and many blooms and berries…

Zinnia still reaching for the sky…

The Dahlias – easy to grow and just so stunning…. I do need to pull the bulbs out of the ground once the frost hits if I want to use them again next year. And I might not, because sometimes I’m lazy that way.

My New Dawn roses have made a second appearance, just a few on a very lengthy vine along the dog yard fence.

I forget the name of these hydrangea trees, their blooms are prolific this year! My mom has been here several times collecting bunches for friends, they are great for drying.

Beautyberry – a more vivid purple berry you have never seen.

More Dahlia….

And although the daisies were done over a month ago, because of the warm weather, a few have shot up again.

Inside the house I’ve brought in fall – one of my favorite seasons to decorate. Pumpkins everywhere! and.. I bring bittersweet vine in from the fields and drape them along the fireplace mantels. There are pumpkins on the front door steps and over the door itself on the “shelf”, too.

I’ve been holding on to a painting by my late great grandfather in 1949 for some time now. His writing is on the back, so it was easy to discover what this painting was of – The covered bridge in Arlington, Vermont just in front of Normal Rockwell’s beloved home on the green. Above as it appears in our dining room, Below is a picture of the area now, and his painting up close. I recently had it matted, framed and glass covered for protection as it was in rough shape – it’s hard to get a photo of it without glare. The white house in the very background was his home.

Current….

And as my great grandfather saw it in 1949…

I hope to get up there in the near future to stand at this spot myself, with a nod to my deceased ancestor who did the very same. He and I have a similar painting style – not too detailed but the end result is pleasing to the eye, if not very professional or precise. Right now I’m reading Normal Rockwell’s autobiography and I look forward to the inevitable mention of his beloved home in Arlington.

11/28/1939-ORIGINAL CAPTION READS: Norman Rockwell, artist. Photo shows Rockwell painting with smoking pipe in his mouth.

Hopefully Getty Images folks own’t mind that I used their image.

I’ll leave you with a link to some scrumptious fall recipes from a favorite blogger of mine, Jane of Blondie’s Journal. Visit her post HERE. I’ve got the beef stew on my stove as I type this, and the other recipes will get a chance here at this old house as well. The stew is delish! Perfect for a cool fall evening.

Till soon, friends –

Welcome Fall in Connecticut!

Connecticut has become an expensive state to live in, and it’s also suffering financial woes. The current government is trying to fix those woes but unfortunately is applying tactics like tolls on highways and tax on foods that will only hurt the people who have already been leaving the state in droves – Young people, families, blue collar workers, businesses big and small, all important members for the health of an economy and communities. So, there are a lot of complaints about the state by residents. Those added taxes and tolls are getting pushback, and rightfully so in my opinion, so we can hope the men and women in office will find solutions and make this state affordable again. This isn’t a Democrat or Republican issue alone, because the problems have been roiling for many years under both parties.

That being said, we do live in a truly beautiful area of the Country. Steeped in history, the beautiful old homes, the quaint New England towns, the shoreline and rolling hills, the woods, the lakes and streams and stone walls are not something I take for granted. I love the seasons and the “flavors” each brings to our lives. The weather is finicky, this is true… saw this recently on FB and it’s SO true of our region…

This past weekend we were in the Second summer faze, as it was actually warm and humid! Beautiful weather though – and so the Mr. and I took a drive to browse antiques – found a wonderful antique shop whose owner is going out of business, retiring to his original home town (bummer!). The following photos were taken from his actual FB page because I neglected to pull out my phone, that almost never happens. Black Whale Antiques at Rattleberry Farm, owned by reknown painter and muralist Thomas Rose, is indeed for sale. A link to an article and photos of the property HERE.

We did come home with a few books – Normal Rockwell’s autobiography of which I’ve just started reading, and an old Bread Baking book, of which I plan to bake from this afternoon. The Mr. bought a small end table for the mancave and I found a charming, if not at all antique, chicken picture to hang in our country kitchen. We had a lovely discussion with Mr. Rose, sad to have met him as he exits stage left. We wish him a very happy retirement.

Across the street is an old and beloved deli that makes gourmet sandwiches – we grabbed a few and drove up the road to Devil’s Hopyard and Chapman falls to take in the beautiful day –

Someone’s Prince perhaps?…..

The Civil Conservation Corps worked here and the stone walls, roads and bridges stand strong… The story of the CCC is very interesting, click the link for more info. The parks in our state benefited greatly from this program and I’m often reminded of their impact when out walking the trails.

We headed home after lunch with a stop at a roadside farm market, where I grabbed some fall treasures…

…..and the Mr. promptly jumped on his Big Green Tractor (Henry) to mow the last of the hay fields already harvested.