A Favorite Thing Saturday

The weeks just fly by. It's time for favorite Saturday again. This week I'm showing my favorite hand painted plate. This plate was a wedding gift to my grand parents. It is dated 1905 and the name Flo, I think. The name and date are in the darker green on the lower right hand side. The only thing on the back is France. I have been told that in the 1900's women did a lot of hand painting on dishes. I've always thought that maybe  a friend of my grandma's painted this and gave it to her on her wedding day. Or maybe not. We'll never know. It was my mom's, after grandma died,  and when mom started growing old, she gave it to me. She said that she would enjoy it more seeing my pleasure while it hung on my wall. I do love this plate. It hangs in our dining room. There are roses in the valances at the windows and the colors of the plate are perfect for this room. I've always worried about it being knocked off the wall by some little person. It's in a place where few people go.I have many other hand painted dishes, but this is my favorite.

Join Claudia http://mockingbirdhillcottage.com/ on Saturday for lots of interesting posts. 

Balisha

Favorite Thing Saturday

It's that day again. A Favorite Thing Saturday. Joining in with Claudia 

http://mockingbirdhillcottage.com/ and many other bloggers for our weekly project. Check it out, if you have the time this weekend. 

This week I've been dreaming of gardens. I have been getting garden catalogs since Christmas and now yesterday I got my new issue of English Gardens. I've been looking through this beautiful magazine this morning...seeing gardens of famous English writers. When I went out to the kitchen, to make coffee, I glanced out the window to see what was going on in my woods. A little tree stands there just waiting to pop with little mauve blossoms. It's my Redbud Tree...probably my favorite blooming tree. I love it's simple little blossoms on bendy branches. I love the way it grows...kind of an unpredictable tree. I bought this little gem at the local nursery...at the end of the season a few years ago. They were just days before closing for the coming winter and had several little trees and shrubs priced so low. I checked them out and there was the one I wanted. A single branch in a 5 gal. bucket. They almost gave it to me. I rushed home and planted it. At that time, I was planting things along the border of the little scrubby woods that goes across our property in the back. I wanted color...and this was the first little tree to be planted. It's grown so  much and it branches out just the way I like. I'm a little worried about it this year. After our hot summer with no rain...I think it needed water, but I wasn't able to water it, being so far from a water source. I do hope this little gem is OK for another season of blooms. We'll see soon enough...it's what I wait for each year.

Balisha

A Favorite Thing Saturday

My all time favorite houseplant during the winter would have to be the Amaryllis. There are so many different kinds to choose from. I have tried maybe a dozen different varieties. My favorite being the Appleblossum shown in the picture. This one is huge and has lasted so long, because of being near a cold window. It's place of honor is in my "garden window" A new thing for me this winter. I sit at this computer for quite a long time some days. The window in front of my chair has a widow seat of sorts. I have never put anything decorative in this window...until this year. Looking at it one day, I thought ....why not keep my plants here, when they are blooming? That way they will be enjoyed a little more. So, I started out with fall plants...a decorative pepper plant, some holiday cactus just about ready to bloom...and a few pumpkins. At Christmas time....I started putting Amaryllis there. I had 5 or 6 this year. Some were from previous years. It's kind of fun to change the window with all things from nature along with my collection of garden magazines. I am linking with Claudia at http://mockingbirdhillcottage.com/ Every week she hosts a Favorite Thing Saturday....a chance for us bloggers to tell our stories about things that we hold dear. So, click on the link and see what we are up to.
Balisha

A Favorite Thing Saturday...... Blogger Grrrrrr!

It's that day again. Christmas is over and so is New Year's Eve and we are getting back to some of our favorite past times from before that time. Favorite Thing Saturday is today. Visit Claudia's http://mockingbirdhillcottage.com/ to see some of the really nice posts about blogger's favorite's today. 

My favorite today is an unusual one. Since having problems with blogger most of the week, I was ready to pull my hair out. Blogger wouldn't let me post pictures. After fooling around with this...I decided this morning ,to change my browser to Google Chrome. Instantly the problem was solved. I hope I'm not speaking too soon. I love blogging...when I have no problems.....but when something is wrong...I get upset. Not being a very computer savvy person, I don't know the language of these computers and even more than that...I get flustered when talking to tech support. I have to strain to hear this person from another country in order to understand what to do. This being the case...I seldom call tech support. Today, I figured it out for myself...Blogger is one of my favorite things on this snowy Saturday in N. Illinois. Now Blogger...don't mess with me after complimenting you and giving you such praise in  my Saturday post.Be nice!
Balisha

A Favorite Thing Saturday

The year was 1944 and a little girl crawled out of bed and came into the kitchen in her flannel pajamas. The house was cold and she could hear her mother tending the coal furnace, in the basement. These had been hard years for the little girl and her Mother. Her Dad was in Germany, fighting in the 2nd world war. It was so hard on him too...being away from his family and worrying about them. The Mother had oatmeal cooking on the stove and they would have toast. The little girl hoped that it wasn't burnt like the day before. The toaster was hard to deal with...you had to keep opening the sides to look at it so that it wouldn't burn. No pop up toaster in those days. Sugar was rationed, so they had their oatmeal without. After eating breakfast, the little girl dressed, standing over the big grate on the kitchen floor. The heat felt good on her legs as she dressed. In those days little girls didn't wear pants to school...they went "bare legged" to school. She dressed in a corduroy jumper and brown tie shoes. Today, she would have curls...because pictures would be taken at school. Usually she wore pigtails....but not today. Her Mother turned on the stove burner and set a chair next to the stove. She had a gadget called a curling iron that she would place in the flame to heat. Then she would take the iron and some of the little girl's hair and turn it...hold it for a few seconds...and let go. There would be a sausage type curl. She gave the little girl her mirror, so she could watch her Mother curl her hair. Occasionally, her Mom would leave the iron on her hair too long and there would be a burning hair smell. The little girl sat swinging her legs and watching in the mirror. Pretty soon her head was covered in curls. Then her mother would comb it out. Ouch! That hurt! Don't pull it so tight! Ouch! was heard over and over. Looking in the mirror she could see that it was finished. Now she could have her picture taken, and one would be sent to her Dad. This little girl was me. The mirror is one of the things that I have had since my Mother's death. When I saw it in the box...I told my Dad, "I would like to have that...I have so many memories of having my hair curled and watching in this mirror." He listened to the story and then gave it to me. It has a special place on my dresser. I still use it everyday, but not to watch my hair being curled. It's one of my favorite things.



I'm joining with Claudia http://mockingbirdhillcottage.com/ for A Favorite Thing Saturday. Please join us and visit Claudia's blog to read about so many interesting favorites

Balisha.

A Favorite Thing...Saturday

Another Saturday is here and I am linking up with Claudia http://mockingbirdhillcottage.com/. I showed these pottery pieces last week and this week I'm telling about the bench that they are sitting on. It looks like a typical wooden bench, but it has a story behind it. During WW ll, with the able bodied men drafted, there weren't enough men left to do hard labor here at home. The little town that I used to live in... once had a canning factory. The town was surrounded with fields of vegetables that went to the factory to be canned. So, you see the town needed men to work in the fields and pick and also in the factory.So the US government started bringing the prisoners of war to the 660 labor camps all over the USA. There were smaller camps as off shoots from camps like Camp Grant in Rockford. The men were mostly German patriots and German draftees and Italians...the more serious, Nazi's, were sent to high security prisons.My first husband's boss was a 12 year old paper boy and delivered the newspapers to the PX of this camp... twice a day. They only wanted the prisoners to read positive things, so the boy had to cut out articles about rape and murder etc. They could read about the war news, however. On Sunday morning, these men would march through town and divide into two lines....one for the Lutheran Church and one for the Catholic Church. They would sing old German songs for the many German people living in the town. The prisoners were taken to Rockford's Camp Grant for the winter and returned to Hampshire in the spring.  I thought you might like a little background about this part of WW ll history. The bench was supposed to have come from this labor camp. The men stayed in tents, but there were wooden buildings... where there was simple furniture. The PX was in one of those buildings.The bench has some carving scratched on it and it was refinished...spoiling the value. The paper boy would smuggle in art supplies to one man. He gave him a knife, because they were allowed straight edge razors and the prisoner said, "If we wanted to attack someone...why wouldn't we use those?" The man was a wood carver, so the paper boy smuggled the knife and watched the prisoner carve. The canning factory is gone now and the little boy is the owner of a auto dealership there. The canning factory employed so many people in that town. I think that the population at that time was 750. The bench came to me as a gift from my husband. A woman, who dealt with antiques,  was having a sale....and he was told the story about it.We'll never know for sure if it came from there, but I like to think that I might be living with a piece of history.

Balisha 

 

A Favorite Thing Saturday

I'm joining Claudia and others this morning for Favorite Thing Saturday  http://mockingbirdhillcottage.com/.

My favorite thing today is a collection of salt glazed pottery... that I started collecting back in the 1980's. I looked longingly at old pottery like this at antique shops, art fairs, estate sales, and knew that I couldn't afford it. It was so pricey. At that time Country Living Magazine had an offer advertised, where you could order these replicas of salt glazed pottery, a piece at a time. I think that the pieces were under $50 each. I loved this kind of pottery, so this was the perfect opportunity for me, as the real thing was so expensive.  I signed up and anxiously waited for my first piece to arrive. I cleared some shelves in the living room to display it. When the piece came I hurriedly opened it and found it to be just as I dreamed it would be. I think that there were maybe 12 pieces in the set altogether. I know that it took about a year to collect them all.I had forgotten, until yesterday...what company made the pottery. Thinking back...I'm sure it was Cambridge Pottery in Cambridge, Wisconsin. My husband and I made several trips to that  pottery  on our way to other places in Wisconsin.Such a fun stop on our way for me.  This was a way for me to have some of these replicas of the olden pottery from years ago.Since I have moved into a new house...I had to find another place to display it. We have a loft type area over our living room. It is very high up and hard to get to to dust :(  I took the best picture that I could last night. Not a good way to show them, but easier than scaling a ladder and taking a chance on falling. So hope you can see these pieces OK.  There is an old piece mixed in with  my collection that I will tell about next week. It has a very interesting story behind it. I hope that you are enjoying my stories of things I love. If you have treasures of your own, why not join us at Claudia's?

Balisha

A little addition to say Happy Birthday to my daughter-in-law, Renee. She's someone who I have a lot of laughs with...an easy gal for me to get along with. One of the things that I love about her is her loyalty to family. There was a need for her to step in and care for her grandson...so she and my son are raising him.Her Dad has been sick in his old age, and she is seeing to it that he has the best care. I appreciate what she does... and want to wish her Happy Birthday.
Me