Tis the Season… to Cherish Family

I know it seems somewhat cliche’ to start talking about the importance of family when the holidays start rolling around, but that’s exactly what is on my mind.

Not only are Thanksgiving, Christmas and then New Years going on during this time of year, but my mom, my sis, and my dad also have their birthdays around this time too, so there has always been even more family togetherness going on during the holidays for me.

It will greatly embarrass my mom for me to blow the whistle on our ‘perfect family’ cover by leaking out this top secret information… but I must admit my little family is a bit damaged and broken at best.  I suppose this just very well may be the case for most families these days considering society, the world at large, and human nature being what they are.  But we always try to cover it up to appear ‘normal’ (whatever that is).  Maybe I should be a more private person and not air all of my dirty laundry out in public for all the world to see, but I’ve never been one for trying to portray an ‘image.’  What is the use in that?  In order to connect on any real level with others out there in the world, you need to be real.  I do however, need to be respectful of my family’s privacy and be careful not to share all of their dirty little secrets while I’m sharing my own.  😉

Not that we really have any of those, it’s not like we have a mass murderer in the family that we are trying to hide (of course I’d say this even if we did though wouldn’t I? ;)).  But even despite our bit of dysfunction, there is tons and tons of love here and I wouldn’t want any other people as my family other than this crazy lot I’ve been thrown in with.

But all joking aside, I suppose that apart from all the birthdays and the holidays going on, the reason family is so much on my mind is because I am realizing more and more every day just how very fragile and precious life is, and our dear families and loved ones are at the very heart of it all.  My aunt passed away a few days ago (on my mom’s birthday) and although I wasn’t particularly close with her, she was my family and I loved her, my heart is breaking for my cousins and my uncle right now.  In having my dad pass away just a year ago this past June, that sense of loss is still very much a fresh wound for me too.  It would have been his 84th birthday next week.  Gosh I miss him.  We really do need to cherish the time we have with our precious families because they could be taken away from us in an instant.

My mom can really get under my skin like no other, and can frustrate the ever lovin’ crap outta me.  But that being said, I can’t even begin to tell you how much I love her, how truly grateful I am to have her as my mom (mistakes in raising me and all), how very much I appreciate everything she is and has done for me, and… how utterly lost I would be without her.

Try and cherish your family no matter what your family situation is.  I’m sure there are likely many families out there who are in very difficult circumstances. Sadly, my own brother is estranged from our family at the moment, but in the meantime I will still love him from afar, pray for him, and hope that one day things will be better.  And I will cherish the other precious ones in my family that I still do have…

Here’s my “bunch of crazies”  😉

and my crazy offspring, the most precious thing in this world to me…

♥♥♥

Relocating, Remodeling, & Readjustments ~ My Bedroom Floor

Getting my bedroom floor ready was the last main thrust of hard labor needing to be done before we can actually start moving in.  The rest of the remodeling projects in my mom’s house will be done gradually after we’re moved in.

The first thing I tackled on my floor was a big black stain splatter.  What a horrendous ordeal, but I beat it!

Now you see it…Now you don’t!~

You know how sometimes in my various posts I mention my weak girlie hands?  Well, I’m not really joking about that.  I seriously hurt my hand scrubbing and scraping at that black stain and the area around it ~ to the point where my pinkie finger went tingly and numb for a couple of days.  😦  And that was only the beginning of the grueling work that went into cleaning up my floor.

Worth it in the end though because look at how nice it looks now…I must say compared to before, I am quite pleased with the results of all my toil.

~

Couldn’t have done it without this guy…Magical scrubbie!  He might not look like much, and he’s quite used and abused, but this little bad boy tore up that crud on my floor like a champ!

~

Couldn’t have done it without this girl either…Magical sis!  😉  Here she is in her tie dye with her magical saw cutting a 45 degree angle on one of the oak strips that I used to cover the gaps between the molding and the wood floor along the walls.  My mom and my daughter also lent a hand with my floor.  Needless to say we are all exhausted.

~

There are still those deep cuts going across the floor in the doorway area in front of my closet, there was nothing I could do to fix them, but I’m just going to throw a rug down over them and call it good.

Also as I had mentioned in an earlier post, a large portion of the floor on the other side of the room has plywood not hardwood on it.  I went back and forth trying to think of a solution, but for now there really isn’t anything else I can do with it.  So I’m just leaving it as is after cleaning it up a bit, until we either have the existing hardwood refinished professionally and install new hardwood to that other area, or have carpeting put in on that side.  My bed will cover that entire area anyway, so rather than go to any further expense right now, I’ll just throw a rug over that too.

~

After working on the floor, I still wasn’t done in there yet… I also washed my windows and put on a coat of fresh stain around all of the other the woodwork.  Nothing better than looking out of sparkly clean windows!  I love the old Sycamore tree that is right outside of them and the way the light flickers into the room through the leaves.  There are actually 3 windows that go across the front of my room, but I was not able to get them all into one shot.

~

So, now we can finally start moving some of our things in!  It will be a month and a half long process with just my daughter and I moving it all, so if I thought I was exhausted after all of this work on my floor and everything else we’ve been working on in the house for the past few months, I’m sure I’ll be completely wasted a month and half from now.  If you never hear from me again, you’ll know why.  😉

In all… as exhausted as I am, and for as many various worries, concerns, thoughts and emotions I’ve had rolling around inside of me at the thought of moving back in with my mom, I am deeply grateful.  And I know there is a purpose and plan in all of this.

One night as I was driving back to my apartment after working on my floor at my mom’s and thinking about this next stage of my life, this song came on the radio.  I had never heard it before, but oh did it ever speak directly to my heart.  So encouraging!  “Settle down, it’ll all be clear…” 

“Just know you’re not alone cuz I’m gonna make this place your home”  ♥

~

Relocating, Remodeling, & Readjustments ~ Mishaps & Misadventures With My Mom’s Bedroom Floor

In my last post I said to stay tuned for:  “My Mom’s Bedroom Floor is Trying to Kill Me,” and I wasn’t exaggerating.  Well, not too much, anyway.  😉  The past couple of weeks working on it have been a nightmare!  To say that I was regretting pulling up the carpet in my mom’s bedroom would be a huge understatement.  I knew the floor wasn’t going to be in great condition, but I didn’t realize it was going to be so much work just getting it cleaned up good enough to be liveable.  My aching body…

The first issue at hand was trying to figure out the best way to pry up the tacking strips that were left from the carpeting.  After getting advice from a friend and a few of my readers, I went out to buy a Wonder Bar.  But when I got to the store I didn’t end up getting one because the thing weighed like 1000 lbs and was way too big and heavy for my weak little girlie hands.

I found these nifty things and figured they’d work just as well for getting the job done and be much easier for me to maneuver and work with.  They worked like a charm and I was glad I got them because as it turns out, having a variety of sizes of these things came in handy. ~

I toiled long and hard prying up all those tacking strips and even with my handy dandy variety pack of pry bars, it was no easy task.  One of the times while I was in there slaving away, splinters flying everywhere, I thought of asking my daughter to come in and take a photo of me in the midst of “tackling the tacking,” but she was busy doing something else and couldn’t, so you’ll just have to take my word for it that it was excruciatingly laborious for me.

But as much work as prying up all those tacking strips was, that was nothing compared to the nightmare it has been trying to get up all of the tar-like substance that was underneath that old linoleum.  I looked online, asked friends, called around, and went back and forth to Home Depot more times than anyone would ever want to, and each time got a different suggestion on what to use.  Because we aren’t going to be actually “refinishing” the floors for quite some time, my mom wanted to try and preserve the original varnish and stain as well as possible, so that limited us significantly in how to go about it.

In the end, as impractical as it was, Goo Gone is what we used.  It took an enormous amount of elbow grease, but it was the thing that we found worked the best at dissolving the tar.It was extremely tedious ~ especially when using a plastic putty knife (to help keep ourselves from damaging the floor’s finish while scraping).

~

I also picked up some mineral spirits to try to get up some of the old paint splotches that were on the floor.  That didn’t work as well as I had hoped it would.  Turns out it’s more for fresh paint clean-up, and not paint that’s 36 years old.  Even with letting it sit on there for a while, it was still very difficult getting it up.

My daughter was such a tremendous help ~ what a trooper!

And my mom even lent a hand.

~

This is how it looked after all our scraping, scrubbing and toil.Pretty dang nice considering how it looked originally!  (Click here to see)

~

There are still this rough patches around the perimeter of the room and one particularly stubborn area, but even after all three of us each spent a considerable amount of time working on it, none of us could penetrate through whatever that was.  It probably needs some sort of stripping or sanding done on it, but that is not something we are doing right now.~

Next step was figuring out something to cover these gaps that are in between the wood floor and the current molding that goes along the floor around the room.  ~

Since my sis was back early from her vacation I enlisted her assistance for this part.  Making yet another trip to Home Depot, we picked up some 12ft oak flooring strips that we thought would do the trick at covering the gaps and also help give it a bit of a “finished” looking edge.  We figured we could just lay it on top of the floor, press it up against the molding, tack it down in couple of places, stain it a neutral color, and call it good until the floor gets refinished properly.

This confusing mess of a photo is my sis pointing at the lousy hammering job that I was doing.  Apparently I was “doing it wrong.”Hey that hammer was heavy, I needed to have my hand that close to the head!  And besides… it’s kinda hard hammering correctly when your sis is tickling you behind the knee while you’re trying to hammer.  Just saying…

That’s how things like this happen…Yeah, totally her fault!  😉

~

Unfortunately, one of the walls of the room is pretty warped, so using the oak strips to cover the gap on that wall was practically worthless.  Off we went back to Home Depot again (good thing it’s close by) to get some wood putty to fill it in with.  My mom took this blurry photo trying to catch us in action as my sis and I were filling (glopping) it in.   As you can see, my side is much tidier.  😉  But maybe that was only because my sis was laying sprawled out on the floor while applying it hahahaha!  And she made fun of my hammering? But I shouldn’t poke too much fun at her “techniques” for applying wood putty because heck, she knows how to use a freaking miter saw (which she skillfully wielded to cut the ends of the oak strips at 45 degree angles for the corners) and that’s more than I can say for myself.  Besides… my sis helping made it fun, and hey, I’m all about the fun!  Bottom line is, I sincerely I appreciated her assistance and expertise ~ even if it was gloppy.  😉

~

Before calling it “done” I took some Restor-A-Finish and went over the entire floor.  I also used it to touch up all of the existing woodwork (doors, windows etc.) in the whole room.  Talk about “My Mom’s Bedroom Floor is Trying to Kill Me” ~ there are all sorts of toxic chemicals in this stuff and frightening health warnings on the label, which scared this “keep everything natural and organic” girl, but I didn’t see any similar products that I could use that were any less dangerous.~

Well here it is… the final result of my near death experience…What do you think?

~

All I know is, I’m filled with dread at what horrendous amount of work may be lurking underneath my bedroom carpet.  Dear Lord, please let it be in halfway decent shape.  We’ll find out shortly because once my mom is all moved into her new room, we’ll be painting mine and my daughter’s rooms, and then the carpet people will be coming to install the new carpet in my daughter’s room and rip out the carpet that is in mine.  Yeah, my carpeting and tacking strip removal days are over.  It’s costing us all of $72 for them to do it for us while they’re here installing my daughter’s carpet.  Totally worth it!

~

And I leave you with this…

Even though my mom’s bedroom floor may not have really been trying to kill me, being over there working on it has been detrimental to the health of my house plants at my apartment.  Basically all I do here anymore is sleep and shower, so I haven’t given them much TLC.

My poor Peace Lily looks anything but “peaceful.”  Pay no attention to those dust bunnies that are congregating for a family reunion there on the floor.  Unfortunately, they’ve been busy producing several generations of offspring while I’ve been busy with my mom’s floor.

And I’m pretty sure my Weeping Ficus isn’t supposed to literally weep.  Pathetic looking thing is even dropping its leaves.

And I’m only guessing here, but I don’t think the ends of this plant are supposed to be brown or have dry, dead, undergrowth.My cats miss me too.  😦

~

Relocating, Remodeling & Readjustments ~ Ceilings and Carpets, and Floors, Oh My!

We had some painters come out the other day to respray all of the ceilings upstairs.  There were a few stains from areas where the roof had leaked before my parents put on a new roof a few years ago, but mostly it was just that as the bedroom furnishings got more and more cleared out, you could really start to see a lot of discolorations.  After 36 years they were really in need of a refreshing.

  This is a before photo I snapped of a portion of my daughter’s room that shows part of the ceiling.  All the ceilings in the upstairs are slanted/angled, but it’s kind of hard to tell from these photos.

And after…So fresh and clean!

The entire upstairs’ ceilings look like brand new!  Makes it hard to wait to paint all the walls now to freshen them up too!

~

But “all in due time, my pretty” because the next thing we needed to do was rip out the carpeting in my mom’s room.  Which surprisingly wasn’t really all that difficult to do.  That’s not to say I’m not completely and utterly exhausted after spending some time “on the floor” so to speak.  😉

But before we could get to the carpet, we had to move the remaining furniture out of my mom’s room which included a couple of very beautiful, but very heavy old dressers.

And that’s where this handy invention comes in.

Pretty nifty things for weak girlie people like me.  You just slip them under each leg of the furniture and they slide it along with ease!  Haha just like it says on the package.  😉~

Okay, so with the furniture out of the way, now we could get down to business.

Because I have asthma and allergies I thought it would be a good idea to wear one of those face mask thingies to protect myself from dying of a dust and debris overdose.  Funny thing is, wearing the thing actually made it more difficult to breathe.  Maybe I got the wrong kind…

My daughter snapped this goofy photo of me wearing it.  I look like I’m getting ready to perform major surgery or something.  “Scalpel.”  😉

~

I took the advice of several people and cut the carpet into smaller, more manageable pieces, and then just rolled it up and hauled it out, worked like a charm!~

Then I got busy on the pad.  That came up super easy.  Why, hello there 1902 hardwood floors!  They looked like they were in fairly decent shape too!

But as I continued pulling back the pad, I saw that there was a bit more going on there than just some hardwood floors underneath that carpeting.  Like left over remnants of some old linoleum…

Yeah… like some really freaking awesome looking old linoleum!  Omygosh I love it!  So much so that I wish the entire floor was covered with it.  I can’t even tell you!  I bet it was really cool when it was new, but I love that it’s all old and worn ~ just adds more character to it.But alas since it doesn’t cover the whole floor, it poses a real problem with making the hardwood look halfway decent until we can refinish it properly.

So my daughter set to work trying to set if it would come up.  And it did.  Not real easily though.

She loves that old linoleum almost as much as me so she tried to take it up carefully to keep larger sections of it intact if possible.

I gave her a wide putty knife and that seemed to do the trick, but it scratched the floor underneath quite a bit.  😦  But it couldn’t be helped.This was the main piece that needed pulling up, but some of the other areas were proving to be a bit more stubborn, so we decided to call it quits on our linoleum lifting efforts for the day and go back to work on it a little later.

I was thinking it might be neat to try to make something out of it.  Like take the intact floral part of the pattern, tear unevenly around the edges, then maybe mount it on something, stick an old beat up looking frame around it, and hang it on the wall as a piece of the house’s history.  Could be cool right?  🙂

~

I worked for quite a while trying to remove the tacking
strips around the perimeter of the room, but that wasn’t so easy either.  I couldn’t get at it with the hook side of a hammer as a friend had suggested I could pull it up with, so I wedged the end of a flat head screwdriver under it and tapped on it with a hammer to try getting it up that way.

But that was brutal.  Unfortunately, the wood just splintered and all I really succeeded at was managing to gouge and scrape up the wood floor.  😦  So I gave up for the time being. I don’t know what I’m going to do about getting those tacking strips up without wrecking the floor.  Maybe I can try calling a carpet place to see if they know of any other tricks I could try.  I’ll definitely be looking around on the Internet to see what can be done too, but I think I may quite possibly be in over my head here.  Wish me luck…

~

Relocating, Redecorating & Readjustments ~ Mom’s Room

In our game of musical rooms, we’ve realized that it’s actually my mom’s room that needs to be attended to first.  Because in order for us to move into our rooms, she needs to move out of them first.  Yes, “them” ~ she has her things in both of them.  She has some things in the master bedroom that she originally shared with my dad (where my daughter is going), and she also has things in my old room that she’s been sleeping in (where I am going).  In actuality my mom is going from having three bedrooms to having just one.  Talk about a huge adjustment.

Initially, she was just going to go into this room “as is” since this room needs the least amount of updating and the plan has been that majority of the improvements will be done after my daughter and I are living there when more finances are freed up.  But as we’ve slowly got it emptied out to just the bare minimums, I started thinking we should at least paint it.  I’ve painted many a room in my day and really enjoy doing that.  It’s not terribly expensive or time consuming, and it’s much easier to do it while a room is empty rather than full of furniture.  Plus, how nice would it be for my mom move into her new room and feel a little more settled.  And there’s nothing quite like freshly painted walls to make things feel like new.  🙂

~

The first thing we did was temporarily put up some new shades for her.  The ones she had in there were old and worn out, and also liked to pop out of the brackets whenever you tried to open or close them.  Eventually we’ll probably put some blinds up and then additional window treatments (a valance, drapes or curtains), but since the brackets for shades were already there and we have a bit of a time crunch, we just replaced the shades for now.  We picked out some pretty ones though ~ you can’t see real well from this photo, but these have a scalloped lacy bottom edge.  They are also a little bit heavier weight so hopefully they won’t curl in too much on the sides as some shades tend to do.~

After that, before we could paint, we needed to patch up any holes in the walls from previously hung pictures and various decor.  That was my daughter’s job, and her first time using spackle.  She wasn’t entirely confident that she knew what she was doing, but she did a splendid job.   Nifty stuff, spackle is.  ~

And it was my job to do the taping around all the trim work.  You can see that the person who previously painted the room got some paint on the outlet plug ~ that won’t be happening with my expert paint job.  😉~

While I was doing that taping (along the floor trim especially) I really started noticing how yucky the carpet in this room is.  It’s “newer” ~ not 36 years old like in the rest of the house, but still needing to be replaced just the same.  Originally the only bedroom we were planning on re-carpeting before we move in is my daughter’s, but after seeing a more close up view of the condition of this carpet I mentioned to my mom that it’s too bad we have to wait to re-carpet it because with the room nearly empty right now it sure would be nice to just get it done now.

Well, I shouldn’t have said that out loud because of course she jumped at that suggestion, and replacing the carpet now would be a big expense that we weren’t planning on.  Buying a can of paint is one thing, but the expense of purchasing new floor coverings is a whole other matter.  I’m not only the “foreman” as I mentioned in an earlier post, but sort of the accountant of this operation as well.  My mom would try to buy the moon if it was for sale, and I’m the one who has to make sure the earth’s gravity stays in balance.  😉

~

 Then out of nowhere I  suddenly got the urge to pull back an area of the carpet and take a peek underneath it.   By golly there be hardwood floors under there!My mom had said that when she was a little girl, she remembers there being hardwood floors in the house, but when she and my dad had it remodeled in the 70’s she didn’t take note of the floors because they were just carpeting it all.

~

When they come to install the new carpet in my daughter’s room, I had planned to have them tear out the carpeting in my room at the same time.  Because all I know is that I’m not moving back into my old room with that same carpet in it, so although I was hoping for hardwood floors, I would even take plywood temporarily over that old carpet and just throw down a rug if I had to until we could afford different flooring in there.  But… with finding hardwood under my mom’s carpet… that means it’s likely in my room too!  Sooo excited about that possibility!  Of course we don’t know what condition any of it is in and it will very likely need to be refinished, but for my room I had just planned on scrubbing it down real good and then refinishing it later when finances allowed.

However, in regard to my mom’s room… I have now opened the proverbial can of worms.  We have three choices here ~ put the carpet back in place and forget about doing anything with it until finances allow, tear it out and see about the condition of the wood floor, and then just live with it the way it is (like I am going to do with my room), or go ahead and bear the expense and re-carpet the room.

Well, it turns out my mom also prefers to have hardwood floors rather than carpeting for her room too, so we’ve decided to go with the middle option and rip out the carpet and then just live with the condition of it until we can manage to refinish it.  Except that we will have to do a little more than just scrub it up real good.  If you look closely at the photo above you can see that there are 2 strips of wood with writing on them and pokey things sticking up out of them.  My sis called them furring strips (she’s knows stuff about stuff ;)).  Anyway, those will have to be pried/pulled up somehow and I don’t know about my girly hands having the strength to do it.  Also there is quite a large gap right under the baseboard molding that goes along the floor of the outside wall of the room (don’t know yet about the interior walls), so that will have to be filled in with something temporarily (like a strip of wood maybe).  Can’t be having any creepy crawlies venturing about from within those cracks and crevasses.  Eek!

So much for our time crunch ~ this floor is gonna take some time.  Why oh why did I have to peek under that carpet?  I have plans within the next few days to try and get in there and rip it out, but that is for a different post.

Next up here: painting.  I maybe should have held off until the floor got figured out, but I had already done all the prep work and hey with tearing out the carpet, I didn’t have to be as careful about getting any paint on the floor.  😉

~

As I said, I enjoy painting a room, but this room gave me a bit of trouble.  I didn’t think the old color and the new color were really that similar (a pale pink was what was currently on the walls and an “off white” was what I was applying), but with the lighting in the room it was sooo hard to tell where I was at while looking straight on at it.  I think it probably had to do with the pink carpeting in there reflecting off the walls.  Maybe I should have torn out the carpet first and saved myself this mild color-induced frustration.

From the side it was a little easier to tell between the two colors, but not by much.  See how you can barely tell the difference…?  It was a little frustrating.The name of the color of paint my mom chose was called “Washed Up” and that is exactly how I felt trying to paint this room.   😉

~

It was fairly easy helping my mom to choose a paint color for her room because she just wanted a neutral off white tone (although you may be surprised at how many variations of off-white there actually are).  But in browsing briefly at the paint samples while we were at the store and in considering my own room ~ I think that’s going to be a bit tougher to decide on because I want color!

And there’s sooo many to choose from…~

Relocating, Redecorating & Readjustments ~ Cool Old Stuff

I’ve been working unbelievably hard over at my mom’s house getting it ready for my daughter and I to move in there after the summer.   It’s mind boggling trying to prioritize everything and decide what to do first.  And just when you think you’ve got it figured out, you realize that you have to do something else first.

Case in point…

We know that we’re doing my daughter’s room first, but it’s not just as simple as moving everything out of there.  Some of the furniture in that room is going into my mom’s room, but my mom’s room has stuff in it that needs to be moved out of there first, and some of that stuff will be going into my daughter’s room, but can’t go there until after her new carpet goes in, and so on.  We’re also having the carpet torn out in my room when they come to install the new carpet in my daughter’s room, but my mom is currently in that room and it is full of stuff that needs to move into my mom’s new room, but it can’t until the stuff in the other rooms gets straightened out.  So we’re playing a bit of “musical rooms’ here.   Also some of the things that we are keeping, need to be put in storage in the basement, but we’ve realized that the basement needs to be organized and cleared out first.  The stuff we “clear out” of there needs to be moved out to the garage for a garage sale later, but there is stuff currently in the garage that needs to be organized and cleared away too in order to make room for the stuff we’re bringing out there.  I know I’m rambling (that’s what I do ;)), but you get the picture…  And it’s just us three ladies doing it all so it’s a little overwhelming.  I’m our makeshift “foreman” so there’s quite a bit on my shoulders…

And it’s not just all the “moving” there is to do,  another part of this whole process is taking care of some of the other stuff in my mom’s house.  This house has been in my family for nearly three quarters of a century and not just my mom has lived there, but my grandma and my great grandma as well , so there’s a lot of history stored there.  In going through some of the closets, we’ve found some very precious keepsakes.  I’ve already mentioned in So Anyway, Moving Right Along…  that I got to look through some of my old baby clothes and how neat that was, but being a fan of antiques and seeing some of the even “older” things my mom has is really cool.  And it’s not just any ol’ old antique stuff ~ it’s my family’s old stuff, which makes it even specialer.

Like my grandma’s wedding dress…

And this cool old memorial document thing from her marriage to my grandpa…

This is my grandparents on their wedding day ~ June 5th, 1935.I can’t even tell you how neat it would be if my daughter or even a possible future granddaughter would wear this same dress on their own wedding day.  Yeah, I’m a bit of a sentimental dork and get off on things like that.

~

We also came across a few old jewelry boxes filled with jewelry that belonged to my mom, her mom, her sister, and her grandma.I already LOVE vintage jewelry, but the thought that not only my mom and her sister, but my grandma and great grandma wore some of this makes me love this particular vintage jewelry even more!  My family doesn’t come from any real significant financial means, so I’m sure none of it is anything “valuable” aside from it’s age ~ which probably ranges from the early 1900’s to the 70’s.  Some of it is tarnished or broken, and some of the earrings have long lost their mates, but it’s beautiful just the same.

This pink box was my grandma’s and some of the jewelry in it was my great-grandma’s too.  My mom says that my grandpa bought the sparkly blue necklaces for my grandma because he himself liked them so much.  🙂  I tried to take some close-up photos of some of my favorite pieces, but I couldn’t really get them to turn out.  You’ll just have to take my word for it that some of this stuff is gorgeous!~

My mom says she thinks this blue box may actually be from my grandpa’s side of the family (his mother, grandmother etc.) because the jewelry doesn’t look familiar to her, but she isn’t sure.  Some of the jewelry in here is the most tarnished and broken so I’m thinking it’s really old. ~

And this gold box is my mom’s.  Again, I tried to take individual shots of my favorite pieces, but couldn’t get them to turn out.  But believe me some of this stuff is amazing!  I have at least 10 things I’m stealing out of here (with my mom’s permission of course ;)).~

The thing is… it’s sad to just keep all of this beautiful jewelry stored away only to take out and gaze at once in a while.  I’ve seen some pretty interesting ideas for using vintage jewelry (aside from wearing it), and for the things that are broken or have no mates, it would be cool to make something like this up with my mom’s, grandma’s or great grandma’s initial.  Then it could be on display and serve not only as a lovely piece of art, but also as a reminder and memorial of the lovely women in my family who once wore it…~

Of course with everything else there is to do at my mom’s house, I have no idea when I would ever get the chance to work on/make something like that, but I adore the idea and think I may have to store it in my memory banks as a future creative project.  How special and meaningful would it be to do something like this as we are merging family together into this same home again?  ♥

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I also might have to find a special way to display these beautiful old potholders too.  My great grandma crocheted these.There are dozens of handcrafted doilies and even handkerchiefs that my great grandma made, including some that were “in process,” which I particularly like. Because I’ve done a lot of handcrafting myself, it’s fun to imagine her being excited to try out new patterns and techniques and then moving on to the next one without completing it (been there, done that ;)).   It would be so cool to finish some of them for her ~ if only I knew even the first thing about crocheting or could find the matching thread.  My mom said that my great grandma had terrible arthritis in her hands, but that she was always stitching something.  I’m glad we have these wonderful mementos from the work of those precious hands.

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There is an old broken dilapidated cedar chest in my mom’s basement that belonged to my grandma and was where she stored all of her and my grandpa’s family photos along with a few other things.  In going through and trying to organize some of the other family heirlooms, my mom thought this might be a good time to take a peek inside of it (it’s been buried under boxes and other things in her basement for many years).  So the three of us girls spent some time the other day looking through it’s contents and it was super cool!  There are family photos dating way back to the 1800’s in there ~ I even saw one of my great great great grandpa!  My brother worked quite a bit on our family tree a number of years ago and had some of them arranged according to family line, but sadly there are still some of them that are unknown.  We also don’t know exactly who the pocket watches in this photo belonged to, but whoever it was must have been strong because man those things weigh a ton!  The green glass candle holders were my great grandma’s, they’re quite atrocious, but I may just have to find a place to display those at some point too…

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We’ve got a bit more to go through, but as soon as we wrap up this little trip down memory lane, we’ll be able to get onto painting and redecorating the bedrooms.

🙂