Happy Valentine's Day

It didn't start out as a very promising Valentine's Day.  I was supposed to go to my diet group tonight and the Commander was disappointed that I wasn't going to be home to celebrate with him.  I was disappointed, too but figured I probably shouldn't NOT go, since I just had started back up with the group last week.

Then my one dieting buddy called to say that she wasn't going and she passed on the info that our other diet buddy was also staying home to be with her husband.  Well, that was enough for me.  With none of my friends going, why go by myself, leaving the Commander by his lonesome?

Yes, things started looking up for the evening right away.  I jumped in the car and headed off to the grocery story to pick up some ingredients for supper.  The Commander was going to just have leftovers tonight but now I'd fix him a nice meal.

I set the table with flowers, cloth napkins (pretty high-class, eh?), and a little candle for some candlelight.

The menu was Almondine Flounder, Parmesan Smashed Potatoes, Rolls, and there were supposed to be some veggies but I forgot to make the veggies.  It was probably a sub-conscious decision to forget those.  What can I say?

He was surprised to see me when he got home from work.  I was beginning to get a little worried that he might have stopped off somewhere for a bite to eat when it was almost 6 and he wasn't home but he had just worked late, thinking that I was on my way to the meeting.  Luckily, he came home hungry.

I wasn't so much hungry as I was eager to have him open his Valentine's Day present.  It's only something that he has been wanting for a long time.

I finally found just the right frame so that I could frame his "three Laura's" - his mother, our daughter, and our daughter-in-law.  He promised me that it is going to go in a special spot.

All that's left to do now is snuggle down in the recliners and enjoy the rest of the evening.  And how was your Valentine's Day?

Who Would Have Thunk It?

Today's post is a bit of lagniappe - a good old word that I first met in a Cajun cookbook.  Its meaning in that book was "a little extra."  It can also mean a little gift thrown in for free to someone or something given over and above, like the Baker's Dozen.  For Hot-Flashed Funk today, it means a bit of this and that thrown together to brighten your day.

My first little "extra" that I found as I was reading the paper this morning was a short article on the most popular baby names in 2009.  Top choices for girls were Olivia and Isabella and for boys were Jacob and Michael.  To see the entire list of the top 10 names for both boys and girls, you can go here.  Strangely, if you look to the right on that page, you'll see a link that takes you to a short video of Chubby Checkers counting down the top 5 boys' and girls' names for the decade 2000 - 2009.  I must say, Chubby is still looking pretty good for someone whose music I used to twist to back in the 60's.

My second "extra" of the day is the news from Great Britain in a recent survey.  The folks there were asked to rank the top 100 inventions in their opinion.  Well, would you believe that they put their iPhones above their flushing toilets?  It kind of boggles my mind.  If you'd like to see how the rankings went, you can do so here.

Do you enjoy free things?  There is a website that lists all sorts of things and services you can get for free and it is sorted by category, which makes it easy to browse through.  It's at thefreesite.com which you can access by clicking here.  They even have a page of listings of free things for bloggers.  Who knew?

Have a favorite coffee travel mug that has gotten stained and grungy-looking inside?  I know that mine looks terrible inside but yet it is shaped in such a way that it is hard to get my whole hand inside to really scrub it.  Well, here is a tip I've read and I think I'll try.  Moisten a sponge with white vinegar and pour some table salt on it.  Then rub the inside of your mug with the sponge.  The stains should come off as the salt will act as an abrasive.  You can rinse everything with warm water and repeat the process as needed to get it clean.  The vinegar should really make the inside sparkle.  I might give this a try this afternoon.  If I do, I'll report back here to let you know how it goes.  You'll definitely need to wash out the mug afterwards, though, to get rid of the vinegar and salt taste.


Well, that's it for today.  I'm off to high tea at a new tea shoppe where a group of us will be celebrating a friend's retirement.  Pictures and a report tomorrow, I hope.  In the meantime, I'll leave you with a graphic from my family collection that you can use for your scrapbooking.  It's a little calling card featuring a dove and roses that someone gave my grandmother when she was a girl.  Enjoy!

Short and Still Sassy

Today marked an annual ritual - Fresca's Spring trip to the groomer for her summer clip.  Right about this time of year, she fully resembles one of those Chia pets and the house becomes adrift in clumps of white fur.  I try to keep up with it all, I really do!  But no matter how often I vacuum the floors, wipe down the furniture, and brush the dog, I simply can't keep up with the volume of Fresca's coat.

Lately, the Commander has been dropping not-so-subtle hints that it might be time to take Fresca in to be shaved down.  So today was the day.  I was rather dreading the drive over to the groomer with her because she's not exactly the calmest dog in the pack and usually bounces off the insides of the car on the back seat while I drive.  Plus they are still doing major construction on a big chunk of the route I was going to have to take and I knew that this would set her off even more.  She'd take it as a personal affront that heavy equipment would dare try to produce more noise than her.

We got there just fine and the groomer even finished her ahead of schedule (hmmm, maybe they just got tired of listening to her "talking" to them and figured they'd speed up the process).  Back I went and sure enough, as soon as she spotted me, the vocalization reached fever pitch.  One poor Yorkie looked like he didn't know if he should faint or run for cover.  I paid my bill as fast as I could and Fresca dragged me out the door.

As soon as we got back home, she insisted on going out into her backyard area where she pranced about, hoping that one of the neighbor dogs would come out and take notice.  When Fresca has her short clip, she always gets a little more spring in her step (if that's even possible) and even MORE attitude.  Heaven help us all!

In honor of Fresca's grooming, today's free graphic is an old valentine my Mom received years ago.  I love the little dog by the chalkboard, don't you?

Getting Ready

I'm getting ready for something.  Can you tell what it might be from this basket of goodies?  I'll give you a clue.  I'll be using everything that is inside the basket.  Here's another clue.  It's happening later this week.

I have my smaller supplies packed inside this little bag .

I emptied this so that I'll be all set to fill it with whatever goodies they have us working on.

I got out the Wood Beam polish and gave things a good rub down and buff.

And now Valentina is all set to be packed up in the car.  Yes, I'm heading out later this week for the Philadelphia area for a spinning retreat organized by the Spinning Loft.  Two and a half glorious days of spinning instruction, not to mention good eating and a chance to finally meet the folks I've been talking to up on Ravelry all these months.  I'm a little nervous (ok, a lot nervous) but I know that once I get there and meet everyone, I'm going to relax and have a great time.  I consider myself a novice spinner (and DEFINITELY a novice spinner on Valentina), so I know that I'm going to learn a lot this week.  I'm not sure if I'll have internet access in order to blog while I'm there, but if I don't, I'll be reporting on my adventures when I get back.

Our graphic for today is an old calling card that belonged to my great-aunt.  Hands and roses were common motifs for calling cards and this one is no exception.  I love the typeset that was used for Aunt Cora's name.  Quite ornate, eh?

Calling Cards - An Elegant Social Custom

Today's graphic image is an old photographic calling card that was in old cards and papers belonging to my grandmother.  She grew up in Lismore, Minnesota and this young man was probably someone she went to school with.  He's quite the young dandy for someone from a small farming town on the Minnesota prairie.

I have become quite fascinated with these calling cards as I've been scanning the few that she had.  I knew that calling cards were used pretty extensively during Victorian times but I had no idea that there were so many rules governing their use.  For example, did you know that you often turned down the corner of your calling card depending on the nature of your visit?  The corner that you turned down was determined by what type of visit it was.  You also might write down some initials on your calling card which would indicate such things as "congratulations" or "With sympathy."

When you arrived at a home, you usually presented your calling card to the servant of the house who extended a special tray to hold the card.  The servant, in turn, would take your card to the master or lady of the house to let them know who was at the door and desiring to see them.  If the family wasn't at home, the card was left to let the family know that you had called.  A set of rules then governed how long after the initial call was made after which the person who had been called upon should then return the favor of the visit. 

There is a website called "The Art of Manliness" which does a nice job of giving you a history of the calling card and a brief explanation of the etiquette surrounding the use of these cards on their page "Gentleman's Guide to the Calling Card" .  If you'd like to spend some pleasant minutes looking at examples of the various kinds of calling cards, visit Days of Elegance which has marvelous pictures of calling cards, salesmen's sample books, and even calling card trays.
It's been suggested that calling cards might even be making a comeback as a means of giving folks a card that will list one simple way to contact you or learn more about you (such as a website address) when you first meet them, without inundating them with all of your personal contact information.  I know I've been using a variation of this idea by using Moo minicards at knitting retreats and other gatherings to exchange with new friends and acquaintances.  Some of these are almost works of art.

Scrapping the Day Away

I haven't been on the internet today because I was off scrapbooking from 9 in the morning until 8 tonight.  Can't remember if this was for National Scrapbooking Day or not but a large group of us all gathered in a hall and scrapped the day away.  Here's my friend Linda working away.  She had quite the day.  Halfway through the day, her computer ran out of available space.  So off she had to go to Best Buy and ended up with a Thumb Drive (is that what you call it) to put some of her storybooks on until she could get home later tonight to transfer them to her external hard drive.

When she finally got back, she began the process of transferring some of the things she had been working on over to the thumb drive to free up space on her laptop but suddenly, she got an error message.  Turns out that she had completely filled up that flash drive as well.  Poor kid!  She just wasn't having any luck.  Thank goodness that she had at least freed up enough space on her laptop that she could work on another set of digital pages until the end of our session.  Oh, that's my friend, Karen, another convert to digital scrapbooking working away on her pages.  There were three of us clustered together.  We always enjoy the fact that we don't have to lug all the paper supplies and tools to these crops.  All we need are our computers, power strips, and our imaginations.  And if we get tired of working on digital scrapbooking, we can always take a break and play some games on our computers or just walk around and look at what others are working on.  It's a great way to scrapbook.

Throughout the day, they drew names for door prizes.  Look what I won?  A set of pages with pre-made borders.  I still do some occasional pages the traditional way so I'll be able to use these or maybe I'll share them with my daughter.  We both love that color of green. 

As always, we have a wonderful spread of food for lunch and for supper.  Everyone brings snacks and desserts to share and food is brought in for our two meals.  So we can snack all day long if we so desire.  It's going to be bad news at my weigh-in at TOPS on Monday evening, I'm sure, although I really did try to avoid eating non-stop throughout the day.  I managed to do pretty well, too but didn't do so well at resisting the toffee cookie bars.  And drat, I made them so I knew how good they were, too.  By the time we needed to pack up our supplies and head home, the weather had really turned cold.  My, the wind was really whipping around and it felt more like early November than late April.  What happened to our lovely warm Spring days?

Here's a graphic for you today.  It's an old calling card that is actually an advertisement for a fellow who printed calling cards.  It was in amongst my grandmother's old cards.  The little card with his name was actually inside the little envelope but I took it out so it could be seen.  The little hand with flower bouquet looked to be a sticker that was stuck on the little envelope.  I'm guessing that it is from the late 1800's since most of the calling cards I have from my grandmother are ones she had as a young lady from that time frame.
Enjoy!

Scanning Old Images

I'm still fiddling away with my craft room, trying to restore order to chaos.  I've actually made quite a bit of headway and am down to the fine tuning.  Part of that fine tuning involves tackling the cupboards where I've just stashed big envelopes of pictures and paper memorabilia, without taking the time to file them or scan them into my photo storing program.  So today I started the scanning and sorting process.  What fun this is!  One thing I am quickly realizing is just what great quality the paper from years ago is.  The high school announcement above is my mother's high school graduation announcement from 1907.  That paper is just as lovely and pliant as the day it was put in her hands.  I'm not sure the paper we get these days would last as long.

Remember calling cards?  You probably don't although I confess that I had to order a set of them when I was commissioned in the Navy.  I don't think I ever used them but I had them, just in case.  This is a calling card from a friend of my grandmother's.  It probably dates back to the late 1800's.

Since we just celebrated Easter, I thought you might enjoy this little postcard that was sent to my grandfather in the early 1900's.  Aren't those little chicks just the cutest?

I couldn't resist this postcard.  My mom sent this to my grandfather years ago.  There's no date on it but I'm guessing that it was probably in the 30's or 40's.  I think that's going to be me when I head down to Texas in a few weeks.  They'd better hide the bon-bons.

I just have an older model scanner but it does a pretty nice job of scanning these images.  So I think in the next few weeks, as I work through these, I'll try to put up one a day to share with you.  Hopefully you can save the .jpg to use as a graphic, if you so desire.  Some of these are just too cute to hoard for myself.

An Empty Nest Easter

Did you all have a nice Easter weekend?  We crammed in a wedding in New Jersey on Saturday.  One of my former student workers got married so we made the long drive over to help celebrate in her happiness.  I was so happy that she found a young man who is a strong Christian.  Jane and I used to joke that I was her "Pennsylvania Mom" when she was attending college here.  So I still have a big soft spot in my heart for her.

On Easter Sunday, we headed off for church and enjoyed all the fellowship and celebration of serving a risen Lord.  After church, the Commander and I had decided to just go out to eat.  It didn't seem worth making a big Easter dinner for just the two of us.

When the chicks have left the nest, we're finding that a lot of our previous family traditions are getting set aside for newer, more streamlined versions.  Anyway, the Commander called the restaurant to see if they accepted "call-ahead seating."  He reported back to me that we should be fine.  "When the lady says, 'Hon, you've got nothing to worry about.  Come on over', I guess we won't have any problem with waiting," he chuckled.

Indeed, we didn't have any wait when we arrived.  In fact, we were the only car in the parking lot.  Wow!  Our waitress told us that she had opened up the restaurant at 10 a.m. and we were her first customers at 12:30 p.m.  I guess most folks were eating Easter dinner with their families at home.

After lunch, I headed over to the nursing home to visit with Mom.  I greeted her with the familiar Easter phrase "He is risen", expecting her to reply, "He is risen indeed."  Instead she smiled and said, "That's wonderful."

"No, Mom," I said.  "Don't you remember?  Every Easter, when the pastor says "He is risen', all the congregation is supposed to reply "He is risen indeed."

"Oh, OK," she said.

We had a nice visit and I read some more of our current book to her and then I wheeled her back to her room.  As I left, I gave her a big hug and said, "See you on Tuesday.  And remember.....He is risen."

"That's great," she said, smiling pleasantly.  Ah, well!

 Later that evening our daughter called us to chat.  She and her hubby were grilling BBQ chicken outside and getting ready to enjoy their Easter dinner.

"What, no ham?" I asked.

"Mom, you know I don't eat ham," she countered.  "What's wrong with BBQ chicken?"

"Absolutely nothing," I replied.  "It's just that most people have ham on Easter.  What's for dessert?"

There was silence.  "Nothing," she said.  "Well, maybe we'll have a cookie."

"Bummer," I thought.  "Not even any Easter bunny candy."
But that's probably why our daughter always looks so good and why I'm always trying to lose weight.  Gee, come to think of it, the Commander and I hadn't had any dessert at the restaurant, either.  Guess the Easter bunny and all those high-caloric treats is another holiday tradition that has gone along with the children. 

What is the world coming to when I feel like I have to go mug a kid to get a peanut butter egg?  Happy Easter!

A Gem of a Graphics Site

Did you ever type on a typewriter like one of these old gems to the left?  Believe it or not, my mum had one like this and I used to bang out book reports for school and "great" works of literature for submission to the local newspaper's weekly children's column.  I loved typing on that old typewriter.  MANY years later, I had quite a chuckle when I was working at a local college library.  I asked one of my student workers to go over to an electric typewriter and type out an address on an envelope.  She looked at me in astonishment and said, "A typewriter?  Oh, my gosh....I've heard about them but I've never actually seen one." 

So what has that little story got to do with a graphics site?  Well, as I was searching the Web the other day for a graphic I could use to illustrate a post I wanted to write, I stumbled across a wonderful site run by a blogger called The Graphics Fairy.  I have a button link to her blog on my home page but you can also access it here.  She has an astonishing collection of free clip art that pulls heavily from vintage graphics like old postcards and advertising flyers.  In many instances, she gives you the option of downloading graphics with the original vendor names on them (i.e. in the case of advertising graphics) or ones where she has cleaned them up and given you a place to insert your own words.

  Love this graphic of a British war poster!  I should probably blow it up and frame it to hang on the wall in back of my computer monitor.  Or better yet, maybe I should print it out onto a postcard and mail it off to my local congressman.  Or how about the delicious illustration of cakes?  It's nice to look at right now, especially since today is a "weigh-in" day for me.  That means I won't be heading over to the local bakery to buy any sweets to snack on.  There aren't many calories in a graphic.


The Graphics Fairy has a neat feature at her blog on Mondays.  She calls it "Brag Monday."  On Mondays, folks who have used her graphics in some creative way post links on her blog and you get the fun of visiting their sites to see how they've been using the various images available.  What a great way to get new ideas.  She also features one or two of these projects in more detail on her blog that day. 

So why not grab a nice cuppa tea, put your feet up and get comfy, and head on over to the Graphics Fairy to check out all the treasures she has assembled for you?  And while you're over there, if you like what you see, don't miss the chance to subscribe to her blog and/or follow her on Twitter.  I'm sure glad that I've done both.