More Treasures Uncovered

I should be hunching over the computer listing more things on Ebay for my brother but wanted to quickly put up some more fun things we found the other day while working on our "Mom" project.

Old merit badges my brother earned in Boy Scouts (and never sewed on his uniform - for shame!)

An Alvin and the Chipmunks glass that we both drank out of as kids over the years.

A very well-loved doll house that belonged to my grandmother.  It dates from the early 1900's.  What is particularly charming about it, is the fact that it has my grandma's and her sister's names scrawled childishly over the inside wall.

A Tru-Scale seed planter toy that my brother used to play with ENDLESSLY in our sandbox.  We even found a little ball in the seed chamber.  There is no way that little ball would have fit through the holes to be "planted" but I guess my brother didn't understand those things back in the day.

And this old dinged up 5-cup sifter that my grandmother used to bake countless pies and cakes.  Yum, I can smell them even now as I go back in time looking at this.

If any of you ever get to this stage of life where a parent dies or goes into a nursing home and you have to clean out your childhood home, you will understand the flood of emotions that we have been experiencing this past week.  So many memories have been surfacing as we hold these objects in our hands. 

Well, that's all I have time for.  If you want to look at the other things we have up on Ebay so far, I believe you can reach them by going to this link.

Working for Peanuts

Another day, another marathon session at the computer entering items on Ebay.  Here's a sample of some of the fun things I found today.  The mug above was a commemorative mug made to celebrate the opening of Gilbert and Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore operetta and it was made in 1879.  I always thought it was just a pretty glass that my mom had.  Who knew?

This little jam server isn't any fancy name brand porcelain item but I thought it was very sweet.  Somebody hand-painted those little blueberry sprigs on each side.

This is a cuticle scissors that was art of a Bakelite vanity set my mother owned.  Over the years the rest of the set has gotten broken and/or misplaced but this little scissors has survived. 

I worked all day long photographing items and then researching them and describing them up on Ebay.  Then my work was still not finished.  I had to box them up.  My brother couldn't believe that I had managed to use up all the packing peanuts in a huge box before he came home from work today.  In fact, I had to text him to stop at the UPS store and buy more.

He came home with these.  But wait.....lest you think THIS is a lot of peanuts, there are actually more than meet the eye.

The bag is actually THIS tall.  That's a LOT of peanuts!

Somehow I think I won't have any problem going through them before I leave.  My brother is already complaining about running out of room to store the boxed items until the auctions end.

He's been putting them down in his basement in his exercise room.  When I went down there to see how he was arranging them, this is what I found.

And this!  "What kind of a system do you have to retrieve them?," I asked him.

"You didn't tell me I had to come up with a way to FIND them," he said. 

Oh, my.  I predict he is going to be looking through a lot of boxes when those auction items begin to sell.  Good thing I've put a paper in each box listing the item and the Ebay number.  But he still is going to have to open each box and look inside unless he comes up with a better system.

In the meantime, since I'm working for peanuts, this "elephant" is heading to bed to do some reading and sleeping.  Tomorrow I'm taking some time off to head over to The Spinning Loft.  More on that later.

To Auction, To Auction

Well, when you've been working for hours and hours doing nothing but cataloging things for auction up on Ebay and on Amazon, you don't have a lot of time to blog so I'm kind of reduced to showing you some of the fun things we've been finding in the tubs we brought from Mom's house and stored for years.  How about this blue straw hat?

Remember the stories about the French schoolgirl Madeline?  I keep thinking that this is the type of hat she would be wearing.

Now here's a stylish little number.  You can have your flowers AND your feathers, too.  I can just imagine my mom wearing this to church, back in the day when ladies all wore hats to church. 

But it hasn't all been hats.  We found some toys today and put a few of them up on Ebay.  This little guy is called Merlin the Magical Mouse.  I had no idea.  He must have been my brother's toy.

I DO remember Speedy Gonzalez.  Somebody is going to give this little guy a new home.  Funny the things that delineate our lives, isn't it?  Well, this is only the tip of the iceberg, believe me.  In case you want to follow our trail of nostalgia on Ebay, this link will get you to the red velvet hat I blogged about yesterday and then you can click on the link from there that says "See other items."  In the meantime, I'm off to work on some more listings. 

The Fickle Finger of Friday

Ah, Friday....You fickle thing, you.  Here I am, all set to describe five things that were highlights of my week and you end up throwing me a zinger. But more on that later.  I'm sorry to be so late in posting my Fave Five's but today has been a busy day and I am just now getting to do some of my own things on my computer, which has been otherwise occupied for the majority of the day.  So let's get to it, shall we?

1.  I arrived safely in Michigan to help my brother go through things from my mother's home to list on Ebay.  Oy, I had no idea there were so many tubs of "stuff" still in his garage.  This is only a small portion of what we dragged into the house this morning.  He's been storing it ever since we cleaned out Mom's house to sell so I have to admit that it is high time to deal with it all.

2.  I spent HOURS checking out tubs of books on Amazon to see if they were worth listing them up there for sale.  This is the small portion that I ended up listing.  The rest will be donated to a local public library.   There are plenty of others that are very nice books but there is no sense in taking the time to list them when they are only selling for a penny up on Amazon.  Much better to let a library make some money from their sale.

 3.  I separated a stack of cookbooks that my mom acquired from who knows where and will list those on Ebay.  Yes, this has been my "Command Central" all day.  I think I need a booster chair.  I'm so shortwaisted, that the table comes to my mid-chest which means that my computer is up much too high and I have to have my neck tilted back to see with these bifocals.  My neck is so sore.

4.  To take a break from books, I opened up an old hat box and started photographing some of my mother's old hats to list on Ebay.  Get a load of this classy bucket hat.  The ladies who act in the TV show "Mad Men" could wear this and fit right in.

Or how about this monstrosity?  Wear this and you might end up with a swarm of honeybees following you around.

My brother thinks this hat looks like you are wearing two black olives in the front.  I think you could paint eyeballs on each wooden bead and call it your "Daffy Duck" hat.

5.  Last, but not least, I got a Skype call from Jason, Laura, and Mika today.   They are settled in their temporary home in Jakarta now and Jason is just getting over a case of "traveler's revenge."  I guess in an attempt to be a sympathetic mother, I awoke this morning with the same type of thing so in between writing up auction descriptions, I was making mad dashes to the bathroom.  Oh, my!  Laura tells me that Mika is the hit of the area.  When they take buses around town, people are constantly snapping pictures of Mika on their cellphones.  In the slum, they scramble to hold her and call her "Doll" in Bahasa.  With such a sweet grin, I think she is simply irresistible.

That's it for my Friday's Fave Fives.  To read what others are writing, visit Living to Tell the Story.