Dolls and Doll Houses

My family loved dolls and doll houses and over the years many wonderful additions were made to the old family doll house. I believe my niece has the actual doll house now but she put more modern furniture in it than what I had that was handed down by my mother.These little dolls were not ours, neither was the blue table set. They belonged to the older woman whose house we just cleared out for the estate sale. I believe the dolls on top are from the early 1980s and the ones below were made in the 1970s since the books that were with them were dated from then.
Most of the clothes are handmade and sewn right onto the little dolls.
This wooden doll house furniture was my mom's in the 1940s, then mine, then my kids. No one wants it any more and every time I see it stored away I think someone should be enjoying it...

I have lots more to list over the next few weeks. It is a bittersweet process to be sure....

More stickers....

Going through my grandmother's old sticker box is sort of like an archeological dig through my childhood...for example, these stickers take me back, way back, to elementary school....We used stickers all the time on our envelopes, gifts, etc. but especially so at holiday times. Halloween wasn't a big commercial day like it seems to be now so these stickers were a very special treat. My grandmother bought little books of stickers whenever she found them so she had Thanksgiving stickers, Valentine's Day, even Mother's Day stickers...
I thought these were especially cute....

Do you remember these?

One of my favorite things about opening my vintage shop on Etsy is getting to look at old things and remember some of the funny and sweet things about my grandmother, my mother and other members of my family that are no longer with us.

These staplers not only reminded me of my grandmother today but of sitting in my third grade classroom hoping I would not be called upon to staple something. Did you have trouble with staplers as a kid? I sure did....they jammed, the staple came out crooked or the paper corner got all messed up. Sometimes the stapler fell on the floor making a huge racket. I just hated them. Today they are among my favorite things but seriously, they needed to give lessons on these things.
Did your family have a set of these little monks? I remember seeing them in lots of houses when I grew up. I lived in a pretty Catholic neighborhood and my own grandmother was raised Catholic although we were not. The Irish Catholics in particular used to have a great time poking a little fun at the priests and the brothers, as they called them and these little salt and pepper shakers were a subtle or maybe not so subtle a way to do that. It seemed every Irish family had a priest or a monk in the mix so the joshing was pretty harmless. These were popular around the same time as Toby jugs....
Are there funny little things that make you smile about your family when you see them?

For the Love of Stickers

My grandmother put stickers on everything that she mailed or wrapped. They came on envelopes, postcards and packages. She bought them everywhere. Do you remember the little sticker books that were about 3 x 5" and had pages of punch out stickers? They came in all sorts of varieties and subjects. Most of these are from the late 1960s and early 1970s.I don't know why, but one day my grandmother seems to have gone through all her little books and punched out all the little stickers and I found them all neat and tidy in an old case for a deck of cards. Fittingly it had a rose on it....
I am keeping some of the stickers for sentimental reasons but am letting the rest go. I have listed a few in my shop but I have tons more ;-)

What would you do with these stickers if you had them to use in a project or two or three?

Bedtime Stories....

Did your grandmother read to you? Mine did. My mother read to us all the time and was a wonderful reader with lots of gestures, expressions and different voices but sitting in my grandmother's soft bed surrounded by old quilts while listening to an old story was fun, too."The Little Rabbit That Would Not Eat" by Edna Groff Deihl was one of our favorite stories to read when we stayed over night with my grandmother, something we did often. We loved the gentle pictures and the story of the bad little rabbit that wouldn't do what he was supposed to do. As children made to sit at the table to finish food we hated, we could relate!
This poor old book just fell apart. I found the pages stacked in the bottom of one of my grandmother's boxes and boy, did they bring me back in time....I may keep one of the illustrations for a scrapbook but I have trimmed off the bent and torn places and will be listing the illustrations in my Etsy shop for others to share and enjoy...
I especially love this one of the grandmother bunny tucking in all the little bunnies. Do you remember this story?

What was your favorite story to read at bedtime with a grandparent or parent?

Happy Mother's Day

I grew up in a family totally dominated by women, a true matriarchy, if you will. My great grandfather left when his infant son died, leaving my great grandmother and her little daughter, my grandmother alone to fend for themselves. This is my great grandmother here in 1936 with my mother who was 4 at the time.My grandmother also ended up on her own but not until the children were mostly grown. I never met my grandfather, though, and in my world, she was the queen of the family. This is a picture of my grandmother with my mother on a picnic. My mother would have been almost 6 and I'm assuming my grandfather took the photo.
My own father left when I was around 8 and for most of my life the dinner table, holidays and vacations were inhabited by women. I grew up thinking that there was nothing a woman couldn't do because in my life, the women did everything that men would have done. They worked, they mowed lawns, they drove through the night and they paid the bills. This is my mom at 21 when I was about 3 weeks old in 1954. Doesn't she look young?
At the ripe old age of 22 here is my mom with me at the beach the next spring or summer. And yes, she deliberately raised us to be beach bunnies.
All these amazing women are gone now, all buried next to each other, in fact at a local graveyard where I am about to go and deliver some flowers. These ladies were strong and funny, smart and caring and I miss them all, especially on Mother's Day. Other families may have shrugged off Mother's Day as a "Hallmark Holiday" but in my family it was a day when the woman of the house got to be celebrated and pampered in a big way. No one loved to celebrate Mother's Day more than my own mother and even though she's been gone 9 long years now we always lift a glass in her honor and tell a few good stories so her legacy lives on.

Happy Mother's Day to all who celebrate it today!

Vintage Scrapbooks

What would you do with these vintage scrapbooks from the early 1940s? They belonged to my mom and have pictures of movie stars in them with captions in child's handwriting beneath most photos.

One book has mostly cartoons, jokes, riddles and other little anecdotal type clippings.
I am going to list these in my shop but am curious to know what people might use them for. I've had them knocking around my basement for a long time. They are not in great shape--pages are yellowed, some are torn but overall I think some creative person is going to have a blast with these....What would you do with these?