Button, Button, Who's Got The Button?

Today I went to the library and was surprised to see an exhibit of antique buttons. The display was sponsored by the local historic society. I am enchanted by buttons so I took some pictures with my phone, which doesn't take the best quality photos. Because the buttons were in a glass case, I also got reflections in the pictures. Mainly of lights but sometimes, I can see my red sweater reflected in the shot.

I collect vintage buttons and sometimes use them when I reimagine an item for my etsy shop. I especially love mother of pearl buttons which is actually abalone shell. Therefore, they are already reimagined when they come into my hand because once upon a time they were a sea shell and now it is a button. My favorites are the carved ones.

These are the pictures I took at the library...............................

 

 

 

 

 

There were lots more in the button exhibit but difficult for me to get photos of with two books, a cup of coffee and my purse in my hand in addition to the camera/phone. I saw so many buttons that I also have in my collection. Mainly celluloid. Here's a brief history of the celluloid button.

http://www.tedhake.com/viewuserdefinedpage.aspx?pn=buttonhistory


Enjoy a little peek of some of the buttons in my own personal button collection:

A great variety - carved metal turtle, cloisonné, a RailRoad conductor's button- jet glass among them

 

All on cards - love the graphics - and the prices - 10 cents and 25 cents

They are a very rare "find" today. I used to find "Mom's button tin" at estate sales years ago. The entire tin would be about $5.00. But not any longer. Now the sale manager removes the buttons from the tin and separates them all out into small plastic bags. The valuable and special ones are packaged and sold individually !!! I'm so glad I got my stash many, many moons ago.

 

Did I Ever Tell You How Much I Love My Toaster Oven?

I have been the chief cook and bottle washer in my home for most of my life. I must admit I had a little resistance to most new advances in kitchen technology. I didn't want a microwave or an ice maker, or a water filter or a 190 degree water faucet for making hot drinks or a slow cooker. Do you believe I didn't even want a dishwasher when they first came on the scene. Our first one was  not a "built-in". I'm really not sure why I resisted but I was just happy with the way things were and didn't see any reason to change or to spend $$$$ on an appliance when it would be better spent on a pair of shoes or a purse.

After I was seduced into adopting each one of these appliances, I came to a sudden realization "how could I have ever lived without this?" And, much as I hated to do it, had to tell DH - "you were right about..........."

Well, we always had a toaster. We received one as a wedding gift. It took me eons of years to jump from the toast dark ages to purchase a toaster oven. When we first began homemaking, I cooked for two, then three, then four and then five. We regressed the same way. From five, to four, to three............ I finally made the toaster oven switch when I started to cook for one.

here she is - Miss T.O.

 

In my new little toaster oven, I toast, bake, and reheat. Some things just beg to be reheated in a toaster oven rather than the microwave. The microwave makes pizza soft and mushy but the T.O. makes it taste brand new. Same with empanadas. There are some things you want to be soft and mushy, like spaghetti and meatballs or soup. But pizza and empanadas want to be hot, toasty and crisp. So does an apple crisp. I even baked these little apple crisps in the T.O. I put the extra ones in the fridge and when I want one for dessert, It warm it up in the T.O.

Apple Crisp

I toast a half bagel in the morning in T.O. I make pizza from an Indian Naan, slathered with my marinara sauce, mozzarella and basil in little T.O. I "fried" bacon in her the other morning. Just layed a few slices of bacon on the foil lined tiny tin that came with her and cranked her up to 450 and in just a few minutes I had nice crispy bacon. So much more economical that heating up my BIG oven to 450 for the bacon or making a mess of the stove top by splashing bacon fat all over it and the adjoining walls.

As you can plainly see, this advance in kitchen tech has made me very very happy.

How To Make a Brown Paper Lunch Bag Scrap Book

 

I just returned from a week long holiday and I wanted to gather my photos and mementoes all in one place. The best way for me to cherish this snippet of time was to make a paper bag scrap book.

With this type of scrapping, no need to run to the craft store and buy any supplies. Almost everyone has brown paper lunch bags in the house. One of the greatest advantages to these little memory savers is you get a few envelope type openings on the pages into which you can insert menus, tickets, notes and other little souvenirs of your holiday.

Gather the pictures you want to have in your book. Count them. The sum of the photos is how many pages you want in your book. Each paper bag - folded in half - will give you 4 pages. Therefore, if you want to include 12 photos in your book, you'll need 12 divided by 4 = 3. If you want a blank front and back cover for your book, you'll have to add one more bag. Of course you can embellish these covers any way you like.

Here's how it's done.

Supplies: brown paper lunch bags, glue, scrap embellishments, scrapbook paper, ribbon

Fold each bag in half separately

With a hole punch - punch a hole on center fold from top and bottom

Lay bags in opposite directions so you won't have too much bulk - line up the holes

I bound the book by threading raggedy ribbon through the 4 pages of punched holes

Here you can see I've used scrap embellishments and the pocket opening for notes

Book view of open ended pages where mementoes can be tucked



Front cover with title and scrap suitcase embellishment

I used a square of scrapbook paper glued on, to cover the inside of each page before placing a photo on the page. Sometimes I had room to journal right on the page. Sometimes I used a tiny ribboned tag to journal. I slipped those into the open ended pages. I also slipped in a menu from the restaurant where we had birthday dinner and a tiny note that my littlest granddaughter wrote to me.

 

This type of scrapbook makes a perfect remembrance of an occasion. Some occasions you might want to memorialize in this way would be a baby or wedding shower (making a gift of the book for the guest of honor), a birthday party, a holiday (like I did). This is not the type of scrapping where you record years and years of a persons life - but just short little snippets of memories you don't want to forget. I've even done these for a "girls day out" where we've gone to a museum then lunch and all the scenery in between. Such sweet memories. Savor them ♥ 





More Meals for One

Some time ago I posted a series of posts on making meals to serve one person and the huge mileage I got from one little $5.00 rotisserie chicken. Those posts are right here:

http://sammysgrammysneedlin.blogspot.com/2012/06/meals-for-one.html

http://sammysgrammysneedlin.blogspot.com/2012/06/act-ii-of-rotisserie-chicken.html

http://sammysgrammysneedlin.blogspot.com/2012/07/act-iii-of-rotisserie-chicken-chicken.html

These recipes are economical and tasty even if you're preparing meals for more than one. You'll just get less mileage from your ingredients.

I find myself in this position of preparing meals for just one person and it's a challenging change of pace from cooking for a family of five. Thank God, it was gradual so that I could get used to it a step at a time. If you have had kids leave the nest, you know how difficult it seems at the time to make that adjustment of not setting their place at the table and making a little less dinner to accommodate one less person.

With just me to cook for, I am always looking for tasty meals for one and the other day while watching the Food Network I ran across Marcella Valladolid of Mexican Made Easy. On this program she prepared empanadas. I am a big fan of anything Mexican. I downloaded her recipe and made it the very next day. So delicioso ! I flash froze each empanada in it's own little plastic bag so that anytime I feel like having one for lunch or dinner, I just leave it on the counter for a bit then put it in my toaster oven for a quick warm up (in the toaster oven the beautiful crust stays nice and crispy).

Here's Marcella's recipe for ground beef empanadas:
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/marcela-valladolid/ground-beef-empanadas-picadillo-recipe.html

I tweaked Marcella's recipe a bit. I added cumin and coriander ground spices to the meat mixture. And instead of using the puff pastry sheets like she did, I found that by using puff pastry shells, you save some steps. The shells are already cut in round shapes, perfect for empanadas. I left the centers intact (which you would remove if you actually wanted them to become a shell). I put each pastry shell on a floured counter and rolled it out to about a 7-8 inch circle, then spooned the filling toward one edge of the circle, then brushed the edges with beaten egg and folded the other half circle over the filling, sealing it by pressing edges with a fork.  Otherwise, I did exactly as the recipe suggests.

       I am going to have one for lunch today along with a small caprese salad and iced tea.

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

Christmas is all about gifts. Who doesn't love gifts and Christmas? No matter how you say it - Buon Natale, Feliz Navidad, Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Seasons Greetings - there wouldn't be any of it without the perfect King leaving His heavenly kingdom and experiencing a human birth so He, as one of us (human) for a time, could carry out the divine plan of redeeming us from the curse. The Father's Gift to us. This scripture says it best:  2Cor. 9:15 "Now thanks be to God for His Gift (precious) beyond telling (His indescribable, inexpressible, free Gift)" Amplified Bible.

 

It's reason to celebrate



 

This old tale by Clement Moore sits on my piano

 

I made this little grapevine tree by wrapping grapevine around and around a tomato cage. I made most of the snow people too. The snow lady with hat and fur, you can find in my etsy shop.

I made this angel on a long ago Christmas. It never gets put away. I want to see it all the time.

These 3 little trees are all made from vintage bedspreads and have old wooden spools for trunks. You can find these in my etsy shop as well

I like to put Christmas time on  the mantelpiece

Close up of the Nativity scene on the mantelpiece

                     How do you celebrate and give thanks for this awesome gift?

Marketing Genius

The popular local grocery supermarket in my city is a family owned enterprise. It has expanded out of our local area to PA, VA, NJ, MA and is always in the top 100 businesses in an annual account of thriving area business. It also usually ranks, by their employees, as the #1  "best places to work". I have blogged about this business in an earlier post.
http://sammysgrammysneedlin.blogspot.com/2014_02_01_archive.html

That's just a little background so I can tell you this story.

All of the stores in this chain have a dining area. People can buy a meal and then go to the dining room and eat right in the store. There are microwaves in the dining rooms although you can also buy a meal from a steam table which is just the right temperature to eat on the spot. All of the dining areas that I have been in, though they're all differently decorated, are extremely pleasant places to take a meal ( some with upholstered couches and chairs, big flat screen TV's, blown up vintage photos of a local nature) and sure beats messing up your own kitchen to prepare, then clean-up after a meal.

This past Summer, on Friday evenings, the ultra keen marketing gurus have hired local big bands (of the Benny Goodman type) to play dance music from the 40's and 50's (Swing) at supper-time. The band strikes up about 5:30 PM and plays until 8:30 PM. The diners/dancers are almost 100% seniors/retirees. They get something to eat for dinner, bring it to the dining area, have dinner with friends, then dance the night away. And for most seniors, 8:30 PM is time to call it a night.

A little "aside" - this is just about the time that the younger generation is getting ready to go out on the town.

How clever of the marketing department to think of such a delightful way to get shoppers into the store on Friday nights.

Sometimes I stop in the store after work on a Friday. I get out of work at 5 PM. When I walk in the store that is near where I work, I actually enter the store through the dining room and it's already packed with seniors. The tables are filled. It looks strangely like "dinner theater".

I never have my camera with me because I don't expect to have any reason to use it. I then have to resort to taking pictures with my phone. I just can't resist this opportunity. I apologize that they are not the best quality.

The last Friday night, a few weeks ago, that I observed this event - and I think I might call this the "piece d' resistance" - a store employee/chef (dressed in proper chef attire) wheeled a tea cart into the dining area about midway of the 3 hour event - loaded with sweets - and SOLD them - at less than the rate that the diners would have had to pay for them at the cash register !!!

This scene and the others I have witnessed at different times and even different locations of the grocery chain always remind me of the local dances I used to attend as a teenager. Girls all dressed up, worrying about how they look, running to the ladies room every few minutes to apply another spritz of perfume, freshen their lipstick and blusher, fluffing up their hair, guys gussied and smelling of aftershave, all having that certain "far away" look in their eyes............     It's the same scenario but one is populated by teens and the other by retirees and the only real difference (besides hair color)  is time.

As far as I know this program is just a Summertime event. It will be interesting to see what surprises they have for us to wile away the dreary Winter months.

A Holiday House Tour

On Saturday last, myself and my two "house tour" buddies went to The Federated Garden Clubs of New York State Candlelight Holiday Tour. There were six houses on the tour and each was decorated in holiday finery by the Garden Clubs which means that the outside of the houses as well as inside were bedecked by flowers, greenery, berries, seed pods, pine cones, ribbons, etc. It was glorious to behold.

You could visit the homes in whatever order you chose. The first house we visited was the Stone-Tolan House, built in 1792, the oldest house in our county. The docents in each house were encyclopedias of the history of each home. When Mr. Stone and his pioneer family lived in this Federal-style structure, it was part of a 300 acre farm. The house is such a classic style that it looks like it could have been built last year.

anonymous tour goers waiting in line to see the home



 

Evidence that the Garden Club was here

 

no electric blankets - you put live coals in this tin box-then pop in under the covers

no Wegman's either - you preserved meat in a smoke house like this one

tester bed - handmade coverlet

Heart of the home - soups - stews - pies - biscuits cooked here

 

this is what the modern bathroom looked like in the 18th century

 



Because this home is now a museum, pictures were permitted to be taken in it. Not so with the other homes on the tour. Suffice it to say, this was the house I enjoyed visiting the most. There was another, an 1840 house, that was a close second. But people lived in it. It was scrumptiously fitted with antiques of the period plus filled with Christmas. I did take a couple pics of the garden there. Here's one:



My friends and I always enjoy a leisurely lunch when we do a "girlz day" like this. All in all, a totally delightful outing.