Vintage Thingies Thursday

I'm a little late getting it posted, but I thought I'd participate in Vintage Thingies Thursday, hosted by Colorado Lady. Go visit and see who else is posting their vintage thingies.

Below is my old hoosier cabinet filled with lots of goodies.

My favorites on the top shelf are the apple cookie jar and the creamers. I got all of these at yard sales, except for the blue cow creamer which belonged to my mom.

On the second shelf are a few of my favorite bowls and a couple of pie birds. I love the little green bowl in the middle.

And lots of vintage fiestaware on the bottom shelf. I love fiesta! The toothpick holder on the left belonged to my mom.

They are so colorful and bright and cheery! The two hidden glasses on the left belonged to my mom. I believe the glass with the yellow boxer on it was a peanut butter glass.

Hope you've enjoyed my vintage thingies.

Blueberry Pancakes

I woke up this morning with a hankering for blueberry pancakes!

I make mine a little different. I add 1/2 cup of instant oats to my batter. That way I don't feel so guilty for not having my usual bowl of oatmeal in the morning.

I also add some of our home grown blueberries. I just throw in a big handful or more. I cover my bushes in the summer to keep the birds away, then I pick them and stash them away in the freezer. Don't they look good.

Mix up bisquick, milk, eggs, oats, and blueberries and put into the skillet. I use a 1/4 cup measuring cup to make them all the same size.

We buy two different kinds of syrup. Original for the ones who don't worry about their weight and sugar free for us who worry about our weight. But seriously, I like the sugar free. I guess it's what you get used to. We were out of it a few months ago and I had to use the regular kind, and I didn't like it at all. It was way too sweet!

And besides, if you use the sugar free, you can pour lots and lots of syrup on your pancakes!
And I like pancakes with lots of syrup.

I enjoyed my breakfast this morning, hope you enjoyed yours.

If you would like to try my way, just add blueberries and a little oats to your pancake batter. I think you'll like the result.

Working Hard

Sorry, I haven't been posting or visiting other blogs very regular lately.

I've been busy doing things around the house and lazy with my blogging.

Since my son Charley got married and moved out, we've been re-doing his room. I have 3 kids and only 3 bedrooms, so two of them shared the same room. My oldest son had a room to himself. Kind of sounds like the Walton's doesn't it. John Boy was the lucky one with the room to himself. Well I won't tell you my oldest son's nickname, because just like John Boy when he got older, he hated it when his family called him by his nickname. I'm thinking by now you know what his nickname is. Wanna take a guess?

But what's a family to do when you have two people in the same household with the same name, you have to have some way to tell them apart, or else when Mom goes yelling for one they both answer.

Well back to the re-doing of his room. We moved out his bed, since we didn't need it any more. But we won't get rid of it because it was his dad's bed when he lived at home. And you know me, I'm nostalgic and won't get rid of anything that has memories attached to it. So for now, the headboard is out in the garage.

Before bringing in Andrew's bed from the other bedroom, we decided it would be a good time to put down a much needed new carpet. (The carpet in there is 28 years old, so I think it's time for a new one, don't you agree?). So before the new carpet arrives on Monday we decided it would also be a good time to paint the walls. It was very much in need of a new paint job, too. I'm ashamed to admit it, but there was a tall white spot on the blue wall in there, which my son covered with a large hanging poster. The white spot was from the last time I painted and I couldn't move the big tall cabinet filled with books and things, so I painted around it. I can't believe I did that, but I did . . . Martha Stewart, I'm not.

So we now have a newly painted room (balsam beige is the color - and I love it!) and waiting for new carpet to be installed on Monday. With the left over paint, I painted our small master bathroom yesterday.

The house is a mess right now, with furniture and stuff moved to the center of the bedroom and large closet doors standing up against the wall in the hallway. We decided to take the doors down and put up curtains over the closet opening. I had already did that to the other two closets a long time ago. I hate our closet doors. They are the ones that slide to one side or the other and you can only get into one side of the closet at a time. And they have a habit of coming off their tracks sometimes, which is a pain.

I haven't got the curtains, yet. But I already have a long wooden curtain rod to use over the closet opening. I had bought a lot of them at Lowe's a few months ago on clearance, and this is the last one I had left.

We've been trying to figure out how we are going to arrange the furniture in the room. I decided, since this bedroom has the largest closet in the house (it's not a walk-in, just long), that I would put his chest of drawers inside the closet and hang his clothes on both sides of it. This will give him more space in his room.

So now both of my sons will have their own room! Since there will be only one bed in them, they will have room for their desks, and that means we will no longer have 2 desks in our family room. And maybe I can now convince my youngest son to move his college books and laptop from the living room where he sits and does all his homework.

Well, I've bored you enough with all this. Just thought I'd explain why I haven't been blogging and visiting as much lately.

One room almost done and only two more to go.

Whew! I'm tired.

Remember When...

Remember when. . . . you bought penny candy from under the glass counter at the local store.

We had a little country store up our holler and I loved going down there. I'd point out which candies I wanted and Shorty put my treats in a small brown bag. I also remember Young's Dept. Store on the west side of Charleston, they had a candy counter, too.

Remember when . . . the gas station gave you gifts when you bought gas at their station!

Wouldn't that be nice, instead of them taking all your money to fill her up today.

These tall frosted West Virginia glasses were give aways at gas stations

Remember when . . . companies put items in their packaging, not the little toys that cereal companies put in their boxes today, but glasses, towels, dishes (some of which are worth a lot of money today) and such.

These wheat dishes were packed in Duz detergent.

Remember when . . . you didn't drink coffee from big mugs, but dainty cups and saucers.

They would pour the coffee into the saucer and sip. Mom used to fold light bread (another word for store bought sliced bread) and dunk it into her coffee and let me take a bite when I was little. It was delicious. We were told coffee would stunt your growth. I don't think they wanted us kids drinking their coffee.

Remember when . . . you not only had milk delivered to your door in glass bottles, but you also had Dr. Pepper in a glass bottle at 10..2.. and 4.

We lived in the country, so we never had milk delivery, lots of times we would buy milk and butter from my Aunt Gracie, who lived up the road from us. How many of you remember buying those little bags of salted peanuts and dropping them into your bottle of Pepsi. Now, that was good!

Remember when . . . you stayed up late to watch Chiller Theater. The station would play the Star Spangled Banner at the end of programming and display a test signal when TV went off the air for the night. And remember when they were experimenting with color TV and they would place this symbol on the screen for you to stare at to see if you could detect color.

No matter how late you stay up now, TV shows are always there. Funny, though, with all the channels we have to choose from and programming all through the night, seems like there's never anything good to watch. Not like the old days when the kids and adults loved Wonderful World of Disney and we came home from church on Sunday night to watch Bonanza. And how about the Mr. Cartoon Show which was on at 4 o'clock every day. My oldest son was actually in the audience when he was 5 years old. It was live and we recorded the show while we were there. My son Andrew is in the opening sequence when the camera spans across the group of children, but that's the last you see of him. He promptly ran off the stage to me and went to sleep on my lap during the rest of the show.

Remember when . . . schools sent truant officers out to check on students that didn't come to school.

Remember when . . . you suffered through the measles and mumps.

Kids don't know what they're missing today. I had mumps on both sides at the same time. Besides looking like a chipmunk with his jaws full of nuts, I was miserable. I remember sitting at the kitchen, with tears in my eyes, trying to eat. About the only thing that didn't hurt me when I ate it was mashed potatoes.

Remember when . . . you got the small pox vaccination?

I got mine before entering first grade. It developed into the ugliest scab and I remember being told not to touch it. Didn't they know that when you tell a child not to touch something, it makes them want to touch it even more. You can barely see my scar, but it's still there, along with the memories.

Remember when . . . schools believed in punishing kids for being mean.

I remember the paddles with the holes drilled in them. I think the holes were supposed to make it hurt more. I was only reprimanded once. It was in the 2nd grade when the teacher held my hand in hers and smacked it with a ruler. That stings! The teacher left the room at recess and told us not to get out of our seats. Well, I returned my carton of milk to the crate after drinking it, and someone told on me when she got back.

Remember when . . . we covered the food left after supper with a table cloth.

I suppose this was to keep the flies off. But the table sure looked pretty with the decorative cloth draped over it.

Remember when . . . quilts were made to keep warm with, not for decorative purposes.

My grandma and Aunt used to make quilts and sell them for $2 and $5 each. Wouldn't I love to have one of those. I remember the old quilting frame sitting in grandma's front room.

A few old quilts in my dad's old trunk.
I believe the one on the bottom and left were made by my grandma.

I could go on and on. And I think I will in another post on another day.

Do any of you . . . remember any of these?

Runs, Creeks, Hollows and Licks

I got an idea for a blog post this morning by listening to my husband on the telephone.
To put it kindly, my husband likes to gab. Once he gets started, he'll talk about anything and everything to anybody and anyone.

He got to talking to this lady on the phone about hollows (or hollers as we sometimes call them) and how they got to be called that.

According to him, they were called hollers because in the old days when people wanted something from a neighbor, needed a child to come home for supper or such they would go out on the porch and holler. Well that was a new one on me. I had never heard of that before.

Though, I will admit, our families did a lot of hollering from the front porch when I was a kid.

So this is my post about Runs, Creeks (or Cricks), Hollows (hollers), Ridges and Forks of rural WV.


I lived in rural Kanawha County, WV before marrying and moving to Jackson County. In Kanawha County, I was mainly used to Creeks and Hollows.

I grew up on Tuppers Creek and Tate Hollow. And there was Happy Hollow, Bonham Hollow, Jenkins Hollow, Fore Hollow, Derricks Creek, Allen Creek, Alum Creek etc. etc. I could go on and on.

There was also Forks and Branches. Edens Fork and Haynes Branch in the Sissonville area were named after my early ancestors.


Well in Jackson County there is an abundance of Licks, Runs, Forks and Ridges.

You can't travel to the big town of Ripley without seeing lots of little roads, creeks, and hollows along the way.

Some of the common Licks are Grasslick, Stonelick, Claylick . . . .





And then there's the Runs. Joe's Run (my friend and fellow blogger Granny Sue speaks of Joe's Run often), Mud Run, Turkey Run, Crooked Run, Bar Run, Bear Run, Cow Run, Drift Run, Skull Run, Buck Run. . . .



And add to that the Ridges. Angel Ridge (which is right down the road from where I live), Stone Ridge, Divide Ridge, Fishers Ridge, Nobel Ridge, Alpine Ridge, Bibbee Ridge, Dutch Ridge, Foster Ridge, Poverty Ridge, Zion Ridge. . . .







We also have Forks. Dog Fork, Trace Fork, Dudden Fork, Dry Fork, Elk Fork, Tug Fork, Sarvis Fork, Laurel Fork. . . .

I just had to add this picture of an old firetruck
that's rusting away at the foot of Tug Fork road.

And yes we have Hollows and Creeks in Jackson County, too. Mill Creek, Sugar Creek, Peppermint Creek, Sycamore Creek, Wolfe Creek, Jens Creek. . . . Frog Hollow, Kay Hollow, Barn Hollow, Squash Hollow, Spruce Hollow, Long Hollow. . .

I am happy to live in Appalachia with all the colorful language and place names. I can only imagine the stories behind the origin of some of these places along the road.


Hope you enjoyed the tour down my neck of the woods.

Do any of you live up a Creek or a Hollow? or maybe a Branch?



Do any of you locals have any more names to add to my list?

Baby, It's Cold Outside!

As you can see by the thermometer, it's cold outside (brrrrrr) this morning!

Schools are on a 2 hour delay.

Of course, I know in lots of places this morning it's colder than this. But zero is cold enough for me, thank you.

The cars even look cold.

Remind me to clean out our big 2 car garage so that we can actually use it to park the cars in!

The trees look cold

And you have to feel sorry for the birds in frigid weather

This picture of the birds was taken a few days ago. The birds can teach us all a lesson. Look how the different birds all get along so well when the going gets tough. We've got the blue jays, the cardinals and the other little bird all sharing the food. Yesterday, I counted over 10 blue jays together on the porch, deck and feeder at the same time. They are so pretty!

I remember a few years back when the children were in grade school and the temperature got down to around -20 and -25 and stayed there for 3 or 4 days. Talk about cold! For here in Jackson County, WV that's cold! You couldn't stand to go outside. Our car wouldn't hardly start, and when it did finally start, it sounded awful. Do any of your remember when it got this cold?

David was born in December and when he was little, we put his bassinet in the living room. In our house there is no foyer, you just walk right into the living room. We didn't want the cold coming in on him, so when people came in and out of the house we made them use the back door to keep the cold out.

I am so tired of the cold and snow and ice!

If you are also tired of the cold and snow and ice, vent a little (but keep it nice, please) and let me know!

If you live in the sunbelt, but used to live in the brrrrr! belt, and would like to see a little cold and snow and ice, vent a little (but keep it nice) and let me know! If I could, I would box up some of this cold and mail it to you.

Here's to hot chocolate and mittens! and spring! and the hot sweltering summer!

Man and Wife

January 31, 2009

Cold temperatures, icy parking lots, good food, family, and friends.

My oldest son Charley got married today! My first one to leave the roost.

It was a very cold day, and the parking lots were icy, but friends and family came and it was a beautiful wedding.

Man and Wife

I almost caught them kissing

a sweet pose of the newlyweds

Onto the reception and the chow line.

Looks like the best man is hungry!

A beautiful cake, almost too pretty to eat.

But that doesn't keep them from cutting it.

Oh no! Looks like somebody has been up to no good.

The car was filled with balloons!

Looks like a guilty bunch of guys to me. What do you think?

"I'm innocent, I didn't do a thing."

Memories of a wonderful day!

Now, give me a day or two to get used to my son being married. I got up this morning and looked into his room. It's still filled with most of his stuff, but he's not there sitting at his computer. I went in, picked up a dirty glass from his desk, stood and looked around and tears filled my eyes.

CONGRATULATIONS CHARLEY AND JENNIFER

LOVE, MOM