Turquoise Teaser

When cottage and camp design guru Tereasa Surratt bought an old summer camp with her husband, she discovered a treasure trove of abandoned vintage items, from potholders, aprons, glasses, and Fiestaware to picnic tins, blankets, lanterns, and fishing poles.  The random items launched her on a mission to find similar treasures and build collections--a five-year process that she details in a book called Found, Free & Flea:

Anyone who reads my blog knows that when Doug and I bought our little beach cottage, there was virtually nothing worth saving--the bedding was moth-eaten, the rugs were filthy, and the kitchen cabinets were filled with more junk than dinnerware.

However, we did find one item amidst the potting soil and garden chemicals in the worst of the kitchen cabinets: a square refrigerator dish in the Amish pattern, complete with lid, in perfect condition.  I took it home, ran it through the dishwasher, and brought it back to the cottage to house my stash of string cheese:

Now, it seems that this one dish has launched me on a Tereasa-Surratt-like hunt for more pieces in this pattern.

First, I found a casserole dish like this one at a Goodwill store for just $3:

Then Doug bought me this cute little refrigerator dish for Christmas. I think it would be perfect for butter:

Note that the farmer and his wife who appear on the larger dish are missing from this small version, which has only the rooster and the corn stalks.

This past weekend, we visited the Beebe Hospital Thrift Store in Lewes, Del., and found this set of three nesting bowls for just $7.50:

A few hours later, we spotted the same set with the fourth (and largest) bowl included for $79.50!  I can be patient--the large bowl is waiting for me somewhere, all by itself and looking for its former mates.

I'm feeling a large collection coming on--it would look perfect displayed on our vintage Cosco cart at the beach cottage. The colors couldn't be more perfect:

In the epilogue to Found, Free & Flea, Tereasa Surratt recounts hearing an antique dealer say that she liked to walk into a room full of her favorite antiques and imagine being greeted by the good-kharma ghosts of the original owners of these items.  I have to admit that we didn't feel too much good kharma when we walked into our beach cottage for the first time, but I'm glad we found something that not only was worth saving but also had the power to launch us on a new collecting mission.

One Man's Trash

I think our friend Martin admires the results of our junking, but he also loves to tease us about it.

During the renovation of his and Jenn's master bathroom, he tore out a wall that had a strange little cabinet between the studs and an even stranger door made from a piece of rustic wood with a twisted vine for a handle.

When we arrived at their house one day, he told us to open the trunk of our car, so he could give us something -- it turned out to be the little door, which he obviously viewed as total trash.

When we got home that night, we were going to toss it into the pile of firewood for our outdoor fire pit, but I realized that the best revenge against an Englishman and his trash was to turn that trash into a treasure.  (Unfortunately, I didn't bother to take a picture at the trash stage....)

I had seen signs in beach towns like Nantucket, Mass. and Duck, N.C. with the names of other beach towns and the distances to them.  This one in Nantucket is pretty intricate and fancy:

I liked this idea, so I asked Doug to make me something like it for our Kitts Hummock cottage, and once again, my personal Santa got to work in his shop. On Christmas morning, I unwrapped this very personalized gift from my dear husband:

Doug chose mostly other towns in Delaware, including Newark, where we live, but he also included Duck, since that's one of our favorite places to visit.

He painted the sign itself with our ever-present Sherwin Williams sea salt but left the vine in its natural state.  He also added a compass rose and painted a crow at the bottom to signify that the distances were "as the crow flies."

I can't wait to hang it on our beach cottage porch -- once that project is done this spring. In the meantime, Doug and I will have to beware of what mad Englishmen put in our trunk when we're not looking.

Cosco Cart Remake

One of my favorite Christmas presents this year is probably as old as I am.  We found this vintage Cosco three-tier rolling cart in the basement of my former in-laws' house, which my son is cleaning out and fixing up to sell. No one else in the family wanted it, so he told me to take it.  It was rusty and needed some work, but I knew that my elf, Doug, could work wonders on it:

I told him to surprise me with it for Christmas.  After several secretive days in the driveway and garage, he finished the project and then hid it under a plastic tarp.  He wire-brushed the chrome frame, painted the wheel hardware with chrome spray paint, and painted the trays a gorgeous 50s aqua (the color is more accurate in the pictures further down), and this is what I saw on Christmas morning:

We took it to the beach the next day and outfitted it with some baking items, including vintage Pyrex bowls and baking dishes that we already had and some stacking cooling racks that Christine gave me for Christmas. It's sitting in the dining room but can easily be moved to the kitchen as a temporary island when we need more space for baking, cooking, or serving:

My stepson Corey and his wife Kristin gave us the towel for Christmas, and it's a perfect match -- even though they didn't even know about the cart when they chose it.

Apparently, getting one of these carts for Christmas isn't so unusual.  This vintage ad advises the 1950s housewife to "Put a bug in his ear that you want Cosco."

I guess I did "put the bug" in Doug's ear, but he had to do a lot more than make a trip to the local hardware store to get my Cosco cart.

Cookiefest

I hate to cook, but I love to bake.  I guess that means that if I weren't married to Doug, I would live on homemade cookies and takeout pizza for the rest of my life.

We have a small kitchen, but we bake so much that we actually bought a piece of furniture a couple of years ago dedicated to baking supplies.

It came with two trashcans in the pullout bins, which we replaced with 8 large Tupperware containers for flour, sugar, chocolate chips, oats etc. The drawers hold colored sanding sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and small spice containers:

This weekend, we pulled out all of the supplies and made more than 1,000 cookies to give away...and to eat. We baked all of them in our 60-year-old Chambers gas stove:

Doug is great with a piping bag, so he made everything look good.

Like sugar cookies:

And homemade to-die-for toffee:

And almond roca cookies:

And jam turnovers:

We also made shortbread, peanut butter blossoms, Toll House cookies, Guiness gingerbread, and Special K bars, which Doug is cutting here:

 

We pack the toffee in little bags:

And we make up boxes and baskets for friends and family:

I know he didn't help with the baking, but I can't resist finishing with a picture of Pax, our 8-month-old orange tabby, who was the star of our Christmas cards this year.  The caption?  Wreck the halls.

Merry Christmas!

Kitchen Tree

Last week, Christine came over with an early Christmas present for me. She was as excited to give it to me as I was to open it.

Although she sometimes asks for gift suggestions, this one was a complete surprise: a set of 12 Fiesta ornaments.

I have a lot of Fiesta in the kitchen--mixed with other brightly colored dishes from Pottery Barn and Kohls. They're a perfect choice for our kitchen, which has glass-fronted top cabinets from an old butler's pantry.

I also have a few vintage pieces in another cabinet:

So her guess that I would love the ornaments was right on.  We immediately strung them on some red cord I had left over from last Christmas and hung them on the little tree I keep on the kitchen table. I dropped one as I was unwrapping it from one of those awful clamshell packs, but it survived the crash to the floor, so I still have my even dozen:

 This morning I baked some gingerbread people to add to the tree:

With grilling Santa standing guard, it's the perfect addition to our 1930s kitchen.

Thanks, Christine, you are a great gift chooser!

A Day in the Big Apple

This past Wednesday, my friend Jennie, her daughter-in-law Lauren, Lauren's mom Marge, and I were among the more than 700,000 people who pass through Rockefeller Center every day during the holiday season to see the magnificent Christmas tree.

Like most tourists, I took a picture with my iPhone, which of course doesn't do justice to the tree.

According to an article published in Business Week, the 80-year-old Norway spruce weighs about 10 tons and stands 80 feet tall. It’s wrapped in about five miles of LED lights with 45,000 bulbs, topped with a 550-pound, LED-powered Swarovski star studded with 25,000 crystals, and it has no other ornaments. This year's tree survived Superstorm Sandy in New Jersey, and when it's taken down, its lumber will be milled for use in constructing a Habitat for Humanity House.

We also visited Central Park, where we watched some very young hockey players in training--the four- and five-year-olds spent more time with their butts on the ice than they did with their blades. 

After Central park, we checked out the Plaza Hotel, which was already famous but became even more iconic thanks to Macauley Culkin.  We had already eaten lunch, but we drooled over the food market downstairs, with all of its beautiful fresh produce, layered cakes, jewel-box-like petit fours, rich multi-grain breads, and cookies that look like works of art:

Jennie and I posed in front of a wreath on the front of the hotel, just to show how big it was:

We also went into Bergdorf Goodman, where we saw actress Andie McDowell making a purchase.  But I was more impressed with the wreath-on-every-window exterior of the building than I was with the bling and celebrities inside:

At night, we made our way to Bryant Park, which features a series of small glassed-in huts, each one specializing in a particular line of merchandise--socks, scarves and hats, candy, Christmas merchandise....

Yes, that last one was the one that got me.  And yes, even though I'm the person who said we don't have room for any more Santas--except maybe an ornament or two--I succumbed to purchasing a grilling Santa for Doug.  He looks pretty cute next to the miniature tree on our kitchen table:

 Merry Christmas three weeks early, honey.

Here Comes Santa Claus

Here comes Santa Claus, right down Santa Claus Lane--which I think is in our renovated attic.

I guess it's appropriate that Doug, who looks a lot like Santa, collects Santas.  He started about 8 years ago, and his collection has grown to well over 100.

We have tree ornaments, Pez containers, nesting Russian dolls, snow globes, statues, salt-and-pepper shakers, and stocking holders.

This snow globe plays a song when you wind it up, and a little train runs on a track around the base.  Santa is drinking a coke:

 

This weekend, we made our annual trek to Eldreth Pottery in Strasburg, Pa., to get the latest redware Santa:

He joined several other redware Santas in our collection, although one is conspicuously absent this year--it's a very tall one that we're afraid will get knocked over by our rambuctious orange-tabby menace, Pax. Maybe by next year, when he's a little more mature, we can bring that one back out.

While we were in Strasburg, we also went to some antique shops and bought the one on the right--it has four more Santas inside, all in different colors:

We also have an extensive collection of blue Eldreth pottery Santas.  They're on display in our upstairs bathroom this year:

This Eldreth is large and stands on the floor next to some vintage picnic baskets.  His lantern is a separate piece that hooks over his hand:

My aunt, who is a talented decorative painter, made this one for us:

This little vintage toy Santa has a bell in his hand and collapses when you push up on the base. I guess the manufacturer thought we wouldn't know who it was, so they stamped "SANTA CLAUS" on the base.

I wish we had one place to display all of them, but our house is just too small for that. So this group is on a bench upstairs. When Doug started collecting, he picked up just about any bargain Santas he found at thrift stores, yard sales, and junk shops, but I've convinced him to be more discriminating because we just don't have room.  When Doug sees this picture, I'm sure he's going to point to the space in the front and tell me we have room for at least a half dozen more.

And of course, other people buy him Santas. My stepson Corey is responsible for this gem, which sits in the office area of our attic and plays loud music when you push a button:

 My daughter Christine brought back this interesting "pepper" Santa from a trip to Arizona.  Santa didn't weather the travel too well, but we glued him back together:

My son Alex found this one when he was cleaning out his grandparents' house last week.  It's one in a set of six called Santa Through the Years.  This one is called The Contemporary Santa and is intended to represent what Santa looked like beginning about 1920:

We have two Santas at the beach, which I don't have pictures of right now--one is a coastal-looking Santa that our friends Steven and Lauren bought for Doug as a thank you for taking their engagement pictures.  The other is a whimsical Florida-themed Santa from my cousin Lou.

This old candle is one of Doug's favorites.  He remembers seeing it every year when he was growing up, and he almost had a heart attack one year when his mother lit it.

 

I guess everyone should have known back then that Santa was Doug's alter ego.