Hurricane Linens

Before Hurricane Helene passed by us back in September my guy and I went out for a drive and stopped at a Goodwill, where I found an intriguing bag of bagged antique-looking table linens. I'm always on the hunt for vintage textiles, and it looked like something that might have been donated by an pro seller who had closed out a booth, so I bought it and brought it home.

I hit the jackpot with this bag -- everything was quite vintage, in mint condition and included some pieces I'd never before seen anywhere. Everything also still had the original price tag attached as well.

This embroidered linen napkin holder (originally $10.00) was a unique piece. It will come in handy, too, as there were 30 napkins in the bag.

The napkin holder unfolded. Really interesting.

Ten of those napkins I was talking about, which will be perfect for a project I want to do.

Cobweb doily, beautifully crocheted and in unused condition. Will make a wonderful embellishment with a little beaded spider, maybe.

This gold fine lace table cover was marked $30.00, and carefully wrapped in tissue paper. It's really gorgeous.

A hand-embroidered and appliqued tablecloth with four matching napkins, with a price tag of $18.00.

If you want to see everything that was in the bag, I made a little photo album online here. Altogether there were 43 different pieces, and the original prices added up to $131.00. I paid $8.99 for the whole bag. Savings: $122.01.

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Gifts

This is a story that starts out very sadly, so if you're depressed by the holidays you might want to skip the first part. As far back as I can remember I've dreaded the holidays. Being poor, having constant family troubles and belonging to a strict religion made that time of year always pretty unhappy. I just hunkered down and hoped to get through without being yelled at or punished because I didn't do something I was expected to do, like sit in church for hours without moving or making a sound while a priest spoke mass in Latin. Gifts were uniformly disappointing, too. My mother usually gave me dolls or socks or underwear for Christmas. I understand now as an adult that she was doing the best she could, and trying to save money at the same time, but as a kid I'd been told good children got what they wanted for Christmas. I was a pretty good kid, but while my friends received new bikes and cool toys and lots of treats from Santa, I didn't. I thought San

Detoxing Results

For twenty-four hours I left these five vintage cigar boxes sit with detoxing agents (baking soda, coffee grinds, dryer sheets, vinegar and Febreze) inside them to see which worked best to remove the tobacco/storage odors that came with them. I then removed the agents and did a sniff test. Before we get into the results, a reminder: none of what I do is ever meant to be expert advice, as I am certainly not an expert at anything. Follow my methods at your own risk, and please first consult an actual antique expert conservator or restorer to detox items that have value for you. Okay, let's see how my experiment worked. Baking soda (left) did nothing to remove the odors. I think if I let it sit for a longer period of time it might have done something, but for a 24-hour test it was a complete fail. Coffee grinds (right) removed 100% of the odors, and left behind definite coffee scent. I like that and think it goes very well with wood, but if you don't like the smel

Survived Another One

I hope you all are having a lovely holiday. Here it was exactly as I expected, only a little worse. I'm trying to be grateful it wasn't much worse. Thanks to the bomb cyclone my favorite person got stuck in Denver for 5-1/2 hours, but late on Christmas Eve afternoon her flight finally took off. Thousands didn't, so I am very grateful she didn't have to spend Christmas Day in an airport. Meanwhile, I suggested to my guy that we leave an hour early because the airport was going to be a disaster area. He felt confident a half an hour early would be time enough (the man has no concept of time.) Turns out a disaster area would have been pleasant by comparison. We used all of our spare time stuck in traffic. They closed all levels of the parking garage because it was full of people coming and going. We went in anyway, and circled all the full lots for what seemed like forever, but couldn't find a parking spot. Getting out of the garage was then impossib

Rayen

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