Has It Been NINE YEARS???

In April of 2005 my darling BooBooKitty (below is his breeder's contact sheet on him)

was born and since we were going to Sturgis at the beginning of  August, I asked the breeder if I could pick him up after we returned.  And I did, and about two weeks later Katrina made landfall.  Little BooBooKitty got to spend two weeks of his young life in a house with no running water, no electricity, no air conditioning, a Chihuahua who wanted nothing to do with him, and a motley crew of my husband's friends, one of whom went climbing around the downed trees buck nekkid (don't ask me why because I have NO IDEA why) and then asked me to take pictures of her perched up on one of them wrapped in the Confederate flag.  Which of course meant that our African American neighbor, who was busy supplying the neighborhood with water from his well, got an eyeful of THAT.  Yuck. 

New Orleans will be ringing bells commemorating the deaths of so many citizens next Friday, August 29.  While so much has been rebuilt, there is so much that's GONE.  Nine years later, people still will be in conversation about something and then say, "But I lost that in the storm."  We don't really say Katrina any longer, it's just "the storm".  A storm that we pray to everything sacred never EVER happens again.

The little coastal towns of Waveland and Bay St. Louis, MS (to my south about 45 miles) literally got wiped off the face of the earth when the giant wall of water hit it.  There were many beautiful homes along the beach road, big expensive homes, and the photo below shows what Katrina left behind.  Note that the pic was taken nearly 4 years after the storm and unfortunately most of the homes still haven't been rebuilt, due to a variety of reasons: lack of flood insurance (still a sore point), no desire to return, etc.

We were lucky, everything considered, especially since our house was surrounded by giant trees and nearly half of them came down.  This is our front porch.  Note the flags--Rainbow, American and Confederate.  I hung the Rainbow flag up as a counterpoint to that damn  Confederate flag (which is NOT mine--the nekkid girl and her boyfriend brought it).  

The back porch was also just missed.  The gentleman on the left, my husband's best friend Painter Mike, passed away about three years ago.  That's the nekkid girl and her boyfriend, Nate.  Nate and his wife (not the nekkid girl) were nearly killed a year ago in a car wreck and both of them are still recovering.   

Whew.  A lot has happened since the storm.  As I write, there is something swirling around in the Atlantic and since we haven't had anything even remotely threatening so far this year all the weatherpeople are starting to try to stir things up.  Fortunately there are a few that don't get hysterical when they see the word "Invest" and they are saying that this thing is 99% certain to stay away from the Gulf.  I don't wish anything on the East Coast, but this is really the WRONG time of the year for a hurricane to come at us!

But if it comes, it comes.  At least we know how to handle that s**t down here.

Have a lovely Friday.  I think I'm going to do a bit of treasure hunting today, and hope that you find some treasures, too!

PS--finally found out what was on the gazillion portable drive thingies that I have so am now able to have a proper sized banner.  

Lamps!

This antique chippy floor lamp uses an enormous 3-way light bulb.  Husband offered to sandblast and repaint it, but I like it just the way it is.

 You saw the green Oriental lamp with this shade in my previous GIGANTO header.  Love it in red, too!

 Thrift store in Illinois super find.  

Hey Linda McKean, how's the header size now?  Still playing with the blog layout, which is always fun.

My Vintage Kitchen

I love vintage kitchen items more than anything!  First off, a bread box, canister and flour sifter with red flowers.  Poppies?  Or whatever that Hawaiian flower is.  You will have to excuse me, my memory isn't all that great these days.  HIBISCUS, that's what it is.  Whew.  Cute red plaid lunchbox (no thermos).

I found the chicken canister all by its lonesome and then a couple months later found the whole set.  The finial is different on each canister, starting with an egg and progressing to the newborn chick.  Awesome Fire-King "Tulips" grease jar.  The Log Cabin container is a 1980's repro of the original.  The spice jars were found as a complete set along with the little red rack.  And then my pride and joy, four Fire-King Jade-ite "Swirl" mixing bowls.  There is a smaller bowl but I don't believe it was part of the original set and you had to buy it separately.  I think.  I've seen them for sale but they are ridiculously expensive.  I didn't buy the bowls as a set, bought them as I found them.

Here are the "Tulip" salt & pepper.  They're in great condition, as is the grease jar.  Can't say the same for what is very obviously a well-used cold-painted instant coffee container but I love it just the same.

I've been moaning and groaning about not being able to blog because I can't do good close-ups on my kind-of-new camera.  And then, quite by accident this morning when my husband and I were trying to figure out how to get some photos off his iPhone so he could print them, we both discovered how freaking SIMPLE it is as long as you have iTunes on your desktop.  I downloaded ALL my photos off my camera using ACDSee.  Then with that program you can resize and fix up the photos by cropping and adjusting exposure.

This wonderful discovery (which I'm sure every 12 year old already knew) will enable me to get my Etsy store back up so I can sell my costume jewelry online.  I just left one of the antique malls I was in where I had a whole room full of gorgeous stuff but sales weren't steady unless some insane collector or dealer came through and bought a bunch at greatly reduced prices.  You buy a quantity from me, you get some amazing deals!  Because I now have a TON of vintage costume jewelry all over my dining room and shed.  

I'm still getting used to the "new and improved" Blogger, especially the gigantic header.  I think as I get back into the swing of things it'll all work itself out.  Are the pictures inside the post too big?  How about the type size (I have it on Large instead of Normal). 

Thanks!

Here We Go Again

VintageChristine is back.  Celebrating my return to Blogland with a beautifully decorated cake set on a Fenton "Spanish Lace" pedestal cake stand.

Well, the cake is fake but the Fenton is real.  

I think I finally have my camera figured out and since I'm closing up shop in my main antique mall I'm going to try to market my vintage costume jewelry online.  And share all the other lovely vintage I've been finding since I stopped blogging.

I keep promising myself that I'm going to get back to blogging because I LOVE writing about vintage and LOVE reading about it on your blogs.  Hope hope hope!

I'm also going to try to figure out why my freaking header is so huge!  I love the photo, though--that lamp is fantastic and I recently found a red one in the same style, same shade, but different figures.