Violet...

Today is my grandmother's birthday.  Six years ago she laid down to take a nap and never woke up.  Just like that.  I was devastated.  She never really got over the death of my grandfather, and I think she was ready to go see him.  If you like a good love story, my aunt wrote about them awhile back... Smitten.  Violet (she was 40 when I was born and thought she was too young to be called "Grandma" until she turned 50, at which point I was not going to STOP calling her Violet... silly) was just about my favorite person in the entire world.  

She spoiled me rotten and we loved every single minute we ever spent together.  She taught me to drive (I think I was about 10 when she started letting me sit in her lap and steer... EEK!), to crochet (ok, I admittedly failed at the crocheting), taught my son how to sew and to garden.   She always had my favorite baked beans and peach cobbler ready and waiting for me, or a big bowl of her famous oatmeal.

As much as I miss her, it is never in a sad way.  When I think about her it is always about how she had to take off her glasses and wipe her eyes when she laughed because she would laugh so hard it would make her tear up... or how she would hide me from my daddy in the mornings so I could enjoy a big ol' lump of raw biscuit dough for breakfast (YUM)... or how she would "whip" her crazy little dog with an ENVELOPE (I'm sure he was VERY scared... NOT).   When I had kids, she was always worried about someone kidnapping them because "they are SO PRETTY, Sissy!"  I had to remind her they kidnap ugly babies, too...

We can all only hope to leave our children and grandchildren with as many happy thoughts and memories.  Even though we lost her MUCH too soon, the years we had with her will live with a smile in my heart forever.  It is the gift she left for me.  Happy Birthday Granny (the Granny part is courtesy of my kids) Violet!

Granny with her "pretty" great grandbabies

And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count.  It's the life in your years.

~Abraham Lincoln

One Mimi's Trash...

My mother is on her annual girl's sabbatical to Scotland... three weeks with her best girlfriends staying in a castle  with nothing more serious on the agenda than eating, socializing and antiquing.  Her dear friend, June, just so happens to live in that castle which once required them to go antiquing for something like 28 dining room chairs and a table to fit them.  I don't think I could fit 28 chairs in my entire house, but I digress.   My mom wrote to me yesterday (via facebook, she is a hip and high-tech grandma) that she and her sweet friends have been shopping around the hills of Scotland for ME... or more specifically for vintage things to list in my etsy store, Orangie's Attic.  Can we get a WOO HOO?!?!

My mother (known around these parts as Mimi) has excellent taste, in friends and in antiques.   I am (almost) embarrassed to admit how many treasures have found a place in my home which were sent here with the intention of being sold in one of my many garage sales...you can often find my daddy (AKA Big Daddy), walking out of some room in my house scratching his head saying, "Carol, don't we have a painting just like that one in Kelly's bathroom?"  Umm... well, you did.   For example this antique needlepoint she found on one of her trips: 

Or this antique original oil painting...

Or this sweet little vintage tole tray:

Seriously... who sells this stuff in a GARAGE SALE?  She gets tired of them, brings them to my house, and they miraculously disappear off my driveway and find their way onto my walls, shelves, wherever they look happiest.  Thankfully, she loves me more than she loves the $5 or $10 she would have made...lucky me!

So let's all say a prayer to the vintage Gods for Mimi and her menagerie to strike gold in some junky little thrift store in the Old Country... and then let's say a prayer that I have the willpower to actually sell them.