Comments On Article: Finally Getting The Old Feel In The House

Lesley i love seeing your creations! My mother doea such handwork and i think my children would love tea cozies like yours in her house! Im going to share the idea with her. 

Grandma Donna,  I have been reading you a while brought here by another Blogger I enjoy but have yet to comment. Your gentle spirit reminds me so much of my own grandmother long since passed. Though she simplified very much in her last year's her house was like yours all old-fashioned all the beautiful things she had grown up with. I remember when I was a child my mother had covers for everything all the appliances even the vacuum and the tissue boxes. I thought they were so pretty and enchanting I think as she got older they just seemed like so much more clutter in her house I don't know where they went to I will have to ask. I recently asked her to make me a little apron for my dish soap bottle as I like looking at pretty things even when I am doing  chores. My little daughters think it is so charming. 

Lesley i love seeing your creations! My mother doea such handwork and i think my children would love tea cozies like yours in her house! Im going to share the idea with her. 

Thank you so much Ellen. I do hope your mother will enjoy some of these ideas. People who come for tea seem to enjoy the tea cosies etc and find them fun, so I am sure your children will too

I was born in the fifties and my mother had a stand mixer in her kitchen from my earliest memory, so the mixer looks just right to me.  Of course, it wasn't in kitchens in 1917.

Do you have a problem with crows getting your peaches?  I've started a nectarine tree and my neighbor mentioned that his peach tree loads up every year, and the crows get it all, every year, so he wished me luck.  

I hope you find peace and calm as you learn to adjust to your new loss and to bring your house back to where you want it. 

I have one more week of work! Will be so nice to be retired and get my house sorted out. I have been making kefir. I buy milk at a small dairy. The kefir grains do a good job and it's cleared up some of my digestive problems. It tastes similar to yogurt.  I have bought some small appliances. I resisted them for years, but they can be useful. I just bought an ice cream maker. It's not something I should eat often. But it dawned on me that I could turn some of this good milk into a treat and know exactly what was in it. Will try it out this weekend.

My mom had an ice box when I was little.  There was a card to put in the window telling the ice man what size block you wanted.  I can recall mom saying "bad words" when she forgot to dump the tray in the bottom that held the water from the melted ice.  It needed to be dumped before it was full to keep it from spilling.  My grandfather ran the ice business in connection with his gas station and fuel delivery trucks.  I'm sure originally his delivery method was horse and wagon.  My mother passed in 2021 at age 100.

My grandfather had five sisters and I recall loving four of them.  One I do not recall ever seeing as she was widowed and moved away for work.  I loved to sit and listen my grandmother and her sister-in-law visiting on Sunday afternoons.  Back then Sunday afternoons were for visiting family because everyone worked the other six days and it was always afternoons because everyone went to church.  

Dish powder settling the mind made me smile... I have that same sort of feeling about bar soap (vs the liquid soap that's everywhere). It has kind of a deliberate, purposeful and calm feeling. Who knew someone else could have such a feeling about soap?! 

I find your simple meals so inspiring, Grandma Donna. I have a tendency to want to try the novel and different... which always seems more expensive ingredients and more fuss in the end. And my poor husband just wants a simple "old fashioned" meal. I've been making an effort to go in the direction of simple , healthy and the tried and true. Thank you for the encouragement!

Erika 

I'm curious what dish powder is. Do you make your own or buy it?

Lesley B., I enjoyed seeing your creations.  I especially loved the Christmas tea cozy with the holly on top.  Cute!  I am also wondering what is behind it in that picture.  Is that a picture?  Wallpaper?  It looks like birch trees.

Grandma Donna, thank you for your lovely post.  I have been reading you for years, although I don't post much.  I don't think there has every been a post that didn't give me a warm feeling or provide some spark of inspiration.  I have been trying harder to create the kind of quite cozy space that feels like a retreat from the crazy world around us.  I have had unusual distractions with family tragedies and assorted medical problems (some mine, but mostly others) and have been dragging my feet.  On top of that, we have been helping out family members with financial problems.  Working on cleaning out my Mom's house, in really hit home how much I was a pack rat like my Mom!  So I have really stepped up the purging at my house and have insisted that my husband start working with me to plan for needed restorations/renovations at our home to make it easier to stay here as we age.

Today I picked mulberries.  They come in later here in PA than in AL, but once they come in, they come in fast.  I saw deer eating them last night, so I thought I better get out there and get some!  I am going to make a mulberry kuchen.

“Lesley B., I enjoyed seeing your creations.  I especially loved the Christmas tea cozy with the holly on top.  Cute!  I am also wondering what is behind it in that picture.  Is that a picture?  Wallpaper?  It looks like birch trees”

Debbie (in PA

Thank you. The Christmas Pudding tea cosy was not quite so recent. I sent it to my friend in Oregon, America quite a while ago. She has lots of pictures on her walls and changes them up a lot. I think they are trees in a painting. The pattern itself comes from a booklet by the late Jean Greenhowe and can still be purchased from her website

I love your little hub!  I am one of those people torn between wanting things on the counters and then not! I am also one of those people whom detest the sight of electric plugs and cords so it puts me in a tizzy of trying to cover them up and not wanting things on the counters! lol. Lovely to hear from you. I always grab a tea and settle in to read. I am getting more overwhelmed by the world and it's current functioning and cannot even think about how much worse and mean it is going to get in the next several months. Turn off the outside noise and do my best to not pay attention I guess. Thanks for the calming sights and words.

Good morning! It’s always calming and grounding to read your posts. It helps me refocus and also realize there are others who are like-minded. These posts do remind me of my grandmother, and great-aunt, whose homes I always felt comfortable in. My own home is filled with furniture that was their’s, and has been passed down from generations before that. I think I am the only person in our neighborhood, or even amongst any of our friends who has a home filled with furniture that is antique. I often wonder why that is, and what others must think when they are in our home. 
As was mentioned by someone else on here, growing up we always spent Sundays visiting family. And there were never any TVs on when visiting, it was just talking amongst family members, maybe eating a fresh pie or popcorn, sitting outside when it was warmer weather. I miss those days. Thanks as always for sharing your pictures and thoughts. 

GRANDMA DONNA WROTE, Hi Matty H, Thank you for starting us off on this forum post. Is Acts of sewing a blog or youtube?  Thank you for sharing this information, I am happy that it is helping you to sew.  I do understand wishing our days were longer, that means must be doing something you love. :)

 Lesley B, I am very happy you have joined our forum.  Your photos are lovely, thank you for posting them here in the forum.  I just love tea cozies and I keep saying that I am going to make one and you have given me an idea of what I can do with some of the vintage flour sack fabric and make a drop over cozy for my tea pot.  You do wonderful crochet work, it is very enjoyable to see what you have made. Again, so happy to have you here.  I have been away from my computer for a few days so I am late posting.

Ellen W, I am happy that you have posted, when my Grandmother was living with my mother she would make doll dresses and the dish soap bottle aprons. When you mentioned the dish soap bottles my heart lit up thinking about how each of us would get something such as the dish bottle apron or a little plastic doll with a crochet dress.  I miss her so much as those were wonderful days.  Thank you.

Joan S, we have not had a problem with crows but some years we do have predators that want our peaches.  Our son and his wife had every single peach removed by racoons last year and this year as well.  So discouraging to lose a good crop like this.  Last year our pears burst from too much rain and so this year we will be watching them very close.

Teri P, Happy retirement week!  You are almost there, I am so happy for you!  Now you will be really busy, Lol!

Ann W, such wonderful memories, I wish our younger generations could have known more about the past in person, I hope the world will become a better place and new really good memories be made. I am sure not all is bad now and there are good memories being made but I feel there was truly a good difference before the distractions we have today.  I love to study history to find those things that I never knew, and people sharing their stories.

Erika C,  I do have a soap "thing."  I stay away from synthetic as much as possible.  I have learned that some of the younger ones that come for a visit do not know what to do with a bar of soap.  That really surprised me.  It is like a novelty to them.  So I keep a bar of soap and a pump soap in the bathroom.  It is okay to go down the rabbit hole of novel and different food, Lol, you will always find yourself going back to basics at some point. :)  Hubby will make it through it. :)

Lori B, to answer your question about the dish powder, it is called "Blueland". I have to order it, I keep hoping it will show up in the stores.  It is a bit pricey but seems everything else is too.  I don't drink sodas or buy chips so I splurge for powdered dish soap. :)

Debbie in PA,  We have found out the same here, cleaning out a loved one's home seems to literally hit home!  I have realized so many things to not do, to not keep and to keep up the home repairs or at least get started on them.  There are so many needed repairs at Madge's house that it is overwhelming.  It has made us start a PMS, Preventative Maintenance Schedule.  This comes from Charles Navy days.  We have started this on the things we do have repaired and continue to repair the things we have not done.  Boy was this a wake up call.  Thank you for bringing this up for others to know about.  It is a bit like looking in a mirror. 

Michelle L, I laughed so hard reading your comment!  I wasn't sure if it was just me but I do not like cords either.  I am going to really expose myself here, I have actually painted a few cords to try and make them invisible and also I have covered one with pretty fabric. Lol  I have already moved my hub once this week but I put it back. :) Happy that you posted. 

Bethany H, I often feel that I must tell their stories since they were in my life.  I do get odd looks when someone comes in that has not been here but something happened that was wonderful that let me know that it is okay to live like this.  When Madge went on hospice and we brought her home here with us, the nurses, therapist and the" Team" started coming and I they started sharing how comfortable they were here in our home.  They loved the colors of the walls and the cozy areas. They relaxed and asked if they could just walk around in my home. Our blue rabbit figurine I call Pergie, every one of them commented on Pergie and how cheerful they felt when they looked at her.  These old things that we hang on to, I say put them out for us to see if they make us happy. 

Grandma Donna

Thank you for your kind welcome. I do hope you will make a cozy/cosy with your fabric.I have made a couple of fabric ones before, usually an inner and outer fabric with some kind of insulation between such as wadding or a wad of recycled pure wool (protective insulation packaging with a vegetable delivery a few years ago)

  However my friend suggested I make a separate inner fabric “cosy” with the wadding in, then an  outer one that can slip over the inner like a pillowslip. That way you could use easily wash the outer “pillowslip” . The inner one could also be used for other teapot cosies. Just an idea…

Hi G Donna,

Recently I have been starting a bit of a study of my own. My daughter will be 3 months in a week but I'm already starting to look into what educational route we are taking with her. This got me to collecting Early American Spellers, Readers, Primers, and math books. It is so interesting to see how early American schools taught.  Today my copy of the New England Primer is due in. Last week I got a Copy of an 1824 edition of The American Spelling Book by Noah Webster. Did you know Noah Webester really did write the ENTIRE dictionary on his own? I figured a work that extensive truly was a team effort, but that is not the case at all. It took him 22 years to finish. The thing that shocks me the most while reading these old text books for kids is there are morals and character building in every lesson.  The reason for school then was to learn morals and character lessons and religion. I read somewhere in one of these old books a lesson saying that even the finest educations are worthless really without good character (I'm paraphrasing). I was also shocked at what children were expected to know at such early ages. Have you ever looked into sewing samplers? I have seen pictures of ELABORATE sewing samplers done by girls as young as 8-13 years! A lot of the lessons speak about getting up early and going to bed early (since you mentioned it!). This is such a healthful habit. Somewhere in the Bible I remember reading a verse that says, 'Are there not 12 hours in the day' if I remember right, (again I'm paraphrasing..I encourage others to verify this themselves). It appears that in Bible times 0600 in the morning to 6 at night was a day and, of course there were 6 work days in the week. So it was normal and common practice to work these hours and rest only after the day/days were over. The evenings and Sabath only was time for "rest and repose" (as one of the my readers stated too). Imagine how much work and character building we could get done if all those hours were spent edifying ourselves, our households, and our communities. Also, imagine how much less trouble would be in the world if people just kept themselves busy about their own work and issues! That would solve SO much. Anyway, the history of American Education is so interesting but also sad to see how far it's fallen. I have a good plan for my daughter's homeschool education.  It will be based mostly off of these old books but she must be exposed to and taught technology because that is her future too. Having things to study sure makes life interesting. Can't wait for my New England Primer to get here! For 200 years, that was the education in American for most students. Sorry for the run on paragraph...I'm typing this on my tablet with a sleeping baby in my arms! I am so glad you are finding your old ways again in your house and are able to post more again. There is nothing wrong with using new technology when needed. Back in the day people would have used new technology available to them so we are doing exactly what they would have done...we just have different technology available. Finding a balance on how much of it to use or not use is key, IMO. I will try to write you an email here soon. Take care and God bless!

How lovely to receive another of your lovely letters. I am pleased that you are more settled after some challenging years.  The cats look contented with you both. 

We are dealing with a plague of tiny house moths. Every time they seem gone I spot another one dashing around, although occasionally I find that I am swatting at another of the “floaters” in my eye, and there is no bug. The trials of ageing. I don’t dare to put away Winter woolies yet, even if it was warm enough. Summer may be a-coming in, but it is in no hurry even though the blossom season is finished. 

We went to the County Show in spite of the showers. We took our picnic and flask of tea. The Women’s Institute Marquee was wonderful to visit, the theme was Alice in Wonderland and there were competition entries on display, with handicrafts, cakes, including jam tarts,  marmalades, painting, photographs, and flower arranging. The needlework included a toy Cheshire Cat, an apron for Alice, and a decorated Alice band. 

I bought yellow knitted tea cosy in a hexagonal stitch and some beeswax candles from our friends at the Staffordshire beekeepers stall, and a sturdy, handmade Norfolk willow shopping basket for my daughter. In old photographs of town high streets, I notice that most of the women have their shopping basket and string bags. 

Keep well both of you,

Best wishes,

Jane

GRANDMA DONNA WROTE, your welcome Lesley B, I am already planning out which tea pot to start with. 

Kieva A, this is wonderful information that you have found.  Thank you for sharing with us, I am shocked about 22 years of writing a dictionary, that is true dedication. Thank you for sharing what you have found by researching history.  

Janet W, what a fun outing that you had. I am curious where was this held? Very far from me, but I still would love to know.  We do not have anything like that here.  

It is held over two days at the Staffordshire County Showground. We have been going there for years, sometimes as helpers, talking to people about Beekeeping, or in a marquee doing teas, or meeting up with members of the Smallholders’ Association. I love to talk to people about their handicrafts and produce, and support local producers. 

I like to see the British rare breed sheep, pigs, and goats, and the poultry show, and the farriers competition where they have to make and fit a horseshoe, and the sheep sheering, and falconry displays. 

Such a BEAUTIFUL family you have created..feels like home to me

Hello G Donna,

Perhaps to feel more at home in 1917 you should wear a big hat ????  (I'm just being silly).   It does take time to get our houses to right.  I think it's akin to narrowing the gauge.  There are so many options no matter the subject: pillows, cars, homes, clothes, foods etc.  It can be overwhelming.  When we automatically cull half the options, it's almost a relief and actually helps that feeling of calm.  I'm not sure if that makes sense, but for me, being able to disregard so many things helps not to have the mental clutter.

Glad to hear critters are all settling in to become one family and that you and Charles are doing well even if missing some of your elders.  I do understand that feeling.

GDonna another great post! I really enjoyed seeing the photos of Lesley's handmade items. They bring much warmth and interesting things to look at in a home where nowadays they seem so bland.