Jul30
Author Archives: Dianne
Jul30
I love Cardinals
Jul30
Redone photo trio
I decided to change the look of my trio of little Irene (photographed in 1921). The cardboard was held on with shards of metal and many broke off. These are not studio quality as the back says ‘postcard’. I gingerly lifted the first photo (which happen to be my favorite) and it tore across the side of her face. I was able to line it up and touch it up with a little pencil, but I was not happy I did this to a 91 yr old sweet photo. I was deciding what would look good with these and right away I thought of Tim Holtz. He does some neat ‘steam punk’ type of designs and his alphabet scrapbook paper looked perfect to me. I had to piece it a bit as the frame was longer. I when added a little gold paint to the frame itself to go with the goldtone color in the paper.
From this:
I should have scanned all these first…that’s another day.
Doing some dusting, etc. today. The hubby did vacuuming and laundry.
Jul29
Awesome vintage finds
I took some photos of my new stash from Friday. I am tickled with the framed photo trio and the big bag of vintage greeting cards! Good finds. I haven’t been feeling that great from being overly warm at night and I have been dragging during the day, so I enjoyed looking at these yesterday.
Here is sweet Irene:
I asked the Facebook gang if I should replace the mat as it’s just an ugly yellowed piece of paper. To have such a sweet photo shoot, the previous owner sure didn’t do this trio justice. Most said to replace it with a gray tone mat to go with the flow of the photos better. One artist said that your eye goes right to ugly yellowing paper. One said it gives it character. I may hold some of my pretty scrapbook papers to see. What do you think?
Then I found these interesting portraits, many from Lancaster, PA.
One had this stamp on the back-an old Ben Franklin. It’s damaged by maybe worth at least $5-more that a cent as it originally cost.
1930s McCall’s paper dolls (both sides of sleeve)
She’s so sweet
I found this little frog with the waterlily hat. He’s only about 2 inches high.
I’m still going through the bag of cards. Here’s a few I like so far:
and the inside….that name tickled me
And this one wasn’t even used:
Today I needed a change of scenery and we went to the Delaware Farmer’s market again. I was not thrilled with the produce today. Of course Friday produce will be better. I did go in a little ‘antique’ stall (mostly books and records-lps) but I had seen a little bisque bust similar to one my pal Carole has, but smaller. Last week it was marked $20, but they were going to lower it 5. This time around when I said could you do better the man said $12. I found her on eBay and she’s a Limoge look-alike and had a boy partner. She was about $35 on the site!
I told Brian we should have a stall like this and he went humph. : )
Geocaching on a whim and when you are tired don’t go hand in hand most times. We ‘almost’ looked for 4 today and only found 1. The one we found was at a train depot-one where you see scenic Delaware. Easy as pie. There was one in Pep Boys we couldn’t find as the GPS was bouncing between a guardrail and near the road-a busy road. One was a park and we didn’t feel like walking trails at 5:30 at night. We’ll have to go for a picnic sometime. The last one should have been easy, but my GPS went out and it involved some bushwacking. We went in the woods a bit, saw where someone had made a fire in there-close to a baseball field and the Police athletic building. No dice.
I thought this was interesting. At the place where I bought the bust, they had a 1939 NY World Fair book. The cover was almost off, but it had some great photos. They wanted $20 and I thought that was steep. When we got home, I asked my mom if someone in the family had been to that fair and she said she had! Will have to try and get the book cheaper for her next time.
Jul28
Looking for abandoned relatives and caches
Friday seems to be our day to go out shopping and caching. A antique mall down in Newark, DE had a sale going on and since I haven’t been there for a few months, we headed on down. It’s near where we bought our Mariner and we kind of forgot where to go. Anyway, found some great old photos and a big bag of vintage greeting cards and some little figurines. I got between 20-40% off. My ‘prize’ was a trio of photos of a little girl (back in 1921) named Irene posing. She may be someone’s abandoned relative, but at least she has a name. I’ll share photos soon. I may redo the frame and matting and I will hang it up.
As for cache hunting…we (well me, but Bri too) wanted to find #50…and we did! It was a funny looking vial, I don’t even know what it’s for and don’t want to know.
The next one was near a mural in the town. I think it was on some traffic signal sign right where people were zooming by…passed that one, but the mural was cute. Didn’t take a photo, but will if I look again sometime. This was a noisy, going in circles kind of area. And it was hot, so not fun as it could be. I do like the town as it has some cute shops…will come back when it’s cooler.
I happen to see there was one right near a fountain at the University of Delaware, a very nice campus. We looked in the blazing sun again for a nano-those tiny ones, no luck.
Found the below in a cemetery. We were all sweaty after 10 minutes!
Bri’s getting good at spotting these little containers. Glad it was blue!
We did drive-thrus in few shopping centers on the way home. The one may have been in bushes, but again I looked, but didn’t dig deeper as there was a ton of traffic in that area. I lost the GPS at the other shopping center. These are some in shopping areas we go to once in a while. so we will look again. I am liking the big ammo boxes and down in Delaware we can find quite a few along the Delaware Geocaching Trail.
We stopped for a yummy cheese steak sandwich in a shop that was too warm. A few doors down was a cupcake place…yeah, I splurged ($2.25 each). I got one with Carole/Pea in mind as she’s at a tribute event for Elvis this weekend. I tried half-it’s a banana cupcake with peanut butter frosting and bacon. I thought it needed more of a contrast between sweet and savory. The other I bought was a Key lime with coconut cake-nice.
We watched the Olympics-nice opening across the pond in Great Britain. Some of those countries need to rethink how they dress their athletics. Many were comical to say the least.
We are planning a few activities-a ghost tour in Philly-but Brian and me. We are going the 15th of August, so pray it’s cooled off by 7 pm. They last about 1.5 hours. This is a Livingsocial deal.
And we are thinking about the Beatlemania event that is held over Labor Day weekend that we went to last year in Maryland. Just one night and there are a few ticket deals online. We had fun last year and Sean said he’d buy his own admission too. Got to get that booked.
A photo from last year…
Jul28
Photo Hunt-Jokester
Swallowing a sword for real!, originally uploaded by DianthusMoon.
We went to the PA Renaissance Fair a few years ago. Most of the actors and performers are indeed jokesters, even this fellow who swallowed a sword!
Jul26
You find some- you don’t
As I was saying in an earlier post, Brian and I were getting the micro cache finds down to a science. We decided to go look for some larger caches yesterday down in Yorklyn, DE. I mainly use my phone. So it was after 3 when we went out as Brian had a phone interview and we start to drive down our road. I should have gotten the site loaded up first as it wouldn’t do so going down our road. We turned around until it picked up again, but this was just the beginning of our issue with it. I decided to try a cache that hasn’t been found for a while-like March of this year. When you read info on a few caches, you forget some of the hints, etc. We parked across from a lovely place we’ve never seen before-Marshall Steam Museum & Friends of Auburn Heights Preserve Inc.. They run a miniature steam train here several times a year. That winds around this pond:
Several bullfrogs live here and croaked or jumped in when we approached. Up the hill is a gorgeous mansion with turrets.
We started looking for the cache across the road which lead into woods. That didn’t work so Bri suggested we look around the train museum property. The GPS never went under 106m. After I got home, I saw we were suppose to park around the corner from this cache where we ended up finding another one anyway. I guess I should take some notes. We went on a few wild goose chases -decided not to go through waist high grass at one place! We’ll go back in the fall.
We found this one and I gladly added more swag to the box. I am finding these caches need goodies! I found a few cute things at the Dollar Store and get a few things for Oriental Trading Co.
After about 45 minutes of looking for the first one, we gave up. If we had followed a dirt road behind the above cache, I think we would have hit on it! The GPS was really jumpy because of the trees, etc.
Today I went to my yearly eye doctor visit, though a few months late and with no insurance. I’ve been seeing a nice woman doctor a little younger than I am. So my prescription is the same after a few years and my internet purchased glasses are fine. She said my eyes are really dry and I have to use an antibiotic cream at night to see if that helps. I have to keep the pressure checked in my eyes for glaucoma, but I am good for a year. : )
I’m hoping to go to an antique mall tomorrow and look around for a few caches so I can get to #50. The mall is having a 20% off sale on some things and I usually look for old photos and paper items. It’s something to do. : )
Jul25
Narrowing it down…
So we are heading up to 50 cache finds soon! I’m thinking it would be nice to go look for a few larger ones so I can add some swag to them. Lately it’s been all micros. If you told me that a few months ago, I’d laugh. I surely could have found these with hints online, but it was indeed a learning process which, when the first one was found, it sure was a surprise and made us smile! In fact, my statistics show that we have mostly found micros. But these kind ‘get old’ and are called ‘micro spew’ as they are so common. Most are in shopping centers…there’s your hint!
I was sad to see this one open with it and with the log and things floating in water in the inside of a tree. This was an old cemetery down the road from my mom’s house.
This is considered a micro as it pill bottle size…but they can be smaller, a ‘nano’ and Brian has found two of those!
Brian and I took my mom to the eye doctor. She gets medication by injection in one or the other and yesterday it was her good eye. We dropped her off as it’s a 2+ hours appointment. That’s when we go look for caches, but I did look around the mall too. After mom’s appointment, we took her to Texas Roadhouse as they have a nice ‘early bird’ special Mondays to Thursday. Their select menu is $7.99 and there is a 6 oz sirloin steak on that menu! That’s what we usually want anyway.
We take mom home (the restaurant is almost halfway to our home) and are almost to the same area when she phoned and said her purse with her medication was in the car-and indeed it was! So we had to turn around again…but looked for a few caches in a nearby shopping center first. The first was easy, but the second one called ‘Bah humbug’ as it was placed around Christmastime of last year was a ‘DNF’ (did not find) by many people. I looked at the hints and thought we’d give it a try. First you find a long metal fence and have to narrow down on that. We looked and looked-nothing. I did email the Cache owner for a hint and he said ‘fishing’-so I’m thinking the cache is hanging off a fishing line down the wall-the wall drops at least 100 feet behind the fence! I saw a string with nothing on the end, so I’m thinking that was a decoy string-lol. We’ll have to check it out some other time.
Brian has a phone interview in a few hours. I haven’t heard back from the school. Sean signed up for a volunteer internship for a few weeks. Something for the resume and of course it’s a learning experience too!
Jul23
Nasturtiums starting to bloom
Hey Zoey! I’m not sure if these are the nasturtiums you sent me a few months back, but they may be close. I don’t think yours have the color inside. These are pretty though.
I’m doing a few Artist trading cards today as it’s so blazing hot and I’m tired from not sleeping well as I am getting hot flashes as soon as I lay my weary head on the pillow. I was asked to make a few ATCs for a Flickr group, so I thought, why not? I’ll share soon.
Jul22
Fluttering around the yard
Not only are these gorgeous yellow Swallowtails fluttering here and there, Brian and I were doing some much needed yard work over the weekend.
Saturday we were pulling weeds out of flowerbeds and Brian did the sidewalk. I thought it would be wise to get the weedwacker out on Sunday, so I fished around the shed and found it plus the extension cord. I started and Brian finished, though he ran out of cord. Big improvement!
It was one of the most pleasant days we had in a long time. I even got the iPad to work sitting outside so I watched an episode of Web Therapy with Lisa Kudrow (remember Friends’ Phoebe?) She is really good with her prim and proper voice, but ‘her web practice’ looks like she has ulterior motive like maybe fooling around with her web patients!
With the events of Friday-the shootings in Aurora, CO…we’ve been walking around here with a sick feeling in our stomachs. An artist connection on Face Book said an old friend of hers lost her granddaughter Veronica, age 6. This is a nightmare. The public shouldn’t get their hands on assault weapons capable of firing round after round of bullets. Wasn’t it enough last year in Arizona to start regulating weapons like this? Sean was at a midnight screening of Batman in Delaware, but who is to say why couldn’t that have happened in any theater?
Collages & Creative Goodness 