My Mom, Mrs. Brown

Remember a while back when I featured my mom's amazing little house? Well, I wanted to share a few of her collections of dishes and housewares with you as I'm sure you will appreciate some of her little hoarded piles. She's like a little chipmunk, stockpiling coordinated items for future enjoyment. I used to make fun of her for it, especially when she amassed a trunk full of 50s chrome toasters and blenders, "In case one crapped out", but I have started doing the same in recent years so...

Her latest dish obsession is this pattern called 'Midwinter'. They're white with brown flecks and rims and were made in England (which always scores some extra, um, brownie points). We've slowly been piecing together a collection for her and I'm sure as soon as she's up to her eyeballs in the stuff she'll find something new (and vintage... and brown...) to latch onto.

She has a platter fetish and likes to collect a mishmash of them, but they HAVE to be vintage. She hates new dishes. She gets all twitchy and aggravated if a new plate touches her fingers, let alone comes into the house.

She's also obsessed with plain white restaurant ware...

...wooden bowls...

...white pots...

...wooden trays...

...hand turned candle holders...

...Dansk pepper mills (I think they just keep showing up at her door like stray kittens!)...

...mid century serving utensils...

...smoked glassware...

...and she also loves art pottery (preferably without a glaze. She's never been a fan of shiny things, she wouldn't even let my dad get a new TV or laptop that had a shiny black finish). I should also add that some of these collections shown are just samples of a larger group - the table wasn't big enough for it all!

Perhaps one day I'll show you her wardrobe full of vintage purses and shoes (all mostly brown). She may even get up the nerve to allow me to take a picture of her to share with alls y'all!

Passing Wind

Last Saturday we had a crazy wind storm that lasted almost 24 hours straight. Not only did we have more than 150 of my neighbour's rotten shingles blow all over our yard, we had a 70 foot blue spruce come crashing down as well.

Oh, how it broke my heart to see this fall. 

We figure it was about 50 years old. 

Lucky for us, we have amazing neighbours and parents who are quite handy with things like chainsaws and manly muscle power. It took us the entire day to slay this beast.

Eww, now all of that lattice is so exposed! Also, my neighbour's tip of a house is front and centre on that side. Ugh, I have to plant more vines this spring to cover that up. Perhaps a more permanent solution would be just to build a 20 foot stone wall between us...

Now it's just a tree volcano. Nature can be such an asshole.

Take Your Lumps.

(The photos in this post are pretty low quality. Most were taken on my old iPhone but you'll get the drift, right?)

Okay, so I have this huge lump on my right middle finger.

As if my hands weren't horrendous enough, now I have this small child of a tumor growing on one of my stumps. This lump didn't used to be this big, no no, it was just a teeny tiny thing two years ago when it first appeared. You see, way back when I was restoring the 44 wood windows in my house I started suffering from carpal tunnel and other hand/wrist pains. So what did I do? Go to the doctor? Noooooo, I just carried on doing other laborious jobs like painting my entire house (inside and out), sanding furniture, gardening and lawn work, etc. Well obviously I was an idiot because this lump is now huge - it talks and even eats with its own knife and fork. 

I am finally having it removed next week and it has meant a few trips to the doctor's office for check ups and xrays to make sure I didn't have cancer of the middle finger (oh the irony and karma would have been just too much if that were the case. I can't tell you how many people I have given the finger to with this very digit over the years). The doctor thinks the lump was likely caused by an injury from all the repetitive manual labour I've been doing since I moved here. See? DIY isn't all it's cracked up to be! Why do you think roofers, landscapers, etc all have bad backs, bum knees and skin cancer? Because home maintenance is a health hazard. 

All this lump stuff has led me to ponder very deep questions about life, such as what the hell hospitals, dentists and doctors are thinking with the peach and blue color combo!? Is it supposed to be a relaxing palette chosen especially for people with lumps, mobility scooters and oxygen tanks? 

Is this 'industrial' look going to be trendy 20 years from now? 

Maybe this huge plastic Herman Miller shelf will be a design collectible of the future? "I'm just dying to get my hands on one of those beige, plastic Herman Miller medical wall shelves from 2012 but they're so hard to find. They're going for $6500 on eBay!"

And this lamp? How on-trend is this floor lamp? Do you think people would want it as bad if they knew it was used to peer into women's vaginas for the last 30 years? Probably...I guess that's what gives it its 'character'. Speaking of character, note the 70s oven mitts on the examination table...

I'm not so sure any tongue depressor is ideal.

And could a bed pan ever be perfection? I guess it could be if it was 100 years old and had been peed and pooped into a minimum of 75 times by a soldier in the first world war. Then it would be collectible, right?  

Does your doctor's office creep you out?

Did Doogie Howser M.D. have a peach and blue office?
Are we looking at a future trend in the making?