Bead Soup Amuse-Bouche

Just a little teaser for my Bead Soup partner...

I will give a little glimpse, but only in B&W because I believe my package will arrive tomorrow and there should be some surprise.  For a Spanish teacher (which my partner is also), I've gone very French lately.

Buttons & Watches

I went downtown yesterday and hit a couple of the few antique/junque shops in town.  I was on the prowl for buttons.  I wanted some to make molds and some for closures.  The lady at Backward Glance who specializes in vintage clothing was finally open and her daughter was up from Miami and helping to unpack boxes.  It turns out her husband, who is usually in the shop with her, has been extremely ill and her shop has been closed because she is taking care of him.  She told me she has a visiting nurse who comes everyday, but that it is not enough time for her to keep the shop open. She was very excited to be working and helped me find some good buttons.  I'm going to keep checking back to try to catch her when to doors are open so that I can find more little jewels to use.  Some of the best finds are glass and crystal buttons which I have yet to photograph and some gold trimmed porcelain deco buttons with neat rows of tiny black dots.

I also found some watch parts that I absolutely love.  The watch on the right still has its crystal, but seems to be missing its hands.  ¿How did that happen?  The piece on the left has its hands, but no crystal.  The most beautiful part is the sapphire-colored stem tip.  The photo makes it appear dark and muddy colored, but it is a perfect sapphire blue.  These will make some fantastic necklaces.

A very lizard day

At 5:00 AM I put my dogs to frolic while I make coffee. They head out into their run through the side porch. Just to the left of the door hangs a string of glitter encrusted plastic snow flakes which I think are beautiful and refuse to take down even though it is almost Memorial Day. This morning I sat down on a bench and waited for them because I had a little burst of energy the night before and ground the coffee and set up the machine so all I needed to do was push the button. I looked around at the peeling paint and cobwebs and thought about the amount of time it would take to scrape and paint. Then I spotted a regular visitor in an unusual place. One of the snowflakes had acquired a rider:

 Papi used the camera later in the day when he spotted a strange creature when he was bringing in the mail:

...and all the wet weather is certainly going to bring the snakes out of the woods.  Fingers crossed that I don't stumble across any rattle snakes.

Gone fishin'

One of my classes is making family trees as a culminating project for the year.  In Spanish they will label their family members, describe their personalities, give a physical description, and tell a little about what each likes and doesn't like.  I drew out some of my family tree and talked a little about it.  I love this photo and a copy of it hangs on the bulletin boards in my classroom and office at home.  I realized that I didn't know enough about the picture so I asked my dad.

My Great-Grandpa Raymond Vlerebome & Great Uncle Roger Stewart

My dad told me, "Looks like Grandpa caught the sunfish and left it at the boat dock to be stuffed and mounted.  They are wearing 40's style clothes and were probably dressed to play pool.  He was good at all sports but especially baseball, billiards, and bowling.  When I was a boy in the 1950's he came to our house on Eastview every week.  I liked spending weekends with him at his apartment on Riverview Street.  He was a lot of fun and a very nice man."

Standing on the left is Roger Stewart who was married to my Great Aunt Jean, one of my grandmother's sisters.  Roger had a heart condition and the doctor told him to move to Florida where the climate was better than Dayton, Ohio.  A few years later Roger died, but Jean decided to stay.  she never remarried, but would visit Dayton each year at Christmas.


Great-grandpa Vlerebome was a pitcher and still played on a team when in his 50's.  When he was younger his mother would not let him tryout for the Cincinnati Reds because baseball players had reputations for being into ungentlemanly pursuits.

He became a printer and was a foreman on a five man crew that worked at McCalls.  They used a five color letterpress to print the covers of Time and McCall's magazines.  I believe they also may have printed Ladies Home Journal because my grandmother always had a subscription to the magazine for which her father had worked.

Great-grandpa loved to hunt and fish.  After he retired he would go to Wisconsin and Florida.  He stayed with his daughter Jean and fell in love with Miami.  He wanted to buy a boat and live on it, but that didn't work out.  He bought a two-family house in Dayton and fixed it up, then he bought a four-family house.

He also owned a gas station in Dayton for awhile.  His wife died in 1934.  A short time later he married a woman he met in a bar.  His daughters, my grandmother and her sisters, made him get it annulled.  During WWII, my father's family lived with him for a few years.  He didn't get along well with his son-in-law, my grandfather.  He was very independent and drove a car well into his 80's. He carried a roll of cash in order to settle up when he got into fender benders.

23 and counting!

We have a huge oak tree down in the alley behind the house.  Actually it fell from my neighbors yard, but it is at the edge of the property line.  Papi and I went out last night at dusk to check it out.  I had a little fun with the tree, but was even happier to think about the 23 days of school remaining.  We are out on May 28.  ¡Yahoooo!  No more pencils, no more books.

Corgi attack

help!

gotta try again tomorrow...been working to post, but keep getting html error...