Cabin Fever Anecdotes

We've been trying to get our cat Woodpile to stay outside more during the day so that he will sleep instead of terrorize us all night with his nocturnal antics.  This has led to some desparation on his part.  Poor cat.  Wants to be in where it's warm now, but he really wants to be out running, falling asleep in the sun, and watching the birds.  I know how he feels.

 

Another cold day, I came out of our bedroom to find this on the middle of our island counter.  Joe had replaced the big fruit bowl with this giant troll, which he brought into the marriage, and which I am removing from the marriage.  It scares the heck out of the kids.  

 

And finally, I cleaned out the refrigerator.  When you make batches and batches of jam, you have little leftover amounts that won't fill up jars, so you put them in jars in the fridge to feed your family and yourself later.  Over time, as I am now aware since cleaning, these amount to literally dozens of partially filled emptied jars.  Who knows what's in half of these?  Now they're empty, and my fridge is emptier too.  Can I call this spring cleaning even though it's only February?

    

The Apple Ladder

Over the summer on one of our many berry-picking adventures, the girls and I happened upon a place where a farmer had hung an old apple ladder (from her orchard) from the ceiling in her store, and wrapped around the ladder itself hung strands of little white Christmas lights.  It was beautiful.  So I've been on the look-out for an apple ladder myself, and you'd think with all the cousins and farms around here I'd have a connection in getting one.  Not so.  Well, Pete Snell did tell me he'd give me the "family discount" if I should choose to purchase one he had for sale in a Wells antique shop in which he has some high-priced items.  I decided to stick it out and hope for a more naturally-occurring situation, as if maybe I'd happen upon one in an old orchard somewhere, and the farmer would let me take it home.  Ha!  These things are evidently in high demand. 

As it turns out, a farmer did let me take one home-- well, it was a Christmas gift from my brother, and he is a farmer, so that counts right?  Here's a look at what I've got on my wall.  It's stage one of the ladder/lights project.  I don't see the lights happening any time soon, but that's ok because I love the ladder just the way it is.  LOVE it.

I did end up picking up a few of these hand-forged barn nails from Pete Snell's place in Hollis Center.  He got them from a salvaged barn in Buxton.






Blog Addendum:  I worried that you'd think I was hanging up a perfectly good ladder on my wall, which thus serves no purpose at all.  So I came back to tell you this-- the ladder has seen its day.  It's been patched on various rungs, is rickety and old.  It is a beautiful example of a tree, cut in half, attached by wooden rungs -no metal at all.  The way it used to be.  The ladder points at the top so the pruner/picker can avoid damaging the tree with a typical ladder's two sides.  It was painted red so the farmer wouldn't lose the ladder in the orchard, and because red paint was cheap.  Note how many barns used to be painted red too.  Anyway, I would use this baby if I could.  

Winter Project 1

You know that winter's pretty much here when I start a series of unnecessary projects around the house.  Here's the first.

I never ended up liking the light fixtures I picked out for the kitchen in our house 2 years ago when the place was built.  Specifically, I hated the one above our dining room table.  So, when the kids were in their most wild mid-afternoon craze, I upped and turned off the power in the whole house, not really knowing which individual breaker to switch for the one light.  I took apart the fixture, removed the light bulb and the socket in its entirety, and waited for Joe to get home.  Poor guy.  He gets in and I say, "Ok, honey.  I have this great idea about replacing our kitchen light fixtures with big old ball jars.  What do you think?"  He took one look at what I had done and promptly replaced the light bulb part of the fixture, then turned the power back on.  Oh, he also drilled a whole in a wide-mouth ball jar cover and added a screw top lid to the fixture in case I decided to randomly decide on a jar while he wasn't looking.  I know it's hard to believe, but this already looks better than what was there before:
 

Next, I hopped in the van on a cold and rainy Monday, kids in tow, and ran up to Peter Snell's antique place on route 202 in Hollis Center.  Now, if you've ever driven by the place, you might not guess it to be the kind of spot where you'd find fine art or other beautiful vintage items.  On the contrary, however, (I always wanted to say that!), the acreage of beat-up trailers, broken-down dump trucks, and other modes of ugly storage is jam-packed (note use of "jam") with tons and tons of old and perfect items.  From old windows to ladders, tools to toys, furniture to jars, it is a picker's dream.  Yeah, I stole that term right off my favorite tv show, American Pickers.  So I drove the van around the dirt roads that wind about the place and right up to the little trailer I know to be filled with antique jars.  Ball jars, clear, green, blue, you name it.  Malted milk jugs, mustard jars, liniment jars, all kinds of funky old glass stuff.  It was awesome.  I bribed the girls with their own individual sticks of gum while they waited for me on the steps of the trailer.  Oh, and by the way, Peter Snell mentioned that American Pickers will be featuring his place in August next year!  How cool is that?  That practically makes me famous!  Enough about my fame.  This is what I brought home:

And this is what I did before Joe arrived home from work on the same afternoon.  The photo's not great, but I'm telling you, I love it!  I can't wait to use a couple more of the jars to do the island lights in the kitchen.

Pie Boxes

I was on Craigslist over the weekend looking for a small wall cabinet in which to keep jars of jam to display for sale at a local restaurant.  I didn't want to spend tons of money on it, but it needed to be sturdy enough and rustic looking to fit the place.  I found what I was looking for about an hour away in NH and picked it up on Saturday.  I'm psyched to get it cleaned up and (hopefully) on the wall of the restaurant.  Either that or it'll make a good farm stand display.

                                                      Consider this a "before" photo.










But even more exciting was the this find in Westbrook, Maine, not too far from here.  A guy was selling two antique Table Talk pie boxes.  Yep, pie boxes.  They were literally used to carry several pies, 16 each to be exact, from the Table Talk operation to places where the pies would be sold.  The guy had acquired them through a friend who thought he could figure out something to do with them, but he couldn't find an appropriate purpose.  They don't fit sheets of paper well, so office use was not right, and the actual shelves do not come out, so putting anything taller than, well, a pie, wouldn't do.  He was psyched to learn that I might actually use these to carry pies, or at least to keep pie plates in.  When he saw the glean in my eye when I finally saw the boxes, he said, "Wow, you must really like to bake pies."  Now, I do like to bake pie, and I do intend to (try to) sell some over the summer, but 16 pies, or 32 pies?  That's a lot of pie.  We'll see.