My friend Josefina presented a great make-it-and-take-it workshop at our then-club Christmas party one year.
She provided the bottle brush tree already attached to a crackle base, the dried stuff, as well as purchased ornaments (like the little horse below) and hand made ornaments of all kinds. A real bonanza!
We attached the dried greenery (whitery?), applied the little fake lights and roping and began placing ornaments. There were so many we had to finish at home.
Look at the workmanship!
Notice how she used the inexpensive wedding favor doves, leaving some white and painting some red, too.
Despite severe arthritis, Josefina was marvelously adept at making exquisite things, and finished making the last of these ornaments on the plane returning from a trip to Europe the night before our club's party!
Here, my finished Josefina tree is displayed in a glass dome on a bookshelf, along with some gift-filled wagons. The Santa on the right has gifts in his pack, and the little toy box is a Hallmark ornament filled with tiny toys. That lamp is actually very small; it was a gift one Christmas from my young nephew, Andy.
This little wagon is about three inches long, and has been placed in many spots in my living room over the years. It is filled with inexpensive little toys and now parks by the Josefina tree.
As does this more recently filled metal wagon. That tiny pottery piggy bank is from Mexico. Because I have so many wrapped mini packages, I sometimes put a large stack next to these little wagons. They make a good display next to books on a shelf, as shown above with the tree, or on an end table.
Here's the rest of that shelf. The ornaments in that potpourri holder (the odd blobs are from potpourri) are Shiny-Brites; the first decorations my husband and I bought many years ago when we felt we could afford our first Christmas tree. I read somewhere recently that those inexpensive ornaments had become sought-after, and that a famous designer was resurrecting the line. No doubt the new ones will cost much more than the originals! The brass bowl has more of a wonderful smelling potpourri which I will probably never find again.
As an aside: You may notice those Shakespeare books. Well, here's the story of the eight brown volumes behind the ornament holder.
One early summer morning in 1969 my husband's sister and I left her parents' home on the East Shore of Flathead Lake to go the grocery store in Polson, Montana. On the way, we saw a woman putting up an Estate Sale sign at the end of the drive to a large, elaborate old log house. Neither of us had any extra money, but we decided to stop because we had always wanted to see inside that old house. The woman was quite friendly and told us it was the summer home of a former governor of Montana and they were his summer and vacation personal belongings that were being sold.
The first thing I saw
when we stepped inside was two very tall glass-fronted
built-in bookcases on either side of a huge stone fireplace
that rose to a very high ceiling. I just stood there
and gaped at them and everything else in that fabulous
old log house. My husband's sister and I were the only
ones there at that moment, and the lady asked if I was
interested in books. I nodded dumbly, and she said, "Go
ahead. Open the door and look at them if you want to."
I had never seen anything
like it. Row after row of gorgeous leather and gold-tooled
books stretching toward the giant wooden beams of the
vaulted ceiling: the complete works of Thackeray, Dickens,
Mark Twain, .... and then I saw them! My heart skipped
a beat when I picked up Volume 1 and read "Shakspere" in
gold on the brown cover. Inside the flyleaf was the date
of publication - 1864!
I clutched Paula's arm
and whispered, "The editor refers to 'Mr. Lincoln' and 'Mr. Dickens' as contemporaries!" She grabbed my arm back and said, "Omigosh!" I figured there was no way I could afford anything there, but I asked the lady how much the set was anyway. She said, "Oh,
they're pretty old; you can have them for $8.00."
If we hadn't been clutching each other already, we would have both fallen to the floor.
We rummaged frantically
through our purses, and other than the grocery money,
which we didn't dare spend, had just a few coins between
us. "Could you hold them for me?" I blurted out. "I need to go get some money!" She
nodded and we tore out like two idiots, giggling and
whispering excitedly.
I drove as fast as I've ever driven on a mountain road down that lakeshore. As we screeched to a half in front of the house, my sister-in-law jumped out of the car and nearly broke her ankle as we raced to find her brother/my husband who was on the tractor, plowing the cherry orchard. We stumbled all over each other's words as we told him about our find.
"It's eight volumes,
1864!"
"Spelled S H A K
S P E R E!"
"Gold tooled!"
I finally cried, "I'm
going to be an English teacher! I can't LIVE without
them!"
He wiped the orchard
dirt from his sweaty face with his sleeve, looked thoughtfully
toward the lake shining in the distance, then reached
in his billfold and pulled out eight one dollar bills
(a lot of money to us in those days). "Go get them."
Paula and I held our breaths as we raced back down the road. There were other cars parked in front of the big old house and I just knew someone else had probably gotten them. But the woman was ready for me and smiled as I handed her my $8.00 with trembling hands. Oh, if I had had any money to spare, I could've bought for a song that day wonderful leather-bound sets, Twain, Thackeray, Dickens, ....
But I got the pick of
the litter with my eight one dollar bills. Each volume
has a numbered bookplate that says, "Private Library of John E. Erickson," and
his pencilled comments are throughout the books. I learned
later that he was governor of Montana from 1925 to 1933
and led the state through the Depression; the only Montana
governor elected for three terms. He resigned in 1933
to be appointed to the United States Senate.
AND he was a man who read Shakespeare and thought about what he was reading. I have always wondered where HE got the books.
In addition to more recent commentaries, I used those books as references when I was teaching English. The editor's commentaries are absolutely fascinating, too. I took the volume with McBeth to school when we were reading that play and showed it to my students and told them the story of finding the books. There was an almost mystical reverence as student after student gently turned its pages and passed it around.
My husband's Uncle Ted,
my mentor and an English teacher for many years, had
a cherry orchard on the lakeshore but didn't go to the
sale that day. When he saw what I had found, he nearly
fell over. He said, "Wouldn't you rather have a
nice new complete set of Shakespeare than those old tatty
ones? I'd be glad to take them off your hands."
Well, naturally, I smiled and thanked him for his kind offer but declined. lol
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