Sleigh Bells Ring, Are You Listening.......

Some of my bloggers friends didn't know what these are so I will give a short explanation.  When the horses were harness up to take sleighs out in the snow, they would be draped with straps of leather with these bells attached to them.  If you have ever seen the Budweiser Beer ads and listened to the sound of the horses, you can hear the bells jingling.  The bells were given numbers for their different sizes.  In this photo you are seeing the number 11 upside down. On the other half of that part of the bell is "No." for the word number.


Vinegar and salt along with a very fine steel wool cleans brass.  My first experience with brass was when I was a kid.  I took home two fixtures from my grandmother's house that  had benn removed to put up modern ceiling lights.   They were black and as a kid finding brass that was shinier and more yellow than what the bells have, was just an amazing experience.  As I grew up and moved away, my dad gave them away, and I have forgiven him for that. 

Some of the bells are more worn than others but the line designs are still visible in this bell. It has a few cracks in it but still jingles with a good sound.

You can see the numbers on the larger ones but two of them do not have any markings even though they have the same designs and were made probably by the same company.

I won't remove the wire. That is just something I like to keep around. Some person for some reason put this S shaped wire into the bell for a reason, and even though it is rusty I want it to stay. It gives it more history.

Flowers for you, to thank you for putting up with my obsessive blog about bells.  The paperwhites do have a smell that you have to learn to tolerate after while.  I liked the smell at first but it is not at all so friendly anymore.  Our new dining room wall made a perfect backdrop for these flowers.  It is funny how the all sprouted up at different heights.  Maybe they got watered more on one side.  


Thanks for stopping by......

Box reveals ancient drawings......

I bet your first thought your were viewing Luscaux Cave drawings from the famous French caves. It is sort of similar but no, it is the box. Yesterday's blog shows a box which holds all of it's old things and  while I was dusting it off and looking at the box, I discovered a young boy had made his mark on the world.


The box came from the John and Iva farm.  It was a mystery about the drawings at first because I had forgotten they were on there.  A young boy probably stored his valuables in it and decorated it with pencil and crayon. The John and Iva farm sat four miles or less south of a town called Hopeville. They had four boys, Harvey, Lowell, George and Loren.  George was killed in the War and is buried over in one of cemeteries in France.  George was a little younger than my dad but he would have been born in the 1920's.  His older brothers, who are all still alive, probably are all in their 90's or close to it by now.

As I was brushing a little dust off of this box, with it's dovetailed corners, I spotted the name Lowell in a word bubble. If you click on the picture you can see it.  It apparently is a drawing of him, having just punched someone. I can figure out who the guy is laying on the ground seeing stars but I have a feeling it is a neighbor boy.  I may research that as I have a writing about them and their country school days. Maybe I can find a name that fits the poor handwriting.

In this photo you can see a dog chasing a rabbit with their little balloon descriptors above their heads. I like the color that he put along the bottom of the box.  I am assuming that products that were in jars probably were shipped in these kind of boxes.


In many ways I am so glad that I clung to the junk. Now I do go back and find this very interesting and do appreciate it.  I have said before that I was very close to John and Iva and even though their family was a whole generation beyond ours, I was able to follow them for quite some time.  Their son Loren, became the state's main administrator at the Historical Building in Des Moines but is now retired.  He kept track of my mom for years and now that she is gone,  he and I write every Christmas.  It is like clinging on to a one last bit of my childhood history being able to still know him.


I have to get to work now. Another snowed-in day with schools closed and roads in bad shape. Everyone stay safe.  Thanks for stopping by.....

What's inside your wooden box??????

A wooden box that had come along with all the other things that I received in my John and Iva Collection. They were an older couple who lived south of us on a farm that really did remind one of the Walton's on the tv program many years ago. They gave me the toys and this box must have been in that metal toy container.  In reality they were step family as my Grandmother remarried into their family and that is how we became so close to them.  The really liked my mom as they had four boys and their grandchildren were all out of state scattered so I was a grandson to them too.

Some of these things came with the box but a lot of them were things I collected as a kid from others also, who thought they were junk.  I am going to go into detail on other blogs about the individual things and the box has a story too.  The tractor of course was a John and Iva toy that I painted.  Some of the bells were theirs also.  I will try to photograph things individually and share some of their past. I will leave you today to just look and see what you can see.

Off beat and blaaahhh......

The paperwhites became very tall in the last couple of days.  One of my friendly bloggers bought the same product and asked me if I had smelled them.  They have a very strong pepper smell as well as a sort of sweet smell.

This is a plant blog today as you can see.  It is time to see a change in our season.  Photos of the most common flowers will be my change today.

I bet right now there is three foot of snow sitting on top of this flower bed.  I will be going out and scooping walks again tomorrow.  I did really enjoy the Olympics ceremony tonight Canada.  It will be nice to see a few of the competitions.


Thanks for reading......

Friday fiddle faddle........

To make a long story short, this is a piece of an old Amish barn, the barn had burned down.  The indention that has been chiseled out was the location where a bracket once was positioned.  The bracket was removed and is going to be reused in our old town interurban depot.  Two brackets with rollers will hold up a sliding wood door that will move back and forth to cover things posted on a wall.  
Even though it is not so much decorative, the craftsmanship has to be admired.  It the barn had not burned that one person's work, which was essential for that door to be hung correctly, would have stood maybe another century. 
A footnote to what I said here, the barn was from out east and it was on the man's brother's property. Amish are building new barns now where they have settled, more in Missouri than in Iowa.

 Another tea pot that I hadn't included with the one blog in which I talked about decoration.  This one had a stencil line outline placed on it and then it was hand painted as you can see where they painted sometimes outside of the lines with quick brush strokes.

Just like a good soldier, I finally moved the very last of the Christmas decorations to the basement. It was a couple of boxes that sat there for awhile, and today, I just did it.  In ten months I will bringing it back up. 

I have  been painting and reworking paintings and getting back on the bicycle again.  Painting is a skill but when it is also an expression you have to warm up the process to have success.  I painted out a sky three times today and still don't have what I want.  Maybe tomorrow I will get it done.  Thanks for stopping by.....Friday

Here comes the sun........

I am taking pictures of the sunlight and if there is snow in the picture, I am not recognizing  it.  I thought I should get an updated photo on my poor red bench under the old apple tree.

Here it is, the sun is shinning today.  The red dots are compliments of my camera, I don't know why or how but they are there.

Find the missing two tiered bird bath.  This is the first time ever that I  have seen it totally covered up by that white stuff.  I again wanted to show you the spot of sun in view.

My good friend blue ball hangs in there, but a couple of more snow falls and we will be at the peak of its demise.  More snow coming over the weekend.

We got ice.  The sun really isn't melting much but on one side of my house where it is so heavy, it did cause some it to fall to the ground because of it's weight.

Going out for salad and pizza tonight to celebrate still being alive and well.  On a serious note, my sister-in-law lost her mother today and even though it isn't immediate family, it is immediate hurt for everyone around her.  My brother may come back for the funeral, which is the only good thing coming out of this time.  I miss  seeing both of my brothers who live in the warmer climates of Arizona and California year round. 
Thanks for stopping by and looking at my sunshine........

Wednesday's findings.....

I have this antique firetruck. It came from an older couple,  John and Iva Horton. They offered many old, very old toys to me when I was helping them to move them into town.  I was still in high school and didn't want to be greedy.  Gosh, I should have, could have, but  didn't take  a lot because as a kid I thought I shouldn't.  The rest ended up in the dump I found out much later.  
It is missing lots of pieces and I ruined it's value by painting it, but I still like it.

I was digging in my cabinet, formerly an oat sprouter, and found another car of the collection.  It too is a Tootsietoy.  I didn't know the Tootsietoy is what makes matchbox cars.  Also is the little plane I found that came with the John and Iva collection.  They lost a son in the War and he is buried in France.  Ironically they had a lot of war toys in their toy barrel. This plane is a WW 2 plane replica but I am not sure about models of planes.

I mentioned an oat sprouter above and if you want to check it out I blogged about it a long while back last year.   Show me the Oat Sprouter.

The three male cardinals were disgusted as they had to wait for the squirrel to get off their feeder.  I sent Barney out to send him on his way.  It isn't a close up but if you click on the photo you can see the bright red hungry cardinals a little closer.

We lack 6 inches now of having had 5 feet total of snow for the winter season so far. It is a record and we will hit the 5 foot total easily.
Thanks for stopping by.......