No Pattern Required

My parents recently bought a small house on a lake in Woodruff, Wisconsin.  It is really cute, in a retirement community and they love it.  And the best part is, they have a yellow 1970s bathroom. Pictures of that are coming up later this week.

In the meantime, here is pictures of the Wood’s Cafe, which is right down the street from my parent’s new place.

Pretty neat, isn’t it?  This cute little mom and pop cafe has been owned by the same family since 1963, and while the inside isn’t exactly the same as it once was, it is pretty close.

Here is a picture of the cafe from the 1960’s.  Don’t you just love it???

And here is the cafe today.

The floor has changed somewhat, but the counter is pretty much the same, which is the great part. 

The two cute guys are Tom, of course, and my Dad, who was really excited to find a place where he could get good corned beef hash for breakfast before a fishing trip.

Here is the AMAZING Formica on the counter.  Tom was dying over this and I can’t blame him.  I would give my eyeteeth to be able to put this in our kitchen right now!

Another shot of the counter and the great barstools.

Our food, nice and hot!  Looks good, doesn’t it?  And I adore the vintage plates! The pancakes were super good, by the way and had real butter on them.  I love Wisconsin.

So, if you come up to Northern Wisconsin, make sure you stop by the Woods Cafe in Woodruff, especially if you are crazy about vintage!

Gotta love this brick place, kids.  Over 1400 square feet with 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms for $120,000.  And I love the outside.  Oh, and check out the 360 degree tour.  Most of it is the same as the pictures, but there is an amazing MCM glass divider in the dining area that is a must-see.

Check out the drawer pulls on the built-ins!! Love them!

Too cute!!

Here is my finished matador!  Whew, I thought I would never get done with that guy.  I know, I know, it needs to be ironed and it isn’t the greatest lighting in the picture, but I was so happy to be done that I didn’t bother to think about all the little details.  I am getting ready to start on my new project, which I should be able to showcase pictures of next Saturday.

Speaking of showcasing pictures, you people have to start sending me some stuff!!  If anyone has pictures of a retro or vintage Thanksgiving dinner, send it my way.  I was going to put up a picture of my Thanksgiving table, but it looked so lonely by itself that I decided I needed to send out for reinforcements.  Also, send me your favorite family Christmas cookie recipe, because I am getting a great post set up for that too!

So, it is time that I start posting about some of the stuff Tom and I have been doing this fall!  During our trip to the UP,  Tom and I went to the Keweenaw Peninsula and stayed at the Laurium Manor Inn.   Well, actually we stayed at the Victorian Hall B&B, which is part of the Laurium Manor Inn’s little group of houses they have in their bed and breakfast empire.  The houses are all really, really cool with tons of great period detail.  Unfortunately, the period they are in is Victorian, which doesn’t really work for this blog, but it is still spectacular to stay there even if the renovations are ongoing and everything isn’t quite restored yet.  One of the most unique parts of the house, which I can’t resist showing here, is the ELEPHANT HIDE wallpaper from the dining room in the Laurium Inn.

Creepy, huh?  It was up in the dining room, so I had plenty of time to study it while we were eating breakfast. Bleh.

Anyway, the Laurium Inn was all Victorian, but the Victorian Hall had one section that didn’t fit in.  The kitchen had been redone in the 1960’s, and the owners hadn’t had time to refurbish it yet so Tom and I got to see it in its 1960’s glory.

Nice cabinets, don’t you think?  The hardware is unfortunate, but they were going for Victorian, so I will cut them some slack.

Original wall oven.  Does anyone know they exact date of this color?? 

The original stove, for a period touch in the kitchen.

And here is an Art Deco light that was in the Butler’s Pantry.  I ADORED this, so I had to include a picture.

Hope everyone is having a great Friday!!

So, here is a little treasure I picked up this summer that I forgot about until I was cleaning out the library to get ready for my parents visit.  An adorable desk pin-up calendar from 1952. 

As you can see, this lovely lady was the front sheet in the calendar.  Rather than pulling sheets off and throwing them away, the sheets were held together behind a little cardboard frame.  There is a slot at the back of the frame where old sheets could be pulled out and thrown away, or, as this owner did, shuffled behind the others to the correct month.

This pretty girl is December.  I have to tell you, I need to get boyshorts like that and those adorable heels!  Love them!

Oh, and this little calendar is about as big as a 3×5 photo frame, and at 25 cents was pretty much the find of the day at a garage sale where I also got pocket binoculars from the 1950s and some Pyrex dishes. It was a pretty sweet deal for me, and I think for the lady selling the things.  She was just happy to be rid of them!

So cute, aren’t they?  I have other plans for these rather than just being pretty.  Stay tuned on Saturday to see my embroidery attempts with these beauties.  I have a few stiches left on my matador, so stay tuned for him finished as well!

I will be posting some more of these lovely ladies, as soon as I get back to scanning!

Happy Wednesday, All!  So, for this Christmas I decided I was going to give Tom a break from the Mid-Century Menu for dinner for a month.

I decided it would be a nice change to do something GOOD for a while.  Besides, with Thanksgiving past and done my mind has switched gears over to Christmas cookies.  And since I was digging through all my vintage cookbooks looking for cookie recipes, I thought it would be a great time to showcase some vintage Christmas Cookies.  So, for the month of December, I am devoting the Mid-Century Menu to cookies.  Sounds good, huh?  I know Tom is excited.

This week I am starting with cookie I picked out from the Duncan Hines Dessert Book, which was published in 1955.  Now, for those of you who don’t know (like me before I picked up this book) Duncan Hines is not just a company that makes cake mix.  I know, shocking, isn’t it?  Anyway, Duncan Hines was actually a man who wrote travel guides and then happened to start a cake mix business on the side.  Hmm…I wonder which became more popular?  In any case, Mr. Hines would often ask people for recipes if he really liked what he was served, and those recipes became the basis for this cookbook.  There are a lot of interesting cookies in this book, but I decided to start with something simple right off the bat to get the ball rolling.

A brown sugar cookie with nuts?  Sounds good to me.  Easy yet tasty.

Simple ingredients. 

Ah…so nice not to have anything creepy staring  up at me from the prep board.  Like sardines.  Yuck.

The shortening, butter and brown sugar.  I thought this was an interesting because these cookies use both shortening AND butter.  I am not sure if that was common back then, but it is the only cookie recipe in this book that does that.

The sugar, butter and shortening, all creamed together.

Adding the egg.

Adding the flour, vanilla and baking powder after the egg was in.

If you haven’t noticed already, there is no salt in this recipe.  I was a little thrown off by that, but I kept going.

The finished batter with the nuts mixed in.  Looks good!

The cookies, all neatly portioned thanks to the Pampered Chef disher my mom brought me over Thanksgiving.  Thanks, Mom!

Finished and ready for the oven, complete with a little nut pushed on the top.  It is supposed to be a pecan half, but I figured since it was a test run I could get away with a third.  Or quarter.  It was pretty small.

Here is a finished cookie, fresh from the oven.  Unfortunately, Tom is at work and not able to do his regular first bite shot.  I will have to take a picture when he comes home from work.  In the meantime, I didn’t mind being the first one to take a bite this time.

It was pretty  good, but not great.  I could tell right away that the cookies were missing salt, and they were also a little too greasy for me.  And a little plain.

The Verdict:  A little plain, not good Christmas cookie material.

If I was going to make this for a Christmas cookie, I would a a 1/4 tsp salt, decrease the shortening by half and add a cup of toffee chips.  Or broken up toffee. And maybe drizzle some chocolate on the top, just to make it look fancy.

 Thanks for the great post, Sara!  I am so sorry this wasn’t the house for you, but don’t worry.  There is always another house around the corner!

As some of you may know, Mike and I have been searching for a time capsule house around the Phoenix area – but with no luck so far. It seems like a lot of the 50s/60s houses have been renovated to the hilt with granite and travertine and stainless etc, etc….. We are hoping to find a house similar to Ruth’s (but hey, who would not want a house like hers – right???) but everything has just been wrong so far. This house is one Mike and I were interested in, but we could not afford the house, and the repairs it needed too. You see, this house is in a highly desired area of downtown Phoenix that backs up to Camelback Mountain, and all of the houses are on huge lots – between 1 and 2 acres. Most all of the houses in this area were custom or semi-custom homes built in the 1950s and 1960s. What has been happening in this area, for the past 10-15 years, is all the older houses have been getting demolished and they are building new HUGE stucco mansion houses on the lots. So, essentially people are buying the older houses for the lot only and destroying the charm and character of the old neighborhood. This house was to be demoed as well, and you can see from the pics they had started with ripping out most all the floors. I looked at this house from a satellite map view and they had also ripped out every tree on the lot, you can see from the pics there is not one tree or shrub in view (the satellite map view showed tons of trees 1-2 years ago) . Anyway, the people who bought this house actually bought it for a million dollars – AS A TEAR DOWN, when the Phoenix housing market was super hot. Well, the housing market here is horrible now and the house was lost in foreclosure. The asking price was $490,000 for the house and it sold for $388,000 at the bank auction. This house was still be promoted as a tear down, even at $490,000 – in the real estate listing it said, “Huge lot with home needing some TLC or tear down and build your own dream home!” This house is a really cool house, with a lot of neat original features – but there was also so much work it needed. Namely the roof, it was wood shake shingle – AND totally original. The roof was practically falling off the house – seriously. There was also a lot of damage to all the wood on the house under the roof  – wood that was falling apart and such. There were also broken windows and other things as well. I am guessing it probably needed $100,000 of repair to make it safe and livable. So, even at $388,000  we could not have afforded the house. I just REALLY, REALLY hope whoever bought the house does not tear it down, but repairs it and saves it for the future. Hey, a girl can dream right? This house was built in 1957 and had 3 bedrooms and 2 baths and was 3200 sq. feet. It was on approx. 1.5 acres.

The house had 2 really cool fireplaces. This fireplace was in the family room area, and what is not shown in this picture is all of the really great wood paneling that was directly opposite the fireplace. It was really cool looking with cute little scallops at the top.

The other fireplace was in the front of the house, the more formal living room area, and was this really cool cut flagstone. It looks like the fireplace has NEVER been used.

The kitchen had been repainted gray and white at some point, which is such a shame because the wood was beautiful. You can see one of the cabinet doors was left open and the wood color on the inside. I LOVE that Copper color Vent-A-Hood, and the push button stove top is killer. I wonder what the original oven was?

This bathroom had the original vanity, but I am sure that is a new toilet. I think that could be a Crane Criterion sink. Yummy!

This pink bathroom is so cute. I love the pink and chrome leg sink, and you can see the house retains the cool original vent covers.

This last shot of the bedroom shows 2 more of the original vent covers in the wall. I think originally these were chrome or stainless steel, so probably all of the vents in this house were repainted at one time. I still think they are so very cool!

The Camelback house is a really great old house, I just hope it has found new owners who can appreciate it like we all can!

Good morning, Required Readers!!  Sorry about the missed day yesterday, I was sooo relaxed after the Thanksgiving holiday, I almost forgot I even had a blog.   To make it up to you, here is a great article from Diane Dempsey at WhatsBuzzin.com about keeping the Christmas card tradition alive.  You may remember Diane’s great cards from the excellent giveaway we had a few months ago, I know I have.  Enjoy!!

As we design each of the Christmas cards for WhatsBuzzin.com we try to think what will make the recipient say to themselves – “Hey, I remember that!”.  Inspired by the vintage holiday spirit of the 1950’s & 60’s, it is our concept to develop greeting cards that will remind folks of happy times past – shared experiences that link us all to one another in American culture.

Welcome to another Vintage Crafty Saturday!  I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving with their family and took advantage of all those Black Friday Sales.  I am busy sewing away with my mom right now, so I thought I would post some more great embroidery stiches from Ruth Wyeth Spears. Hopefully I will be able to post progress on my sewing projects next week, with the holiday this week I didn’t make any progress at all! 

Oh well, my mom will whip me into shape!

De do de do…dum…dum

De do de do…dum..dum

Introducing…..The Pink Panther Lamp! (Trying to type the theme to the Pink Panther was lame, but I am excited, ok?)

Yep, we scored a pink panther TV lamp during our trip to the U.P. I was pretty excited, I have wanted a panther lamp for a while, but thought I would have to settle for black.  Having a pink one is definitely one step up!

 If you want to check out a huge, fun gallery of big cat TV lamps, head over here to TVlamps.net and look at all the great picutres.  I was kind of sad to see that they consider the lamp we found to be common and less attractive, but I still love the lamp and Tom likes  it, so that is all that matters.

Rar!!!

And, of course, the lamp’s theme song from Return of the Pink Panther: