A Belated Mother's Day

The whole family was finally able to get together to celebrate Mother's Day over the weekend. The hour or so drive to my folks' house is one we make often to just spend the day enjoying being together, and there are some pretty interesting sites along the way.
Here is a giant bovine alongside the road in Oologah, whose main street is named Cooweescoowee Avenue-y. We love us some Native American town names in Oklahoma. I used to work for a cell phone company where I would have to make regular calls to operators in Florida for help with phone activations. I loved to hear them try to pronounce small town names like Ochelata, Owasso, Talala, Watova, Nowata, Pawhuska and Vinita. The Floridians were always greatly amused by Miami, Oklahoma, pronounced "my-am-uh" by us Okies.



Tiny Oologah is also the birthplace of Oklahoma's most famous native son, Will Rogers, who never met a man he didn't like.


This is a small scale model of the house on Dog Iron Ranch, a few miles outside of town, in which Rogers was born in 1879.


One of my mom and step-dad's neighbors has a bowling ball fence. He also makes other things from the balls, including spelling out the alphabet vertically on the front lawn. He is now up to "M", and is always happy to receive donations of old bowling balls to continue his work.

Here is my Mama's present from me: a vintage card catalogue of over 700 types of plants called "The Greenhouse", Better Homes & Gardens New Garden Book from 1961, a 60's era "C-Ch" children's encyclopedia volume to use for making artist trading cards, and a vintage hand painted pine cone vase. She has a green thumb which I, unfortunately, did not inherit.


Mom gave me the best presents ever for my first Mama's Day, including some tiny magnet animals made from seashells to add to my collection of seashell crafts,


...a tiny vintage flamingo plate for that collection. Please ignore the dying Schefflera plant on my porch. I told you I did not get any of Mom's horticultural skills.


...a ceramic mermaid to add to still another collection of mine. Come to think of it, my mom is usually the culprit when I start a new collection. She'll find me some fabulous vintage tchotchke and that will begin a small obsession that just snowballs from there.


...some handmade vintage potholders for my Mexican/Spanish Fiesta kitchen,


...and the best part of all, a little purse she made from vintage fabric for me to use when garage sale-ing after I lamented not having the perfect tiny, long-strapped one when we went to Neosho this year. I did inherit her craftiness, at least. All of this once again proves my theory: my Mama is the coolest mama any girl could ever hope to have.

In blog housekeeping news, I'm getting really behind in posting all the great thrifty finds I've lucked upon lately. Instead of playing catch up with one or two huge posts, I'm thinking of posting a little each week, maybe in a "Thrifty Thursday" post. I know I promised more craftiness. Rest assured I'm working on it, Dollfaces. I have so many things I want to share with you all, I'm just about to bust. Lots more vintage beauty stuff, vintage craft stuff, thrift stuff, old signage, music, my collections, my aprons, vintage decorating--the list goes on and on. Also, I'm thinking of omitting the word "vintage" from all future posts as the keys used to type it are wearing out on my keyboard. Perhaps my readers could just mentally fill in said word a few times in each sentence, and save my beauty operatin' wrists from wear and tear. Ha! Who am I kidding? I could never live without "vintage". What do ya think of my brand spankin' new header? Hell, what do ya think of this whole silly project? I'd love some feedback on the type of posts my four devoted readers want more of.