Feminine Friday: Vintage Sheets

Oh vintage floral sheets... I love you so! 

The pastel colors and floral patterns on vintage sheets are so feminine and pretty!  I love them so much!  I outfit my bed with vintage sheets and I feel like a princess!

So often when I get a bundle of vintage sheets they've all come from the same estate... sometimes dozens of them!  I love to imagine some granny's linen closet piled high with the same sheets she's had since she was a young bride!

I love the ties that vintage items have to the past.  I love imagining who used them and where they got them.

Vintage sheets are great for fabric too!  It so much cheaper to use a vintage sheet for a sewing project instead of buying vintage (or even new) fabric...  They've been preshrunk, they're super soft and you can't get much more feminine!  I saw a picture somewhere of 1950s-60s feminine dresses made from vintage sheets.  I hope to take that project on someday!

These guys aren't vintage sheets, but I recently got them and wanted to show them off!  Aren't they the cutest pink vintage kitties?  The angry one is my fave!  They've taken up residence in my bathroom and I smile every time I see them!  I just love feminine things!

Got Milk?

I love milk in glass bottles!  I love looking at them and I love drinking from them!  I buy a yogurt drink at the Asian grocery store called Yogu-Time and my girls love them... I remove the labels and hooray... vintage-looking milk bottles.

I discovered that cupcake papers and rubber bands make great toppers for the bottles.  A lot of people used to cover their milk bottles with wax paper and rubber bands so this is a fun take on an old fashioned practice... plus it gives me an excuse to use the cute cupcake papers I collect but never bake with!

Why not fill a vintage metal basket with milks to pull out after dinner to go with brownies or cookies?  Or keep them in the fridge for kids to drink in the mornings with breakfast?  There are so many things you could do with these paper topped milks!

Keepin' it Cool...

Using a vintage cooler and a large canner for ice and drinks at a picnic or party adds a super fun vintage/country touch!

I decided to keep the cooler on my porch for extra seating.

I painted these old metal folding chairs years ago and I'm still in love with them! The add such a fun retro touch to a boring metal chair. Metal chairs are found in abundance at thrift stores for super cheap. I spray painted the whole chair gray and let it dry for a day. I used painters tape to tape off my design and a red spray paint to finish it off. Rustoleum is my favorite brand of spray paint for metal. It covers well and they have designer colors.

I think I'm in the mood to paint now! :)

This cooler was only $3 at a thrift store!!! I'm so in love with it! What fun finds do you have on your porch?

Homemade Noodles for Chicken Noodle Soup

I've heard stories of delicious, big, fat, homemade noodles, but I had never attempted them until this week. Since my chicken and dumplings were a success, I thought I'd use the same recipe and make some noodles. July is not the time of year to be slaving over a stove top, but I was asked to take dinner to someone in my ward and I was told that soups were what she was eating best. I figured it was the perfect time to try out my noodles! They were amazingly fabulous! I'll be making homemade noodles a lot! I wondered how the soup would be leftover... I was worried the noodles would get soggy, but I had a bowl the next day and it was just as good!

Homemade Egg Noodles

3 c. flour
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 egg
1 c. milk

Stir together flour and salt. Add milk and egg. Mix until dough forms. Knead until smooth. Roll out on a floured board thinly and slice with a pizza cutter to make noodles. They don't have to be perfect. Let dry while soup is being made. Drop noodles into boiling broth. Cover. Simmer for about 20 minutes until done, stirring occasionally.




Broth for Chicken Noodle Soup

chicken on bones, skin pulled off
2 lg carrots, sliced
2 stalks celery
salt
pepper
water
4 chicken bouillon cubes
water

Fill your pot about 1/2-3/4s of the way full with water and simmer everything together, covered until the chicken is done. Remove the chicken from the water and let cool. Pull the meat off the bones and set aside. Return the bones to the broth. Continue to simmer covered. Simmer for as long as you like. Strain and discard bones and veggies.

To make soup:

Bring strained broth to a boil. Add homemade noodles into the boiling broth and cook for 15 minutes. Add sliced carrots and celery and cook for another 5 minutes until veggies and noodles are done. Add chicken (from bones), frozen peas and corn. Stir until peas and corn are hot. This soup is fantabulous!!!

I picked up this rolling pin for .25 at a yard sale and had Nina paint the handles red (when she was done beating her sister). I think it looks great!


Have you ever made homemade noodles? My next experiment with the will be in spaghetti sauce. YUM!

Vintage Suitcases

I absolutely love vintage suitcases! (ok, ok... what vintage item DON'T I love?) I know the white one seems a little out of place, but I'm thinking of changing the color with tan shoe polish. Do you think it will work? I remember changing the color of my shoes in high school with shoe polish when I'd get bored with them :)

Not only do the suitcases look great by themselves, they also give me lots of room to store vintage accessories. I paid $2-3 for each of these. I only buy them if I find them for super cheap.

Tablescape for One

I eat a lot of my meals alone since my kids are gone each Thursday and every other weekend. I was feeling kind of down thinking about spending the upcoming Valentine's weekend alone and then I thought I should cheer myself up with a pretty pink tablescape.

I found these polka dot plates for $1 each at a thrift store this weekend... I'm thinking they'll be perfect for my brown & pink party I'm planning. Nice brown chocolate on a pink and white plate... sounds perfect :)


I'm so in love with these pink glasses. They were another recent thrift store find.

And in case you're wondering what was on the menu...

Hashbrowns, eggs over-medium w/cheese,
whole wheat toast and orange juice
(my favorite meal when the kids are gone)
YUMMY!

Spring Tablescape

I know it's not spring yet, but I can dream can't I?





I'm really in love with this tablescape. Not so much because it's super fabulous or anything, but because it used so many things I love. The plates were a recent thrift store find. They were .75 each and in perfect shape. They're Homer Laughlin, dated 1955. The milk glass cups (holding the daisies) were purchased at the same time for .50 each. The table cloth is vintage and belonged to my grandmother. And of course daisies are my favorite flowers... all in all I just smile looking this tablescape.

Welcome to my bedroom....

Old Fashioned Raisin Cake

There areen't a whole lot of raisin cake recipes, but there are vintage prune cake recipe so I altered one for raisins. It was really good. Even my mom who doesn't like cooked raisins loved it and took an extra piece to save for her morning coffee. The topping on this made a fantastic crunchy layer on the cake. The cake is worth making just for the top!

Raisin Spice Cake

Cake:
1 lb raisins
2 c. flour
1 1/2 c. sugar
1 1/4 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
1/4 c. oil
1/4 c. applesauce
3 eggs

Topping:
1/2 c. sugar
2 T flour
2 T butter

Cover the raisins with water in a saucepan. Cover and simmer for 20 minutes. Drain, reserving 2/3 c. of the liquid and discarding the rest. Add the liquid to the remaining cake ingredients and mix well. Add the raisins and stir until all dispersed. Pour into a greased 9x13 pan. Mix the topping ingredients together, cutting the butter in until crumbly. Sprinkle the topping onto the cake and bake at 350 for 35-45 minutes.

I got the recipe from one of my vintage red checkered cookbooks. The one on the left was my grandma's first cookbook when she was married. The other I picked up at a thrift store. I saw another at a thrift store for $3 yesterday. I didn't buy it, but I'm tempted to go back...

And if anyone knows how to make a cake like this chocolate baby and thinks they can teach me how to do it and have it turn out then please do!

Ten Cent Tea Time

Once upon a time several years ago, I didn't really like tea cups. I loved vintage and shabby and all that, but I just wasn't really a fan of tea cups. It was during that time that I went to a yard sale and they had a little old tea cup for .10, so I bought it. The next week I was at another yard sale and there was another small old tea cup for .10. Over the course of that summer I picked up seven mini tea cups all for .10 each! I had an accidental collection on my hands.  I also found several saucers for .10 each, but there's not really room to have my cups on saucers where they're displayed right now. I'm not really sure why all the tea cups were .10 that summer... I haven't really seen any for that price since, but I LOVE my little collection! Without further introduction, here are my .10 tea cups!