Hello November
1
11, 2023
30
10, 2023
Halloween Decorations
Halloween yard decorations have become as popular as Christmas decorating.
Ghosts swing from trees to greet early morning walkers in neighborhoods. Jack-o-lanterns light the way in the late afternoon. Witches crashed into trees and giant spiders in spidery webs crawl on the shrubbery.
In the 1900s, Halloween wasn’t so much about zombies and gruesome headless monsters, tombstones and skeletons, or other scary, scary things like spook houses and ghost tours. Back then, crepe paper pumpkins, plastic candy containers, painted tin noisemakers, and paper lanterns were the items of choice for a happy Halloween.
Not many of these items are around today because people used them and then threw them away. Last week, I dug out what’s left of my vintage decorations.
Only a few things are still around:
Pumpkins constructed from honeycomb tissue.
A gauze mask
A paper-mache jack-o-lantern
A tin noisemaker
A couple of black cats I used for old bulletin board posters and chalk tray decorations in classrooms
Check out Kovels’ Pinterest page here to see other vintage Halloween collectibles
Do you have a future Halloween collectible among your Halloween decorations?
Antique experts predict these items might be a future collectible:
- Special holiday bottles and cans with special holiday flavors like Gruesome Grape, Spooky Strawberry, and Orange Ogre. Look for other limited-edition plastic bottles with scary faces.
- Plastic candy containers either reproductions of the 1950s and ’60s figures and jack-o-lanterns or contemporary plastic decorations with clever designs.
- Zombies and vampires of plastic, rubber, or resin-like zombie-hand candleholders.
- Charm bracelets with pumpkins, bats, and black cats; jointed skeleton earrings decorated with rhinestones and spider rings.
- Motion, or voice, activated figures that light up or emit scary sounds and music. Look for pumpkin men, witches, vampires, black cats, and body parts like crawly hands.
- Paper or plastic masks, costumes, treat bags, and dolls.
If you’re thinking about increasing your collection, there’ll be some good buys at reduced prices after Halloween, and don’t throw away the items you have. You might have some vintage treasures like mine one day.
27
10, 2023
Trash or Treasure
A Blog by Chicken Wrangler Sara
I have a friend who is an art teacher. We worked together at a small private school for many years. When the school closed abruptly, we started to meet with other teachers every week at the local Dairy Queen to grieve together. Over time, we each moved on but we continued to meet and talk about life.
I’ve learned much from my friend. She has a unique way of looking at things and I find myself seeing the things around me with new eyes. She sees potential in many things, students included which is what makes her a great teacher. It also makes her a great friend.
An ordinary leaf becomes a dancer or a bottle cap becomes an earring. I started taking her things to use in her creations. Most recently, I took a piece of cardboard that had been part of the packaging for something.
It was too interesting to simply recycle. I thought it looked like a spine – perhaps because we have been learning the rhythms of the poem Skeleton Parade by Jack Prelutsky.
I took it to our Dairy Queen meeting and we set it on the table. We sat and discussed the cardboard, turning it in all directions, for 15 minutes or more.
My friend saw a building and the other friend saw a set of jaws.
At one point, the manager, who we know from our regular visits, came out to see what we were looking at.
He thought we were playing a game like Jenga.
This is what I love about my friend. She has taught me to be inspired by a piece of cardboard.
My friend and her husband recently bought a house in a nearby town. It turns out to be the house she grew up in. But that’s another story for another time.
Eventually, they will move. I will miss our weekly meetings. I may have to take road trips periodically to see her.
And, of course, take her interesting treasures to sit and discuss.
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10, 2023
23
10, 2023
Change is Coming
You can feel it in the air.
You can see it in the shifting of colors on the trees–shading from green to red to brown.
Shadows are lengthening as the sun shifts.
I’m sitting on my swing porch with a cup of tea. I can feel the change and at the same time dread it.
The constancy of seasonal changes can be comforting. If you live where leaves put on a show of color, nature supplies a master class in how change can be beautiful.
I definitely welcome the cooler temperatures after the sweltering summer we had.
The annual shift from Daylight Savings Time–that’s a major problem for me. My body protests the loss of an hour’s sleep and takes weeks to adjust.
I’m not a tree willingly changing color and shedding foliage. I’m a Texas tree that slowly fades to ugly, boring brown instead of glowing with reds, yellows, and oranges.
Grumbling and complaining, I remind myself there’s not much I can do about the weather or the time change except adjust my clothing, our thermostat, and our clocks.
I know Spring will roll around again and I will get back that hour of rest I lost. But the change tends to steal my peacefulness. It doesn’t have to.
A better approach to the change is with pliancy instead of frustration. Flexibility keeps our happiness steady. That’s why I take a cup of tea to the porch swing and relax.
Others recommend these three things when any change is stressful.
- Breathe –By breathing slower and more deeply from your stomach, you signal your nervous system to calm down when you can’t control the situation. Purposeful breathing allows you to calm down and think rationally.
- Smile – Smile even if whatever change has thrown your way is not funny. You’ll find a certain amount of detachment can lead to acceptance.
- Pray or Meditate – To refocus the mind.
Most importantly, remember that change is the only constant in this world. Whatever the catastrophe or circumstance, eventually it will change.
What about you? What strategies do you use when change stresses you?
20
10, 2023
New Puzzle Challenge
A Blog by Chicken Wrangler Sara
I have always enjoyed jigsaw puzzles. I cannot set one up during the school year because I will work on it to the exclusion of everything else.
I am actually pretty good at them, and I enjoy puzzles of all kinds. When I was visiting our grandsons this weekend, I encountered a new type of puzzle that was most challenging.
Alex loves trains. He has a set of tracks which he loves to put together. These tracks came in a box with a picture. While I was there, Alex decided he wanted the train tracks put together like the picture.
No problem, I thought as I got down on the floor and began to work.
I’m not sure whether it was my old eyes or my lack of spatial awareness but I could not make the train tracks look like the picture on the box.
The curves were going the wrong way and there were gaps in the track that did not match any available pieces. My daughter came to the rescue. She had watched her husband put the track together for Alex recently so she had an advantage. We finally got it all together and Alex enjoyed running the trains around the tracks.
When Alex tired of playing trains, Theo took over.
It was worth the team effort to make the track look like the picture.
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10, 2023
16
10, 2023
Dictionary Day
This day honors Noah Webster, the man who fathered the American Dictionary. It’s one of my favorite holidays because I love dictionaries.
As a child, I’d spend hours poring through the pages of my grandmother’s eight-inch-thick Webster’s New International Dictionary (of the English Language). It was a fertile resource for a blossoming logophile or, as I prefer to call myself – a wordsmith.
The ancient leather-bound book with its India-skin paper had leather alphabet tabs cut into the pages. The detailed illustrations and maps are gorgeous. There were diagrams, charts, and thousands of words.
With so many dictionary resources readily available online, it’s easy to believe a hard copy isn’t necessary anymore. I disagree. Every home should have at least one realio-trulio paper dictionary available.
All sorts of wonderful magical stuff can happen when you use a hardcopy dictionary instead of looking up definitions online.
Your finger glides over other words as it scrolls down the printed page. Words that you might never have seen right there at your fingertips. You can see a word’s origin and its root without clicking to a different screen for synonyms and antonyms.
Yes, all that’s included with online dictionaries, but do you scroll down to discover the rest of the entry?
Probably not.
Understanding meaning is important. I learned that from my British antiques business partner. His British accent and my Texas drawl tended to muddle discussions and complicate purchases for the shop when the English and American definitions didn’t match. The King’s English Dictionary he gave me saved us many times over.
Spelling can be a problem no matter what type of dictionary you use. I stump spell checkers 90% of the time. Plus, spell checkers don’t give definitions.
I keep 20,000 WORDS by Louis A. Leslie side-by-side with my dictionary for fast lookup of commonly misspelled words. This little jewel gets me through my writing day.
While you may never love dictionaries as I do, I still recommend you have a hard-copy dictionary handy. You never know what you might learn.
13
10, 2023
Peace
A Blog by Chicken Wrangler Sara
As I met with friends on Zoom to pray this morning, Honor curled up on my lap asleep,
She is blissfully unaware of all that is going on in the world.
Furthermore, she trusts that I will take care of her regardless.
I want to be more like Honor.
I want to rest completely in God who cares for me and has the world in His control.
9
10, 2023
Columbus Day – Indigenous People’s Day
Which day do you celebrate?
The Italian explorer Christopher Columbus believed he’d reached East Asia when he sighted Cuba and thought it was China. When the expedition landed on Hispaniola, he thought he’d found Japan.
Columbus’s discovery introduced Europeans to the New World, which led to cultural exchange, commerce, and exploration, and eventually to the discovery of the real westward route to the Indies.
His accomplishment has been celebrated as Columbus Day since the 18th century and became a U.S. federal holiday in 1937.
But Columbus Day and the man who inspired it also generated controversy.
Many argue that Europeans got land, slaves, and gold, while the natives were dispossessed, enslaved, and infected the indigenous people in the lands they claimed.
Protests of Columbus Day celebrations resulted in the creation of Indigenous People’s Day in the 1990s, but that did not solve the controversy. Only twenty states have adopted the new Indigenous People’s Day as a holiday. The other states ignore the designation and have various other celebrations on the day.
Italian Americans honor their heritage, not Christopher Columbus. Various Oklahoma tribal governments designate the day as Native American Day, naming it after their tribe.
Whatever you choose to call the day or celebrate, I will always think about the three ships Columbus sailed, the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa María, and remember the jingle I learned in school.
Christopher Columbus sailed in the ocean blue in 1492.
Turns out the jingle comes from a poem by Winifred Sackville Stoner, who was known for poems, rhymes, and mnemonic jingles to aid in the recollection of information.
The poem “The History of The U.S.” is found in Yankee Doodles: A Book of American Verse, edited by Ted Malone and published in 1943 by Whittlesey House (NY and London). You can read the entire poem here. It’s quite long and covers American history through WWI.
Today, I’m celebrating that my teachers never made me recite Stoner’s entire poem.