Vintage Things - An Old Spinning Wheel

Yesterday I wrote about my recent visit with friends to the Jubilee Gallery.  I saved "the rest of the story" for today so that I could link it with Vintage Thingies Thursday at Colorado Lady.  You will want to visit her site and see all the great vintage things she has posted.

Part of Tennessee's history preservation includes historical markers located throughout the state.  Below is a photo of TN Historical Marker 1B19.  What this marker does not say is that Hezekiah Hamblen was also a furniture maker.  Five pieces that he hand made still exist and one of my friends with whom I had lunch is his descendant.  She is in possession of one of those pieces.

I do not know if a spinning wheel is considered furniture, but a spinning wheel was a necessity used throughout the southern Appalachian mountains during the 19th century to spin wool and cotton.  This particular spinner is in beautiful shape with all original parts intact and sets proudly in my friends mountain top home.

The Old Spinning Wheel by Billy Hill

Covered with dust and forgotten,

Like the face upon the wall;

The one souvenir of the days gone by,

I treasure most of all.

There's an old spinning wheel in the parlor,

Spinning dreams of the long, long ago.

Spinning dreams of an old fashioned garden,

And a maid with her old fashioned beau.

Turn back the years of my childhood

As you turn, old spinning wheel.

Just show me a lane with a barefoot boy,

As shadows softly steal.

________________________________

 

I have no history of this picture that adorns my friends bedroom wall.  It came from her aunts home but it is old and BEAUTIFUL and still in its original hand-hewn frame. 

Italian maybe?

Follow-up regarding this picture:  Viridian's Blog put this picture in context for me.  It is a copy of  "Madonna della seggiola" by Italian renaissance artist Raphael.

This mother is gorgeous!

I hope you enjoyed these vintages pieces. 

Thanks for reading, Rosie.

Jubilee Art Gallery And Cafe

Near where I live, an easy fifteen minute drive west, sets an old farm house that has been turned into Jubilee Art Gallery and Cafe.   I took the time today and met a couple of friends for lunch at this charming establishment. 

Unique to Tennessee is the Appalachian Quilt Trail.  Old barns and farm houses across the state display large hand painted wooden quilt blocks.  Jubilee Gallery happens to be one stop along the trail and displays, what else, the Jubilee Star quilt pattern. 

Colorful front porch rocking chairs invite guests to relax and linger and on weekends live bluegrass bands entertain.

The American Flag is proudly displayed.

Colorful flower boxes adorn the windows with tole painted flowers and old china plates adding a unique touch to the decor.  Also embedded into the concrete walks are colorful broken china plates.  What a unique way to recycle!

This azalea bush took my breath away. 

Smiling purple pansies.

Yummy girlie food is served in the cafe, although, there were as many men visiting today as women.

The waitress said this was a breakfast, lunch and dinner salad.  She was right.

Sweet tea served in a Mason jar....

it don't git much better an this :)

Whimsical art decorates the interior walls.

Local artist and owner, Lorraine Brewer, sells and displays her art work in one of the rooms.

Other art is available for purchase too.  I love these wind chimes made from old kitchen items and silverware. They create a lovely melodious sound.

The jewelry is also made from the handles of old silverware.  Charming!

This crocheted poncho was gorgeous and my picture in no way does it justice! It appeals to the inner gypsy in me.  Children, please take note, one of these for Mother's Day would be nice...

Pottery and antiques are for sale

along with local honey and molasses.  Note...another beautiful crocheted shawl...hint, hint.

Yes indeedy, it was a lovely day!

Thanks for reading, Rosie.

Two Goals Set And Met

Today finds me reaching two goals I set for myself over a month ago.

My first goal was to create a button for my blog.   While this would seem like an easy task, I found the plethora of graphics overwhelming.  SO MUCH FROM WHICH TO CHOOSE!!!!!  Finally, last evening, I put together a button I can live with for a few months.   It matches my blog design and also reflects me.   Feel free to grab my button for your blog; it would make my day!

Also, I would love to hear your opinion. 

What do you think? 

My second goal was to write an article and have it published on  Blissfully Domestic: The Smart Girl's Guide To Life.  After weeks of wracking my brain for an idea and putting that idea into words, procrastinating with the submission because the article did not seem just right, and coming to terms with "they're going to laugh and trash this", I finally submitted the article for review.   Much to my delight, I received an e-mail within twenty-four hours saying my article was approved (with a few edits)  and would be published April 26.   That's today!!!!  I am a little giddy with excitment!

Personal Pedicure:  A Beautiful Gesture to Honor Your Mother

If you have the time, I would be honored to hear your thoughts regarding the article.

My goal for this week and next will be to sew two aprons and have a giveaway for Mother's Day.  Check back often for giveaway details!

Thanks for reading, Rosie.

Just As I Am - A Tulip Kind of Girl

My name is Rosie but really...

I am more of a Tulip kind of girl.

Visit SweetSadieMarie.com every Sunday

and MckLinky up to "Just As I Am."

It Was Twenty Years Ago Today

I can do all things in Christ who gives me strength. 

Philippians 4:13

 

Twenty years ago today, April 21, 1990,

 I gave birth to my first baby boy.  

Carter, words can not express what

a blessing you are in my life. 

You are the light of my heart!

You have grown into a handsome

man both inside and out and

I stand in awe at the development

of your strong character

knowing that it is from God alone and

taking no credit as your mother. 

What most people believe in their head,

you believe in your heart and that

is what made the difference.

I have watched you set goals and

work tirelessly to reach them. 

I have also watched you struggle,

praying I could help, yet knowing there are some

lessons a mother can not teach her son.  

I wait breathlessly some days to see what

God is going to do in your life next

expecting that it will be amazing because

you are open to adventure.

You have been given many talents! 

My prayer is that you will use each one to make

Him famous and not yourself and I fully believe you will.

Thank you for being such a wonderful son!

Happy 20th Birthday!

I Love You!

Drive fast, take chances ;)

Love, Reading Rosie (AKA Mom)

Two Sweet Women

A BIG thank you to two Sweet women!

To Megan at Sweet Sadie Marie, who invited me to guest post on her sweet blog today AND

To Sweetie Berry at Growing Into Lovely who wrote a sweet guest post for my blog today. 

She even created a sweet pink tour bus just for me.   Too sweet!

Sweet!  Sweet!  Sweet!

Words cannot express how blessed I feel to have become aquainted with these two SWEET ladies.  

They have made my life....well, Sweet!

                                           Thanks for reading, Rosie.

Welcome Sweetie Berry As Wednesday's Guest Blogger

First of all I want to say that I am just tickled pink to be here today. What a joy it was to have met Dana in person at Blissdom '10. You know when perfect strangers meet and come away friends it’s a great day!

My blog’s name is Growing into Lovely. It may be more of a hope than a certainty, but you see where I am from in the deep South, lovely is a term that means so much more than pretty. Lovely is reserved for those women who overcome adversity with grace, who face unexpected strife with peace, who choose to be elegant in behavior and deed even when knee deep in mud….you see I want to be that kind of woman, she’s perhaps best described in Proverbs…but she’s a pretty busy girl…yet …

Who is it that you admire? Who are the women in your life that immediately come to mind when I ask who influenced you? For me, there are several who come to mind immediately. There’s Virginia Smith, a woman in her seventies, who built with her husband Guy, the first public bank begun with GI Bill funds after Guy returned from the war. (Her daddy bought her a convertible for their wedding, Guy sold it the next day because it wasn’t “fittin” for a new bank to be high fallutin...don’t you know the discussions that brought!) They began Stephens Bank successfully over forty years ago and that one branch has grown into several. Virginia’s financial success is overshadowed by her community and personal success. Harder to measure, but one only has to walk through her small town to see or experience her impact. Virginia is a “get it done” girl. She sees fertilizer in manure piles and manicures in mud….that girl only knows the bright side of life. She is a cancer survivor, a wifehood thriver, and will wear you out if you try to keep up with all that she does in a day. She calls me Mrs. Jefferson, because I so embraced her need to help others grow….and I am honored that she feels so. There wasn’t an idea I had in that little town the five years we lived there that she didn’t say “let’s do it” and by golly we did, whether it was to build a city park with grant funds (which stands today) or to begin a children’s library program for the town’s children at no cost (which we did, with over 50 children attending each week for 12 weeks a summer!) or to host a town wide inter generational Easter Egg hunt at her home and mine ….amazing days we had, and Virginia fueled them all with her absolute belief that our tiny town was simply waiting for an idea to be enacted to succeed.

Another woman I admire was Lillian Bell. Lillian was nearing eighty when I met her. You’d think that meant she had slowed down. Oh my heavens no. She had reared ten children in a two bedroom home, canned enough food each year from her own garden to feed them, and managed to keep them all done up in homemade clothes that were the talk of the town for their “store bought” appearance. Lillian was a school teacher, a wife, and in her spare time after keeping every thing at home spic and span, she was known for her delicious cooking, which she shared all over town to anyone ailing, sad, or someone she thought looked puny…after all food was a cure all for everything in my small town. Her twinkling blue eyes would look at you and say “come on now, have another bite” as though she knew if she could sit you down over pie she’d have you….for no one would not do as Miss Lillian suggested. Many a contrary situation was settled over Miss Lillian’s visit with a pie.

As much as I admire women like Mother Teresa and Eleanor Roosevelt, I’ve not had to rely on folks in history books or biographies to know what a fine lady is. You see, in my book it doesn’t take fine trappings, or exceptional wealth to create the lovely I’m talking about. Growing into lovely to me means to daily look about you, to do what you can with what you have to improve today. To choose to take the high road with other people who may have gotten stuck in the valleys and mud holes of life. To willfully ignore the desire to get in the mud with those folks who sling it unnecessarily in unkind thought or deed. (although I also am a firm believer in splashing in them if the mud hole warrants a good old fashioned mess to be made…after all, growing into lovely means never growing old either.)

One of the most beautiful faces I’ve ever known was a lady I taught next to in a tiny rural district. She was in her 62 year old teaching…yes you read right sixty-two years, and she taught next door to me. Miss Eva had taught mothers, daddies, and grand daddies in that district. She had married young and then was widowed early, left with young children on a school teacher’s budget. Remarried years later it seemed cruel, but her second husband failed to mention that he had ten children stowed away until their wedding day…suddenly there were twelve children to feed as well as a new marriage. She never missed a beat, they made do, made over, and remade what they had and it was all kept well. Miss Eva’s second husband died shortly after and there she was with all the children, a school marms salary, and yet her flower gardens were beautiful, the children fed well, and before it was over, she had a beautiful home they had renovated together and several through college. When I would ask her about teaching so long she’d tease me “Wouldn’t you keep working if you had twelve goomers waiting on you at home?” Yet she was a delicate cultivator, learning how to garden in containers long before it was vogue, because with 12 children and a tiny town, well, you had to eat! Later when we moved down the street, she was first up and regularly up to help me with this or that in the yard. Despite being in her nineties, she could out work me any day! She and my youngest had a special relationship, Madison is dyslexic, but Miss Eva personally was determined to see her through….and she did. and it is a good portion of why Madison reads so well today.

Growing into Lovely…..a huge standard to have had set by ladies like the ones above, and there’s a passel of them in my home town…you see there isn’t a common qualifier among them: wealth, background, beauty or education- but they all choose a path of service to others and to gather around them those who were near to love them well and make the best of the situations they faced while persevering on with joy. That’s the kind of woman I want to be when I grow up….and yet each one of those three would never be mistaken for a “grown up”…for you see one of the most important attributes they shared was to be eternally young at heart.

Thank you for letting me share here today. It’s been such a pleasure to visit today!

Hugs,

Sweetie

Thanks Sweetie, for your lovely thoughts.  You are certainly one of the lovely ladies and I feel blessed to have met you and look forward to a long sister/friendship.  Blessings, dear one.   Rosie

Francine Rivers Has Published A New Book...Finally!

Francine Rivers, probably the best Christian Fiction author on the market today (IMHO), FINALLY has a new book on shelves.   Her first Christian Fiction book, Redeeming Love, changed my opinion of the CF market simply because she addresses tough topics.  Maybe her books are so good because she doesn't publish frequently; therefore, spending more time developing her characters and focusing on the story she wants to beautifully illustrate.  Whatever the reason, I am thankful her latest book, Her Mother's Hope,  now sets impatiently on my nightstand waiting for me to savor the magic each evening.   If I go missing for the next few days, you'll know where I am. 

By the way, It is National Library Week!  

Do you have a library card?  

Do you visit your local library? 

Thanks for reading, Rosie.

No Pain, No Gain

My six-foot, thirteen-year-old, barely able to walk through a door frame without ducking, can not fit into a dentist chair, big footed son who talks incessantly had his mouth wired this morning.  My "baby" is in some pain and probably will be for a few days.   Nothing makes my heart ache more than to see my child in pain.  I can very much empathize with him, as I too had braces when I was a teenager.  On the positive side, though, I should see a significant decrease in my grocery bill and a hear a lot less smart aleck comments for the next few days.  Oh well, no pain, no gain! 

Winking at you with a sly grin, Rosie.

Welcome Megan from Sweet Sadie Marie

Hi... my name is Megan and I am so thrilled to be a guest at Reading Rosie!

I am a wife, a mom of three, and a daughter of the King.

I love to write, read... and clean poopy diapers.

Okay, not so much the diapers.

Come visit me at http://www.sweetsadiemarie.com/.

In the meantime, get a load of this...........

So, we needed a new lawn mower. Ours died and we have been searching for an affordable solution. With our budget being tight, we knew we couldn't drop a few hundred at Lowe's.

We called around to the fix-it shops....NO luck. Craig's List doesn't like us. Neither does the local newspaper. So, I started praying. Praying that God would send us a lawn mower OR enable us to leave our grass tall and start charging the neighbors to go on Safaris. It was looking more and more like I should start selling tickets.

Then it happened. Last night, a lady down the street wheeled her mower out to the curb and put a for sale sign on it. She said she had a feeling someone needed it. $40 later.... we have a mower.

More than that.... we have an awesome God. A God who cares about the little things...... even lawn mowers.

         Visit our blog: http://www.sweetsadiemarie.com/   &       

Our fabulous Etsy shop www.sweetsadiemarie.etsy.com

Thanks Megan, and I agree, God does care about the little things.

Even lawn mowers.   

Love, Rosie

From Boys to Men

As a mother, I am always looking for quality reading material for myself and my sons.   I look for material that will encourage me to guide my sons, as well as engaging material that will inspire my sons to become strong, capable, and responsible men.   When I ran across these books by Bob Schultz, I knew I had struck GOLD!

Created For Work: Practical Insights for Young Men - This book is chocked full of  real life stories to teach young men what it means to become hard workers.   Witty and applicable in today's culture, this book offers tools and insight into giving a honest day's work.  Recommended for ages 9-13 but applicable for any age;  I read this one aloud to my sons.  We laughed and talked our way through every chapter and learned so much about work ethics.

Boyhood and Beyond: Practical Wisdom for Becoming a Man  - The author shares personal anecdotes and practical stories dealing with different issues boys will encounter as they move into manhood.   Topics discussed include: honesty, forgiveness, being "manly," leadership, worship, and respecting girls in preparation for loving their future wife.  Boys can read the book alone and record their responses in a journal. Ideal to read and discuss each chapter with a father, grandfather, or mentor. For ages 9-13.  This book set the foundation for some great conversations in our home.

Practical Happiness:  A Young Mans Guide to a Contented Life - Again, a timely applicable book that gives advice to young men on how true happiness comes from their attitude and response to life's situations rather than seeking the materialistic.   Don't we all need that information?!

For pricing, ordering and more details regarding each book....go here.   In my opinion, you will not find better information available for young men.  If you've read these books I would enjoy hearing your opinion.   What books for young men have you read and recommend?   I would love to know.

I have been blessed with amazing sons.  It has been and continues to be a honor to watch them grow from boys to men.  Love you guys!

Thanks for reading, Rosie.

A Tulip Tree

Today, Easter Sunday, was a lovely reminder of my Faith. After Easter services and an enormous dinner with family and friends, I took my Mother to the cemetery where my Dad was buried almost seven months ago.  Mother wanted to place spring flowers on Dad's grave.   Because the winter was so bleak and wet, I had not been back to the cemetery.  Honestly, I felt no need to go.   But today was a gloriously warm, blue-sky day and it felt right in my heart to honor my earthly father.

No tears were shed today.   Why would anyone of Faith shed tears on Easter Sunday?  If I truly believe that Jesus is the Resurrection and the Life (and I do), why would I weep over my Dad's grave?  Only his shell lies in that grave; I have reason to rejoice!  "Oh death where is your victory?  Oh grave, where is your sting?"   NOT HERE!!!

Near his grave stands a magnificent tulip tree arrayed in majestic Easter frock.  I stood under the tree and gazed into its branches marveling at nature's manifold witness of spring renewal.  In the cemetery, under the tree, in a shower of soft petals, I worshipped and praised my Heavenly Father.

This is my Father's world, and to my listening ears

All nature sings and round me rings the music of the spheres.

This is my Father's world

I rest me in the thought

Of rocks and trees, of skies and seas,

His hands the wonders wrought.

This is my Father's world, the birds their carols raise,

The morning light, the lily white, declare their Maker's praise.

This is my Father's world

He shines in all that's fair;

In the rustling grass I hear Him pass;

He speaks to me everywhere.

 

Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!  

And thanks for reading, Rosie.