Grandma Nehring

I grew up in a red ranch home directly behind my grandparents' home in Sycamore, Illinois until my family moved to North Carolina in 1983.  Up until that time, my grandparents' home, their backyard and the large chalet they built in the 1960's was an extension of my home.  Really, my childhood was magical.  Gram and Pop kept up their expansive lawn park-like; they planted hoards of flowers every spring and kept the bushes trimmed perfectly.  They lined the curved flagstone walkway with bushes and lights next to the chalet.  Spotlights shone on the back of their house accenting the blue siding and pointed to a large fountain in the center of the garden right outside their dining room window.  The fountain was a boy that held a goose which spit out water from its beak.  You could hear the tinkling of water in the backyard and when the windows were open, it was the background sound you would hear inside the house.

Gram tells me that when my brother was born, their first grandchild, they purchased the fountain because the little boy looked like my brother, Jeff.  When she downsized, the bottom of the concrete fountain was thrown away and she was ready to pound the living tar out of the boy to throw away, as well, but I rescued him and brought him home.  He sits near our fireplace.

My grandparents were beautiful people.  They were very classy in everything they did.  Pop wore khakis and always a white dress shirt to work in the yard.  Gram was a model for The Little Traveler in Geneva, Illinois when I was quite young and she always presented herself in a beautiful fashion.

Here is the picture after they were first married in the 1950's:

Gram just sent me a picture that was taken for the church book a couple of months ago and still looks as tasteful as ever:

My Grandfather died in 1997.  Gram stayed on at the house and took care of it until late 2003 when she moved in with my parents because her health was failing and she felt she couldn't properly take care of everything the way it should be.  However, during 2004 through the summer of 2005, Gram held several garage sales and sold things on WLBK through the call-in Trading Post segments.  I drove out to Illinois several times and sold many antiques on eBay.

My grandparents had gorgeous antiques; many from their families and some they had purchased over the years. Truly, my love of antiques came from my Nehring grandparents. I grew up with antiques.  To me, this was a normal way of living.  While I grew to love primitives, the antiques in my grandparents' home leaned more towards the formal antiques, except in the chalet.  The chalet was more primitive in style.

When it came time to sell the contents of the chalet, I came out and Gram had lined up all the stoneware crocks and jugs and numbered them all.  Oh, these pictures are just the tip of the iceberg, they had so many more jugs, but those pictured are the ones slated to sell online.

See the red phone on the left hand side of the picture?  Us kids called that the "Bat Phone." (Batman and Robin, you know.)

The chalet was the most special place on Earth.  I took this picture after she started dismantling everything.

Nearly every square inch of display space was full of stuff.  Most everything had a story and if you had the time, Gram could relay stories behind every single thing that was ever handed down or purchased.  Those months I eBayed items for her were some of the richest months of my life.  I loved hearing the stories and tried to pass them on to the new owners that purchased her items on eBay.

So many family dinners were in the chalet.  My friends and I held slumber parties here and played Barbies right in front of the fireplace.  The loft held some interesting trunks filled with old linens.  There was a small kitchen, a bathroom and the workshop was in the back room.

Christmas Eves were spent in the chalet.  This was probably around 1976 or '77.  

When Gram moved in with my parents, she brought her most favorite things from home.  Her doll was on her bedroom dresser:

I'm pretty sure her mother, my great-grandmother, Mary Loptien, stitched this sampler:

During the downsize, I chose an antique pie safe and an antique buffet as well as some smaller items like this gravy boat and aluminum heart bookmark:

Infact, as I look around this house and the cottages, I have many things from Gram and Pop.  They are all so special to me.

When my mother passed away in 2009, my grandmother moved to a condo and lives with my aunt and uncle. Gram and I have had a very special bond.  We wrote letters to each other after I moved to North Carolina, and now as an adult, I call my grandmother often and I listen to her talk about her friends, social life and church.  It's a gift, really.  I am one of the few people in my age group who still has a grandparent living.

New Year's Eve I received a phone call from my aunt saying that Gram was in the hospital.  Her heart isn't working like it should which caused a fluid build-up in her system causing her to be very short of breath.  Initially, it was thought this was very serious but now it sounds like something that's quite common in her age group.  Today I called the house and my grandmother answered.  She was checked out of the hospital yesterday and is resting comfortably at home on some new medications.

But during the past few days I've really had the chance to think about my grandmother and how, when she passes away, it will be one of my greatest losses. She has always been the link to earlier generations and she spent quite a bit of time in genealogy.  Gram remembers the time when they used an outhouse out on the farm, she chuckles when she tells the story of her mother taking the horse around the bend a bit too fast in icy conditions and tipped over the wagon she was riding in.  She has seen and lived so much in her 86 years.

We have always talked a lot about the past because I'm cut from the same cloth as she is.  I love history, especially the history involving family.  I drive the country roads in DeKalb County, Illinois and it's like a visual history book because over the years she has told me stories of her growing up, which farms belonged to which family member, who lived where, the walk to the one-room schoolhouse, and yes it's true, over hill and dale even in knee-deep snow.  Elmwood Cemetery in Sycamore, Illinois is a place she has always frequented.  She used to put red geraniums on the family member's tombstones for Memorial Day and she once mentioned to me while we were walking around the cemetery, "I know more people buried beneath this soil than I do living."

Grandma has been there with me through nearly everything in my life and I cannot imagine her not there.  I think having my grandmother when my mother died was a factor in helping me along with my grief.  Gram was there for my mother in the nursing home after her stroke and was there with my father and me the moment mother breathed her last breath.  It was Gram who held it together while I cried uncontrollably.

She is a rock who has always been a large part of my foundation.  I'm headed up to Illinois hopefully within the next week, weather permitting, to visit with her.  I didn't tell her on the phone today that I was coming out because I want it to be a surprise, just like all of those surprises she did with us after we moved out of state. Surprises are the best.

I'm sort of glad that she ended up in the hospital this week. I live 500 miles away and this gives me time to prepare. Time to say everything I've ever wanted to say, though we share our sentiments every time we've talked. Time to ask questions I have forgotten the answers to. Time to just be with my dear, sweet grandmother.

Two years ago, my grandmother was failing in health and we thought it was near the end. My brother and I traveled out to Illinois for Christmas and I took this picture of Gram in front of the nativity that my grandfather built:

And now I wonder if this was truly the last Christmas Gram will ever spend here.

I'm so blessed to have her in my life. Family is everything and my grandmother is my hero and the strongest woman I've ever met. Even in her various health issues, she finds a reason to smile and laugh over the phone. Today, in between bouts of coughing, she laughed and said, "I'm an old woman.  What do you expect?"

From her? Nothing less. She is my everything and the greatest gift of all.

Don't buy generic cloth napkins! Sew your own!

Christmas is next week, so why not start a Christmas sewing project over this past weekend, right?  This at a time my Christmas shopping was not fully finished.  And it's still not, though the sewing project is done, so there's that triumphant accomplishment! (Post Script:  Now my Christmas shopping is officially finished. Thank you Target.com.)

It's an exciting Christmas this year!  For those who don't know, our very small family is spread among 4 states.  My brother and his significant other, Jessica, live in New York.  His daughter lives in Arkansas.  My dad lives in Illinois and we live in Kansas.  When my mother was alive, Christmas mostly centered around the family home in Illinois.  It was a "come if you can" type thing, but since her stroke and death, we've only had two family Christmases; one in Arkansas the year after my mother's stroke in 2005 where it was such a torn feeling to be happy we were all together and so burdened, at the same time, that mother was up in a nursing home in Illinois lying in vegetative coma; especially since Christmas was her favorite time of the year.  The second Christmas was a few years ago when we all made the trek to Illinois.  This was under the assumption that my grandmother was doing poorly.  Thankfully she is still with us, though that was a difficult Christmas, too.

However, this Christmas will be at the lake.  My brother and Jessica are flying out to Missouri and picking up his daughter in Arkansas and then coming up to Delavan Cottage.  My dad is coming down from Illinois and we will all be together for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, at least.  Hopefully longer!  This is the first time Delavan Cottage will really get a workout as a "guest cottage!"  It will be nice to spread out among the two cottages, just as I always envisioned!

There is no sadness this year just a complete nuclear family together at a place that I hold so near and dear!  I cannot wait!  So, as I've blogged before, I purchased an antique farm table for Delavan Cottage.  Though the cottage has mostly a mariner theme, I still like to incorporate vintage touches, especially through linens.  I have antique quilts folded in the cabinet that I hope will be used to keep everyone warm as we relax and visit with each other.  For the Christmas table, I was looking at using cloth napkins.  After shopping online, I decided I'd rather just sew up my own napkins.

When I go to auctions in the warmer months, I'm always scoping out feed sacks and grain/seed sacks. I just love the graphics, the advertising, the stains and the different material of each sack.  Even though you may find multiples of the same sack, they are never quite the same depending on the wear and the worn graphics.  Oftentimes, I have to bid on a large stack of sacks to get the perfect one I wanted which means I have a collection of worn sacks of all types.

Some of the better sacks I've turned into pillows and sold.  A few sacks are in my own collection, but when it came time to sew up some double-sided napkins, I turned to my more worn seed sacks because I knew I was going to use them and I wanted to see how they'd turn out before I actually cut up perfectly good sacks.

I also needed backing fabric.  It might have been last year or the year before when I had Spoonflower print up a yard of fabric each from an old 1930's advertisement from our lake neighborhood at the Lake of the Ozarks.  One of our part-time neighbors at the lake has the original advertisement which is a 3-fold ad.  I scanned both the front of the ad as well as the inside and sent the files to Spoonflower.  So two napkins have one part of the advertisement as the backing material and 2 other napkins have the other side.  The last 2 napkins have a sweet vintage calico print.

Now, before I show pictures, I want to reiterate that I chose the sacks that were in the poorest condition since I'm using them myself and I won't go postal if anyone gets a stain on the napkin!  Ha-ha!  And, since it's cloudy outside and my dining room table is full of Christmas gifts that need to be wrapped, I grabbed an antique tablecloth to drape over my cutting table for the pictures.  My camera needed to use the flash so the stains look worse in the pictures than in reality and the pictures aren't my finest work, but I wanted to get this blogged before I take the napkins down to the cottage this week.

Each napkin is double-sided and has a good weight, which I like in a cloth napkin.  They were fairly easy to sew by measuring the fabric to 18" X 18" and sewing right sides together with a 1/4" seam before turning right- side out and top-stitching both the seam and the entire napkin.

They fold nicely and look substantial:

I used a sugar sack for this napkin:

This clover sack is delightful with the yellow and red:

The Morton Hybrids sack is interesting because it's just black and white which I thought paired beautifully with the black and white 1930's advertisement of our lake neighborhood on the back fabric.  This pattern was the front page of the advertisement.  I love turning something that was paper into fabric and then using it in a meaningful way!

Of course I had to use a DeKalb sack!  This is the only sorghum sack I've come across.  It had a hole in the material, so I cut out a heart using bumblebee fabric (of course) and appliquéd it over the hole. Bees like sorghum, right?  ;)

Let's face it, there's something charming about flying ears of corn.  DeKalb has the greatest logo of all time until I came across this ear of corn airplane.  I mean, c'mon!  Isn't this the greatest design ever?  (Don't tell the DeKalb folks I said that. I'd never be let inside the DeKalb, Illinois city limits again!  ha-ha!)

This napkin is backed with what was the inside of the 1930's Lakeview Height's advertisement.

And lastly is this delightful corn seed sack.  I especially like the award-winning ribbon!

I love the idea of having two-sided cloth napkins.  You can reverse the design for a different looking table setting.  After the holidays are over, I may dig into my good seed sack collection and sew up more napkins and perhaps put some in my Etsy shop.

This was a super-fun project!

In Antique Mourning

Last night I cried actual crocodile tears after finding out my all-time favorite antique shop in Illinois is closing December 24th.  Real tears, folks!  If that's wrong, I don't wanna be right because my gosh, this is a loss felt to the core.

Many of you know I was born and raised in Sycamore, Illinois.  My family lives in both Sycamore and the adjoining town, DeKalb.  Just as the name DeKalb implies, we lived in and amongst corn fields.  Good, black soil on flat land is our farming neighbor's bread and butter.  While I grew up in town, I have always been enamored with the large, old farmhouses and barns that dot the northern Illinois landscape.  A dream of mine is to someday live on a farm, though I doubt that will ever come to fruition at this point.  So you can only imagine the joy I always felt when visiting Josie's Antiques in Maple Park, Illinois, just a jaunt away from DeKalb.

In the 26 years that Josie's has opened her barns and outbuildings filled to the brim with the most exquisite primitives and antiques, I've been a customer.  Kansas has been my home now for 20 years, and there are quite a few pieces here that were purchased at Josie's over the years.  It was a frequent stop on my excursions to Illinois.

My Mother and I loved going out there.  In the Spring when the warm winds blow mightily through the empty corn fields and bring with them storm clouds, Mom and I would don our rubber boots, rain coats and tromp through the mud and muck to shop.  And just this past March, one of my closest friends and I tromped through the melting snow and shopped, this time cozying up to the two old wood-burning stoves in the long building.  And have I mentioned the chocolate cookies?  Every single day, Josie baked fresh chocolate cookies.  To say the shopping experience was more than browsing antiques is an understatement.

There were plenty of barn animals to pet, peacocks to admire and the most gorgeous grounds to just stand and soak in.  And of course, the antiques.  Josie always stuck to her beloved primitives.  She didn't mix genres. So if you loved authentic primitives, this was the place for you! And if you liked to see antiques in what would have been their original surroundings, then this was nirvana.  While I like the large antique malls, nothing comes close to shopping for antiques in an 1800's barn.  Nothing.

In March, I took my cell phone camera and shot some pictures.  This is just a sampling of the wonderment that is always Josie's Antiques.  I understand she is now going to pursue a different avenue; one in which she is passionate about so I wish her well.  But for me, this is just another chapter in Illinois closing.  Along with the future closing of Moxie in DeKalb, another delightful store that holds such great memories to me, going home to Illinois is going to be that much emptier, especially with my Mother's death in 2009.  The special places we visited are going along the wayside and while I'm thrilled that the proprietors shared that part of their lives with us and they are following their dreams, I'm just sad.  So sad, my cup runneth over last night and I choked up for a bit.

Life charges on and I must, too. I just wish I could swing a quick trip back for one more stroll through Josie's Antiques.