In The Kitchen - Page 2

More stuff from my kitchen ... and yeah, pretty much all of these things were in
my kitchen at some point in my married life. When I look back at all of these, I wonder where I kept them all. A lot of the stuff on the first page of kitchen stuff is from the time I was "into" antiques and collectibles, and the kitchen I had then was pretty big (about 20' X 14') with a lot of space on top of the cupboards to display that sort of thing. I also had several vintage kitchen cupboards that displayed a lot of these items as well.

Oval crock pot.

Now, in my retirement years I'm trying to keep things to a minimum, but I'm realizing that even a minimum of stuff is a lot. At least, it's a lot if you still want to cook without buying a pile of prepared meals. The older we get (my husband and I) the more I seem to have to think about the type of foods we eat - he has diabetes, so low-carb for him. I have thyroid issues, so gluten free for me. You'd think life would be easier after you retire, but sometimes, it just isn't. It can become more complicated than you ever thought it would be.

The things I use often, I keep handy, like the crock pots. I have a lot. They're a great way to keep food warm when you entertain.

In the Kitchen

Vintage jam and jelly jar with spoon.

Most kitchens are places where there are a plethora of gadgets - some useful, some useless, and some that only get used at specific times of year. I don't think I've been in a kitchen that doesn't have the proverbial "junk drawer".  In the house where we used to live, I had more than one junk drawer ... that's the drawer all the stuff you don't know what to do with gets tossed.

Eventually, you might start to clean that out, maybe once every few years when you can't get anything else in it, but it always exists.

Ours has held elastic bands, batteries, twist-ties, bits of paper with numbers on them (often no name to go with that number), old padlocks (sans keys), old keys that didn't fit anything in your home or shed or garage, but that you didn't want to throw away "just-in-case", drill bits, the odd screwdriver, film tubes, christmas light bulb replacements, old lids, a bandaid or two, broken keychains ... if it fit in the drawer and I didn't know where to put, that was the place.

Medical Stuff

Electric wheelchair.

This is mostly stuff related to the world of medicine - items used by nurses, or people with mobility issues, or found in hospitals and on store shelves, including examples of herbal extracts and natural products.  Personally, I'm not a big fan of medicines and would much rather use a natural product wherever I can, but there are some things that no vegetable, herb, or minerals can fix on their own, so overall I'm grateful there are medicinal ways to help fix some things in our lives.

My husband is alive today because of medicine, and without it, I'm pretty sure he wouldn't be here. He did end up spending a year in a wheelchair (why I have access to so many mobility accessories, so there will be more added later!), but with therapy, and a lot of hard work and sweat on his part (and a lot of angst on my part), he has been walking and driving again for a couple of years now ... in fact, he's progressed to the point where he has a gym membership and not only uses the bikes and stair climbers, but the treadmill.

We're pretty thankful for his recovery!

Furniture - Interiors, Page 4

Other stuff you might find in the home furnishing category ... no, not might find, but most likely will find in the average home. Most bedrooms will incorporate things like dressers, storage cabinets, armoires, and night tables ... and of course a bed, but larger rooms often have a small desk, chaise lounge and side table, and sometimes even a fireplace.

Colonial Dresser - maple, circa late 1940s, early 1950s

This page is another with furniture that came mostly from my own home with the exception of the small drop-front desk, which was my aunt's.

I imagine someone looking at the site and seeing all this furniture "I" owned would think I lived in a monstrously large house, but I don't. Not all of this furniture is still in my home. Earlier I said change is a good thing right?  Over the years I've gone from the rather tacky 1970s furniture (new when we married) to vintage farmhouse/country type furntiure, to more traditional stylings of the 1910 to the 1930s ... my husband being a huge fan of Stickly style furntiure and then onto modern and contemporary designs.

Then of course, we've lived in a variety of homes too, with a vast difference in the number of rooms and room sizes so ... yeah, stuff happens and things change. It's a good thing to get yourself out of a rut sometimes.

Furniture - Interiors, Page 5

Modern Simple Footstool

More furniture ... sure why not? There are bits and pieces we add to our rooms that are considered furniture, though many serve other purposes than seating ... like the footstool (or ottoman, or hassock). They could be pushed into duty as "seating" if need be, but they are designed for comfort really ... put those feet up, lean back in your chair or sofa and relax.

Of course, with recliners being prevalent in the home today, footstools or ottoman's may not get as much use, and in tight spaces, the footstool can be "an accident waiting to happen".

And then, well we do live in more than the living room, there are bedrooms, family rooms, dining rooms ... other spaces we (if we so desire) fill with a variety of decorative furnishings ... even the entry hall of a home, if it's large enough, can hold some type of furniture.

Furniture - Interiors, Page 3

A variety of other seating furniture can be found on this page because, hey, nobody can just have a bunch of chairs, right? Well, perhaps they can but a sofa or love seat is often found in most living rooms and family rooms - sometimes because they are a more functional choice, and sometimes because that's what fits.

Beige leather love seat with dual recliners.

In a smaller home (like ours) the living room space can sometimes be a tad on the small side, which necessitates having smaller furniture. Sometimes 2 love seats can work better with oddly shaped rooms, or a medium-length sofa and an extra large (what they often call "chair-and-a-half") chair, which (depending on the size of the people) can hold two people (or 3 kids).

Choosing what to buy and how to arrange it in a new space can be a daunting experience - you might know what you want and like, but will it fit in the room and how long will it last?  Unless you have "dough to spare", you want to choose the best quality you can for the money you want (have) to spend.

Furniture - Interiors, Page 2

Furniture - Interiors - Page 2

Old metal chair for outdoor use.

More chairs, mostly older types. Check out the white metal chair on this page. It's old, missing it's cushion, badly weathered and very worn, and I don't think I've ever seen one quite like it before. It's outdoor furniture from some era (I don't know which), and it has wheels on the back. I've seen wheels on the back of older-style chaise lounges, but not just a regular chair like this one. Weird, huh?

The old wooden highchair is another interesting piece. It was used as a display piece in a friend's home, but when it was built, it would have had the attached tray like any modern one, but certainly lacks the functionality of today's offerings ... and the safety and comfort!

All of the victorian styles on this page were furniture in my aunt's home. She was a modern-thinking woman, for the most part, but she did love the traditional Victorian styles and spent years searching out original pieces for her home. It was almost like walking into a museum sometimes, but she didn't treat it as such - she lived in her home using the furniture for every day living, just like anyone of the Victorian era would have.

Furniture - Interiors, Page 1

Contemporary Wing-back Chair

A selection of furniture ... everyone has different tastes in furnishings, and over the years even as we, ourselves age and change our own tastes in furniture will change. Some of us like change, while some of us don't ... I like changing styles and furniture design/shape but ... well, the hubby, he is not one who likes big changes like that. In fact, he complains if I change the layout of the furniture in a room.  Still ... a little change can be good for the soul, right?

Three of the chairs here were found in hotels - either the lobby, or a public area, or in a room, while the others are (or were) chairs in my own home. I'm pretty sure you can tell which ones are from the hotels. Most of the time the hotel furnishings are of simple, but sturdy design and materials, meant to weather the onslaught of use. The upholstery types often are of industrial quality and and easy-clean surfaces.

Holiday Items - Christmas - Page 3

Some of things on this page are pretty old, although I guess it depends on what you call "old". The ceramic snowman was one of the items I made during the first year of my ceramics classes ... that would have been somewhere are 1979, but the Christmas Elves are from the 1950s, so no, they are NOT "Elf on the Shelf".

Something I haven't figured out about the current elf craze ... is why all the 'young-uns' seems to think this is a new thing. Those elf designs have been around since before I was born (in the '50s). The one difference I can see between them is that the current elf is somewhat uglier than the older elves on this page but they are essentially the same otherwise.

Something young people should learn ... "everything old is new again".  That's an old saying, but it still holds true.

Glitter Christmas Train.

Holiday Items - Christmas - Page 2

Santa Cookie Jar with gifts.

More Christmas stuff ... not much else to say is there (see, sometimes I do realize you only come here to grab some images, and I can be a little to wordy sometimes, right)?

And to update our Christmas holiday in Florida ... well, it wasn't something I'd want to repeat unless we have our family with us.

It was a little lonely having Christmas with just the two of us. We weren't really sure what to do that day. We didn't plan a big dinner since we had ours before we left home for Florida. What we did discover, though, was that some of the stores were open, even on Christmas Day (that was something of a surprise!).

Maybe it changes from year-to-year, I don't know since we've only done it once. That year, Family Dollar was open; so was Walgreen's and a CVS and a few others. We spent part of our day shopping at Walgreen's for a few gifts to take home. The store was a lot busier than we thought it would be.

Holiday Items - Christmas

It's that time of the year again! Well ... I guess depending on when you happen to be looking at this page it's that time of the year ... yep, Christmas. There are some folks who prepare for Christmas all year long, and there are others who hurriedly put up their decorations the week before December 25th.  Which are you?

A traditional style Christmas wreath.

Me, I'm up and down. Some year's I have my stuff up in early November, and others, not until the beginning of December, but I almost never wait for the week before Christmas ... I have a nice Christmas village with about 40 buildings in it, and it takes time to haul all the stuff up from the basement and then decide how to arrange it. Then I have to start taking them out of the boxes and putting the lighting in it and it can take 3 or 4 days just to get the village set up to my liking. Yeah, I guess I'm a little fussy about it.

On the other hand, the Christmas tree takes about 3-5 minutes. I've got one of those pencil-type trees - about 6' tall, but super skinny, and fits in a small flat box -  a little bit like this one but mine has decorations instead of poinsettias. Up and down in under 5 minutes.

When we're home during the holidays, the main floor of our home is done up as much as it can be, removing dishes and replacing them with holiday dishes, and open shelves contain decorative items like Hallmark's singing snowmen (I have about 5 of these so far), or figures like the Christmas penguins.

Clocks and Timekeeping

I suppose everyone has heard the old saying "it's about time" ... usually it means you've been tired of waiting for something or someone to show up, and when they finally do, you might say "it's about time".
 

A vintage "time'n temp" travel alarm by Westclox.

In my case, however, what it means is exactly what it says ... this page is really about time. Or at least, it's about the devices used to tell time - mostly clocks of various types. Clocks aren't just about the casings we see or their designs, the way the clock movements work can be quite different in clocks.

Movements run from wind-up, to motion, to electric, modern battery, solar and even water. Yeah, water!  A while ago while in Florida I needed an alarm clock for our guest room and didn't want to spent a lot of money buying a new one.

In a second hand shop I found this funky, modern-looking blue clock, but when I picked it up, the housing was full of water. Turning it over, I read the information on the bottom of the clock (the manufacturer's information). To power the clock and keep it running you simply filled it with water. I'd never seen one that ran on water, and it was only priced at $5 USD, so ... because I was so intrigued by it, I decided to take a chance and buy it.

True to it's word, the clock has been running along just fine with it's casing full of water. Since we only spend winter months in Florida, I fill it up to the top before we leave in April, and it's usually still running fine with plenty of water when we arrive back in Florida in late December.

Onto the images.

Miscellaneous Items - Page 1

Vintage Binoculars

These miscellaneous items aren't in any particular order, nor added in any special groupings.

Although they include some things we use in everyday life (like the binoculars, or the shoehorn) there are also some odd items, and some vintage items we no longer see used everyday, like the gramophone music box.

I do try to keep most of the .png pages categorized so that similar items are grouped on a page, but with the miscellaneous pages, the items are somewhat scattered, so you may have to look through all the miscellaneous pages, or use the site's search option to locate a particular item.

Miscellaneous Items - Page 2

Blue #4 Shotgun Shell.

Another page of mostly miscellaneous items the my visitors might find useful in their image projects or games.

I always find it pretty hard to categorize "miscellaneous stuff"  ... I like to be somewhat organized, but even at home we have what we the "junk drawer".

It's a bunch of "stuff" I don't quite know what to do with. 

The miscellaneous section in my site always reminds me a little of that drawer ... someone might find the stuff useful for something but I don't know where to put it.

And I just know I'm not the only one out there with that "junk drawer".

Clocks Page 2

More clocks for download. Please be sure to check the terms of service for use of these images.

Time is a wonderful thing ... when you have it, but it can be a bit of a nuisance when you're short of time, or rushed and in a hurry. It's also one of the things you can't really control - all those idioms usually end up being sort of true, don't they - sayings like "time waits for no man" (or woman), or "time marches forward" help establish the fact that time "doesn't stand still".

A large modern black iron wall clock.

Statues and Figures - Page 2

A concrete angel statue with open wings, holding a book.

It's probably pretty obvious that the angel statuary came from a grave yard ... while the place isn't somewhere we like to visit very often, I do tend to frequent them a little more than other people.

The statues are often very detailed and beautifully done, and even some of the carved marble or granite  monuments can be beautiful when the sun hits them.

The other statues aren't really "statues" in technical terms. Smaller pieces like those are referred to as figurines, or statuettes, while the bigger-than-life-sized angels are true statues.

Statues and Figures - Page 3

White Swan Statue

Have you ever seen a 6' tall concrete swan? No ... well, me neither until I ran across the on this page in Florida.

The city where this is located is noted for the number of and varieties of swans (real ones) in and around it's city. Many swan statues can be found there, most of them quite large.

That's another thing about "statues" ... a statue is usually supposed to be life-sized, or close to it ... or, a very large representation of a smaller thing (like a person, or in this case a swan), but smaller sculptures are usually referred to as statuettes.

Yeah, maybe you didn't exactly need to know that, but I thought it worth sharing :)

Books, Paper, Money Page 4 - Books and Papers

Papers and Cards

Here is mostly just newspapers, but a few sets of playing cards, and some notepads to download.

A stacked pile of printed newspapers.

Statues and Figures

Bride and Groom Cake Topper.

Outdoor statues, indoor figurines, decor items and even graphics in the form of figures can be found in this section.

Some are garden decor, but some are probably advertising related, like the gigantic 9 foot tall figure of the stallion. I found that one outside of an Antiques Mall in Florida ... very unusual statue, and one that is very detailed and beautifully done. This isn't something you'd see every day.

Other figures are human (Mr. Peanut is just a guy in a cosume), and some are 3D renderings, others are things we might see every day in the homes of friends and family.

Books, Paper, Money Page 2 - Money and Coins

Keep in mind, the paper money here is not suitable for printing, so ... no trying any funny stuff with it. It's meant for use within other imagery, like a collage, or to illustrate an article, or in a game as an object. Most are older forms of currency anyways, so other than image use, it would be pretty pointless to try anything else.

Older Canadian $5 Bill