A Trip Down Memory Lane

Hi everyone.  We've had radio silence over here at Forest Manor since the first week of February.   I'm very glad that Mr. Forest Manor was able to retire last October, but -- it's harder for me to find uninterrupted periods of time to work on my blog these days.  Often, just as I'm in the middle of doing something, my hubby asks if I want to go to the bookstore or go for a walk.  He's a little more restless at home than I am.  Have any of you experienced this same thing?  😉  We have certainly been busy, which is a good thing.  I mentioned in an earlier post some things we were hoping to get done to our house this year, but with inflation the worst in 40 years, we will have to put off our bathroom updates until next year(?) and hope things are better then.     However, the project which we can do ourselves is to turn our third bedroom into a home office/hobby room for the two of us.  Since I last posted here, we have moved the bed, nightstand, dresser, and standing floor mirror to my mom's attic space for storage.  This was the bedroom suite my parents bought for me when I was ten years old, and I have always loved it.  When I moved into my first apartment, that bedroom suite went with me, and we've had it everywhere we've lived since Hal and I married.      

         In 2020, I wrote a post about Will's my Peter Rabbit collection.  😉     

Here's a picture I took this evening.  The dishes on the right side were given to us for Will at my baby shower in 1990.  They were a gift from Hal's parents.  The miniature tea set on the left, was a recent gift to me from Hal's mom.  What I managed not to show in the post from 2020 was the ugly walls in here.  The couple who sold us this house used the room as a nursery for their little girl, but I'm so ready to be rid of this dessert-themed border paper and the lavender walls.  We're going to remove the border paper and the chair rail molding, as it was pretty poorly done.  We're leaning towards painting the walls Sherwin Williams Sea Salt  (SW6204).  I have to get a few more things tidied up in here, and I'll share some first pictures of the office/hobby room transition.    

What I really want to share today is some of the stored and partly forgotten treasures that I found whilst cleaning out the dresser so it could be moved to my mom's attic.  First of all, I found two matted, unframed watercolors that I bought to hang in my first apartment, where I lived before I got married.   

I've always thought these were pretty, so I decided to put them out and enjoy them for awhile.  I put the other picture in the kitchen.   

With so many blue and yellow flowers, this is perfect for the kitchen.  The two pictures are similar, but not identical.    

These will look better after they're ironed, but I also had these stored in the dresser.  I take them out periodically and promise myself I'm going to get them framed, but so far that hasn't happened.  I cross-stitched these when Will was still little (before he went off to kindergarten).  I really need to get these framed since Hal and I love the birds so much.   

      By the way, I intend to get this chair re-covered in a neutral color -- probably ivory.  It's time.      

   

There are several other backyard birds in this cross-stich book, and I would like to stitch a few more of them one day.   

This box was under the bed (which we also took to my mom's for storage).  Today, I decided to open the box and see how my dress had held up.   

I'm happy to say it still looks like brand new.  I haven't laid eyes on this dress in almost 35 years; it will be 35 years on May 23rd.  Oh, it was such a treat for me to look at it again!  I've got pictures of course, but I'd forgotten many of the details.     

This is a tea-length dress; I'm only five feet tall, and I felt like a full-length dress with a train would look silly on me.     

Sorry about the picture overload, but I loved seeing this dress again.   

The hem of the dress is scalloped, and I had a Juliet cap veil.   

The past couple of weeks have been a sort of sentimental journey for me.  It's good to have those once in a while, isn't it?  Of course, I saved too many things, and I've had to part with some of them.  I'll share some more of the "treasures" I found and some pictures of our room and what we've done in there so far.     I'm not ignoring the current world events -- sometimes I really wish I could.  It's all so senseless and completely heartbreaking.  I'm thankful to have my home and my family safe, for the moment.  Thanks to all of you for reading my blog, and I hope you have a good weekend.     Blessings,