just an old-fashioned girl

Hello and welcome. I'm glad you dropped by. If you´re looking for something a little nostalgic of bygone eras with a timeless elegance and a little modern twist – in other words, something slightly “retro” – then you should feel right at home here in my shabby chic room. Month by month, there will always be something new to see so I hope you´ll enjoy your stay and come back again soon.

Thursday, January 22, 2015

Happy Belated Birthday, Helen

Oh my goodness...where has the month of January gone.  It is just flying right by as fast as the 35 mile per hour wind outside my window.  It just hit me like a ton of bricks...the wind must have blown that stack of bricks by the edge of the woods right inside the house and aimed it right at the top of my head.  HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY, HELEN  I actually thought about your birthday when I renewed the store's domain in December....remembering that the store was your birthday gift several years back.  Making a mental note when I'm celebrating Grandson Jase's birthday on January 10th, that Helen's birthday is just three days away!   Thought we would revisit your birthday room once again for a nostalgic yet belated celebration of your birthday.


To be truthful, Jacquie Lawson, sent a notice of a new birthday card  to my e-mail...so that set off the ton of bricks that flew right through the walls of the house!  So, you can look for an e-mail card today as well.

Happy Belated Birthday, my friend...I hope you had a perfect day!!!

Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Dog Rules

I´ve always known that boxers are clowns and, judging by the the huge number of silly, not to say ridiculous, photos of boxer antics I´ve found on the Web I´m not the only one. Here are just a few which, along with the constantly amended list of dog rules, are guaranteed to put a smile on anyone´s face, also hair and slobbers on your pillow if you´re besotted enough to abide by the utterly ludicrous rules set down by what you were foolish enough to allow to become the leader of the family pack...

 
Even if you´re a dog owner but don´t have a canine clown, does any – or all – of this sound familiar?

Monday, January 5, 2015

Distance Lends Enchantment

As soon as my mother was old enough she joined the Women´s Land Army which was a British civilian organisation created during the First and Second World Wars which enlisted young women of 18 and over to work in agriculture to replace men called up to the military. She was sent to Argyllshire in the Highlands of Scotland to work on the estate of the Duke of Argyll, chief of the clan Campbell. For a city girl this must have been quite an adventure though I suspect that it didn´t entirely live up to her expectations. Knowing my mother and her love of animals, I imagine she´d pictured herself tending to cuddly lambs and petting sheepdogs. However, the closest she ever came to an animal was too close for comfort when she had to lead a large and very bad tempered bull from a field to a barn during a thunderstorm. I remember her recalling this episode with a shudder when she described how he tossed his head so wildly that he managed to get one of his horns into a sleeve of her plastic raincoat and would have shaken her about like a puppet if the sleeve hadn´t ripped from elbow to wrist and released her. As for lambs and sheepdogs, the former were far too skittish to allow themselves to be cuddled and the latter were mainly vicious and untrustworthy. Even so, she always looked back to that time in her life with great nostalgia. As the poet said, “Distance lends enchantment...” 

This photo shows her with one of her colleagues. I sincerely hope that the implement she´s holding is a hoe or a spade and not a pitchfork. Apparently, on days when working in the fields was not a priority the girls were sent into the barns to kill rats and the weapon of choice was invariably a pitchfork. According to my mother, she always shut her eyes tightly before thrusting the pitchfork randomly into the straw. She said this was the most effective way of not killing anything!

Of the 2 smaller photos, one is of Inverary Castle, the seat of the clan chief and the other is the original photo of my mother which is, as you can see, not in particularly bad condition, just a little faded with some slight damage at the bottom edge. I thought I might have to experiment quite a lot to both brighten and darken it but actually “Auto Contrast” worked like a charm and the damaged edges were easily repaired using the clone tool and the healing brush tool. Having done that, I sampled an off white shade from the photo and used it in creating a new border.

Off now to tackle something more challenging.