My New Treasures

       
V sent me a "Brown paper package wrapped up in string..." a couple of weeks ago.  Included inside were some of those yummy Confections she'd been dipping in chocolate, a pair of Sock Monkey Slippers, and books.  The girl knows the way to my heart does she not?  I started to take a photo and my camera refused to work...I got batteries today so feast your eyes on these (minus the confections 'cause they didn't last long enough for a photo):

 These two books about birds came from V.  The Traveling with the Birds book has the most beautiful pictures inside.  I think I should copy some of these to hang in the guest room!

 Isn't that just lovely?

There were lots more books from V, too.  I'll list the titles here for you:
Short Plays, Four In One Mysteries, To Have and To Hold by Mary Johnson, Silas Marner by George Eliot, The Bishop's Emeralds by Houghton Townley, Saplings, Evangeline by Henry W. Longfellow, The Strange Woman by Ben Ames Williams and The Oak Above the Kings.  Several of the books V sent are from the late 1800 early 1900's and so very precious to me as they were her Grandmother's volumes.  Most are inscribed to the original owner, which in my eyes can only add to the value of the book.

V also found these awesome things:

Sock Monkey Slippers!  And they fit! lol  I was tickled pink.  I was delighted enough with the books but when I saw these in the box I squealed like an excited three year old!

So today, despite the heavy rain I was out and about.  I needed to pick up a few items at the grocery (butter on sale at Publix for $2/pound namely, though quite a few other things went into the buggy as well.  It is, after all, the holidays...) and I'd promised Mama two weeks ago rather rashly that I'd decorate her dining room table for her Christmas dinner.  I had NO clue whatsoever what I'd do for that table.  And no, I don't have a photo because the batteries were in the CAR (bought those at the grocery,too) and I was in the house with the camera with no batteries.

I went by a favorite junk store that is loosely organized into categories.  It's the sort of creepily dim lit, slightly gritty junk store that has treasure and trash liberally mixed and you pick and dig your way through things, some of higher value than others.  I found some juice glasses, perfect to use as votive holders for the table, a few snow man figurines.  I culled out those missing noses and began to sort of build a centerpiece in my mind.  I knew that I needed 'snow' and that I got at the grocery (ice cream salt).  I'd brought along some poinsettia picks minus the stems and a larger snowman and wife from home.

Once I had a sort of semi-idea for Mama, I decided I could turn myself loose to look at the books.  I hit the treasure trove today!  I took along my flashlight so I could better read the titles on the bottom shelves and told John that not once but twice I stumbled against boxes of books that spilled over and there in the bottom found the best books by far.  7 novels by Emilie Loring, 2 by Faith Baldwin, a Grace Livingston Hill, Du Marier's My Cousin Rachel, Daphne Deane by Grace Livingston Hill, Gift from the Sea-Anne Morrow Lindbergh, The Marriage of Katherine  by D. E. Stevenson, and a couple of more books just to sweeten the pot.  By far, the most treasured in my personal opinion were the Loring books as there are just loads of her paperbacks from the 1970's available but the hardbacks from the 1930's and 40's are rather dear in cost.  I got them for $2 each!  I gasped out loud when the first box tumbled to it's side and I picked it up to restore the contents...

Just ignore my little messy spot here with the magazines and Dvd please.  I've done little housework yet today, but I just had to show off my stacks of new to me books.

At the grocery today, I was wandering all over the store, since it's not that familiar to me yet being a fairly new store on the outskirts of the city area.  I thought, thought being the key operative word there, that since the store was in a lightly populated area, well out of the city and not in a high traffic area that this particular store would not be too busy.  I'd zip in and zip out...Sigh.  Well it is the holiday season and I suppose others may think themselves as smart as I.  The place was busy, the parking lot packed and yet I'll still lay a wager that it was far, far less crowded than the two other Publix stores in that city.

So there I was going up and down aisles, back and forth across the store looking for items, when I passed a display of stuffed animals.  And I saw the cutest, absolutely most adorable, sock monkey...He made me chuckle and I even sent John a phone shot of him.  By the time I'd passed him a third and fourth time I found him too irresistible to leave behind.  Tell me now, could you have left him?

See?  I told you he was adorable!  I think my old fashioned sock monkey looks even happier to have a baby sock monkey! lol

The weather was frightful outdoors.  The wind on the top of the hill where the store is located was doing awful things.  I went out the door minus my raincoat with the umbrella pointed sideways and due West.  I didn't get hit by one drop of rain but the umbrella got a good pelting.  When I arrived at my car, all of a sudden a big gust came from the east, and blew the umbrella inside out and soaked me but good!  I got that umbrella right side in once more and took my buggy to the buggy bay.  The wind literally was pushing the umbrella, now held over my head ,DOWN onto my head so that I had to PUSH up to get it off my hair!  I was still doing a dance of sorts with the wind and umbrella when a car came barreling across the parking lot at a diagonal and would have run me over had I not been watching out for myself.  I told John the only thing that saved me getting a good hard splash was that I had come to a full halt in the middle of the runoff puddle and the car swerved at last to avoid me.  I was soaked and grumpy by the time I got back in the car.  And hot, too, because the humidity was doing funny things, as well.

I stopped just 1/2 mile away at the gas station and discovered that the bays there were not made to keep rain off the person pumping gasoline.  I got soaked some more as I filled my car.  I was glad to get to Mama's where it was semi-warm because the air started to cool down a bit after that.

All in all I've had a lovely busy day, but I really must get on with the rest of my housework and make John's work lunch and determine what I shall have for supper since I barely ate lunch.  John has promised to take me into town to see the holiday lights tonight when he gets home.  Then we're going to come home, light the first candle for Chanukah and eat jelly filled doughnut holes as our treat for this evening.  I think we might turn on the holiday music and plug in the tree, too, just to complete the holiday feel.