Making the most of Treehouse collections: dolls and more

We are Squirrels, and don't forget it.  We may not be parts-stashers, but we do like to collect things.

These are Red Rose Tea Figurines. Some of them were Mr. Fixit's grandma's. Some were Mama Squirrel's. The shelf had hung in a corner of our rec room for a long time, kind of hidden and dusty. We decided to move it up to the kitchen.

Dollygirl's TY Teenie Beanie Boppers. (Also here.) She has been collecting these at yard sales and thrift shops for several years; I think only one was bought new.  Mr. Fixit helped her spray paint and frame a piece of pegboard, so now the Boppers can all hang out together.

Mr. Fixit's restorations are part of our living room decor--they come and go, and we make room for them while they're in the Treehouse.  The glass-fronted cabinet was the grandparents', and it holds a group of dolls handed down from both sides of our family.

All photos by Mr. Fixit, copyright Dewey's Treehouse, 2012.

Saturday yard sale finds

Crayons found one addition to her Beanie Boppers: a hockey-playing Hat Trick Hunter. Very cute.

Mama Squirrel bought a boxful of mixed books and ca. 1994 educational software, some still in its shrinkwrap, and some on 3 1/2 inch HD diskettes that caused a Squirreling reaction similar to that seen in the dinosaur room at the ROM. We'll have to talk to Mr. Fixit to see if there's any way of using this stuff (obviously they're not going to fit into a CD-Rom drive). One we found on CD-Rom is "What's the Secret, Volume 1," from 3M Learning Software, and that does look pretty interesting. According to the reviewer, "Volume One contains everything children and adults want and need to know about: • Bee anatomy• Bee behavior• Our heart and blood• Blood Pressure• Our hearing• Stomach aches• Fractions• Sound waves• Roller coasters." Can't go wrong with that.

The books are mostly 1960's Whitman Teen Novels and Donna Parker books (we are thinking E-bay for those), plus a couple of good spy novels, a vintage French reader and a French translation of Lucy Daniels' Sheepdog in the Snow (an Animal Ark book).

Rummage Sales

Last week's rummage saling: a box of oil pastels, a cassette recorder, a sweater (for Mama Squirrel), a skort (it turned out not to suit Ponytails, but we'll put it aside for Crayons), drawer organizers, a cap, and several books. Plus a cloth shopping bag, since this was a fill-up-a-bag sale and for an extra fifty cents you got to keep the bag.

Today was too rainy for much outdoor yard-saling (it's off and on, keeps pouring rain and then the sun comes out for awhile), but there were some church sales. We came home with two Beanie Boppers (Crayons' treasures), an embroidery set (mostly for the floss, needle and any other useful parts), a plastic tool box, two sets of punch-out wood dollhouse furniture, paper doilies, a "Country Flowers of a Victorian Lady" greeting-card keeper, and several books including Lasagna Gardening. Mr. Fixit found some records including a never-been-opened copy of The Mennonite Piano Concerto.

Who's Invited to our 4th Blogiversary Party?

It's today.

And you are!

On the guest list:

The Composite Ghost (Ponytails' Perfect Superhero) and The Commodore Frog
Ty Teenie Beany Boppers
John Wesley
Liona Boyd
Punky Pumpkin (don't ask)
Barbie and her bowling buddies
And all the Treehouse friends!

For entertainment, we have:

Three Stooges Movies
Answering Ponytails' Annual Winter Quiz
Writing poems about things that BOTHER us
Sea Songs With Crayons
Fun Israel activities
Discussion (serious and otherwise) of the names of IKEA chairs, Stickleback parenting habits, freaky homeskoolers, the etiquette of not touching somebody else's fish, grammar grabbers, and God's provision.

On the menu:

Sausage-Barley Soup
Granola bars that don't fall apart
Doreen Perry's Cookies
Tofu Chocolate Pie

Happy Blogiversary! Enjoy the party!

And, one day late--happy blog birthday to The Beehive Five too.

A good morning for books. And strudel. And discount-store groceries.

We had a fun Saturday morning shopping around.

First stop was an estate sale with a lot of vintage books; the late owner of the house had been a French teacher and her collection went way back, maybe to her own school days. I picked up a few books just for interest, mostly vintage school editions:

Corneille: Le Cid (Hachette's French Classics)

Beaumarchais: Le Barbier de Seville

Daudet: Lettres de mon Moulin (Siepmann's French Texts)

Les 100 Plus Belles Chansons (a school songbook from the 1940's)

Notre Histoire, by Brown, Harman, and Jeanneret, translated by Charles Bilodeau. This is a real treasure: a French translation of George Brown's Story of Canada, which is an out-of-print textbook that some Canadian CM homeschoolers like to use. (Ponytails will be using our copy this year.) I didn't know a French version existed (I can find no mention of it online), and I'm not sure yet what I'm going to do with it. I know a couple of bilingual CM mammas who might like to have it.

There were some books in English, too:

The Heart of Midlothian, by Sir Walter Scott

An Everyman's Library book of Modern Plays

The Little Minister, by J.M. Barrie

A Year in Provence, by Peter Mayle

Mr. Fixit took away a few records, too.

Second stop was a rent-a-table sale at the community centre. I found a small dolly for Crayons and a few somewhat tattered Scholastic paperbacks for a quarter apiece to add to our collection: Just Plain Maggie, Ghost Town Treasure, Snowbound in Hidden Valley, and Vicki and the Black Horse.

And a couple of the Squirrelings found earrings.

The community centre sale had a snacks table, but we weren't up for pop and hot dogs at 10:30 in the morning. So we all got back in the 2000 Rav4 (yeah, that's what we're driving right now) and drove to a cafe we had been wanting to try out that opens and closes at weird hours and keeps being closed every time we go there. This morning it was open. Grandpa Squirrel (that's Mr. Fixit's Dad Squirrel, not my map-collecting Dad Squirrel) was in the neighbourhood so he joined us for some coffee, juice and homemade strudel.

Last stop of the morning was Giant Tiger, which sounds like a funny place to pick up groceries, but we only needed bread, milk and a few boxes and cans, and we were planning a trip to the farm stand later to pick up the fresh stuff.

So...phew. That was our Saturday morning. How about yours?