These Are A Few of My Favorite Things

In continueing my "series" on favorite things, I pulled out the camera while I was home and snapped a few shots of some of my favorite things there to show you.


Now, my favorite things. Last time I shared three of my favorite beauty products with you. Today I'm sharing a few of my personal treasures with you.

1. This is my favorite lamp. Dad brought this home to me when I was a kid, knowing how much I loved horses. I think, if memory serves me right (which isn't always the case) that he found it at a yard sale? Anyway, I have always loved it. The carved horses are actually modeled after two Breyer model horses. I'm not sure if its actually a Breyer lamp, but I still love it. Last summer I left a window open and got a surprise rain storm which blew rain in the window. The lamp now has some water stains on the shade. I was upset about it for a while, but if it ruined any value it had...well I never intended to sell it anyway, and now it has another memory for me. Montana leaves its mark on more than just my heart!
2. These are my first and favorite set of Little House on the Prairie books. I have two sets, and am considering buying a set with the new cover designs (though I can't decide because I'm kind of offended that they changed it.) Anyway, these I've had since I can ever remember. Mom bought them for me. They are read and read and re-read and tattered and the cover is taped onto the volume of The Long Winter with masking tape. I'd like to get a set of the light blue hard backs like my Aunt Lisa has. Is it really necessary to have so many sets of the same book, you ask? Absolutly.....you can never have too many books in general, but especially you can't have too many copies of one of your best friends, and Laura will always be one of my best friends. I'm kind of attached to the girl. In fact I'll confess to being 31 and just having finished reading them once again. The little angel music box is also a gift Mom gave me for Christmas a couple of years ago. I sat her with my books on my bookshelf.




3. This is my Christmas Cactus. Here's the story. For as long as I can remember Mom had a Christmas Cactus. I found out in my adult years, again if I'm remembering correctly, that it was born of some cuttings from Granny's plant. (is that right Mom?) And oddly, the cactus, which I remember being a very robust plant, died the same year Granny did. Anyway, the first year we got married I had decide I wanted a Christmas Cactus of my own, but being me, I talked about it and looked at them at Walmart, but just never bought one. None of them satisfied me.


So a few days before Christmas, Malcolm stopped at a florist shop in Hixson on his way home from work to get me flowers, and the lady had a very pretty Christmas Cactus, which he remembered me talking about. And so he bought it for me. It has since doubled in size. I repotted it in May, and came home a few weeks ago and I think it just trippled in size. It is covered in new leaves. So this is one of my favorite things, that I will always treasure for the reminder it gives me of three very special people in my life.





4. My birdfeeder....Mom gave it to me. She had one just like it and I was admiring it every time I went over there, thinking how nice it would be to have one, but they were kind of pricy, plus I didn't know where to go. Some man was making them I think down in Georgia. So a couple of years ago, Mom showed up with this one for my birthay. Malcolm and I finally got it set up this past visit home. I don't have any seed in it yet, and I don't know if Montana birds will even bother with a feeder, considering the abundance of natural food for them, but I still love looking out my window and seeing it standing there. I look at it and think about my Mom and Grandma's yards, and their lovely flowers, and all their song birds at their feeders, and it brings back memories of sitting on the porch watching birds with Mom. Below the feeder are my two metal bunnies. I'm not a big yard ornament person, but I was on a shopping trip at Lowe's with Mom and for some reason was looking at the concrete yard junk, saw these bunnies, and....well this is one impule buy I allowed myself. Actually Mom might have bought them for me, I can't remember.





5. My bird bath....I wanted a bird bath to sit next to my feeder Mom had given me, but I couldn't find one I liked, and of course when I did, typical me didnt' want to spend money on something silly like a bird bath. Malcolm's good for me in that way. I won't spend money on myself, but he makes me, or shows up with the things I have talked about. Anyway, I was debating, so one day he drug me to Holcomb's Garden Center in Fort Oglethorp, GA where I had found this one, and loaded it into the truck for my birthday present. I like my bird bath because so many of them are so modern looking, or they've got little concrete birds perched on them, etc. But mine is elegantly simple, and looks like the older designs that I like so much.





6. This bookshelf is something Malcolm built when we live in the little green house after getting married. The house didn't have a doorway for the bedroom. Well it did, but it was also open to the hallway. So Malcolm's solution for this was to build a bookcase that fit into that opening perfectly. I enjoyed my bookcase so much, that when we moved, I insisted on taking it with me, so now that hallway is re-open to the bedroom...sorry to future residents. Figure out something for yourself. I love my bookshelf because its the biggest one I've ever had, and Malcolm made it. True to form, because Malcolm made it....the thing weighs a TON because he didn't use cheap stuff to make it. Its always such a joy to move it.....


So there you have it, a few of my favorite things at home. In reflection I realize they all were gifts from people I love, and they all have multiple memories associated with them. That must be why they are favorite things. Because I'm not so much a materialistic person, but I am nostalgic...terribly so....and I treasure material things that remind me of memories and love ones.

Aside from favorite things, we got to see some of our favorite people while we were home, some expected and some by surprise. Fourth of July evening, Malcolm's cousin, Michael Paul, called from Billings. He and his wife Jennifer were on their way to Glacier National Park, and called to say "hey were in your country." They hadn't realized we were home, but since we were, they took a HUGE detour in their trip (we're over 200 miles the other direction) and stayed with us for a couple of days. It was so much fun. We hadn't seen them since we moved over a year ago.