Every Day is Like Christmas!

One of the best things about getting one's own Vintage Trailer is that everyday is like Christmas!

There's nothing like the feeling of coming home to little packages at your door which have carried vintage treasures from around the country.   Packages like this one:

Let's open it up, shall we?

 I am so excited for this to arrive.  Ideally I would love for The Pearl to be filled with vintage treasures.  I am adding things slowly though, looking for the perfect items that are functional, not too weighty, and most importantly can withstand being handled repeatedly by a family of eight and possibly flying through the air should something drop or come open in travel.

oooooh the anticipation!!

 And here they are!  The beautiful vintage salt and pepper shakers I ordered in one online community or another.  I absolutely love them!  Especially since we had a tragic mishap before our last trip and lost a  glass pepper shaker that belonged to my Gramsy.  It was part of a set.   Thankfully it was my own fault.

Here's a closer look!

What is it my sister always reminds me?   "See the glass as already broken...."   well not these babies.  These look like they're built to last forever.  That's one of my favorite thing about vintage treasures.  Planned obsolescence was only it's infancy and manufacturers still cared about the products they made.





And then there was this one:

They look so unassuming, don't they?

 But to me it really is like Christmas morning.

 so the kids and I tore open the wrapping....

And another treasure is ours to use while out camping.

All these things bring back such fond memories.  Memories of Gramsy's kitchen.  Each meal lovingly cooked to perfection.  A simpler time.  Good memories.  Before pollution and the hole in the ozone.   Before the technological revolution that saps all our free time and energy.  Before it became 'unsafe' to play in our own front yards.   Ahhh yes,  those times....  

Camping at the Point

For Mothers Day my crew took me camping at the beach.  My favorite place on earth to be.

The minute we dropped anchor Sobe our ship hound
made herself nice and comfortable.  This seems
to be her favorite spot on the ship, my pillows.

 We decided after our last camping trip to go again, once a month, at least through the summer.  To that end we have been working furiously on The Pearl getting her all prettied up and comfortable for our large family to relax in when we want to.

I finally got around to taking some new pics of her gussied up interior.  With each project she becomes more and more comfortable to relax in.

 

  

 I left the books at home and took my needlepoint with me this time.  Thinking there might be some down time to sit and work on it.

The nightstand

 

I did have some extra reading material in my magazine rack just in case.




Here is the finished french memo board.   Guess I should have made a bigger one to fit all the pictures I'd love to have with me.  Some are missing from this picture.

 This is what we ended up temporarily doing with the front end.  We need to get as much sleeping area as we can for all the female crew members.

 
 There is still much to be done.   You can imagine my list I think.   But for now she's comfortable and cozy feeling, and a very special place to relax.

 Before we set sail for Doheny point our parish priest, Father Joseph Corrigan bestowed a blessing on her.  The seas can be rough, and you never know what dangers one will encounter while upon them.

"Oh man, now that's a blessed bee"  one of the wee crew
members remarked.

We dropped anchor at Doheny State Beach.  The campsites are teeny, but beach front property is in high demand so you get what you get.  

Everyone who passed smiled, and pointed.  Some stopped to tell us how cute the Pearl is or how they loved our campsite setup.  One lady seemed to be waiting for an invitation to breakfast she stayed so long chatting about The Pearl and how it reminded her of past times.  We get a lot of that.  People reminiscing.  Plenty of people miss 'the good old days'.

The funniest comment this time around was the guy in the Land Yacht (The' Behemouth' I call them) who came over as we were packing up and told my husband how he liked our campers 'retro look'.   

Being a '58 she came by it honestly...

That made me smile.

Shining Up The Pearl

This weekend was the final push for getting the butyl taping done before we once again need The Pearl to be seaworthy.  Fortunately it was a gorgeous day, and with many hands on deck we managed to get a lot accomplished.  

 First thing Erik did was set to work removing the other drip edge.  Thankfully this one was easy.  No black goo, or major work to be done on that side.  

 this is what it looks like under that drip edge.  The 60 year old butyl tape was not looking so good.  It had to all come off.

 so we scraped.....














                      and scraped...


                                                                         

 and scraped some more...  this was the drip edge itself being carefully scraped to remove it all. 


That all went smoothly and relatively quickly so I talked Erik into giving me a few window frames to start polishing up.

With her rear window removed I attempted to keep the junk out, but all the butyl tape scraping around the edges was messy.  Guess I should have taped off the window first...  I would say you live and learn, but I just jump into things no matter how many times I've learned the lessons...  Impatience wins every time...

this one's favorite job is swabbing the decks, and just about anything else she can reach.  Here she is polishing up Backstage.  We're not even started on Backstage yet...   

 Meanwhile Erik was replacing the tape on the side.  Here it is looking all fresh and new.

this is her front window.  I had hoped to get to it last weekend, but we ran out of time.   So we removed the eyebrow,  unscrewed about a thousand screws, and removed it.  More scraping and taping ensued. 

 I have no idea what this stuff was on the back window.  I attempted to scrape as much as I could off, but it was like asphalt or something, and some parts of it wouldn't budge.  

 One of the crew scrapes the actual window edges.

and at last the drip edge is done and replaced.  

 I neglected to take pictures of the difficult messy part of our day.  Partly because my fingers went numb and I thought my arms were going to fall off.  But here is the result of a heck of a lot of scrubbing those window parts with steel wool.  They had been previously painted silver instead of cleaned, so it took at least twice as long to get them to this state as it would have without the paint removal.  It wasn't til the end of the day when Erik came to help polish and commented that there must have been an easier way to deal with the paint....   

So we finished that up as best we could.  I was exhausted and he had no patience for sitting there scrubbing, so the front window did not get as shiny as these.

and the rear window, all shined up and with the screen fixed is put back in place with new tape around here as well.

he also managed to get to making some temporary replacement jalousies for one of the side windows which was missing a couple of them.  For now it'll do.

And finally, as evening approached, and most of the crew had mutinied and jumped ship the new front window went back in.  

On Sunday we tidied up a bit, and put all the gear from our last trip in their storage places. And it's amazing what a clear window can do for one's outlook.  At least a few of the crew rested in the sun in that window, one even took a nap.  

She's coming together nicely!  Next time I'll have to post pics of her cabin.  We've really got her in good shape and are looking forward to a beautiful, campy summer getting together with new Vintage Trailer friends.  Join us if you can.

Adventures of an ADD crafter

Have you ever started a project?  You know the feeling, you find a new craft, or get an idea online, or in a magazine or something that you would like to do, so you run out and buy all the supplies and get to it?

This is a feeling I know all too well.  Unfortunately I have trouble with distraction and often with finishing things.  I was going over the list of projects I have to complete for the Pearl, and our upcoming camping trip, and it made my husband's head swim.  Some of these will look familiar, and are ongoing projects.  Take the afghan I started about 6 years ago and am still needing to finish for my now 13 year old.  I chose this project because my Gramsy used to make these and it was the only crochet pattern I liked at the time.  It's a very time consuming design though and sadly I decided to make it entirely too big (I started this before I had at least two of my kids) so I am at this point completely bored with it. I will force myself to finish it, I have to.  The boys have had their own for years.



 Remember these??   I had mostly finished this pennant banner for our last camping trip, however since I do things without measuring it was slightly too short.  Partly because when I do a project I usually go big and I wanted it to hang on two sides of The Pearl.  Most people make them to hang on one long side.

Here it is, it would have hung the length of one long side
but I wanted it to also be on the front.  I thought it would
look better along the whole side of the easy up so I
decided to extend it.  

so I finally finished that one...  

 here you see one of my other ongoing 'projects'.  Pointe shoes.

 I tend to juggle my laundry and clothespins when I hang my laundry on my clothes drying rack outside.  I try to be a good 'homesteader' so I get out to hang laundry and take care of the chickens and ducks.  I saw this cute clothespin apron online somewhere and decided to make not one, but two. I could whip these out in a day right.  Plus it was laundry day and I would have lots of use for them. Here you see a partially finished one, that project is sorta stalled out because it rained all week and I couldn't hang laundry outside anyway.  Plus once again ran out of rickrack and had to get to the fabric store.





 I did this to one of the drawers that was offensive looking... It went pretty quickly.

So I went to work on this fine piece of art....

Ideally it was going to resemble this beautiful birds nest I saw in Cloth, Paper, Scissors to go in the Pearl for my teeny collection of stuff from our travels.  IE: rocks and stuff.  I know, it looks like a mess.  It seems pretty straightforward building a birds nest, well let me tell you I have a whole lot more respect for our fine feathered friends after taking on this project.  How they accomplish this feat without two hands and thumbs is beyond me.  At one point I wanted to throw it.  (One of my girl's got the job of making the bird, I was over it by then).

Then there was the french memo board I have wanted to make for about 10 years, maybe longer.  But now the Pearl has a place for one so I decided to tackle it now.  Guess I should have ironed the fabric though, and I ran out of ribbon so that went on hold.  

Then I saw these darling little owl's on Pinterest.  Aha, the Pearl needs one of those!  I thought.  So I whipped this one up in one evening.  It's hideous and chubby, but those are my Gramsy's buttons from her button jar that I used for the eyes so she has some sentimental value.  

And no, that's not a cute pink smile, it's a beak, but I couldn't find my yellow embroidery floss.  Could you imagine if I was ADD and a perfectionist??  I think I'd drive myself mad.  A couple of my girls ended up loving it and now want me to whip up a couple more.  

It looked cute when I cut it out. 

stuffing it made it not so cute

 

Oh yeah, and just for kicks, in all my spare time I decided to take on crocheting a granny square a day.  Here is my progress.  The internet maybe should be kept away from ADD people....

This is the granny square afghan I started also for The Pearl.  This Vintage trailer project sure has given me a lot of other projects to add to my ever growing list.  And a new found love of all things vintage.  Since I don't get out much and have no one to go antiquing with I end up fashioning a lot of things myself.

Finally, got out to the store for more ribbon, and was able to put the finishing touches on the french memo board.  Gramsy's buttons.  Are you noticing a theme here?

Again one evening on the internet I came across embroidered items.  Hey, my Gramsy taught me how to embroider about 30 years ago, and I've wanted to pick it up again ever since.

So I drew some simple mushrooms and started with that...  

then I found this....

 Kinda put up curtains when we last went camping for some privacy, but still have to stitch all of them properly.  And make tie backs.  I'm hung up on the measuring.  I tend to overwhelm myself.   Ideally I am going to stitch curtains for every window with beautiful vintage (guess who's) buttons on the tie backs.  Sparkly!

And then there's my art, which has seriously been neglected.  I managed to finish this painting and another I will reveal later.

 The mushrooms came out adorable, and now I've started on my second embroidered test subject.  It's tough to have so many projects, be distracted by shiny things, and have precious little time left after raising a family.

Ok, now for a note.  You've probably noticed that I did not include pictures of the items I saw online and in magazines that I was making for myself.  There is a good reason for that.  It would be completely embarassing, so forget it.

Also I'm not joking about the ADD.  I was diagnosed with adult ADD a couple of years ago and am on meds for that too.  My kids joke with me by saying "oooh shiny!" and know I am easily distracted.  Some days I feel a lot like Dory from Finding Nemo.   I've always been someone who talks to myself and find I have to remind myself to 'just keep swimming'....