5-3-16 ~ Our Home from Years Ago

I have been looking for ages for this beautiful picture of our house back after it was first built, and I finally found it today. Sadly, the spring house is now gone. The people who owned the property before us knocked it down, left a mess, and stuck a grill out there. HEARTBREAKING. The water trough and is still out there where the spring water ran thru it. Everything else is the same other than that precious wooden fencing being long gone, the roof is tim, the horse and buggy has been replaced by our cars, we added a new bathroom to the left side of the house, and the addition of the deck on the back. I just LOVE looking at this...the buggy, the blanket over the gentleman's feet, the children in their little outfits on the front porch flanked by their mother (I assume), and the wonderful pain job on the structure. It is hard to believe that this 100+ year old homeplace still basically looks the same.

Please go over and visit Tom the Backroads Traveller's Tuesday's Treasures to see some more beautiful pieces from old.

February 29, 2016 ~ Family Love Tokens

Every time you smile at someone, 

it is an action love,

 a gift to that person, 

a beautiful thing.”
~Mother Teresa

One of my FAVORITE pieces of jewelry is a necklace I had a silversmith friend of mine make for me from my daddy’s family’s love tokens.  During the 1800’s,  people would deface one side of a coin - mine happen to be dimes - and engrave initials, dates, and pictures on the that side. They also placed engravings on rounded pieces of silver.  I have been struggling for years trying to identify the initials and have been successful in some cases.  All of them come from my father’s side of the family. The Hornot’s were French and lived in New Orleans.  A number of years ago  - before Katrina - I spent a week in the genealogy section of the NOLA Pubic Library researching family history, and that is where I was finally able to identify some of the dates and initials. This necklace is another one of my Hornet family “treasures.”

 The following are the pieces that “responded positively” to being photographed!  Many of the tokens are inscribed on both sides. In other words, I couldn’t get the other shots to come out clearly enough to post. I am still having trouble with the silver. At least these will give you an idea of why this necklace is so full of meaning and sentimentality for me.

I am adding one more NEW treasure to this post, and it is a picture done by my granddaughter, Eloise, for her art journal. I gave her one for Christmas 2014, and ever since I started mine I’ve been sharing with her my sketches hoping that she would catch the bug and start sending me some she has done. Well, Saturday she sent me her first and I about flipped out I was so thrilled. I do not know if her mother took a photo of her or she was sitting with her back to the hall closet mirror, but this is of the back of her with her LONG hair that she will cut in June for Locks of Love. Since it is going to continue being a treasure to me - especially since it is her first sketch she has shared - I thought it would be OK to post it here. Oh, I asked her if it would be alright if I posted it on my blog and she said “yes” and  was thrilled to death. It made her so happy...and me, too. She is now 10 years old, and I am smiling at her now.

This post is linked with Tom’s Tuesday’s Treasures.

February 23, 2016 ~ My Daddy’s Pencil & Silver Holder

"Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, 

invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears."

~Edgar Allen Poe

This week I am sharing with you a sterling pencil holder which belonged to my daddy.  It was a birthday gift from a very dear friend of his who later became a nun. Her name was Aloise, and she gave it to him March 6, 1914, his 21st birthday. His name was Eugene Marseilles Hornot, and I was named Eugenia after him. My daddy was born in 1893 and lived to be 100+6 months. He and my mother, Mattie Lou, tried 3 times hoping to have a boy. I was the third daughter in row so they decided to quit trying and just name me for him. I love wearing his pencil on a white gold chain, and it is another of my “family treasures”. Please excuse the quality of the pictures, but I am finding it terribly difficult to shoot silver successfully. I always get that glare. Maybe one of these days I will figure it out.

This post is linked with Tom’s Tuesday’s Treasures.

February 16, 2016 ~ Vintage Treasure Finds at The Peaks of Otter

 This is an aerial view of The Peaks of Otter which is located in Bedford, Virginia taken from their site on the internet. The proper belongs to the National Forrest fur they lease out the lodge and dining room to a private company. We have gone up and stayed there a number of times because I love to walk around Lake Abbot and up to the Johnson Farm, and Bud treks up to Sharp Top Mt. I go up there via a school bus service. The last time we were there we did not stay in the main lodge but out to the left in the two story section. In the bathroom I got to witness a blast from the past....an original bottle opener on the back of the door and in the wall to the right of the sink was a slot where you would drop your used razor blades. I could not believe my eyes considering I had not seen one of the latter since I was a child. Hope the photos bring back some memories for those of you who are seniors.

BLOGGER has deleted my picture and will not let me put it back. There is just a yellow square.

Here is the information on the Peaks that I found in Wiki.  Buddy has hiked in to the area that I have highlighted in red. It is an interesting piece of WW!! history.

At milepost marker 86 of the Blue Ridge Parkway stands the Peaks of Otter. It’s known that Native Americans used the peaks often for travel and rest and European settlers started establishing the area in the mid-1700s. In 1766 Thomas Wood and his family from Pennsylvania settled a homestead on the area; National Park Service documents^[1] indicate other early residents included brothers Charles and Robert Ewing, who are asserted by some to have named the Peaks after the Ewing surname as it is pronounced in Scottish Gaelic - Clann Eóghain na h-Oitrich, or "Clan Ewing of Otter."^[2] This view may be given credence by similarly Otter-themed place names in Scotland, and the resemblance of Flat Top to Beinn Dorain in the ancestral Ewing area of Argyll and Bute.

In 1834 the first local inn was created by the children of the Wood family and opened to travelers. In the late 1800s the Peaks of Otter was home to over 20 families, a school, a church, and a hotel. By the early 1900s the Peaks of Otter became a popular local tourist spot and became especially noticed by the National Park Service. Abbott Lake, the lake at the base of the peaks, was man made and created in 1964 along with the official Peaks of Otter Lodge, which still stands today.^[3][4]

The Peaks and Surrounding Areas and Activities[edit]

There are three main peaks; Flat Top, Sharp Top, and Harkening Hill in order from highest peak altitude to lowest peak altitude. Aside from Sharp Top there is a separate cliff formation on the other side of the peak called Buzzard’s Roost, at about the same elevation as the rest of Sharp Top. Combined within the three peaks is a little over 12 miles of hiking and extra attractions along the way.^[5] On the outside of the valley, past the lodge, are the Peaks of Otter campgrounds, where there are trails, picnic tables, big open fields and outdoor grills. Johnson Farm is a historically restored site along one of the side trails towards Harkening Hill, it is a interactive, still functioning farm building from the early 1900s.^[6] From atop the peaks the very close town of Bedford can be seen within eyesight. The township of Bedford actually claims the Peaks of Otter within its jurisdiction, due to its proximity to the peaks. On the summit of the far side of the main peak; Sharp Top, there is a famed crash site of a World War II B-25 bomber that crashed into the side of the mountain during a training exercise. The wreckage was never removed, as it is too heavy and the side of the mountain it crashed on is too steep to work on. There is a small memorial on a rock at the top of the site for the crew that died, it is a hike off trail, but the majority of the plane can still be found along the mountain with bigger parts further down as you go over an estimated area of 500x600 feet.^[7][8] There is also a bigger, more put-together World War II Memorial in nearby Bedford. This memorial is a D-Day memorial dedicated to all men who died in the Normandy landings, but especially to the ones from Bedford, who had the highest percentage of men killed in the initial landings, the most out any other single area in the whole country.^[9]

This post is linked with Tom’s Tuesday’s Treasures.

February 2, 2016 ~ My Mother’s Old Compact and Money Holder

This is the compact my mother always had in her purse when I was growing up. The mirror is broken and the powder all gone, but the original powder puff is still there. The little flower on the top is my favorite thing about this old piece. As a child, I would beg my mother to let me play with it...to recieve an emphatic NO!

This is another piece of my mother’s. It was her silver change purse. You will notice that there in no 50 cent piece in that hole. The inscription on the sides of the 2$ bill is: MC for Mattie Crenshaw and the date it was given to her is December 25, 1919. This is before she and Daddy were married, but I feel sure he gave it to her.

This shows the little ring that went over her finger 

when she would carry it to a dance or on other occasions.

These pieces are linked with Tom’s Tuesday’s Treasures.

#26 ~ Vintage Bicycle Found in Fairfield, VA

"The bicycle is a curious vehicle. Its passenger is its engine."

~John Howard

This post is linked with Tom’s Tuesday Treasures.

These pictures were taken with my iPhone C.