Shelley China~Tea Cup Tuesday

It's time, once again, for Tea Cup Tuesday, hosted by Artful Affirmations.

Today I'd like to share this tea cup and saucer from Shelley China in the Rosebud pattern.



Shelley China is my favorite china to collect. Everytime I go to a flea market, thrift store or yard sale, I always have an eye out for it.

It's so hard to find Shelley China where I live. In the past, I've bought items from Ebay, but the downside is competing against someone else. I have a really bad tendency to get involved in bidding wars which isn't good for my wallet.

I love all the patterns, the delicacy and the craftmanship of each piece.

This particular tea cup and saucer set belonged to my grandmother. Friends and family would gift her tea cup sets for Christmas and her birthday. She used to place tape on the bottoms of the china with the person's name, the occasion and the year. This one is from Christmas, 1962. The writing is fading on the tape, so I'm thinking about photographing all the "tapes"and then tracing over her handwriting.

The saucer and cup are both marked. And I also collect, when I can find them, the Foley and Wileman lines, too. They're the predecessors of Shelley.

Thanks for stopping by! ~Michelle

Tea Cup Tuesday

It's time to exhibit another tea cup and saucer for Tea Cup Tuesday hosted by Artful Affirmations and Martha's Favorites.


The book, The Power of Style, is one of my favorite books. I recently pulled it off my bookcase to re-read. The other three books are by Kate Spade. They are "Style", "Occasions" and "Manners", filled with fun ideas and ways to behave in different situations.

Today's tea cup is white with lovely pink roses and green leaves. There are little yellow bursts of color, too. I found this particular tea cup at an antique store, though I don't think it's old enough to fall into the "antique category".


As soon as I saw this tea cup, I knew I had to buy it. I'm really partial to roses. Here's a look at the back side of the cup.


Both the cup and saucer are fluted.


This is made by Royal Chelsea. The cup and saucer are both stamped. Please excuse the sticky spots from where the tag used to be! I didn't notice them until after I uploaded the pictures.




These next two pictures are pages from Kate Spade's book "Occasions".


She says, "Tea is the most elegant of small gatherings and is the high-water mark of gracious socializing...". Of course, we already knew that :)



Thanks for stopping by :)
Michelle

Tea Cup Tuesday

A few months ago, I discovered this lovely blog event called Tea Cup Tuesday. I've been meaning to participate for awhile as I have a small collection of tea cups.

I inherited the majority of my tea cups from my grandmother. My grandmother had a huge collection. She used to buy them at yard sales and people were always gifting them to her as well. I remember yard saling with her and my mom, when I was about 9, 10, 12 years old. Of course, at the time I thought it was the most boring way to spend a Saturday. When she passed, the collection was divided equally between her two sons. Then "our half" was divided among my two sisters and I.

Here is the first tea cup and saucer I'd like to share with everyone. I love the blue sky and mountain scene. To see the tea cup and saucer up close, please click on the picture.


I love how the mountains swoop down to this body of water.


Here is the reverse side of the tea cup. I love these pink flowers.


This pair was made by Royal Albert and is from the "Traditional British Songs Series of Six" line. I only have this one in the series, Bonnie Banks O'Loch Lomon, but I'd love to have the Men of Harlech design. To see the different patterns in the series, you can click here.

I'm linking up to Artful Affirmations for Tea Cup Tuesday.

Thanks for popping in :)

Reading Challenges for 2012

I love to read. I really do. However, I've really fallen off the reading wagon this last year. This year, I've decided to sign up for some reading challenges which hopefully will keep me motivated.

Please click on any of the links to go to the sign up page for that challenge and to read the rules. I love the supernatural, so of course, I'm on board for this 2012 Witches and Witchcraft Reading Challenge

I need to be shaken out of the type of books I normally read, so this challenge will be good for me. 2012 Book Blogger Recommendation Challenge

Mystery and Suspense Reading Challenge --Whodunnits are my all time favorite type of book. I love trying to figure out "whodunnit" before I get to the end.

Southern Lit Challenge --Books set in the southern states. What can I say? I'm a southern girl.

2012 100+ Books in a year reading challenge --Wow. 100 books in a year. I'm up for it. I am.

This seems like a lot of books for 2012. Luckily, many of these books will cross over onto other lists, so not as many books to read as you'd think. Well, except for that one for 100 books... that's about two books per week. I feel a trip to the library coming on.

Oh, and I'll be doing two poetry reading challenges:
2012 Fearless Poetry Exploration Challenge
and
Read More/Blog More Poetry Challenge.

I really need to read more poetry. Last year, I read two books in March and flipped through an anthology this past summer. That was it. So this year I decided to amp up my poetry reading.

Thanks for stopping by :)

Merry Christmas!!

Which one have you been?


One of my favorite ornaments. She decorates my tree every year.


I love the song, "O Holy Night" .



Another favorite is "Hark the Herald Angels Sing".


Blue and silver are two of my favorite colors to decorate with at Christmas.


Merry Christmas to everyone!!!

Autumn

Autumn's here! Now don't get me wrong... I love summer and her long, hot days. Of running barefoot through freshly mowed grass and of being so hot, my clothes stick to my skin like honeyed molasses. But. I'm always happy when the season changes and fall moves in with her fiery rainbow of light.

Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns. ~George Eliot

From last year's autumn, a lovely bush that grows beneath my front windows.


I have three trees in my front yard & about twelve in my backyard. This one is the second biggest. All of the trees are filled with birds' nests. In fact, I had an owl hunting in my trees two years ago. Did you know owls bark like dogs? I sat outside, late at night, many times, with camera in hand trying to capture her on film without success. Though I heard her, I never saw her. My brother-in-law did see her one night. She swooped out of the tree, with a sparrow in her mouth and flew about three feet above his head.


These gorgeous trees are at the local park.


Fallen log with fallen leaves! I love the crackle of leaves as you walk through them.


When I started to look through my photo archives, I was surprised to find that I hardly have any photos of fall. So this year, I plan on taking TONS of autumnal pictures.

Autumn
By Alice Cary 1820–1871

Shorter and shorter now the twilight clips
The days, as through the sunset gates they crowd,
And Summer from her golden collar slips
And strays through stubble-fields, and moans aloud,

Save when by fits the warmer air deceives,
And, stealing hopeful to some sheltered bower,
She lies on pillows of the yellow leaves,
And tries the old tunes over for an hour.

The wind, whose tender whisper in the May
Set all the young blooms listening through th’ grove,
Sits rustling in the faded boughs to-day
And makes his cold and unsuccessful love.

The rose has taken off her tire of red—
The mullein-stalk its yellow stars have lost,
And the proud meadow-pink hangs down her head
Against earth’s chilly bosom, witched with frost.

The robin, that was busy all the June,
Before the sun had kissed the topmost bough,
Catching our hearts up in his golden tune,
Has given place to the brown cricket now.

The very cock crows lonesomely at morn—
Each flag and fern the shrinking stream divides—
Uneasy cattle low, and lambs forlorn
Creep to their strawy sheds with nettled sides.

Shut up the door: who loves me must not look
Upon the withered world, but haste to bring
His lighted candle, and his story-book,
And live with me the poetry of Spring.

Thanks for stopping by!

Practical Magic

Why do I love "Practical Magic"?

I love the book because Alice Hoffman is a magical writer who transcends the ordinary and weaves fantasy into everyday lives.

I love the movie because it's a wonderful portrayal of sisterhood, love and magic. I have two sisters of my own so I enjoy the complexities of sister relationships whether in movies, tv shows or books.


Magic, love and sisterhood are the underlying themes not only in the movie, but in the book as well. So for my Practical Magic party post, I have decided to combine both the movie and the book.

"For more than two hundred years, the Owens women had been blamed for everything that went wrong in their Massachusetts town. And Gillian and Sally endured that fate as well: As children, the sisters were forever outsiders, taunted, talked about, pointed at. Their elderly aunts almost seemed to encourage the whispers of witchery, with their musty house and their exotic concoctions and their crowd of black cats.


But all Gillian and Sally wanted was to escape. One would do so by marrying, the other by running away. But the bonds they shared, even into adulthood, brought them back--almost as if by magic..."

I love old houses. I feel drawn to them. Most of this is because of my mom, who also loves old houses. As a child, she'd drive my sisters and I around neighborhoods full of old houses. We'd be so excited, pointing to this one or that one, deciding which one we'd live in once we were older.


Probably like everyone else, who's ever seen the movie, I am in love with the house. It's my goal one day to build my own Victorian, so I hoard pictures of Victorian homes whenever I run across them. This house is amazing with it's two staircases, attic room, attached conservatory and kitchen.


"Anyone who dared to stand on the porch, where the ivy grew wild, could try for hours to look through the windows and never see a thing. It was the same looking out; the green-tinted window glass was so old and so thick that everything on the other side seemed like a dream, including the sky and the trees."


"Sally, three hundred ninety-seven days older than her sister, was as conscientitious as Gillian was idle. She never believed in anything that could not be proven with facts and figures. When Gillian pointed to a shooting star, it was Sally who reminded her that what was falling to earth was only an old rock, heated by its descent through the atmosphere. Sally was a take-charge sort of person from the start; she didn't like confusion and mess, both of which filled the aunts' old house on Magnolia Street from attic to cellar."


One of my favorite scenes in the movie is Sally's Amas Veritas spell. The best part of Sally's "love spell" was that she didn't ask for a certain man to love her, but she asked for a man with certain qualities.


Sally: He will hear my call a mile away. He will whistle my favorite song. He can ride a pony backwards.

Gillian: What are you doing?

Sally: Summoning up a true love spell called Amas Veritas. He can flip pancakes in the air. He'll be marvelously kind. And his favorite shape will be a star. And he'll have one green eye and one blue.

Gillian: Thought you never wanted to fall in love.

Sally: That's the point. The guy I dreamed of doesn't exist. And if he doesn't exist, I'll never die of a broken heart.


Sally's letter to Gillian: Sometimes I feel like there's a hole inside of me, an emptiness that at times seems to burn. I think if you lifted my heart to your ear, you could probably hear the ocean.

The moon tonight, there's a circle around it. Sign of trouble not far behind.

I have this dream of being whole. Of not going to sleep each night, wanting. But still sometimes, when the wind is warm or the crickets sing... I dream of a love that even time will lie down and be still for. I just want someone to love me. I want to be seen. I don't know. Maybe I had my happiness. I don't want to believe it but, there is no man, Gilly. Only that moon.


Raising the dead. Of course, you're going to get something more along the lines of a zombie rather than the person you loved.




"You put the lime in the coconut." Another of my favorite scenes from the movie.




When Gillian finds Ben (Ben is a character in the book who didn't make it into the movie): A circle of pale yellow light seemed to hover around Ben and Gillian; the light rose higher, then fanned out, across the street and above the rooftops ...

On the afternoon when Kylie stood in front of Mrs. Jerouche's house, she wasn't the only one to sense something unusual in the air. A group of boys playing kickball all stopped, stunned by the sweet scent wafting down from the rooftops, and they rubbed at their noses. The youngest turned and ran home and begged his mother for lemon pound cake, heated, and spread with honey. Women came to their windows, leaned their elbows on the sills, and breathed more deeply than they had in years. They didn't even believe in hope anymore, but here it was, in the treetops and the chimneys.

Magic is all around us. It lives in all of us. Anyone can tap into it. It's in the flowers that grow wild by the side of the road, the trees that shoot from the ground to the sky,


the bushes that bloom their brightest in summer and in the stream that gurgles hello to you.

There's a little witch in all of us.



Thanks so much for stopping by and thank you to Frosted Petunias for hostessing this wonderful blog party. Please visit the other participants here at the Practical Magic party page.

All italized script is from the book.