National Coloring Book Day

Today, August 2nd, is National Coloring Book Day! Or so the Dover Publications people tell me. I know it's really just an advertising gimmick, but I love coloring books, so I'm definitely in favor of a national holiday to celebrate them.

I've always loved to color, and kept a stash of coloring books long before the hobby became a national craze. Over the years I've collected quite a pile of them, so I thought I'd show off a few.

I think probably the oldest book in my collection is this Children's Hour Painting Book for Little Folks, published by M.A. Donohue & Co.

It's from 1913 and was a Christmas gift to "Wm-Cecil Walker" from his Aunt Nellie.

I believe it's actually meant for watercolor painting, but would also be perfect for crayons. It has some very sweet nursery rhyme type illustrations.

And many of the pictures include duplicate colored images, to serve as examples.

Most of these pages are untouched, so I guess this wasn't very popular with Wm-Cecil. But as you can see, he (or someone) did attempt a few of these.

One of my favorites in the collection is this Super Market Coloring Contest book from the early 1950s. Don't you love the way the original owner "decorated" the cover image?

The pictures in these books usually were tie-ins with products the stores sold, and this one is no exception.

Inside they always had the rules and some sort of entry form to fill out:

This entry was started by Mario Lewis, but apparently Mario didn't end up entering the contest after all. I used to love these things, but like Mario I never entered any of the contests. And that was a shame because look at all the cool prizes I could have won!

Christmas Cards

I love Christmas cards.  And I have a huge collection of them.  Actually, I love ALL greeting cards.  Always have.  My mother used to save all her greeting cards in a big shoe box and one of my favorite childhood pastimes was going through the box, making up stories to accompany the pictures on the cards.  I especially loved the shaped or die-cut cards - I'd trace around the edges and use the outline to make frames for my drawings.  Hmmmm.  Whatever happened to all that creativity I wonder.  But I digress.

Today, I just thought I'd show you a few cards from my collection.  It's a pretty random selection - some are really old, from the 1920s and earlier.  But most were issued sometime between 1930 and the early '60s.  I used to be able to pick these up for around a nickel each, in thrift shops.  These days, with more and more people collecting, they're usually considerably more expensive - and harder to find.  But I still love hunting for them.

Wordless Wednesday: Filos and Friend

(Click on photo to enlarge.)

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Blue Monday: Christmas Greetings

Blue Monday is hosted weekly by Smiling Sally.
To see more offerings, or to participate yourself,
please head on over to her blog.

Among the many (many, many) collections I've managed to amass, old postcards are some of my favorites. Here are a couple of Christmas postcards from the early 20th Century (actually before my time, so they must be pretty ancient, right?), with some nice blue touches. Happy Holidays, everyone!

(Click on photos to enlarge.)

ABC Wednesday: "U" is For...

Under the Tree!

A few shots of some of the Christmas ornaments under our tiny tabletop Christmas tree. (Click on photos to enlarge.)

These are all Hallmark Keepsake Ornaments. This photo shows the railroad station (Hall's Station) and the gift-and-card shop (Hall Brothers).


Here we have the school (with its little flagpole), the town hall all decorated for the holiday, and the movie theater (the Grand).

And this is the village church.

And here's one of the many Snoopy ornaments I've managed to accumulate. Charlie Brown seems to be giving him a gift. Wonder if Snoopy has something for the round-headed kid.

Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with or compensated by the Hallmark company. I just like their little decorations.


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Vintage Thingie Thursday: Costume Critters

Vintage Thingie Thursday is hosted by Suzanne at Coloradolady, and as she says, "Thursday is the day to showcase your vintage treasures and to share your special things with everyone." Please visit her blog to find out more about VTT or to participate yourself.

I don't usually wear much costume jewelry, so it's a little odd that I've ended up with a fairly large collection of the stuff. Most of it was given to me by family or friends, and I've just hung on to it over the years. Today (for my first Vintage Thingie Thursday post in many months), I thought I'd share a few of my "critter" pins. Some of these are just about the only pieces in the collection that I actually do wear from time to time. The butterfly at the top left of the photo is a stick pin and is unmarked. The one on the right, with the two pearls, is marked Winard on the back. Each one is around a half-inch wide, and both date probably from the late 1950s to early 1960s. (Click on photos to enlarge.)


I think these little enameled honeybee scatter pins are probably the oldest pieces in the crowd. They date from the late 1940s or early 1950s and are unmarked, as far as I can make out. They're each less than a half inch wide, and I used to wear them all in a bunch on sweaters.


This blue and white flying bug is another unmarked pin. It's about an inch and a quarter wide, from wing tip to wing tip. It probably dates from the late 1950s.

I do wear these frogs occasionally. The larger one is almost two inches long, from his nose, to the the tip of his toe. They date from (I believe) around 1960, and they're marked Denicola.

I think this owl is my favorite of this group. He's a little over an inch tall, and he's marked Coro on the back. He was a gift from my Aunt Linnie. She worked most of her life as a costume jewelry buyer for several large department stores, and a lot of my collection has come down to me from her. I don't know how old this one is, but I know I used to wear it when I was in elementary school, so he's getting pretty ancient now!

Random Photo Monday: New Stars

It's been a while since I posted a Random Photo Monday shot – Monday is not my snappiest day of the week. And I know everyone is probably tired beyond belief of seeing Christmas decorations everywhere, but I really had to show these off. The red and green wooden stars here were Christmas gifts from my littlest cousins in Texas. And I mean really little – ages not-quite-three-years and a-little-over-one-year. Their mom sent along photos of the kiddoes decorating these ornaments, and they are super cute. I have a small collection of star ornaments (like the gold wire star here), and these fit right in. Our tiny tree was too small to hang them on it, but they looked really pretty on the china cabinet, don't you think? (Click on photo to enlarge.)

Vintage Thingies Thursday: A Doll for Christmas

Vintage Thingies Thursday is hosted by Suzanne at Coloradolady, and as she says, "Thursday is the day to showcase your vintage treasures and to share your special things with everyone." Please visit her blog to find out more about VTT or to participate yourself.


Some little girls are doll lovers and some aren't. I was definitely one. As a child, I always received at least one doll every Christmas. I guess that's where my tendency to collect things (dolls among them) got started. Several eons ago (well, sometime in the 1950s), I received my first Ginny Doll for Christmas one year. Designed by dollmaker Jennie Graves, the Ginnys were made by the Vogue Doll Corporation, and were 8-inches of very sturdy hard plastic. They were also adorable.

Ginnys were all the rage just before Barbie hit, and just like the Pink Princess, they had tons of outfits and accessories - all sold separately, of course. They were very addictive - so much so that I had to have another one the next Christmas. Well, I didn't want Ginny No. 1 to be lonely.

Not long after I received that first Ginny, I took her out into the backyard and took some photos of her and my other dolls, with my mother's old Kodak Brownie camera. The blurriness of the pictures probably reflects my photographic ability at about age seven, more than the quality of the equipment. Here are a couple of those original shots (click on photos to enlarge):



And as a testament to the longevity of those Golden Age toys, here's that same doll in the same outfit, some fifty years later, enjoying yet another Christmas. All I can say is I'm a Vintage Thingie myself, and I wish I'd held up this well. And a Merry Christmas to all!





Added 12/25/2009: Just want to say thanks very much to the Holidailies panel of readers for choosing this post as one of the "Best of Holidailies" selections. I've read a lot of the other entries, and I'm not sure I'm really worthy of that company - there's some pretty impressive writing in the bunch. So it's quite a thrill!

Blue Monday: Vintage Cards, Part 2

Blue Monday is hosted weekly by Smiling Sally.
To see more offerings, or to participate yourself,
please head on over to her blog.

I've already posted about vintage Scottie Christmas cards (see Vintage Cards, Part 1), so today I thought I'd put up a few photos of some of the Santa and angel cards in my collection. Those earlier cards were mostly from the 1930s, but today I'm getting more into my era - cards from the early 1950s (with one or two from the late '40s). As you can see, cuteness was a definite factor. And apparently, so was blueness!

The background on the second card is actually a dark, midnight blue, even though it looks black here. "Cheerio" was a popular greeting on these cards. Veddy British, wot? Also, notice the man in the moon on that second card.

Santa going down the chimney is always a popular subject, isn't it? This one looks like he might not make it.

Some of them are a little weird, as you can see. Well, abstract art was all the rage.

And some had interesting shapes and little cut-out areas, like this one. Those bells are cut so that they can be turned up or down - looks a little like they're ringing!


And a few angel cards. This last one is very up-to-date with its mention of Jingle Bells on the radio!