Mary Kay Andrews

We did it! Upholstery project


Sometimes, when I speak to a book club, they’re kind enough to give me a little gift–usually it’s a nice aromatherapy candle, note cards, chocolate (always a winner)like that. But when I spoke to my friend Martha’s book club in Atlanta a couple weeks ago, she gave me the best book club bribe/gift ever. An antique upholstered bench. Martha assured me that if I didn’t take the bench, which was a family piece, she was going to have it hauled off to Goodwill. Couldn’t let that happen now, could I? If you look past the dirty, rotting upholstery fabric and the old, alligatored black varnish on the wood frame, she’s an adorable little bench, with her sexy curved legs and sweet scalloped apron. And a useful size, to boot.
The bench rode around in the back of my car until this past weekend. Finally, Saturday, I decided to tackle that sucker. I found a nice Robert Allen cream twill fabric on sale at Hancock’s and grabbed a yard-and-a-half of it–which was probably double what I needed, and also purchased some (on sale) gimp braid as trimming. I deconstructed the upholstery, removing the filthy old fabric on top, the equally filthy padding (one layer of which consisted of straw!) and the also rotting scrim on the underside of the top. I set the bench up outside and using Formby’s Refinisher and three different grades of steel wool, I stripped off the old blackened varnish. In its place, I rubbed in a coat of Briwax in a finish color called Tudor. And then came the hard part.
Upholstery. Ugh! I’ve stapled my share of dining room seat cushions in the past, but the bench, with its padded top, was a much bigger challenge than it seemed like it should be.

I finally had to call in the heavy guns–i.e. Mr. Mary Kay. We managed to replace the scrim with some muslin I had in my fabric stash, and then we covered the old padding with more of the same muslin, stapling everything in place with the electric staple gun. On to the upholstered top. We measured. I cut. We measured, I trimmed.We stapled, and then unstapled. The corners of the bench nearly undid us. Turns out we probably should have put some additional batting in there. Finally, I made the decision it was “good enough for government work.” As a final touch, I hot-glued a ribbon of gimp braid to cover up the staples.

The finished product isn’t exactly professional quality. I may still attempt to make a fitted slipcover to protect that snowy linen top. Here she is auditioning for a spot in the sun-room, where I like to sit and write on sunny days–like today.

But in the meantime, it’s done! And from now on, I’ll be expecting antique furniture hand-outs at all my book club appearances.

Catch and Release



I never set out to become a vendor of vintage and antique finds. As newlyweds, my husband and I lived in Savannah, and our tiny little attic apartment was sparsely furnished with cast-off pieces my mother, a real estate agent, had squirrelled away from houses she’d sold. We were living on my pitiful salary as a newspaper reporter and banking Mr. Mary Kay’s, because we knew he would be going back to school for an engineering degree. So I started junking in Savannah, going to estate sales and junk shops on Saturday mornings, scooping up little treasures that appealed.I made friends with dealers I met along the way, and they gave me hints about antiques and vintage stuff, and I got hooked. In a bad way. When we moved to Atlanta I continued my junking habits. At one point, when Katie was a baby, I attended an auction in our neighborhood on a weekly basis, taking her along in her stroller while I indulged in what was becoming a passion. Dealers befriended me, and I learned a little more. The dealers running estate sales came to know me, and eventually, one of them asked me if I was a dealer. “Not a dealer, just a user,” I said. Raising an eyebrow, she replied sadly, “yeah, that’s how we all get started.” It only took me about 30 years to finally admit my addiction, and take a booth to sell my vintage wares at Seaside Sisters on Tybee Island. Three years into it, I still love “piddling around” with old stuff. People always ask me why I don’t rent a space in an antique mall in Atlanta, where, after all, we live full-time. And I tell ’em–because if I did that, I’d never write another book. I’d just piddle away all my time playing with junk. This way, I junk in “moderation”–hah! Try telling that to Mr. Mary Kay. We go down to The Breeze Inn around once a month–except during the summer, when the house stays rented, and that’s when I re-stock my booth at Seaside Sisters. One of the best things about junking is when you can finally manage to practice what I’ve come to call “catch and release.” I really never buy anything I don’t love, and I very rarely buy anything incredibly rare or pricey. So I’ve gotten a little promiscuous with my junking. I’ll buy something, take it home, live with it a few weeks or months or years even, and then, eventually, when the infatuation wears off, I’ll rotate it down to my booth and hope that somebody else will fall in love too. Because then, I’ll have money to spend on my next great love affair.

Yesterday was a fine day to indulge my love of vintage, strolling around Scott’s Antique Market. A beautiful sunny day, and the place was packed to the rafters. I strolled and munched–tiny little cinnamon donuts! I ran into old friends and laughed and chatted with dealers. And I bought a few things. Scouting around the outdoor vendors at the South building, I ran into a man who’d bought out an estate in Columbus, Georgia.

Little League jersey

The deceased had been a Little League coach for many, many years, and the dealer had a great pile of vintage ’50s kid’s baseball shirts and pants. Not the yucky polyester baseball jerseys Boomerange Boy wore during his 18 years of baseball, but the good stuff, wonderful, heavy cotton flannel uniforms, with real machine embroidery for the team sponsors, and real ground-in Georgia red clay. I had to bring a couple of those home with me!

Popcorn megaphone

The coach must have run the concession stand at his ballpark, because he’d left behind a huge stash of old waxed cardboard soft drink cups, and popcorn containers that can become a megaphone when the popcorn’s gone. And he was a Shriner too, because there was also a stack of vintage circus posters.

Circus poster

I chatted with the dealer and enjoyed the sunshine, and moseyed around inside, until I found a stack of vintage Jadeite plates. I was lovin’ Jadeite before Martha Stewart discovered it and jacked up prices, so I was thrilled to find a stack of 8 Lotus Blossom salad plates at a great price.

Jadeite Lotus Blossom plate

Hmm. Do I let ’em stay with me for a while–or let some lucky Jadeite lover take them home? The jury’s still out on that one. But there’s no arguement about the last item I bought. I’ve been looking for months now for a vintage tin litho sign to nail up on our outdoor shower stall at The Breeze Inn. I scoured the midwest during the great October junk jaunt I wrote about here, but to no avail. I even made a trip to a metal salvage yard run by a friend of a friend in Savannah–hoping I might stumble across what would be my fantasy find–an old Capt. John Derst bread sign. No luck. Finally, just as I was leaving the parking lot at Scott’s yesterday, I spied a dealer who had lots of great old tin signs and Tom’s Snacks jars and racks. The Royal Crown sign was just the ticket. Reminds me of the old movie promotion in my hometown of St. Pete. On Saturday mornings, you could get into the Florida theatre for a showing of kiddie movies–Old Yeller! Big Red! The Parent Trap! for six Royal Crown Cola bottle caps. Of course, since there were five of us, that meant we had to come up with 30 bottle caps. Usually, we fished them out of the coke machine at my dad’s best friend’s gas station. Good times! Although all the other treasures I scored yesterday will make their way to the booth, I’m not letting that Royal Crown sign get away. Not anytime soon.

A Picnic at The Beach

It’s probably not sporting of me to whine about the cold rainy weather we’re having here in Atlanta–not when so many of you are shivering under a blanket of snow and ice–even you Texans! Like a lot of you, I’m already dreaming of summer, and the beach, and picnics. I managed to sneak away to an estate sale this morning, and I guess summer must have been on my mind when I spotted this ‘lil darlin’ hidden under the dollar table. She’s a ’60s vintage souvenir picnic basket from Acapulco.

Check out the great woven straw pineapples and coconuts–at least that’s what I think they are! I snatched her up quick, thinking she’d be perfect for picnics, or even filled with beach towels and books, at Tybee.

In the kitchen, I spied this orange Ransburg pottery bowl atop the fridge. Wouldn’t it look amazing on a white, primitive picnic-style coffee table, filled with green mangoes, bananas and pineapples? Or maybe, taken on that picnic I’m dreaming about, filled up with my grandmother’s fab potato salad? Or a delicious marinated green bean salad?



When I got my treasures home, I found a surprise tucked inside the basket–all the makings for that very picnic–a pack of unopened compartment-style paper plates, a smaller oak-splint basket, even a little white duck tablecloth and a seafoam green thermos. From shaking the thermos, I gather the glass inside is broken, but no matter that, wouldn’t it be fun to fill something like this up with icy gazpacho? And to wrap some of my mama’s fried chicken in a checked napkin in the splint basket? Mmm. Come on summer!

Curled Up With A Good Book

Ah, winter. No better time to find yourself a snug place to hideaway and read. I’m one of those people who always have at least one book going at any time, and now, with the Kindle Mr. Mary Kay gave me for Christmas, the possibilities for new books seem endless. So, what have I been reading these past few months? Just finished the ARE (advanced reader’s edition) for my friend Patti Callahan Henry’s new book, Coming Up for Air. I think it’s her first set outside of the South Carolina Low Country, with a theme of lost love and family secrets, and I know her readers are going to love it. Not due out til September, but you can pre-order here. I do love a big, juicy biography, and this fall was fascinated by Jane Levy’s ambitious and revealing The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America’s Childhood. Susan Elizabeth Phillips is always on my auto-buy list, so I bought Call Me Irresistible the day it was released last week,and gobbled it right up. Last summer when I was staying in Nag’s Head, writing Summer Rental , I discovered the work of Elinor Lipman. Can I just tell you that she is my new book crush? I loved all her books, including And Then She Found Me, (which was made into a meh movie with Helen Hunt and Bette Midler), but if I could only recommend one it would be, hands down, The Family Man. Funny, droll, heart-warming, this is a book about acceptance and forgiveness and late-blooming love. How I wish I had written this book! Another day while I was writing away at the Nag’s Head library, I discovered the Regency Romances of Eloisa James. I hadn’t read a Regency since my teen years, but what a delight it was to find Eloisa–who is, in real life, a Harvard and Yale educated Shakespearean scholar who teaches creative writing at Fordham. Don’t be shy about those “clinch” covers, either. After all, if the guys can buy all those thrillers with submarines, stealth bombers, guns and knives, why can’t a girl buy a book with a bare-chested hunk on the cover? Just sayin’…I flew through her Desperate Duchesses series, and then last week, downloaded her eNovella, Storming The Castle. Great fun. I got to meet Eloisa at a romance convention last summer, and through her was introduced to the steamy Regency Romances of Lisa Kleypas, which I actually listened to on audio. Have mercy! What else have I been reading? Oh, you know. A little Michael Connelly, The Reversal–awesome, as always. Some old Jennifer Crusie re-issues,if you’ve never read Crazy For You, or Tell Me Lies, boy, are you missing out. I received Nora Ephron’s, I Remember Nothing for our book club Christmas swap, and I love Nora, so that’s next on my TBR stack. And then there’s a new novel getting a lot of buzz, The Weird Sisters, that I’d like to read. And my pal Laura Lippman has a new Tess Monaghan mystery novella called The Girl in the Green Raincoat. By the time I finish those, that should bring us to March, when oh happy day, we will have both the movie of Connelly’s Lincoln Lawyer, and his next Mickey Haller mystery. Oh yeah, and I’m supposed to be writing a new book of my own. Details.

Stop the Car!

I brake for dead people’s stuff

Did you miss me? Hard to believe I went nearly three weeks without posting here. I missed blogging and connecting with readers, but the holiday season was so wild, this seems like my first chance to catch up. I’m down at Tybee, holed up at The Breeze Inn, working on the next book, or as writers say, WIP (that’s work in progress). The secret code name is Project Ex. But since I exceeded my ten page writing goal Friday, I got to do a little junking on Saturday. Savannah was where I cut my estate sale junking teeth, and when I saw the Craigslist ad for an estate sale for a 90-year-old prominent Savannahian, in Ardsley Park–primo junking territory, no way was I going to miss out. I set my alarm for 6 a.m., and hit the ground running, Diet Coke in one hand, giant tote bag in the other. By 6:45 I was rolling through the drive-thru at Krispy-Kreme, and by 7 a.m. I was pulling up to the stately old home where the sale was being held. Eight or nine stalwart dealers were already lined up outside, huddled in the pre-dawn chill, sipping coffee and discussing their latest scores. One guy even brought his own portable propane heater to ward off the cold! Now that’s a first. What next? Porta-potties? Wouldn’t that be awesome?

The early morning line-up–and their propane heater

The dealer gang included my friend Liz Demos, who used to own my favorite Savannah shop, At Home Vintage General. These days, Liz sells through a booth at a new antique mall called Steal Magnolias, in midtown Savannah, but mostly she stays busy as a much-in-demand wedding planner, magazine and ad photo stylist and designer. This gal has flair to spare! Unfortunately, we like the same kinds of stuff, and unfortunately, she was in line ahead of me, but since the house was so huge, there was plenty of vintage junk for all, so no problem-o.

 Dining room packed with antiques

When the doors opened shortly before 8 a.m., we rushed inside. This was the kind of sale junkers dream of–a house packed full of decades and decades worth of treasures. The furniture, silver, crystal and china were the real deal. That portrait of Robert E. Lee in the dining room was priced at $18,000! Upstairs there was a magnificent rice-carved mahogany four-poster with it’s own pull-out steps, I think it was $4,000. The high-ceilinged old rooms had once been elegant, but the whole house was painted a dingy green, giving the effect that you were under-water.

 General Lee presides over the sale

I had myself a grand time, browsing and ogling. In the end, I managed to fill my tote for a grand total of $69. My biggest expenditure was a covered ironstone vegetable tureen for $20. I also bought a candlewick spread with a sprightly design of pink tulips for $2, a red vintage straw hat with a saucy red rose, some ironstone butter pats, a never-used pin the tail on the donkey game, a never used tartan wool lap blanket from Scotland, a tin tole tray, and a silver-plated bevelled hand mirror. True to my deep-seated need for vintage linens, I also succumbed to a flat sheet with pretty crocheted trim for $2, but I did manage to tear myself away from the wonderland of embroidered and monogrammed damask tablecloths and napkins and pillowcases.

 Couldn’t resist this vintage hat

My bag o’ treasures

After the sale I met up with Liz and my pal Diane Kaufman, who owns Mermaid Cottage Vacation Rentals. Diane and her crew manage The Breeze Inn, and she has established her first off-beach beachhead with the tiniest, most adorable little cottage in downtown Savannah, which she has been re-doing. Can’t wait to take pics of the finished project to share with you. We managed a quick dash through a promising new antique mall on Wright Square, and an even quicker dash through Habersham Antiques before I had to scoot back to Tybee to have lunch with new friends Beth and Carla, who’d lured me into lunching with them because they’d very sweetly scored me some vintage glass Christmas ornaments. What can I say? I’ll lunch for junk any day.

 New friends Beth and Carla

After lunch I told myself I needed to go grocery shopping at Publix, on Wilmington Island. That’s what I told myself. Somehow, I ended up at the Goodwill. Now, I never find anything at that Goodwill. My friend Polly furnishes her whole booth at Seaside Sisters with Goodwill treasures, but I have never once found anything even remotely attractive there. But yesterday, I walked to the back of the store, and there it was–shining like a nugget of gold in a heap of sad, fugly ’80s cast-offs. A vintage rattan sofa! In decent condition! With sad, fugly Herculon plaid cushions! For $39.99! I could not rip the tag off that puppy fast enough. Marched myself up to the cash register and staked my claim in a loud voice.

Gem of a vintage sofa in the landfill of fugly

Then I went back to fondle and fawn and photograph said sofa. And I noticed a pair of vintage mahogany bookcases. They were unpriced, so I marched back to the front to inquire. “Oh those? They’re $9.99 apiece.” Oh those? They are so mine now.

Couldn’t pass up this promising pair

And then, to put the cherry on my sundae–the cashier looked me over and asked if I might qualify for the senior citizen discount. Let me just say that when I got that nasty AARP card in the mail after a certain birthday, I ripped it up in a huff. I don’t ask for discounts at the grocery or the movies. But at the Goodwill? For 10 percent off? Hell to the yeah. Today I must commandeer a truck to pick up my stuff. And get some fabric for those sofa cushions. And hide the sofa in the garage at the Breeze, while the cushions get recovered. Shh. Do NOT tell Mr. Mary Kay. Oh yeah, time to get back to writing again.


The Pound Cake Chronicles

Ingredients lined up on the kitchen counter

A lifetime ago, when I was working as a reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, I interviewed Atlanta food writer Shirley Corriher for an article, which, ironically, had nothing to do with food. I knew that Shirley was trained as a food chemist, and in the course of our interview, I asked her why my pound cakes always came out too dry. I recited the ingredients of the lemon cream cheese pound cake recipe I was using, which had been given to my sister Susie by another emergency room nurse at Grady Memorial Hospital. If we baked it as long as the recipe directed, it was too dry. Less time and it came out undercooked.”Hmm,” Shirley said. “Try this. Add another quarter cup of sugar. Stir in a quarter cup of vegetable oil. And add two extra egg yolks. Cut your oven temperature back to 325, and let it bake additional time.”

Batter up!

Et voila! A perfect, moist, amazing pound cake. Susie and I made pound cakes at Christmas. We made them at Easter, topped with strawberries and whipped cream, and for the Fourth of July, with peaches and blueberries. I took pound cakes to covered dish suppers and funeral luncheons. At one point, the recipe ran in the AJC’s food section. And at some fateful moment, I decided to bake a pound cake for my editor and agent, and ship them off to New York as Christmas gifts. The cakes were a hit. To my surprise, I discovered that “up north” pound cakes are considered something of a Southern regional specialty. The next Christmas, I added my agent’s assistant, my editor’s assistant, and my publicist to the list. Again, a hit. And so it began.

Pattycake, pattycake, bake me a cake as fast as you can!

Every year, I would add somebody in New York to the Christmas cake list. The publisher, the head of marketing, the head of paperback marketing, the head of publicity, the people in library sales, the telereps in Scranton. Everybody who touched my books, basically, got a pound cake for Christmas. Or at least a share in the cake for their department. I’ll never forget the day my agent called with the news that polite hints were being dropped that I should bake cakes for the buyers at the big chain bookstores. Huh?

One Christmas, about five years ago, I woke up in a panic, realizing that my pound cake list had grown to 30. I’d gotten the cake-baking down to a science. I’d acquired four Bundt pans, and had figured out how to bake two cakes per shift. I’d hired my cleaning lady to assist on what I came to call “cake day”–separating eggs and measuring out the flour and other dry ingredients. On a good day, I could bake as many as ten cakes. And then have to take to the sofa with the Ibuprofen and heating pad. But 30 cakes? All of which had to be baked, wrapped, and hauled off to the UPS Store for shipping?

A plethora of pound cakes

That was the year I caved in and began out-sourcing some of the baking to a small bakery in my neighborhood. It’s still my recipe, and the key people in the life of my book still get a pound cake baked by me personally, but at least now I can manage to face December without cringing. This year I baked twelve out of the 28 pound cakes. And lived to tell about it, thanks to my amazing assistant Grace, who came to work on “cake day” even though she wasn’t feeling well. The cakes arrived in New York and New Jersey last week, and the excited emails began popping up in my in-box.

Cake day–boxes ready to be packed

“YUM” read the subject line in one typical missive. “Lemon cream cheese lusciousness” was how Meg described her cake. So it was totally worth doing. And it will be worth doing for you too, although, take my advice, and do NOT start sending these as Christmas gifts. Unless you have plans to open your own bakery

next year.



LEMON CREAM CHEESE POUNDCAKE

Turn off the phone and shut out any other distractions when making this cake. It’s a bit of work, but the results are definitely worth it. I usually bake two cakes at a time when I get started, one to serve (or give as a gift) and one to pop into the freezer. Since it’s such a large cake, you can always slice and serve half, and freeze the other half for later. Another note: the whipped egg whites mean the cake batter may spill over the edges of the pan, so make sure you have a large bundt pan–or place your pan on a cookie sheet to catch any overflow.

Preheat oven to 325. Spray bundt pan with floured baking spray

2-1/2 cups unsalted butter

1 8-oz. pkg. cream cheese

¼ cup vegetable oil

3-1/4 cups granulated sugar

5 egg whites

7 egg yolks—yes, this means you’ll discard the two extra egg whites unless you’ve got plans for ‘em.

1 tsp. lemon extract

1 tsp. vanilla

3 cups cake flour

¼ tsp. salt

Beat five egg whites until stiff and set aside

In mixing bowl, beat together butter, cream cheese and vegetable oil. Add in sugar and cream well. Beat in lemon extract and vanilla. Add egg yolks one at a time and beat well. In smaller bowl combine flour and salt, beat into batter, adding flour mixture by thirds. Fold in beaten egg whites, pour into prepared bundt pan and bake for approximately 1 hour and 30 minutes—check for doneness with wooden toothpick. Let cool 5 minutes, then remove from pan onto cooling rack and finish cooling. Wrap tightly with plastic wrap or store in large ziplock bag for freezing. You may choose to add a lemon glaze, made with one cup of confectioner’s sugar and 1-2 Tbsp. of fresh lemon juice.

Fun, Games, and Giveaways: Ho! Ho! Ho!

With Christmas right around the corner, I got a special gift this month from my friend Jay Powell at Digi Ronin Games.

It turns out that the casual game “Mary Kay Andrews: The Fixer Upper” is now available in Target stores! Up until now, the game was available only as a PC-download, sold online on various gaming sites. But now you can buy the PC-version in your local Target. It’s even in a snazzy box designed to look just like the book cover–perfect for gift giving if you have some MKA fans on your list. Cool, right?

But that’s not all.

Jay has also gotten a Mac-based version of the game approved by the gods at Apple. So now all of you iPad users can play the game too!

Well, it is better to give than to receive as they say. Having received this good news—along with a bunch of boxed copies of the game AND some free digital download codes for both the PC and Mac versions of the game—now I get to give these out to my loyal fans. Oh how I love to play Santa!

Enter to win your free download or a boxed copy of the game by visiting my Facebook page. Leave a comment letting us know what books you are giving as gifts this year. And at the end of your note, be sure to mention whether you are on a PC or a Mac. We’ll select winners at random from all the entries and contact the lucky winners next week, just in time for Christmas.

Merry Christmas to us all and good luck everyone!

Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas

I’m linking to a fun holiday decorating blog party here

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Vintage silver and gold glass grapes and silver candlesticks

Whew! Did you hear that giant sigh of relief? That was me, happy to have nearly all my Christmas decorating completed. And yes, there are still another half dozen bins of stuff down in the basement. After having two different homes on our neighborhood’s Christmas tour three different times, we (and by we I mean I) have accumulated a lot of holiday decorations. A veritable buttload, my husband would say. When your house is on a Christmas tour, you find yourself putting Christmas trees in the claw-foot tub in your son’s bathroom (2008), and your husband’s office (2008). You find yourself painting your office walls only hours before the tour begins (2000). You sweet-talk your girlfriend and her daughter into wallpapering your bathroom the night before the tour. (1996). And of course, you buy miles of garland and enough lights to string halfway around the world. Why? You rationalize that you are doing this for the betterment of mankind. But really, if you’re me, you can’t not. If you’re me, you fervently believe that anything worth doing is worth overdoing. But this year, we are not, thankfully, on tour. So I’ve simplified. Bwahahahahaha. Who am I kidding? I thought I’d share pix of some of my Christmas collections. Unlike most people, my collections are not numbered, signed, or dated. There is no Christmas Spode in my cupboards, no Christmas villages on a tabletop. Nor are there any artisan-made velvet Santas. I like all these things, but they do not speak to me. What speaks to me are old dime-store decorations. Brush trees from Woolworth’s. Plastic Santa candy containers from Kresge’s. Honeycomb snowmen from stores that haven’t existed since the ’60s. For years and years, I’ve picked up my kitschy little cuties at estate sales and the occasional dealer, especially when I’m junking in the Midwest. Some of my vintage treasures still have their yellowed original price stickers or grease-pencilled prices pencilled on the bottom. Hmm. When was the last time you found anything for 19 cents? Me neither, but these guys remind me of those simpler, cheesier days.



Vintage (mostly) snowmen snuggle up in the secretary.



I love looking at vintage Christmas collectibles on blogs and at antique shows, but I only add to my own collections when I find things on the cheap. The thrill of the hunt, you know. And I love arranging everything around the house once the bins have been brought up from the basement. I put on my Sinatra, Crosby and Nat King Cole Christmas CDs, and light an aromatherapy candle and commence to putter. I line up the brush trees, some of them shedding their glitter and rusted branches like their real-life counterpart in the living room, on the shelves of the Welsh cupboard in the dining room.



Vintage brush trees sprout among the transferware

The snowmen have found a home in the glass-front secretary in the living room, and the Santas and elves are always perched on top of my collection of vintage picnic baskets, thermoses and breadboxes in the old pine armoire. This year, with Miss Molly toddling around, it’s good to be able to gently close the armoire doors to keep busy fingers away.

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Santas and elves congregate on picnic tins and thermoses.



Little lost lambs mingle with plastic reindeer



This year, the lambs, most of which were probably orphaned from old nativity sets, decided to herd up with the plastic reindeer on a silver tray on top of the mahogany chest by the sofa. But other years, they’ve paraded across the mantle. I’m hoping the lambs won’t ridicule the reindeer for their missing antlers, or for being so woefully out of scale, compared to the sheep.





Santa mugs and jug lined up on kitchen windowsill


The Santa mug collection got its start because my grandmother had some at her house when I was very young. My sister Susie and I pieced a set together after finding boxes of them at a florist shop. The ones pictured here are actually tiny nut-cup sized, but I’ve also got the cocoa-sized ones on another windowsill.







Christmas boxes seated by the fireplace…for now

Some years I don’t add a single piece to my collections. But this year I picked up a couple of these holiday gift boxes. Some years I get really lucky and find vintage Christmas decorations inside the old gift boxes, a rare twofer. My favorite recent find is the box I got for fifty cents. On one side is a large-lettered label. ELF HATS. I seem to remember that the elf hats were in shreds.




Brush tree and mercury-glass ornaments

Because every year the holidays seem to get busier, I always try to fit in some down time, an afternoon or evening when we turn down the lamps, light the tree, loll on the sofa with a glass of wine, and watch an old Christmas movie. Sometimes, Katie will agree to share my ritual of watching White Christmas. I try to savor these moments, and not think about the day AFTER Christmas, when Mr. Mary Kay will start tapping his toe and demanding that I pack up that buttload of stuff, piece by piece, tissue by tissue, so it can go back down to the basement again until next year. Sigh.





A Sunset Postscript

Saturday night was indeed, an engaging evening on Tybee Island. If you read my blog from Sunday, Nov. 21, you saw that Mr. Mary Kay and I chanced upon a young man intent on posing a very important question to the girl of his dreams, whose name is Dana. Tybee is small, and the internet is big, and it happens that the young man, whose name is Blake, works with our friend Carolyn, who’d invited us to share their sunset viewing that night. Carolyn shared my blog with Blake, who, it turns out, didn’t mind me sharing his happiness with my readers.

I thought you’d enjoy reading the email I received from Blake this morning:

Thank you to both you and Mr. Mary Kay for assisting me with my preparations for the evening. I wanted to let you know that you were indeed party to the best night of my life so far. She did say yes! In fact, she said, “Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh! Of course!”

Dana models the bling

Sigh. Don’t you just love a happy ending?

A Day at the Beach

Most of the time when we’re down at the Breeze Inn on Tybee, we’re preoccupied. Mr. Mary Kay is out fishing on his boat, I’m junking, or pimping my antique booth at Seaside Sisters, or working on the next book. We’ve had a busy weekend this month, as always, seeing old friends, ect. I did a signing for BLUE CHRISTMAS at Seaside Sisters, and Mr. Mary Kay was tearing up the sea trout and redfish. But Saturday night, our friend Carolyn invited us to join her and her husband at “the point” for sunset. It had been another beautiful mild autumn day on Tybee, and sunset sounded like a great idea. We fixed ourselves an adult cocktail and headed off to the beach. The first thing we spotted was the glowing orange sky over Little Tybee Island. Silhouetted in front of that was a small wedding party, a young bride and her handsome groom in full Marine dress uniform. As we were headed down the boardwalk, another man nervously asked my husband if he could give him a hand carrying his stuff down to the beach. He had two picnic baskets, a cooler backpack, and a portable CD player, plus a blanket. He confided to MMK that he was plotting a proposal for his girlfriend, and packed everything for just the right ambience.
We joined our friends on the beach and settled in for a technicolor sunset. The wedding was completed with a quiet round of applause. Children splashed in the chilly water in front of us, and lovers strolled past hand-in-hand. We chatted with our friends, but mostly took in the spectacular scenery. As the sky turned violet, and then dark blue, we packed up our little camp and headed back up the beach. We spotted the young lovers, laughing and sipping wine in the glow of a candle, and we could hear strains of their mood music floating across the dunes. We discreetly skirted their location, fingers crossed that the young man’s proposal was accepted. We rode back to The Breeze and our planned dinner, with a renewed vow to stop and watch the sunset—even in November.