Knick Knack Tour

There is an item in my living room that goes way back.

This little wooden rocking chair was used by my mother when she was a child. And then again by my brother and I when we were children.

It was given to me by my mother at my baby shower and it means the world to me.

Now my son uses it....and he rocks like a mad man! Big cheesy grin, and all.

Knick Knack Tour

As most people know, I'm a huge sports fan. The hubby is not. So instead of watching basketball, football, golf, and baseball, like I did growing up, I get baseball. Which is fine with me since it's my favorite. But I do miss watching the others. (Now that we are upgrading the cable in our house, we will have another room with cable....maybe I can resume sports TV.)

Anyway, sports have been a part of my life since early childhood. And I loved to collect sports cards. They are hidden away in my closet - not to be touched or played with.

I have two books FULL of cards. They are to be preserved. Because the longer you hold on to these things, the more valuable they are.

Some of the cards I have are full sets - which, sometimes, hold more value. Some day, I will look up the values....but for now, it's like a mini-retirement plan just sitting in my closet.

Knick Knack Tour

So, over by our front door, we have some built-in shelves. I love them. Because I am a decorating fool, when money allows. (Which, isn't a lot of the time. So pictures and candles kind of take over my house. But at least it smells nice all the time!)

Anyway, one of the shelves is dedicated to the hubby and me. And our infinite love. Yeah. Anyway. So, from right to left (because I'm being a daredevil and going backwards from the norm) in this picture, we have a hand-made cross-stitch that Eric's younger cousin, SaraBeth, made for us and presented at the wedding. It's awesome. I love it. And she framed it. Even better! Then we have a lovely potpourri (let me explain what just happened here. I couldn't figure out how to spell 'potpourri'. So I decided to live on the edge and just leave it. But my OCD-ness (as so many people like to point out that I have, though I don't) took over and I had to click on dictionary.com and look up the spelling of the damn word. Seriously. It was eating at me as I continued to type my post) in a tall glass vase. It smells amazing. But it's old. I need to change out the potpourri (see, now that I know how to spell it, I'm going to use it 73 more times in this one blog post). And then a lovely picture of us on Christmas 2006, which was ironically when Carter was conceived. So the odd thing about that picture is that we are pregnant and don't even know it yet. I think it's a cool thing. Maybe not to other people. But it is to me. And it's my shelf. Then we have several shells that we picked up on our honeymoon and brought back over the border. Because you can do that with shells. And then.......

Then we have this fella.

Our Mayan mask. That we got screwed into buying. Well, I would have bought it anyway. We bought two actually, and gave one to my father. Seriously though? When we were walking around the Mayan ruins, all the locals were whistling at us (have I mentioned that I HATE whistling?) ONE DOLLAR! ONE DOLLAR! So finally, I walked over and said, "seriously? One dollar for this mask?" And the guy said "yes! One Mayan dollar!" So I inquired, "Oh. And how much is one Mayan dollar to American?" He tells me, with a big grin, "Fifteen American dollars." See, this is where I started to walk away. I don't like being deceived. So I finally talked him into the $15 for TWO masks. I'm sure we still got ripped off, but we wanted some momentos (mentos, the freshmaker!) from our honeymoon. So we came home with the overpriced mask.

And that's our shelf of love.

Knick Knack Tour

So, like most people, I have some pretty random things around my house. Some are cool, some are just plain wierd. Let's take a tour of all things cool and wierd, shall we?

First item up? A bowling pin. Yes. I have a bowling pin in my house. No, I didn't steal it. My grandfather (on my dad's side) used to own a bowling alley in Oregon. All four brothers on my dad's side of the family are big bowlers. They have bowled on a league together since I was a wee child. They still bowl. Every Thursday. Most always in tribute to their father.

When my grandfather closed down his bowling alley and moved back here to Idaho to be near his family, he brought some keepsakes with him. Such as? Bowling pins from the bowling alley. Makes sense! So the one I have sits on a shelf in my closet.

I pulled it out for this blog post and of course, curiosity killed the cat. It's almost too heavy for him to lift! Have you ever held a bowling pin? Those suckers aren't light!!