Christmas Exterior...Coming Soon: Christmas Interior

It's our first Christmas at the house, and we hung our multicolored C9 lights today. The rest of the street is pitch dark, and we're the wacky house with the tacky lights now!

Mom's Piano

One of my favorite things in the house is my mom's piano that my sister was kind enough to pass along to me a few months ago. It's a Kimball early American style piano, and I think it exudes that warm seventies feeling. Its warranty and "suggestions for protecting the finish on your designer styled Kimball pianos and organs" papers have been kept in the bench since 1969 when my mom got it. If my puppy wasn't such a pain in the bottom, maybe I could actually find the time for my mom to give me lessons. She is a top-notch piano player. The piano is in our spare room downstairs, which still needs some work and some window treatments. Please ignore my poor terrarium. It badly needs to be replanted.

Grandma & her GE Americana

I wish I had been an adult when my grandmother sold her house several years ago. I would have insisted on keeping all of her kitchen appliances and replacing them with new ones for the buyer. But, I wasn't. So, someday I will find my own GE Americana "breakfront" refrigerator. I check eBay regularly to see if there are any listed. There was an aqua one listed several months ago (along with matching range), but it was in Florida. It went for some insanely low price. Anyway, I will have one someday. And whatever color it is, I'll redecorate my kitchen to match. I get sick thinking about how the new owners probably threw out all of the awesome stuff in her house, and the fridge was probably one of the first things to go. It was supposed to fill up the ice trays automatically, but that mechanism had broken a while before she moved out. The trays were attached inside, and you flipped them over into a long plastic tray to crack the ice out. The top was the refrigerator, which had french doors. The bottom was a big sliding drawer freezer that had a push button on the handle that read "ice". It had a countertop with gold speckled Formica, a cutting board, and backlight. My grandmother and I recently found some old family photo albums, and these were among some of the adorable pictures not long after she got the GE. I can't remember what year she said she got the refrigerator, but these pictures are from the sixties before they (and the refrigerator) moved to Tennessee and built the awesome 70's home where I spent so much of my childhood.

Pink Motel

I finally got to stay at the Pink Motel in Cherokee, NC on our recent trip to the Smokies. It was $55 a night, plus taxes. The room had a back door that opened up to a small patio, picnic area, and a flowing river stream. The room had been updated some years ago with typical hotel bedspreads and wall treatment, but the pink and black bathroom was mostly intact, and everything was very clean. Of course, the exterior and neon sign is what I went for. I'm glad I finally got to go, and I got a souvenir tank top!

Salt & Pepper Shaker Museum

We recently took a little trip to Gatlinburg, TN, and our first stop was the Salt & Pepper Shaker Museum. They have over 20,000 sets. It was probably my favorite part of our trip, and it was definitely the cheapest ($3)! Here are just a few pictures of its adorableness. Oh, it's for sale, too. I wish I could buy it. It makes me want to start my own collection. It was fun going through and picking out the few sets I do have.