Our Future Child(ren)'s Room Color

The room as it stands now, currently functioning as a guest room for our parents' frequent visits.

I've been excitedly thinking of decor ideas for our (hopefully-soon-to-be-but-we-really-have-no-idea) future child(ren)'s room. The plan is to do what gender-neutral things we can now, and then add some gender-specific details once we've accepted a placement.

The awesome dresser for this room that I got for a song off of Craigslist.

If you know me well, you may know that I'm a terrible decision maker. My personality is one that gets dazzled by all of the endless options out there, and then 300 hours on Pinterest later, I am wonderfully inspired but just that much further away from being able to decide anything.

So right now, I'm stuck between three possible paint colors for this room.

I'd originally planned to do a light gray like this Chic Gray and Yellow Nursery, or this Gender Neutral Grey, White and Yellow Nursery.

Then I kind of fell in love with bright light turquoise rooms like Gus & Lula's Cheerful Shared Room, or Norah's Bright and Colorful Nursery.

Most recently, however, The Nesting Game's Baby's Room has me totally rethinking all of that light brightness. I'm kind of swooning over the rich moodiness of the navy walls, and I think it would be a great across-the-hall complement to Jude's dark shamrock walls. I've also been inspired by this Into The Woods room for a while (it's more of a navy-gray, but still). And if it turns out to be a girl or two living in there, then navy goes so well with pink and florals, too.

So I need help! What color do you think I should paint the room??

A Small Encouragement for Mothers

I was having a down day today. Actually, I've been having a down week this week. Being a mom is hard. Keeping this place clean is mind-numbingly monotonous and boring. Sometimes it just gets old.

Add to that the fact that my wonderful husband naturally has much higher standards of tidiness than I do. This super tidy husband of mine is extremely busy with school right now, but if I don't get things clean during the day he will come home and compulsively clean like a madman, neglecting his more pressing tasks like homework because he just can't focus on anything else until our home is clean.

An old picture from Moldova, but I love that he put on my apron to do the dishes.

I often feel like I can either be a good mom or a good housekeeper, but not both in the same day. Lately, I haven't been much of either.


In a moment of desperation this afternoon, I texted Josh:

"Let's be honest. It isn't easy being here with Jude, but if it were you here, you'd find a way to have the place spotless every day. I just... ugh. This is hard for me. Maybe I'm not cut out to be a stay at home mom."

My sweet, Godly husband texted back:

"You are cut out for it because God has called you to it. If he has called you then he will enable you also. That doesn't mean it will be easy or you will do it perfectly, but that does mean that you can please and glorify him in it."

Jude certainly doesn't make it easy to keep this place clean.

That was exactly what I needed to hear. So short, but so nourishing to my weary soul.

Have you visited my "Why My Messy Manger?" page? I explain there that the purpose of this blog was inspired by Mark Chanski's book, Womanly Dominion: More Than A Gentle and Quiet Spirit, and at the end I say:

This blog is a chronicle of my family's adventures as I strive to raise "children who go out and turn the world upside down," while at the same time glorifying God in the often mundane details of keeping my home orderly. This is NOT a how-to guide, because I am LEARNING.

Yep. I'm still learning. Have a feeling I always will be.

I'm so thankful for my Godly husband who doesn't let me wallow in my sin, but always points me to Christ.

And I'm going to dig out my copy of Womanly Dominion and re-read it for the third time. It is such an encouraging and inspiring book. I highly recommend it to anyone who is struggling with finding joy and satisfaction in being a wife and mother. And be encouraged by my husband's text. God can and will enable you to please and glorify him in whatever he has called you to do, no matter how hard it is.

Dinner Fail

I'm generally really good about meal planning. In Moldova, I learned very quickly that I had to carefully plan all of our meals a week at a time, because we lived 30 minutes away from the nearest grocery store. Once a week, we would drive into town, spend about an hour and a half or two hours going to the grocery store, the market, and sometimes the pharmacy. If we ran out of something mid-week, there wasn't usually an opportunity to stop and pick something up until the next big trip.

I'm sure we were quite a sight-- strolling into the grocery store speaking English, filling our cart to the MAX, buying odd items that most Moldovans don't know what to do with (like peanut butter), and then paying with a card instead of cash. One time when Josh was checking out, a cashier actually grumbled to another store employee, "Why do they always have to pay with a card?" She didn't know we could understand her!

Checking out at the smaller of the two grocery stores in Orhei (actually it's the only one left now). This was not the girl who grumbled about us paying with a card.

On an even further tangent, I'm finding that one of the little things that I'm adapting to the slowest is the fact that you can swipe your own card at checkout in America. I almost always try to hand my card to the cashier, because that's what you have to do in Moldova. The guy at Trader Joe's the other day asked if it was my first time there, and I sheepishly said no. I spared him the explanation that I was just still not quite used to shopping in America, apparently.

But none of that is really relevant to the point of this post, except to explain why I became a really disciplined meal planner. A new wave of missing Moldova has hit me recently, so I guess I just wanted to reminisce a little.

So, yesterday, I'd planned for us to have pork chops for dinner. I sat them out to thaw in the morning, but because it was so cold in our house, by late afternoon, they still weren't completely thawed in the middle. I turned the oven on and popped them in, intending to only leave the oven on for a minute or so--just enough to warm it up and help them thaw a little more quickly.

I think you can see where this is headed.

Thirty minutes later, we picked Josh up from school and I started telling him about dinner... and then I remembered the pork chops in the oven. The oven that I'd never gone back to turn off.

This was in one of those styrofoam trays, but the styrofoam had completely melted into the meat.

I ran in, opened the apartment door, and was greeted by smoke and the smell of burning plastic. After turning off the oven and opening the kitchen window, I jumped back in the car and we all went to the mall for Josh and me to split a one-trip, all-you-can-pile-on-your-plate Chinese buffet feast. Yes, it's gluten-full. And probably MSG-full. I do it occasionally anyway because it is cheap and good and fast.

So, lest you get discouraged and/or intimidated because I cook everything from scratch and we eat super healthy... now you know that even I occasionally ruin dinner and pig out on mall Chinese. Pobody's nerfect, right?

My Home is a Mess

I've gotten fairly good at keeping our home in presentable condition most of the time, but do you ever notice how any time you let a few things slide, they all of a sudden snowball into one big overwhelming mess?

Okay, it's really not that bad. It's not like Hoarders or CPS are going to be knocking down my door. Really, the kitchen is just a little messy and there's a nice mess of bits of bacon, homemade energy bar, and corn on the cob creating a fun texture on the floor conspicuously around where one adorable little boy sits at the table.

 My mom is going to be absolutely horrified that I am putting pictures of this on the internet.

In case you're wondering, there are always wooden spoons laying randomly around our house because Jude likes to play with them like puppets, and you can see in the bottom right of the floor picture the pile of clothes that I stripped off of him after he finished eating the corn on the cob.

And instead of cleaning any of it right now, before my hardworking husband comes home, I'm taking pictures of it and blogging about it. Insanity.

A new friend brought her two boys over last week to play and kept commenting on how clean our apartment was. I don't think she reads my blog, but I wish she did so she could see that it's really not like that all of the time.

I just wanted to encourage you today, just like I hope my blog encourages you every day, that it's okay to not be perfect. Yes, we are striving to glorify God in the way we order and keep our homes, but that doesn't mean we have to pretend to have it all together.

What areas of your life might others think you have it all together, but you really don't? Or in what ways are you running yourself ragged trying to keep up with someone else's spotless home/well-behaved kids/perfect hair/ministry/etc.?

How can we encourage each other to relax and just be ourselves?

Sheer Curtains

Okay, okay... please hear me out before you start throwing tomatoes at me! I KNOW that sheer curtains are about as cool as lace doilies (although even those are making a comeback in some unexpected places), but just listen for a second.

We live in an apartment complex in the city. Our apartment is actually quite private compared to some of the others, but our big front living room window faces another building and a sidewalk. It's not the best set-up for people who don't enjoy putting on shows for the neighbors.

I've noticed that most of the residents of our complex opt for simply keeping their blinds closed all the time, but it makes us both sink into the depths of SAD just thinking about blocking out all of that wonderful light. So, I noticed that our Korean neighbors were doing something that I also remember being popular in Moldovan homes (although I think in Moldova it's more for the bugs than for privacy, since most people have neither air conditioning or screens on their windows): sheer curtains.

I realized that I couldn't see in through our neighbors' sheer curtains, but I knew from being in Moldovan homes that inside their apartment, they were enjoying beautiful, bright, diffused light. This picture is actually of our window with our new sheer curtains, not our neighbors' window... come on, I'm not that creepy. Also, how do you like our bird feeder? The birds go CRAZY over it and it's really fun to watch.

And you know what? It really doesn't look bad from the inside, either. I love the way they diffuse the light and make the whole place seem brighter and happier. I just hung them from a cheap tension rod set inside the window frame. I'm telling you, it's simple and wonderful.

As an added bonus, if you like to take pictures, this will now become your favorite spot in the whole house because the diffused light is AWESOME for portraits. Did I mention that they diffuse the light? Because I love that.

Of course, once the sun goes down you still have to close the blinds.

So, my dear friends, if you live in a place where privacy is an issue, I offer you this simple, inexpensive, and wonderful solution: sheer curtains. You can thank me later when you're not getting treated for SAD.

Simple Food Storage Tip

I guess you could say that I'm on a quiet mission to reduce the amount of plastic that touches my food. Since moving back to America, I've begun primarily cooking on iron cookware, storing leftovers in glass or ceramic containers, and replaced all of my plastic cooking utensils with wooden ones.

There have been two things, however, that I've been holding back on doing without because I just couldn't figure out a good alternative: ziplock baggies and cling wrap. I've thought about using aluminum foil, but the few times that I'd tried it before, I usually wound up forgetting what was in there until it was too late.

Putting food in the fridge the other day, and pondering this dilemma again, I suddenly thought about ordering a Joey Bag of Doughnuts at my favorite burrito joint and got the idea to label what's under the foil with a permanent marker!

Problem solved! I'm so happy with my new solution! (And you get a peek inside my messy fridge!)

Do you worry about plastic and your food? I think this is a great solution for refrigerator storage, but I'm still using ziplock baggies occasionally for other things, like taking snacks to-go. What do you use? Got any tips for me?

Let me know, and if I love your tip, I might feature it here for all of us to enjoy!

Our Kitchen

I'm so excited to give you a few sneak peeks into our new apartment!

My mom and I came up a day and a half early to paint the walls. Everybody else followed with all of our stuff, and we all woke up bright and early the next morning to unload the truck.

We are blessed with such an amazing family and friends. Our family stayed almost two whole days helping us unpack and get settled, and by the time they left, you would have sworn that we'd lived here for at least a few months already. It was great.

We've learned a lot by moving 12 times in 5 years, but one of the most important things is that the sooner you can get in and make it feel like home, the better. Maybe that wouldn't be as important if you didn't move around so much, but it's made a world of difference for us. 95% of what you see in our apartment is stuff we boxed up when we left, so please don't feel like we (unemployed former missionaries) went out and spent a fortune furnishing this place.

That said, I know you can't wait to see pictures, right? Your tour will begin in the kitchen. Let me warn you... this could take a while... our kitchen is HUGE.

Syke.

Haha, I don't think I've said that since the third grade! Okay. Actually, it does have an obscene amount of cabinet space for such a tiny kitchen. Especially compared to our last kitchen. This is the view from the kitchen door. There are so many cabinets that I felt really good about using a nice dark teal, and I LOVE it:

That metal thing hanging under the window is a paper towel, foil, and wax paper dispenser that I found at an antique store a long time ago. And you'll also notice part of my cast-iron collection in the floor waiting for a home. Don't worry, I finally figured out a good place for them.

To the left is the fridge, stove, and sink. I told you it was huge!

My favorite part, though, is when you turn around to go out of the kitchen:

Remember the feature I did a while back of Art by Erin Leigh? She generously sent me this wonderful set and they could not possible go more perfectly in my teal and red kitchen! I love, love, LOVE them!

Are your legs tired yet? 

Things Your Grandmother Knew

Jude with my Dad's Mom, Naomi.  She is an amazing cook and gardener, and is proud that I'm learning how to cook and am concerned about cooking naturally and healthfully.

A couple of days ago, I was opening a new package of sugar when I discovered that it had hardened into one solid brick.  This particular brand of sugar comes in paper packaging, which I like better than the plastic that most of the other brands come in, but it does seem to make the sugar more prone to clumping.  I wondered if there was an easier way to soften the lumps besides hacking away at it with a fork, which was what I had been doing, to little avail.   So, I did what I do when I'm faced with any question... I googled it.

And that's when I came across a blog that I am now officially obsessed with: Things Your Grandmother Knew.  I love her "About This Blog" blurb, so I'm just going to let her tell you about her blog in her own words:

Some of the best kitchen and household tips were published during World War II when recycling & rationing was vital not only for the nation's economy, but necessary for the survival of each family.

Some of these tips were handed-down from grandma, but were often they were dismissed as cute anecdotes, stories of 'hard times and hard work' which were not necessary in times of prosperity and a plethora of modern conveniences.

As a result, many of these kitchen and household tips have been lost to history -- unless you collect vintage magazines.

There, in the yellowing brittle pages, you'll find a slew of household tips that are amazingly still practical today.

Me on the far left sitting beside my Mom's mom, Ocie. Some of her recipes are still famous among those who remember her.

I just can't say enough how much I love this blog!  She scans tips out of old magazines and posts them so that the rest of us can also glean wisdom from them.  I couldn't find any contact information on the blog, so I hope she doesn't mind me doing this, but I love some of the too much not to share. 

 She has tips on everything from tenderizing tough meat:

To recycling tips like how to make an emergency sewing kit:

And laundry tips like this one that I'm going to need next month when we move back to camp:

And even recipes, like this one that was said to be from or used by Jackie Kennedy:

You seriously have to go browse around her blog for a while... or a few hours.   I love it.

Housework That's Working For Me

Much to the dismay of my husband, cleaning does not come naturally for me.  My mom is the kind of person who seems to have never-ending energy and can never sit down and relax because she is always cleaning.  I didn't inherit that trait from her.  My mother-in-law has a morning routine she does every morning, and then she spends all day on Wednesdays cleaning the house and bathing the dogs.  I've tried having one big cleaning day before, but I just get overwhelmed and exhausted.

So what's a girl to do?

I am embarrassed to admit my lack of cleaning in the past.  Really embarrassed.  But all of that is behind me and I've finally gotten into a housekeeping routine that's working, and I wanted to share it with you.

My mornings run like clockwork.  We wake up, have breakfast, and then Josh and I take turns going up to his office to read and pray.  After that, I go in the bedroom, get dressed, pick up the bedroom, and make the beds.  I take any dirty laundry with me to the bathroom, where I start a load of laundry (this works well for me because here, my washer and dryer are in the bathroom).  I wash my face and brush my teeth, and then I spray and wipe down the sink and toilet, and give the toilet bowl a swish with the toilet brush.  I pick up any stray things on the counter or in the floor and head to the kitchen to check and see if there is anything I need to do to prepare for dinner, like take meat out of the freezer.

After all of that, I play with Jude until time for his nap.  Once he goes to sleep, Josh and I eat lunch, and then I get to work on whatever is on my agenda for the day.  Here is my list of once-a-week things that I do:
Monday- polish shoes (our shoes get really dirty going to church), dust, give the Poodle a bath, quick sweep
Tuesday- wash bed sheets, clean shower
Wednesday- big sweep, mop, beat rug, wash rugs and dog bedding
Thursday- iron, wash windows
Friday- clean out fridge, clean microwave, quick sweep

And this isn't huge, but at night after dinner, we always make sure the kitchen and living room are straight and the dishes done before we go to bed.  That's just good to wake up to in the morning.

I have to tell you, it's been really satisfying for me to just have a couple of things on my to-do list every day, and this way nothing gets really dirty.  I love never having to clean the whole bathroom, because that was my most dreaded chore ever.  I would put it off until the bathroom got disgusting, and then... well... it was a disgusting job.  But by wiping down the sink and toilet every single morning, it NEVER gets dirty, so it's not gross and I don't dread it.  It's wonderful.

There are a couple of places for improvement in my routine.  Notice that you didn't see "do the dishes" anywhere?  I really need to work that into my routine, or else we end up with a huge pile of dishes to do after dinner (we don't have a dishwasher).  If I were really disciplined, I would do the breakfast dishes while Josh is reading and praying, but it's so much more satisfying to do my morning check of the internets during that time.  But seriously... I need to do the dishes instead.

I should also mop the kitchen and dining area more than once a week.  It gets pretty grody by Wednesday thanks to a little dog, a little cat, and a little boy.  But I'm not too worried about it right now.  I won't tell you how often I mopped the floors before starting this routine, but I'll just say that once a week is a HUGE improvement for me.

How do you keep your house clean?  Do you have a routine?  Do you just clean all the time like my mom?  Do you never clean until it gets grody and embarrassing?  Let me know, I'd love any tips or ideas!

Thanksgiving Planning

Our family on Thanksgiving 2009

Overwhelmed with the task of single-handedly planning my family's entire Thanksgiving dinner (and wanting it to be big and special even though it will only be the three of us), I knew I had to over compensate with some extreme planning.  If you ever find yourself in the same situation, I hope that some of my pointers come in handy for you.


1.  Plan the Menu.  First, I did what I do every week for every meal-- I planned what we were going to eat: Turkey, dressing, rolls, pumpkin pie, cranberry sauce, green beans, gravy, baked apples, mashed potatoes, and cinnamon rolls for breakfast.  I told you I wanted it to be big and special!

2.  Find the Recipes.  I did not yet have recipes for several of the things I wanted to prepare.  I scoured the internet for the yummiest looking recipes and printed them to PDFs on my computer.  It's probably a good idea to later print out a hard copy too, but I'll probably just keep the laptop in the kitchen with me.  Yes, I'm making several new recipes over the course of two days.  Yes, I know that's crazy.


3.  List the Ingredients.  With all of my recipes at hand or opened on the computer, I listed in an Excel document all of the ingredients for each dish.  It looked something like this:

Stuffing	Pumpkin Pie
sourdough bread	2 eggs
3 T ghee	1 (15 oz) can pumpkin
1 stalk celery	1 cup light brown sugar
1/2 onion	1 t cinnamon
2 cloves garlic	1/2 t nutmeg
2 T parsley	1/2 t ginger
1/2 t sage	1/2 t salt
1/4 t marjoram	1 T molasses
1/8 t pepper	3/4 cup coconut milk
water	1 pie crust

4.  Combine Ingredients Lists into a Shopping List.  Directly below the ingredients lists, I began organizing everything into a shopping list.  I filtered out the things I already had on hand (which was surprisingly a LOT) and, as always, divided my list by Dairy, Meat, Fresh, General, and Non-Food.  It looked like this (which includes everything I need for the week, not just Thanksgiving):

11/20/10
Dairy	Meat	Fresh	General	Non-Food	?
butter	bacon	celery	salt	wipes	coconut milk
	chicken breasts	onions	sugar	body wash	worcestershire
	salami	garlic	marghiran		gelatin
		bell pepper	sesame oil		lemon juice
		sesame seeds	flour
			juices
			millet
			jam
			PB
			potato chips
			tortilla chips

The "?" column at the end is where I write things that I cannot remember if I have enough on hand or not.  Instead of getting up to go check several times, I make a list there and then check them all at the same time after I've planned everything else.  It's a little thing, but it saves quite a bit of time for me on my shopping morning and helps my easily distracted self stay focused on the task at hand.


5.  Make a Timeline.  The last thing I did was make a timeline of when everything needed to be done.  It spanned Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and  Thursday's to-do list was in order of what to do first, second, etc.  You'll see that I also noted how long some of the things would take that I wanted to all be finished at the same time:

Tuesday Wednesday Make sourdough sponge Make sourdough bread for stuffing for bread, rolls & cinnamon rolls Brine turkey Make & bake pie crust Par-bake rolls Make pumpkin pie Make cinnamon rolls and refrigerate Thursday Cinnamon rolls for breakfast Green Beans-cook in morning, reheat Turkey- 6 hours including prep Stock/gravy- 1 hour stovetop Mashed potatoes- 1 hour stovetop Stuffing- 30 minutes stovetop Fried Apples- 30 minutes stovetop Warm beans- 5 minutes Warm rolls- 10 minutes after turkey Warm pie- 15 minutes after rolls

Then all I had to do was collect my ingredients and execute my plan!  I'll let you know after Thanksgiving how well that went!

Why "My Messy Manger?"

You may be wondering why I chose such an unusual title for this blog, and an even more unusual Bible verse for my tagline:

"Where there are no oxen the manger is clean, but abundant crops come by the strength of the ox."  Proverbs 14:4

No, I'm not an ox farmer.

I was inspired by Mark Chanski's amazing book, Womanly Dominion: More Than A Gentle and Quiet Spirit.  In the chapter "Womanly Dominion in Child Rearing--Part 1," Chanski uses the principle behind this verse to encourage Godly mothers to accept a certain degree of upheaval in their homes during the season of their lives that they are raising children.

He contrasts an immaculate but unproductive barn with a soiled but profitable barn.  This is an easy concept for anyone who has ever been in a barn to understand.  If there are animals in it, it's not only going to be messy, it's also going to require a lot of work.  He puts it this way:

Step into the "ox-inhabited" barn.  Whew!  The manure, urine, hay, mud, and flies make it anything but fresh and sweet in here.  Here comes Farmer Elimelech with a shovel over his shoulder to clean up the mess.  He's late this morning.  He was up at two a.m. to help deliver an ox calf.  It's a huge task to feed, house, and look after these enormous beasts.  Why does he put up with all the grief, messiness, and aggravation? ... These mighty plodders knife open the soil, enabling the nestling of the seed in rows, resulting in the eventual swaying of wheat and barley, the overflowing of barns, the rolling of full wagons to the marketplace, the piling of the kitchen table high with bounty, and the providing of riches for one's family and heritage.   

Sure, the barn is not very tidy, immaculate, or fresh smelling, but the yield, the increase makes it a far better barn than the first. 

Later, he contrasts the immaculate but unproductive house with a soiled but profitable home.  This is the part that inspires me anew every time I read it:

But if a mother is bent on raising up mighty children, capable children, bold, brave, daring, adventuresome, God-fearing, dominion-minded children, then she needs to "kiss goodbye" any aspirations of immaculate tranquility.  Oxen who go out and turn the soil over, and children who go out and turn the world upside down, make messes.  But the woman of dominion is willing to pay the price of domestic upheaval for the prospects of kingdom profit.

Now, lest I think that I can neglect my home under the excuse of raising Godly, messy oxen, Chanski reminds me:

Now, remember Kidner's important qualification: "This proverb is not a plea for slovenliness."  A woman of dominion will strive to maintain an orderly household.  An overgrown yard, ransacked rooms, and a sink stacked high with dirty dishes do not glorify the God who loves things being "done properly and in an orderly manner" (1 Corinthians 14:40; also numerous Proverbs). 

This blog is a chronicle of my family's adventures as I strive to raise "children who go out and turn the world upside down," while at the same time glorifying God in the often mundane details of keeping my home orderly.  This is NOT a how-to guide, because I am LEARNING.

Please, come settle in at the table with me over some mugs of strong coffee and learn along with me.

I Have a New Addiction

So, at the local market, there is a very sweet, very beautiful older lady (which I have to say is rare in Moldova… women here just don’t have gobs of money to spend on anti-aging stuff like women in America) who has a booth full of used aprons imported from Germany.  I stop every time I pass by and chat with her while I look through the piles of beautiful vintage patterns and designs.

Here’s the thing, for a long time I thought that the full aprons were 50 lei (which is currently $4.32), and had only bought one.  It was a justified purchase because I am a messy cook and didn’t want to get the one I made dirty because it’s more for cuteness than for work.



It wasn’t until today when I offered her 40 lei for another one that I figured out that they are actually 15 lei ($1.30) for a full apron and only 10 lei ($0.86) for a half apron!  Wow!  (In my defense, 15 and 50 sound very similar in Romanian, just like they do in English.)  So of course I bought two.  Another full apron for cooking:



And a half apron for cleaning.  It's hard to tell in a picture, but this one has two pleats under the waist band on each hip, which gives it nice shape, and it has two huge, deep pockets on the front.  Perfect for toting random things from room to room while I clean:



And, because I know it's hard to see in the above picture, I took a close-up picture of the red apron to show you what REALLY sold me on this one:


Sailboats and windmills! How am I supposed to resist that??"

Oh my… now that I know they are so cheap, I don’t think I’m going to be able to stop myself!

I just have to show off!

Those who know me very well will know that I have a small collection of (mostly) vintage teal glasses.  It's small because good teal glasses are really hard to find.  So you can imagine my delight in getting not one but TWO new glasses within a week!

Okay, so one isn't technically a glass.  The little milk glass coffee mug was spotted last week at an antique store in Benton, Ky and my sweet mother bought it for me.  Then today, I went to Goodwill to see if they had any cute old sheets for the Summer Skirt Sheet Swap (try saying that 5x fast!) over at Polka Dot Creations (I'm hopefully going to blog more about that later).  I didn't find any cute sheets, but I DID find an awesome teal goblet!  You can't tell in the picture, but it says "West End Dinner Theater Alexandria, VA."

I was so excited, I just had to show them off! :)

Anybody know anything about vintage glassware?