Karen

I have an old soul.  I must have, for I am drawn to all things vintage, aged. or otherwise old.  From an early age, I loved the stories of women such as Abigal Adams, Martha Washington, or Mary Todd Lincoln.  I imagined life in those times, romanticizing about the simplier life style I thought their stories portrayed.  It was much later that I began to realize the extreme hardships and effort of just getting through each day.  I still, however, feel a kinship to earlier periods of American life.

I've held on to fond memories of our family vacations where we visited places etched with time; whether it was a museum filled with history, the deep forest where Sequoira trees reached tall into the sky, or the amazing dances of Indian tribes in the Southwest.  Each summer we'd visit my grandparents in Kentucky.  My grandmother's would bake biscuits on a wood burning stove, gather eggs from the hen house, or sit under the big Oak tree with the smell of honeysuckle in the air as they shelled freshly picked garden peas.  I've seen old glass Mason jars used at their houses to brew iced tea, a gallon jug used to brine cucumbers, an iron skillet to fry chicken.  I've slept under quilts my grandmother made on a feather bed in the back hall of the house my grandfather built; felt the heat of the smokey wood burning stove that kept us warm,  and helped my cousins turn and turn the ice cream maker on a hot summer day.  We'd visit Uncle Rube's and I'd walk his front porch where he had a flea market collection of items for anyone to purchase that stopped.  All this adds to the mix of my love for anything antique, used, shabby, or vintage.