See Me Sea Cruisin'!

Last week the Mister and I enjoyed a cruise to the Bahamas. Our ship was Royal Caribbean's Monarch of the Seas. It sailed out of Port Canaveral on Monday October 19. We enjoyed 4 days and 4 nights of sun, sea, snoozing and snacking. It was a blur of buffets. A dearth of dinners. A litter of lunches.

And a semi comfy bed. Only mermaids and ship's passengers know what it's like to have the sea rock you gently to sleep.

A cruise is easy traveling. You take your hotel with you wherever you go. We docked next to this Norwegian Cruise ship in the Bahamas

Those beautiful resort hotels stay where they are. You have to pack up your stuff and take it with you if you want to go someplace else.

Freeport is not exactly free, but you do save money on essentials - like a years supply of Grand Mariner for example,

A sunny sight as seen from deck 11. Something about those buildings makes me homesick...or maybe thirsty......?....

Ah - a closer look - a Starbuck's! No wonder! Luckily the ship has a coffee shop, Latte-Tudes, so I don't have to leave the ship for a sip of java. But cruising is really all about f-o-o-d. Rumor has it that cruise ships are not allowed to dock back at the home port until all the food is gone. We'll do our part!

So, the Mister and I donned our "smart casual" wear and stopped by to pick up our cruise posse, Bill and Suzanne on our way to Claude's Dining Room

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We weren't the only ones that answered the dinner bell. They're on their way to the Windjammer buffet dinner.
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Our staterooms are just steps away from the elevators! Brilliant planning!

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The mister looks a bit peckish. It's been at least an hour since we last ate.
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We meet our wonderful serving staff. Amit, from India and Sunshine from China. Just two of about 40 nations represented by the ships crew.

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Sunshine showed me how to write "beautiful" in Chinese characters.

Beautiful!

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Amit took our dinner orders.

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Mia, from Great Britain, was traveling with her parents and brothers. She celebrated her birthday and wore this beautiful sea foam mermaid dress for the occasion.

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A first course of roasted garlic soup. Mmmmm!

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And my all time favorite escargot

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Where'd it go? Please Sir, May I have more?

After a wonderful evening of dinner, conversation, donating to slot machines and browsing about the ship we headed for our blankets and pillows
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Our stateroom staff had everything ship shape and left a bunny to watch for our safe return.

The mornings brought breakfast followed by lunch and plenty of activities and naps to keep us busy until dinner.
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Here we go again!

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Happy!


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Menu?


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Sunshine captures Mia for my camera.

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Looking a bit smug and very well fed

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While we were away, Layla the dog caught up on her favorite catalog

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And waited for us to set sail for home.

So, how was the trip?


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Beautiful!

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Postcard Friendship Friday! Pumpkin Seed Charm

Postcard reproduced here with kind permission of http://www.cardcow.com/

Happy Postcard Friendship Friday! We'll celebrate with another Hallowe'en postcard. This one includes a verse that instructs us how to keep black cats - and their associated bad luck -away. The not so menacing Jack o' lantern will keep him at bay as long as he is fortified with a ring of pumpkin seeds.

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Mmmm - pumpkin seeds! For years I was aware only of those store bought seeds that are covered in a salty salted saltish crust of salty salt. The main flavor was salt. I ate so many pumpkin seeds..well.. it's just a wonder I didn't end up like Lot's wife.
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I can almost hear my ankles swelling!
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Only 4 carbs per serving but enough salt to preserve you over the winter.

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I was in my early teens before we had our first home roasted pumpkin seeds fresh out of the Jack-o-lantern.
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Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

1 1/2 cups raw whole pumpkin seeds
2 teaspoons butter, melted
1 pinch salt
DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 300 degrees F (150 degrees C).
Toss seeds in a bowl with the melted butter and salt. Spread the seeds in a single layer on a baking sheet and bake for about 45 minutes or until golden brown; stir occasionally.

Delicious!

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The postcard is dated October 31, 1921. There is no stamp, or postmark. Perhaps Grandma tucked it away in his mother's suitcase during their last visit with several reminders of "don't forget to give this card to little Albert on Halloween!

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It reads:

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Hello Albert

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How is Grandma's little boy - what have you been doing since you got home. Love and kisses from Grandma

Sounds like a mighty nice Grandma, doesn't she?

I searched for Park Idaho, but found no information to share with you. Zilch. Albert lived one state over, in Leadpoint which is an unincorporated mining area in the far north east of Washington State. When I think of "mining town" I automatically think of coal mine. Leadpoint mines, however, contained galena (which is lead) and other associated minerals and elements:

Leadpoint Mines Mineral List:

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Cerussite also known as white lead
Dolomite sedimentary carbonate rock
Fluorite calcium fluoride -used in smelting process
Galena lead
Limonite an iron ore
Pyrite a carbonate mineral also known as fool's gold
Quartz second most abundant mineral on earth. amethyst and citrine are examples of quartz
Scheelite ore mineral of tungsten
Siderite a valuable iron mineral
Sphalerite zinc ore
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Leadpoint is a hilly or perhaps mountainous area with lots of lakes.
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Speaking of hills:

Royal Caribbean's Monarch of the Seas anchored by some hilly isle.

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Here's where me n' the Mister were this week!

Celebrating our 40th

what a life!

See you later today!

In the meantime, stop by and visit our PFF host, Marie at Voila! Vintage Postcards!

Postcard Friendship Friday With Good Luck Wishes

I've found another early 1900's postcard with unusual good luck wishes for Halloween:


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A message of good luck for you

The best that you could dream

So let us all be merry

On this joyous Halloween.

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Apparently that is a good witch in the picture. Her BFF, the good Blue Fairy is mixing a cauldron of luck to ensure a joyous (?) Halloween.

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The year on the postmark is unreadable. My best guess is October 2o, 1904, 24 or 34. You choose.





It was mailed from Grants Pass in Oregon - another state the rest of us never talk much about. The liberal, Caucasian, gun toting, treehugging, hydroponic residents sandwiched between Washington and California would have moved further west had it not been for the Pacific Ocean.





The written message is like a prehistoric discovery. Cave drawings. Footsteps in the sandstone as it were. The author, Ralph, used the text messaging abbreviation "r u" for "are you"! I should send it to the Smithsonian. I'm thinking this find will surely compete with the Prehistoric Barbie!

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The message reads:

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Dear (unreadable) thithter Ruth,
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How r u and Rose getting along in H. School now. Mrs. Gruber, Marie's sister you know, thought you were doing fine. She used to be a stenographer. She, Mr. Gruber and little "Snookie" are coming down Saturday. "Snookie" or LaVon, rather, is a mighty cute baby and we have great times. She comes to me when she won't to her mother sometimes. Love to all, Ralph.

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Sounds like Ralph is a fun brother to his "thithter" and a great attraction to babies.

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Grants Pass and Medford are located in the Rogue Valley of southwest Oregon. Grant's pass was once a timber town, but now relies on tourism and Medford, once an agricultural area now has healthcare services as the main industry.

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Medford, down in the Rouge Valley

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Meet the Thunder Egg, an agate filled nodule. The Oregon State rock.

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Seed cone of the Douglas Fir, the State Tree of Oregon

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A California Native American myth states that the three-ended bracts in the seed cone are a tail and two tiny legs of the mice who hid inside the scales of the tree's cones during forest fires, and the tree was kind enough to be the enduring sanctuary for them. Beautiful!



The name of the tree honors David Douglas, a Scottish botanist who first cultivated the fir tree in Europe. It is one of the most common trees in North America and a very popular Christmas tree choice.
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A little too early to think about Christmas...it's not even that lucky joyous Halloween yet!
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For more Postcard Friendly Friday fun, stop by and see Marie at Voila! Vintage Postcards.

A Wedding Anniversary - 40 Years!

Today we celebrate 40 years together, my Mister and I

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The years just flew by - at least it seems that way now

Did you know that the 40th Wedding Anniversary....

Is the Ruby Anniversary?

That's what we celebrate today

You know? ....we never did have monogrammed towels... but those we've had through the years, and there have been many...dried us just the same.

We picked an amazing year to marry. That rainy Friday night was just one more day in an amazing year.

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Rob Kirpatrick wrote a book about 1969. He called it 1969 The Year Everything Changed.

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"This was the year that saw Apollo 11 land on the moon, the Cinderella stories of Joe Namath’s Jets and the “Miracle Mets,” the Harvard student strike and armed standoff at Cornell, the People’s Park riots, the first artificial heart transplant and first computer network connection, the Manson family murders and cryptic Zodiac Killer letters, the Woodstock music festival, Easy Rider, Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, the Battle of Hamburger Hill, the birth of punk music, the invasion of Led Zeppelin, the occupation of Alcatraz, death at Altamont Speedway, and much more. It was a year that pushed boundaries on stage (Oh! Calcutta!), screen (Midnight Cowboy), and the printed page (Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex), witnessed the genesis of the gay rights movement at Stonewall, and started the era of the “no fault” divorce. Richard Nixon became president, the New Left squared off against the Silent Majority, William Ayers co-founded the Weatherman Organization, and the nationwide Moratorium provided a unifying force in the peace movement."

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40 Years!

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The letters of the word "forty" are in alphabetical order; this is the only number that has this linguistic property in English

Life begins at forty"

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forty winks

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40 yard dash

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The back 40

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Days and Nights of Noah's Flood

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the code for direct dial international phone calls to Romania

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hours in a work week

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days of fasting

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years the Israelites wandered in the desert

And the number of years the Mister and I have loved each other and shared our lives.

40

It has a nice ring to it

Postcard Friendship Friday in the Great Northwest!

Posted with kind permission of http://www.cardcow.com/

It's hard to believe this beautiful Art Nouveau style postcard is nearly 100 years old! It's rhythmic leaf pattern and subtle colors are a prime example of the artistic style of "new art" that broke away from the stuffy and cluttered Victorian works. The Art Nouveau movement swept world-wide and was popular for about 15 years in the late 1800's and very early 1900's.

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The verse reads: On this Halloween may your most wished for wish come true. Kind of an odd greeting for Halloween, I think. That would be the last day of the year we should make wishes. We might hiccup in the middle of asking and wind up with a zombie on our doorstep.

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The card is postmarked October, 28 1911 and was mailed from Hazel, Washington to Warden Washington. Hazel lies on the banks of the Stillaguamish (Stilly) River, about 75 miles NE of Seattle (which is NOT the capital of Washington, by the way) and is 295 feet above sea level. The Stilly river flows down from the Cascade mountains into Puget Sound.
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The Stilly River in July

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(all right, all right! January)
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The Cascades are part of the Pacific Ring of Fire, the ring of volcanoes and associated mountains around the Pacific Ocean. All of the known historic eruptions in the contiguous United States have been from Cascade volcanoes. The two most recent were Lassen Peak in 1914 to 1921 and a major eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980. Minor eruptions of Mount St. Helens have also occurred since, most recently in 2006.

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I'm just sayin'.

Mt. Rainier, Washington State

The postcard was mailed to Miss Lydia Daell in Warden Washington which is in the center of the state. Warden was settled in the late 1800s by immigrants of Russian-German ancestry who homesteaded in the area and farmed dryland wheat. The Milwaukee Railroad arrived in the early 1900s and attracted additional settlers, including Doc Harris who established a drug and sundries store with physician services in Warden about 1905. The town was named after his son Ward. The Town of Warden was officially incorporated June 28, 1910. By 1917 the population of Warden reached 300. Electricity arrived in 1939, but the town's population declined through World War II.

The card, written in pre Starbucks days, reads:

Hazel Wash. October 22, 1911

Dear Lydia,

I had a postal from Miss Jessie McDonald, and she said your school had not started. What is the trouble? I suppose you will soon have a teacher.

Your friend, Louise Vinsonhale

Does Louise sound just a little terse? Is she suffering at the thought of her friend being free from the restraints of school and homework so late in the fall? I'd be falling over dead from the thought I if had to go to school and my friends were on an extended vacation! Perhaps Louise's most wished for wish is that a teacher will show up at Lydia's school -and F-A-S-T!

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What was going on in late 1911?

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Orville Wright remained in the air 9 minutes and 45 seconds in a glider at Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, setting a new world record that stood for 10 years.
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Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera was published.

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Suffragettes stormed Parliament in London. All were arrested and all chose prison terms. You go girls!

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The Titanic 's hull was completed.

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Ragtime was the popular music of the day, and Alexander's Ragtime Band by Irving Berlin was just one of a very long list of popular songs for 1911. Mahalia Jackson was born this year.

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David Guterson wrote a wonderful and finely told novel that takes place in Washington. Snow Falling on Cedars is loosely based on real events that took place in Washington during the 1940's and 50's. The story was heavily influenced by Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird and is a must read. The movie by the same name is well done and keeps true to the story. Read, watch - or better yet, do both books and both movies! I'll be watching To Kill A Mockingbird this weekend thanks to Netflix and their timely delivery. Aaahh an evening with our favorite Mr. Peck. Peck n' popcorn. Who could ask for more?

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Enjoy more PFF posts hosted by our friend Marie of Voila! Vintage Postcards!