Some Photos and Some Frustration . . .

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I'll start with a few more pictures
of some of my "treasures"

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This is a piece
I bought some thirty years ago.

It's an original pen and ink with watercolor accents. It's on some kind of light drawing paper, and I've never been able to learn anything about it. It was matted when I bought it and I've never had it apart, so I'm unsure if there's a signature. The piece is quite large.

I love this style of art, very much like the work of Charles Dana Gibson of Gibson Girl fame.

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Next I'll share a strange piece
I bought from a lovely woman who collected
primitive and tribal art.

It's a hand carved wooden headpiece that she told me was from Africa, although I have no proof of that. I just bought it because I liked the chicken on his head!

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Most of my regular readers know that we collected Disney for a really long time (like 30-40 years). I have a massive Disney collection, much of which I will be selling through a friend of mine.

I have always been particularly fond of very early Disneyland pieces, like from 1955 (the opening year) to the mid 60s. Here's just a minuscule part of that early Disneyland collection.

The dwarfs in the back are all pencil holders, sold individually. As far as I know these were the only four they made. Dopey is the most common. The little jugs are my favorite kind of piece, just blank souvenir ware that was marked for sale at different locations. These pieces tend to be quite rare. There's also the badge from a Disneyland Railroad Conductor's hat. And if you look really close, in the back, the blue and pink piece is a set of plastic silverware celebrating Baby Weems. In addition to Disneyland, I also liked collecting pieces from obscure Disney shorts (and Baby Weems is pretty darned obscure!).

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Next is an off kilter shot (more of my bad photography) of Adriana Caselotti, the voice of Snow White. She was a dear lady who used to love to come to Disney conventions back in the old days. As you can see, they based some of the character on her lovely face.

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And now that I've shared a few photos, allow me a small rant-

I'm very frustrated!

We are slowly making progress on weeding through the million and one things in the house. In the process, we're finding lots of things we just don't need, but can't find anyone who is willing to take them. We keep hearing hoe bad everything is, yet we can find no one who will take a king size dual control Craft-Matic type bed. Wouldn't you think a women's shelter or a homeless shelter would have some use for this? Even if they didn't want the mattress the bed itself is in excellent working condition!

Everyone says we should try Craig's List or Freecycle, but the truth is is it's such a mess here, we really don't want people coming to the house, so it looks like it will go to the dump. What a waste of a good bed, not to mention the landfill and the materials that someone could use.

I also have a lot of shampoos, creams, etc, many of them unused, but unless they are completely unopened, no one will take them. Wouldn't you think someone could use these?

And don't get me started on the food, which we have already had to throw away.

All right, rant over!

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The good news is we are making some progress, slow but steady. I spent all day today going through three huge boxes of vintage jewelry that I will be taking to a local dealer. Lots of memories there, and some of it I will just have to keep. I dearly love the look of the old stuff, there is an intricacy that just isn't in a lot of jewelry these days. I guess most things today are mass produced, whereas I love the old tiny hand made pieces. Good thing most of it is quite small.

We've decided to take tomorrow as a day off. We figure we'll get in the car with the cameras, wander around and see what has changed in the years we've been gone. Maybe that will help remind us what we loved about this area for so many years.

Of course when we loved it here, there weren't anywhere near as many people as there are now. The sheer numbers combined with the traffic is a real turn off for us.

That said, the traffic is so bad, it keeps us working on the house more, so maybe that's a good thing.

Tomorrow night I'll share some photos of the area.