The rocking horse I remember from when we were kids was not the typical vintage, wooden horse. Ours was plastic, set on a frame with four big springs holding it to the frame and giving it all the bounce it needed. I can remember the sound the springs made as it bounced and rocked back and forth and side to side, once you really got going.

I didn't find anyone collecting that plastic rocking horse. Maybe there is a line between what is vintage and what is antique and some things (like rocking horses) don't become valued until they are old enough to be antiques. Kind of a shame. Now that I've got thinking about the rocking horse I miss the sound of those squeaking springs as they stretched back and forth. Then the hollow sound the plastic horse made when the littler kids were on it, their legs flopping around while we kept them from flying off.

Flickr: Rock a Bye Baby -- Rocking Horses

Rockimals: History of the Rocking Horse

Rocking Horse and Art Design Holland -- Includes pages with vintage and antique rocking and carousel horses. (Note: Spams with pop up windows).

Rocking Horse Maker (UK): Makes and restores rocking horses.

Jane Hooker Rocking Horses: Restores vintage rocking horses, based in the UK.

Lexi's Rocking Horses: Personal blog from a restorer and collector. No recent updates.

The Guild of Rocking Horse Makers

A very modern rocking horse from the Boing Boing site.

I remember luggage from the old movies. Big trunks, body size standing up and deep enough for a couple of bodies. Inside were drawers and a full closet with a mirror.

When I started planning for my first big trip as a kid I wanted one of those. My Mother and I went shopping for my first luggage (of my own!)  I was looking for one of those big trunks. Even though I had no idea how I would cart that trunk around on my own, I was already having the adventure of  planning everything I would pack into it!

I didn't find a big trunk. But I wasn't disappointed. I got a new suitcase, vintage 1970's, blue, with tiny wheels. Mine was pretty plain and practical, none of those handles that extend out, no extra pockets on the outside to stash secret treasures or books to read. It's long gone now. On some kind of trip of it's own I guess.

Later, I wanted a suitcase like my Grandmother's. It was plain brown with a broken handle. It's only real charm were stickers from all kinds of places. I don't know if she had been to all of them herself or if some came from other family and she kept adding to them that way. I do know that she came from Ireland as a young woman and went out to BC as a married women with her husband and children. After that she moved back to Ontario again, when I was already born or at least heading that way.

We went on family trips, sometimes my Grandmother took trips with us. I never noticed her getting stickers for that suitcase then, but I was just a kid. There was a lot I didn't notice and a lot I did notice. We were in dozens of US states up and down starting from Ontario and ending up back there eventually. We took drives out to BC in a big, huge camper which we delivered to Red Deer, Alberta and then took the train the rest of the way. She may have added more stickers to that suitcase all along the way.

She's been gone awhile now. I don't know where the suitcase is. I never would have dared to go looking through her things, it just wasn't something I would have felt right to do and I know she liked to have her things left alone. I don't have any truly firm beliefs about what happens after we die. But, if we get to choose I think my Grandma would be keeping up with what we are doing and yet, I hope, she takes a few road trips too. Pack up her suitcase with the essentials and enjoy her sense of adventure forever.

Flickr: Vintage Luggage

Go Nomad: Travel Chic: How to Refurbish Vintage Luggage

The Queen of Re: Vintage Luggage as a sculpture.

If you ask yourself why you actually like coffee do you have a reason? Sometimes I think it isn't the coffee that I really like so much as the social side of coffee drinking and coffee making. Starting with the beans and how you grind them, then to the type of coffee maker or the process you use to make coffee and then ending with the classic: cream, milk, sugar, sweetener...?  Even the way you serve the coffee, do you prefer a mug or do you use something fancier like a teacup?

Where do you drink your coffee? Typically, I drink my coffee alone in a crowd of people who don't know me. I like it that way. Sometimes I make coffee at home when I work in front of the computer. I also feel alone and yet in a crowd of people there too. Coffee is a part of going out. How many times are you out somewhere and end up going out for a coffee? You could just come home and make it yourself. But, there is something kind of special about being out for coffee. Something kind of grown up, cosmopolitan, elegant and sophisticated about sitting with a coffee in a cafe or even over lunch.

I have a small collection of coffee makers. The process of making coffee is as interesting and sometimes elegant too. My favourite is the Bodum French Press, for practical reasons. With the press I don't need coffee filters, just the beans themselves, to make a cup of coffee. I can take the press with me and make coffee any where that I can boil water. It is very handy when I go babysitting for the weekend at my sister's house.  My French Press pot is a bit small though. Fine for a regular sized mug. But, when I'm at home working on the computer I like a big, deep mug of coffee. A mug so huge as to appear bottomless, as close to it as any mug could ever be. So, for making coffee at those times, I use a portable cone filter which I hold over the mug, pouring the boiling water over the beans. I doubt this makes full use of the beans. They have less brewing time. So it seems a bit of a shame to make coffee this way. But, it does work.

I have an old percolator (Corning) which I picked up at the thrift store. It must have been used very seldom as it looks pristine. I have only used it a few times in th years I have had the pot. It is fun to hear the coffee brew in the percolator. You get more coffee smell this way too I have noticed. My other pot is a cone filter too but it comes with it's own pot, lid and scoop. The pot itself is glass but the rest of it is all my favourite shade of red. A Melitta pot which I bought when I was 16 and had my first apartment, living away from my family.

Flickr: Coffee Maker Museum

Flickr: The Coffee Machine Collector

Ning: The Vintage Coffee Maker

Jitterbuzz: Coffee Paraphernalia

Vintage Coffee Grinders

Talk About Coffee

A to Z Coffee Makers -- Reviews.

Coffee Sage -- Blog about coffee, beans and news.

Transcend Coffee -- Committed to fresh roasted beans.

Jim Seven -- James Hoffman's coffee blog.

Brewed Coffee -- For caffeine addicts only.

On Coffee Makers

Royal Coffee Maker -- When you want something really deluxe!

I used to have cookie cutters that belonged to my Grandmother. I remember a gingerbread man. It was aluminum, a dull silver colour. The shape was filled in, not like the modern ones that are open on top. The old gingerbread man was wearing a pointy hat. That's about all I can really, clearly remember about him any more.

It's been a long time since I've seen that cookie cutter. Too much moving, too many boxes lost or damaged. Lost due to things like the water heater bursting and flooding the basement. Mice nibbling at boxes which were then thrown out as useless. Or, boxes just being forgotten in some corner of one basement or another. It's sad to lose things that way. It bothers me more than any other way of losing things. As if the things lost that way were never important enough to remember.

But, I have the hope that my lost things will be found someday and become someone's great find, treasured all over again, though they won't know the history. They won't know that cookie cutter once belonged to my Grandmother. They won't know my Grandmother, my Mother, my brother and sisters and I made gingerbread people many times with that old cookie cutter in the kitchen of the house I remember best from my growing up days. I wish I could tell whoever finds that cookie cutter the history behind it. Tell them about how my Grandmother was once nicknamed Pepper and how she liked to plant potatoes in the garden to aggravate my Grandfather. I'd like to tell them about how she fought breast cancer for years until she had to show/ teach us all how to die quietly, with pride and courage. I miss her. I really wish we had that cookie cutter still. There is some hope it will turn up in a box not opened during years of moving from place to place. More likely it is gone, to be found by someone who will wonder about that cookie cutter and other things that may be in the box they find in some corner of the basement of the house they move into.

It would be nice to tell them about that cookie cutter. To let them know it's not just another old cookie cutter. But, it doesn't work that way with lost treasures. The story becomes a secret known only to those who lost it. Those who find it can only wonder or imagine what the history behind it might be. Maybe, when they imagine the story they will get some of it right. That would be nice.

I have other new cookie cutters. A small collection of them. This Christmas I tried making gingerbread men again. I made the batter from a recipe online. But, when I tried to cut out the cookies the batter was too runny and sticky. It could not hold the shape. So no gingerbread men again this year. I will find a better recipe next year. Ideally, I'd like to get matching cookie cutters for gingerbread men and women and another for a gingerbread house cookie shape. Those would be the pinnacle of my collection.

Note: The aluminum gingerbread man in this article, looks like my Grandmother's old one. It might be the very same kind that she had. Also, we had a Christmas tree and that bunny from this collection too. Ours was badly dented in the middle though.

Resources:

The Cookie Cutter Collector's Club -- Based in the US. The 2010 convention will be in California, in June.

Cookie Cutter Search -- From the Cookie Cutter Collector's Club.

There are cookie cutter collectors displaying their cookie cutters in photos on Flickr: Cookie Cutters.

After you look at that group, see how the cookies were decorated on Flickr: Cookie Cutter Cookies.

Brand Name Cooking -- Has posted a good article about collecting cookie cutters.

The Russian dolls (also called Russian Nesting Dolls) are called Matroschka, Matryoshka and матрёшка. As a kid I would see these Russian dolls when we went to the Canadian National Exhibition in downtown Toronto at the end of each Summer. I always wanted one. They were exotic, something from a country I heard so many different stories about. They were also so pretty, some were cute and some were so intricately painted they were things of real beauty.

I asked my Mother to buy me one. She told me to wait and see if I still wanted one next year and then I could buy one myself. This is still excellent advice for anything you want, it sure does cut down on my impulse spending when I am out shopping around. (Not that I always follow that rule, of course).

It took me a few years before I had the money to spend on a Russian doll. I couldn’t get one of those really big ones with endless dolls nested inside. But, I did get one that made me happy. She has five dolls, including the tiny baby in the middle. She is a traditional looking Russian doll cause when I took the time to look and remember the very first Russian dolls I had wanted this one seemed to be the most like the very one I had wished for all that time ago. I think she’s pretty. Of course, I have seen cuter dolls since then. But, I am happy to have the doll that I have.