Treasure Hunt

We made yet another trip to my Mom's ruined home yesterday. The insurance people are packing everything up and putting it in storage so the builders can come in and fix stuff. We were trying to bring stuff here before they packed it all up, but apparently, the packers work weekends. When we went in on Friday, the basement and top floors were untouched. Going in yesterday (Sunday), we were floored to see everything in boxes.

I must say, my Mom is a pack rat, so very little gets thrown away and there is stuff in there that I haven't seen in over 20 years, because it either never got unpacked, or it got buried under other stuff. So when I say we were shocked to see everything packed, I knew they must have had a large crew working to pack everything since they did it all in one day. I was disappointed that I wasn't able to take more stuff home, because they had all the boxes numbered and we were afraid to take any and get someone in trouble for missing boxes. I was all set to get this and that but we were too late. We did manage to grab some of the "loose" stuff, like the lawn chairs (from over 30 years ago and still in pristine shape!), my Mom's baby rocker and some other stuff.

To look at the bright side of the fire, we are finding things that my Mom thought was lost-- her jewelry box, which we thought was thrown out at my Aunt's house, was in her own home all along! It's like a treasure hunt of sorts and now that I cannot bring any more stuff here, I'll continue to go through what we have here and get everything cleaned and put away.


This lovely washstand was my Grandmother's. My Mom remembers seeing her scrape all the old paint off it and then repainting it this pale yellow color. It's one of the few pieces of furniture that my Mom has from her Mom.

My Mom's lovely black jewelry box. I haven't seen this in over 25 years and I remember going through it as a kid. I'm looking forward to sitting down with my Mom and having her tell me where she got some of the items inside.

We found a chalkboard! I don't know where she got it, but if it's alright with her, I want to use it with my kids when we do home school lessons.

My sister made this in 1977 when she was 7. It's painted on the reverse side of the glass, then framed. The wooden frame was burned and charred, but the glass and the painting seem to be ok (see up in the right top corner where it's a little charred), it got wet and the backing is wrinkled now, but a little ironing should do the trick. I'll look for a replacement frame and we can hang this up in the apartment. I think I'll get my kids to make one like this, too.

Hey! Toilet paper! That's treasure, too, isn't it? Most important paper in the house! :0)