Category: Favorite Things

Old School Sign

Decorating, Happy Finds

I added a vintage metal sign to my kitchen this week.


I found it earlier in the summer at a consignment shop in Newport Beach, California and loved it instantly.  One of the things I love about my kitchen is the soothing color scheme.  Blue walls, white cabinets, dark wood floors, mirrors, silver.  My kitchen chairs are all painted different shades of blue with one bright green in the mix.


While I love this color scheme and am far from tiring of it, I wanted to add a touch of  pattern or something more graphic to the room.  I think this sign does the job.  It’s the kind of thing I fall in love with in magazine pictures.  (Are you like me, always falling in love with the one vintage piece in a room instead of all the things they’re trying to sell?)


And how cool is that, to find a sign that says “Old School House”?  When I bought it, the shop owner asked me if I am a teacher.  I said, “No, but I do have eight young children.” Her response, “Close enough!  You’re a teacher 24/7!”


Today I’m enjoying a new vintage touch in my kitchen.  What are you doing today?


Hopeful Homemaker

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Addicted.

Happy Finds



After a trip to the Balboa Candy store in early June, my mom placed a package of C. Howard’s Violet mints in my hand.  My brother had told me his wife really likes them and my mom thought I might, too.


The first one I tasted reminded me a little bit of… soap.  I tried a second one and this time the taste was more flowery, like tasting a piece of lavender.  I noticed that they really cleansed my palate, like ginger.  By the end of the package (which came far to soon) I was hooked.

A little research taught me that these mints were first marketed in the 1930’s and the recipe is still the same.  I love the silver and violet colored wrappers, the shape of them, everything.  When we visited Balboa Island ourselves a week later I took my kids to the Balboa Candy store.


Don’t you love that sign?


All the children chose a treat and I got mints.  C. Howard’s also makes violet gum, which we tried.  The wrapper made me smile.  The advertisement that it “refreshes after eating, smoking or drinking” is certainly reminiscent of times now gone.  I’m really not a gum person so I prefer the mints but my husband liked the gum a lot.   We also got a pack of the lemon mints but my children ate them so fast I have no pictures.


Now I’m all stocked up on my favorite mints.  Yum.


Hopeful Homemaker

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Trader Joe’s and Roasted Seaweed

Happy Finds



While in California a few weeks ago I went to Trader Joe’s  for the first time (and naturally forgot my camera).  It’s always interesting to walk into a place you’ve heard about but never visited and see how it lines up with what you imagined.

I loved their cut flower section.  The selection in Newport Beach was gorgeous.  I wandered around and picked up a few things here and there for us to try.

When I was down in Escondido, this is what I went back for:


When I was a missionary years ago I lived and worked with many Korean people and grew to love them very much.  For lunch we would often eat seaweed and rice.  The seaweed was paper thin, small enough to eat a sheet in one big bite, and we would wrap it around a bit of rice with our toothpicks.  Call me crazy, but I remember it as one of the best meals I’ve ever enjoyed.  Simple but delicious.  I’ve never been able to find seaweed since that is as thin and tastes the same as what I remember eating.  Until now.


I’m excited to have found one of my favorite snacks again.  At 99 cents per package, I brought 20 of them home with me to savor over the coming year.  My two oldest boys also love the taste of it and beg for it daily but the rest of the family grimaces when we get it out.  Even my husband, who loves sushi, wants nothing to do with it.


That’s fine with me.  It merely means I get more!

Have you ever been to Trader Joe’s?  If you have, what’s your favorite thing to buy there?

Hopeful Homemaker

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