Saturday doings.

Yesterday I sat down and made my Valentine's Day cards for the nephews and nieces. I found these great papers at the scrapbook store--it's a line called Splendid by Fancy Pants.

The one paper in the set has 12 small valentine images on it that you can cut out and either use for school exchanges or glitter up and put on a bigger card. I did the latter.

I just think they are SO CUTE.

We went down to Portsmouth today and had lunch, and stopped in at The Queen Bee, which is a small but wonderful antique store right across the street from the Biergarten, our favorite purveyor of knockwurst and German potato salad. The woman who runs The Queen Bee seems to have the exact same taste as me, because her store is loaded with old china, vintage hankies and pins, old kitchen doodads, etc. And her prices are very fair. Some things are expensive, but it's because they're rare and in perfect condition. And the things that aren't so rare or perfect are nicely affordable. I can live with that. What annoys me is when I see a dealer trying to sell some chipped, cracked dirty piece for way more than its worth. But The Queen Bee doesn't seem to do that.

I got this, which I don't think is vintage, it just looks that way:

And this, which is definitely vintage:

The owner told me it was a pattern that Jewel Tea sold in the mid-20th century, made by Hall China. I guess their famous pattern is Autumn Leaf, and I can't for the life of me remember what she said this pattern is. I like to collect china made in southeastern Ohio, and this dish is stamped "Cambridge" which is about an hour from where I went to college.

A cursory Google search reveals that this topic is far more complicated than I have time for at the moment. I may have to call the store and find out exactly what this pattern is called. But anyway, I've been thinking about getting a small casserole dish, since our two-person meals don't always require big dishes, and this should fit the bill.

I am extremely disillusioned with my Pfaltzgraff dinnerware and I decided I'd like to replace it with something American-made, but the options are very, very limited. So now I'm thinking about leaping into estate-sale season with a goal, when it starts up here in the next couple months: a new (old) set of dishes. I'm kicking myself for selling the like-new set I picked up at an auction two years ago for five bucks, but at the time I didn't have a place to store it. Now I wish I'd kept it, now that the Pfaltzgraff is cracking and crazing and making me mad.

All right, I'm off to pry up and paint some bathroom trim. Yippee!