A New Experience! Blue Monday

It's BLUE MONDAY time! Please visit Smiling Sally for more blue blogging!

In January, our family moved from a rural Eastern Oregon town of about 16,000 to a much larger community an hour north of Seattle and an hour south of Vancouver, BC. Since then, we've had many new opportunities and experiences.

Yesterday, we attended a medieval war tournament hosted by a member group of our regional reenactment group. Here is the dress I made for it:

I am now also known as Lady Gairwyn of the Freehold of Arandor! This next picture shows some blues on a warrior's uniform (please disregard the modern vehicles in the background! Ha!):

A little more blue during Ogre Wars:


Here is my husband and his friend doing a demonstration of medieval Italian-style sword fighting. My husband is on the right. I also made his surcoat:



Meet Sir Corbinian of the Freehold of Arandor!

Lots of fun! Happy bLuE mOnDaY!

Vintage Sealing Wax: Vintage Thingie Thursday

I've missed participating in Vintage Thingie Thursday the past couple of weeks so I'm excited to be back today! Visit Coloradolady for more Vintage goodies!

A couple days ago, Lynzie (10) and I were discussing her upcoming birthday party. (It's actually not until the end of January...!!!) Each year, she's pretty creative about picking a theme to bless her friends. One year she did a fairy garden tea party with grape Kool-Aid in the teapot. Another year, she had a costume party and everyone came dressed up. (She was Batman).

This year, she's decided on a full-blown Revolutionary War era tea party. I won't go into too much detail as it will make for some really great blogging later on, but one of the things she mentioned was that she wanted to seal her invitations with a wax seal. She started describing the process to me and I began to grin as I remembered something.

I went to one of my art cabinets and grabbed this sealing wax set that I'd picked up at a yard sale when I wasn't much older than she is now. I was so excited to sit down with her and show her how it worked and let her play around with it too.

Long story short, my sealing wax set is rather VINTAGE (for a nice way to say it... :) Some of the sticks wouldn't even melt and the ones that did caught on fire and dropped flaming drops of wax onto the paper. Before we could get the seal stamped, the wax would turn brittle and crumble. More often than not, it would harden as we put the stamp down and then I'd have to heat it up to dig the wax out of the pretty rose and fleur de lis designs!

I did a little searching online to see if I could figure out approximately how old this set is and where it came from. The box indicates it was "imported exclusively by Marcel Schurman Co., Inc., San Francisco" and that it was made in England.

Turns out, Marcel Schurman is the original founder (and father of the current owner) of Papyrus stationery stores. From what I can see, it looks like the set is from the early 1950s.

We've resolved to buying us a newer set of wax before time to send those invites out!

What's Your Answer Wednesday

Due to a yucky flu outbreak in our house, I will not be putting up a post today! (Haven't had the time!!) However, I look forward to reading everyone else's so go ahead and add your link below!

Have a wonderful week!

~Sarah