JACKPOT!

Soon after Josh and I got married, my great grandma moved from her larger home to a smaller apartment. I think it was like a weekend before she was planning to get rid of everything that she offered some stuff to us... because we were JUST married. And poor. And needed things.
One of our fondest first year memories is renting a huge Penskie truck, driving all over California (it seemed), and ending up back in Utah where we lived. Part of that trip was to pick up some stuff from Grammie. We definitely hit the jackpot. She gave us AWESOME things. Like a fridge, table and chairs, and many cool cabinets (some of them my dad had made a LONG time ago). But the one thing she gave us that I'd like to focus on at the moment is this...
It's one of those OLD FASHIONED sewing machines that is built in to this cupboard thing. The sewing machine can be hidden away and everything can close up so that it just looks like a regular old cabinet. IT'S SO COOL. I haven't pulled it out to use it until now, two years after we got it. We've been carting this thing ALL over the place. We've moved 6 times with it. And it's REALLY heavy. Like, I could barely move it. Anyway... because it's so heavy and I wasn't using it, there were SO many times that I just wanted to throw it away or give it away. I was tired of carting it around for nothing. Oh how glad I am that I didn't throw it out! Thank you to all who talked me out of it during almost every relocation we made.

The other cool thing is that my Grammie gave me a big box filled with all of her sewing stuff. I hadn't looked through the box until today. I can't believe it took me that long! Usually I think it's so fun to look through old stuff and discover things I could use, etc. So, here is a picture of the box before I went through it....


Oh my... this is just SOME of the fun and interesting stuff that was in the box. If you close up on the picture above you will see how old this stuff was. You can see how they advertised back then and how much things cost. It's so funny and crazy!
This one was priceless. "I want PROSPERITY pockets!"

She had TONS of zippers. And you can see that the packaging for the "invisible zipper" is starting to look a little less 1940's. That kind of zipper was revolutionary!
And then of course all of her thread. Isn't this cool??!!

Look closely... these boxes are... yep, you guessed it... cigar boxes. :) I had to call my mom to figure this one out. My great-grandfather's (gramps) step-father smoked cigars and a pipe. So my Grammie used the old boxes to store stuff. Haha.

I was SO happy with my find today that I was literally singing and dancing around the house and not realizing it. I only noticed after Josh gave me a weird look that probably meant something like, "who are you and what have you done with my wife?" Or I guess it could have also meant "you're kind of scaring me honey." But I was and still am SO happy! Today I was able to find tons of stuff I can actually use to further my homemaking skills and I didn't know I had it! And it felt like it NEVER ended. I kept finding cool things, like a package that said, "Renu-a-bra!" over a drawing of a woman in some odd looking underwear. :)