Hey, Do You Want to Come Out and Play the Game?

It's never too late.

That's the chorus from a song called "Century Plant" by Victoria Williams.  It's one of those songs that makes me tear up every time I hear it because of how hopeful it makes me feel.  It reminds me that no matter how old we get, we can always start something new.  We can always wake up and start really living.  As the song says, you never know when someone will bloom.

If you can't tell, I've been a little introspective lately.  My grandmother, who died last June, would have been 100 years old today, and I wanted to do something to celebrate her.  So, Mr. flyskim and I went to my Nana's favorite restaurant for lunch:  IHOP. 

Yes, the good old International House of Pancakes.  My Nana loved to go there because she could get breakfast all day long.

Just look at the man hands on me.  Wow.  As Tyra would say, they look like baseball mitts.  I definitely don't model head-to-toe.

I don't know where her love for scrambled eggs came from, but they were the very first thing that I learned how to cook one summer when Nana took me for my mother's annual vacation from me.  We always went somewhere every year.  Southern California, Canada, Hawaii.  I think I might have been eight, and I made eggs for her and her sister, Bessie, every morning for at least a week in the little kitchenette in our rented house. 

Nana would always order a scrambled egg, a pancake and bacon, so I did, too.

I'm sure they were horrible and rubbery, but Nana and Auntie Bessie cleaned their plates every morning.  I felt very grown up and accomplished.  It's so funny what things take on a significance in the course of a life.  Scrambled eggs are one of the great, lasting connections I have with my grandmother.  Who could have predicted that?

Mr. flyskim usually doesn't support my taking pictures in restaurants or I would photograph more of our meals out.  Particularly the ones that are very pretty.  He suspects that people will think I'm a little strange.  But this time, he humored me and even posed with his lunch so long as I promised not to photograph him while he was eating.
 

We also did a little shopping and picked up a bench for our kitchen at a local antiques mall, and I made a small purchase in my grandmother's memory.  She collected and displayed china teacups for much of her life.  I'm sure they were all Shelley which are highly collectible today, but I and my teddy bear had many a tea party with them.  I also added to her collection indiscriminately, not realizing that she collected a particular kind.  I'm not sure what my uncle did with her cups.  He'd been selling her things bit by bit for several years without my mother or I knowing, and most everything is long gone.  So, I decided that I'd start rebuilding it myself with this little creamer/sugar bowl/teacup set.  Not Shelley, but I plan on working my way up the china food chain as I become more knowledgeable.

I'm actually on the lookout for this set.  This was my grandmother's china.  It's by Shelley.  The Vogue Blocks pattern in coral.  My mother originally thought it might have been my great-grandmother's, but as I've researched it, I've discovered that this pattern is from the 1930s, brought to the United States by my grandmother when she and my granddad first emigrated from Scotland.  It's likely the china she received when she got married.

So, happy birthday, Nana.  I love you, and you are very much missed. 

Oh, and actual sewing content later this week.  I have that dress I posted about a few weeks ago and am also nearly done with Simplicity 2501.  Be prepared for my to beat myself up a little in that post.