Melmac Mania

When we were growing up, Mom had a set of Melmac (also referred to as Melamine) dishes that we ate off of everyday. I remember when she got her first set of Corelle and we were all so glad to quit using the "plastic" dishes. Now the melmac craze has hit vintage collectors everywhere. What used to be considered cheap dishes are now quite the rage. I am still trying to find me a small set for those occasions when we want to eat outside and I don't want to risk take the good dishes out there. 

I spent some time on EBay and Etsy doing a search for Melmac Dinnerware Sets. I was amazed at how high the prices were for what used to be considered the "cheap" dishes. 

Here are some from EBay.

This pretty pink set is marked at $54.95.

Since we all know anything in the original box adds value, I guess that is why the seller thinks this will go for $99.00. 

I love the turquoise in Melmac and would love a set like this. But not for $48.00.

This turquoise and brown is pretty but not $99.00 worth of pretty. 

The rest of these were found on Etsy. 

This isn't a complete set so the price is only $20.00. I do like this pattern real well. It is a change from the normal floral that was seen so much on Melmac. 

 This set in the box is only $32. Of course there are not as many pieces, but I do love this pattern. 

For $40.99, this is a unique pattern. It is not something you normally see in this line of dishes. 

This is a nice set for $40.00

This is really vintage looking to me. It is $42.00. 

This is another of my favorites. It is $49.00.

I would love to find a set like this. It is $52 which I still think is too high, but I love the woven look behind the flower design. 

They just have one of these saucers left, but oh how I love this pattern. But $7.00 for one saucer? I don't think so. And that was without shipping. 

Here is another box set service for 4. It is $76.00. I love the color of the cups but not fond of this flower pattern. 

And this pink set is absolutely gorgeous with a price of $85.00. 

I'll keep hitting thrift stores and yard sales this year to find me what I want. I don't need a whole set. Just a couple of plates and a couple of bowls would make me happy. 

Yay for Friday!

I am so glad it is Friday. Last week, I only worked on Thursday. This week I only worked on Wednesday and Thursday. Next week it is back to a 5 day week so I'm going to take today off for my last 3 day weekend for awhile.



My husband is constantly providing me with blogging material by saying "You should blog about that." I do crazy things sometimes that just crack me up at how silly I can sometimes be...and I end up sharing it on my blog, exposing my silliness to the whole world. So when I saw this shirt, I knew I was just going to have to order me one. 

As you know, I normally like to buy my Pyrex at yard sales and thrift stores. I will buy a piece now and then at antique stores, but never pay more than $10 for one individual piece. But I paid $14 for my green primary bowl to complete my set last week. Fourteen dollars. 1 .. 4 ... dollars. That is SO NOT ME! But you know what? I survived it. I didn't faint. I didn't have a heart attack over it. The world didn't come to an end. I was still able to put food on the table and nobody suffered because I paid $4 more than I normally would for a Pyrex bowl. So I guess the old saying "What's it worth to you?" is very appropriate when you find something you really, really, really want. 

The new Thirty-One catalog is released today. Check out all the awesome new products and patterns by visiting my site at www.MyThirtyOne.com/brendakeefer. For those of you who would love to add an extra income to your family, work from home, and set your own hours, email me if you want information how to become a Thirty-One consultant. My one year anniversary is next month and I have been so blessed with this company.

Well, we have Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's behind us. I'm starting to see lots of Valentine's items in the stores. Knowing me, I'll be changing my blog template again soon. I've scouring Pinterest for some craft ideas for the day of love. I really like this wreath and it should be easy to make.

This one is cute and simple as well.

Of course, if I was a patient, talented crafter I would try my hand at this one.

These are cute decorations as well. 

Hubby and I are heading out for Date Day. I love spending Friday's with him. I'm going to dress up in my coral sweater and brown corduroys and wear my new "Born to Rule" charm bracelet today. I absolutely love it and the little flower matches my favorite sweater perfectly. I'll actually feel stylish for a change. 

Have a great day!

A chocolate lovers paradise

I love chocolate. In any form and in any fashion. But when it comes to baking chocolate, nothing can beat good old chocolate fudge. I have two recipes that I love to make for fudge. One is a creamy smooth fudge that you refrigerate and one is an old-fashioned fudge that "hardens" as it sets up and has more of a crunch when you bite into it and is more granulated but just melts in your mouth. It is by far my favorite. With Valentine's Day our next holiday to focus on, I thought I would share my two favorite recipes so you can make some sweets for your sweetie this year. 

Carnation's Famous Chocolate Fudge

2 Tablespoons butter or margarine

2/3 cup evaporated milk

1-1/2 cups granulated sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 cups (4 ounces) marshmallow cream (Fluff)

1-1/2 cups (9 ounces) semisweet chocolate chips (we like milk chocolate so I use that instead)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 cup chopped pecans or walnuts, optional

Combine butter or margarine, evaporated milk, sugar, and salt in a medium, heavy-duty saucepan. Bring to a full rolling boil over medium heat, stirring constantly. Boil, stirring constantly, for 5 minutes. Remove from heat.

Stir in marshmallows, chocolate chips, nuts, and vanilla. Stir vigorously for 1 minute or until marshmallow cream is well blended. Pour into a foiled-lined or buttered 8-inch square baking pan. Chill until firm. We like our fudge night quite that thick so I pour mine in a 9 x 13 cake pan.

You can use this same recipe and replace the chocolate chips with Reese peanut butter chips for a delicious peanut butter fudge. You can also add Heath chips with the chocolate chips for a delicious Heath bar flavor. There are many brands of chocolate chips, but we prefer Nestle when making fudge. 

Old-Fashioned Chocolate Fudge (This is the one my Mom always made and still does)

3 cups sugar

2/3 cup cocoa

1 and 1/2 cups milk

1 tsp salt

4 1/2 tablespoons butter

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Grease an 8x8 inch square baking pan. Set aside. ( I like to make mine on a large oval platter and grease that. It isn’t as thick).

Combine sugar, cocoa and milk and salt in a medium saucepan. Stir to blend, then bring to a boil, stirring constantly.

Cook to the soft ball stage. If you have a candy thermometer, cook until temperature reaches 238 degrees F. If you are not using a thermometer, then cook until a drop of this mixture in a cup of cold water forms a soft ball. Feel the ball with your fingers to make sure it is the right consistency.

Remove from heat. Add butter or margarine and vanilla extract. Beat with a wooden spoon until the fudge loses its sheen. Do not under beat.

Pour into prepared pan and let cool. Cut into squares.

ENJOY! Let me know if you try either recipe. I'll look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Some questions, some soup and some donuts

I have a question for all my blogging buddies. How do you respond to comments? I get a lot of comments that might leave a question or may make a statement that I would like to comment back on. But I don't know the proper protocol. Do you you email anyone who leaves a comment and provide them with their answer or make your additional comment. Or do you just comment on your blog so everyone can see the answer and read your comment? Somebody please tell me the proper way to respond since I love comments and want to be able to answer all questions properly.

Yesterday was cold and rainy all day. I thought it would be a good day to make some soup. So I did. It turned out really good. It is Cabbage Vegetable soup. It hit the spot last night.

It is a very easy and inexpensive recipe. It can feed a large family or is perfect for freezing. Here is the recipe. 

After I finished the soup, I was in the mood for some cinnamon donuts. I must tell you that it is not as easy as you think. There are so many different steps and I remember why I don't like to make anything that involves rolling out dough. I'm just not that "neat" at it. But it was fun and they are delicious. Here is a link to the recipe I used with two exceptions. I made cinnamon sugar, not chocolate glazed. And the recipe says to deep fry 5 minutes per side. I started that way and they just about burned. I think my donuts were smaller than they called for. Just watch them till they are golden brown and then flip them over.

Cake Donuts Recipe

I gathered all my ingredients together. (I was in Pyrex heaven getting to use some of my Pyrex like the little grecian bowl with butter and the flamingo pink ramekin.)

I sifted my flour, baking powder, salt, baking soda and cinnamon into my primary yellow Pyrex bowl. 

I beat the eggs until they were foamy. 

I added the sugar to the eggs like instructed. 

I beat those until it was thick and yellow. 

Then I melted the butter and added the milk and vanilla to that.

I poured that into the egg and sugar mixture until it was well blended. I would be lost without my Kitchen Aid mixer. I love that thing. 

Then I poured the liquid into the dry ingredients. 

I stirred until everything was well incorporated as per the recipe. 

I didn't take a picture of the dough chilling or me rolling it out and cutting them out because your hands do tend to get a little messy in the process and I wasn't about to touch my camera with those hands. The end product was not as gorgeous as I had hoped they would be, and I think I deep fried just a little too dark, but I rolled them in cinnamon sugar and had some with a cup of milk in my Hazel Atlas cup. They were really good. 

Change is good

Happy New Year! At the beginning of the New Year, I always like to change things and get more organized. It seems like I am always trying to get more organized. So it probably isn't going to happen, but I will continue to try. I did spend some time on my office so I can start the New Year off with a clean desk at least. I changed my curtains too. I took the pink and white flowered ones down and put up these green sheers. I like the look. 

I still have some boxes of craft stuff to go through and put in tubs or drawers in my little plastic chests. I'm going to work on that today. 

My craft table doubles as my Thirty-One work area. I just move the calendar pad and planner when I want to craft. Plus I have a card table that I get out if I need extra room. Most of my crafts are things I can do while setting on the couch, like my plastic canvas. But sometimes I need a table. 

These little baskets are going to get cleaned out today. They have assorted scrapbook papers, printing papers, etc. But they need to be organized since I was digging through them last week in a hurry and I left them a little jumbled. 

I rearranged the bookshelves that holds my knick knacks and pictures. I am going to use two of the shelves to hold my file trays so my desk is not always cluttered. 

I am really excited about the new turquoise rectangle basket by Thirty-One. I may have to get some more of those. 

Last October, our amenity for one of our meetings was the new spring Room for Two tote. I have decided to use mine to store my yarn. No matter where I store yarn, I have to dig through it to find what I want so I thought this would be a good way to store it. 

It set right in the floor of the craft closet so I can get to it real easily when I need yarn to start a new project. 

I am very happy with all I accomplished yesterday and I will probably spend most of the day today finishing organizing the files and papers and then cleaning the closet in the kids room. It had a lot shoved in it during Christmas and now it is a wreck. I hope everybody has a wonderful and prosperous New Year. 

Weekend Wrap Up

Time to close out 2012 today and tell you about my weekend. I spent all day Saturday de-Christmas-ing the house. It was a process because I kept getting side tracked. Funny how your house is one way for 11 months out of the year. Then you decorate for Christmas and one month later you can't remember where anything went. Can I blame it on old age?



Sunday I went to Sunday School and church. After church, I was talking to one of my dear friends and she had me a little gift. It was a Yankee Candle (one of my favorites). As I'm snapping pictures of my blog, I am upset because I left the candle in my bedroom and hubby is still sleeping. I'll insert the pic later. After that, I was leaving church and one of our teens came over to me and handed me something. I about freaked out. It was her first CD. She is just 15 years old and can sing like you wouldn't believe. I played this through about 3 or 4 times yesterday. It is really awesome. I really got a blessing when I heard her do Amazing Grace-My Chains are Gone. She is extremely talented and will go far.

After church, my daughter took me to a neighboring city to an antique store. She is the one who has found two of the three of my hard to find Cinderella bowls, so I thought maybe she could be my good luck charm.  We walked in the antique mall store and on the third booth she walked in, she said Mom there is a lot of Pyrex in here. Weren't you looking for one of these? I walked over to see what she found and it is the elusive green bowl to my primary bowl set. I have been looking for this ever since I started collecting in November 2011. 

I now have the entire set just like my Mom had when we were little. I was beyond thrilled. The fact that she found the green in a booth that was 50% off everything made it even better. 

She knows I want a flamingo pink casserole bowl and we saw a little small one in the 1/2 off booth so I snatched it up for just $3.50. Then she walks a couple a booths down and finds me the one I have been looking for and it was just $5.00. I couldn't believe I got the mommy bowl and the baby bowl both for under $10 total. I'll be applying some oven cleaner to the big one today to clean it up. But it is a beauty for sure. Now just need to find me a lid. 

I was very excited because you will recall that I received the pink flamingo pie plate on Christmas Eve from a Pyrex trade with another collector. 

So now I have three pieces in my flamingo pink collection. I need to see what else came in this color and I need to get some turquoise pieces to compliment it. 

So I went all summer and found only a couple of pieces of Pyrex and she has helped me find 5 of the 7 pieces that I have collected in December. It has been a good month for me and Pyrex. I told her she is going to be dragged pulled volunteering to go with me from now on. She said she it turned out it was kind of fun...sorta like going on a treasure hunt. So glad to have a daughter that "gets" me. 

But my Pyrex fun was not through. My first piece of luck in December was finding the small bowl that was the start of my Colonial Mist set that I wanted so bad. I didn't have any of the pieces and it was my dream set. Now here we are at the end of December and in one month, I have gotten three of the four. Well, I logged into my Facebook last night and Ms. Christa that traded me for my little bowl had posted to me "I have your Cinderella 444 if you want to trade." For those of you not familiar with the Pyrex numbers, that is the biggest bowl on the Cinderella set....the one I am missing. Do I want to trade? You betcha. So I have that on the way and I will have my Cinderella set completed. Am I excited? Oh yeah!!

After all the Pyrex excitement, we went to Walmart and I picked up this cute little dishtowel. 

And some new yarn. I wanted something really pink and this is really pink for a little box I am going to make. 

It was a long full day, but I was hungry for something good to eat. So I threw some potatoes in to bake then hulled them out and mixed butter and bacon and covered them with cheese and baked them again in a casserole dish. I kept some of the bacon and made me some scrambled eggs to go with it. It turns out that apparently I can cook when I want to. I just don't usually want to. But with hubby working some nights at dinner time, if I want something good to eat, I guess I will have to cook it. 

I have a lot of things I want to get done today and tomorrow to get ready for the New Year. So I am going to close for now. Please stay safe tonight. Hubby and I will stay in and have assorted cheeses and crackers along with fruits and other snacks as we play our annual Monopoly game.