You're The Lady

The Flanders Mercantile wouldn't be possible if it weren't for the Matriarch of the family. The wonderful mother who has to put up with all the Belgian waffle and chocolate jokes has not had it easy living life with the Flanders. Mom is the baby girl in a family with two older brothers. If she wasn't tormented enough by them- she married dad and they had one little girl...me! But this blog post is not about me(even though mom says I can bring ANYTHING back to being all about me :)  




Mom and me when I was a week old

 

Mom and her brothers(three stooges)

Dad and I adore mom, who can't make the motor boat sound with her lips-it sounds like psst and she gets slobber everywhere. And we will never forget the time she tried hard to keep up with us and "made a funny". Mom always had great creations from her cooking arsenal on the table. These included pickled beets, chili sauce, homemade jam, cucumbers in dill sauce, and her wonderful lasagna that runs all over your plate so you get to soak it up with yummy garlic bread. Mom says she is not creative but I get all my creativity from her. She is always trying new crafts and recycling new treasures from cool junk. She is a lovely homemaker and her house always smells like heaven. It looks great too -until my two crazy munchkins cyclone through. Mom's sense of fashion and decor is something I really admire(even if she tried to get me to wear a "bedspread" for a dress when I was younger)



Mom had a wonderful grandmother to learn from(more about her in the future). She has taken the wisdom and compassion she learned from her granny when she was a little girl and used it faithfully with the Flanders for all these years. She started out with dad by choosing a time for her own wedding that would not interfere with the milking life of dad's family who worked the Dairy.



mom with her granny



the wedding announcement that accommodated the Dairy folk



Mom is hardworking and strong. She is smart and generous. She does well with her champagne taste and beer pocketbook and she "never had a bad day in her life." Dad wrote her a song when they were around 17 and dating. We are in the process of recording it so check back for audio and lyrics because it is AMAZING! The title is You're the Lady and that about sums mom up perfectly. She is our lady, who puts up with us and loves us through all our crazy escapades. She is an amazing Mother, Wife, Daughter, Sister, Aunt and if I searched the entire world over I could never find a more perfect Grandmother to my little boys, I love you Mom!

mom with her daddy

Timmy Becomes Yimmy: A Cleveland Rock Fight

Timmy about the age of his Goliath day...

   Dad lived in Cleveland when he was just a little tyke. Around age 5 he remembers that there used to be rock fights between the neighborhood kids. And that these rock fights, they could get kind of rough. One of these rock fights gave dad a souvenir he would never be able to get rid of.....

   The story goes that dad was behind his brother Mark who saw the rock coming. Mark ducked down and dad(standing right behind) was hit square in the forehead. The resulting scar making a perfect "Y". Just like the day when little David creamed Goliath; this was the day little Timmy took a stone to the head and became Yimmy.

 

50 years later the "Y" still stands







The First Shiner!

I finally was granted my crazy wish of having a black eye. I told my husband that I also wanted a blue fingernail because that signifies that you are tough and that you work hard with your hands. A black eye is a symbol that you are tough stuff... or that you have just been headbutted by a TWO-YEAR old!!! My sweet little guy did not do it on purpose but certainly had mommy crying buckets after whipping back with his hard head to my eye. So much for tough stuff. Now I crave to never have symbols of working hard and being tough  but just to get through life peacefully and bruise-free. That would be nice, eh?

Building the Eiffel Tower(almost)

We've had a great houseguest this week and have been working on some amazing projects. I just was wondering aloud, "How does he know how to build that?" My father-in-law is visting and he makes Norm Abram seem like a real person to me. Watching Norm on TV and then seeing people like my dad and father-in-law build things is two very different experiences. Of course Norm can build a super sweet curio cabinet with dovetailed everything(he has a professional crew hidden in that attic and Ty Pennington standing behind the curtain) BUT my dad and now father-in-law just go out in MY yard and build picnic tables, sheds, doors, lean-to's, you name it and they can make it. I cherish the skills they are passing on to me by allowing me in on this process. Maybe Norm really can build all those things on his own. Thanks builders! You are awesome!

Unearthed!

    So yesterday was the oldest munchkins birthday and we met dad at Chik-Fil-A to go over serious Flanders business. The most important item discussed was the executives meeting scheduled for next year-in Hawaii! This started us into laughing hysterics. Dad and I always seem to find outlandish ideas and statements the most funny things in the universe. I can remember us rolling on the floor when I was younger because of someone saying something about a tornado, barn and airplane(inside joke I guess).

    However, when we finally started getting serious we worked on sending a few orders and looking at the new line of products available from The Flanders Mercantile: Unearthed! Treasures dad has discovered underground. I have many memories of dad roaming around a park, field or old house with large headphones on, swinging around a Garrett metal detector. We always have fun looking through his finds. On this occasion two sets of little hands were "helping" us look through the treasures on their breaks from the play area. We were most excited about the Chevy Vega emblem he found while unearthing treasure in some interesting place. Also the ancient Avon metal lipstick tube in the color Betsy Ross Red. Fun to look through and fun to talk about who might have dropped or buried the items.

The Flanders are at it again!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Vega

The Museum of Ceramics Makes My Day

So today was a great day to dance around and sing that I received an email from the Museum of Ceramics. I didn't even know such a thing could exist until I tried to identify this crazy old crock I found in a trash pile. I consider myself a tad bit knowledgeable on internet sleuthing but nothing I did worked on this item! 

So I emailed the experts thinking that it was a shot in the dark that anybody would ever get back with me. The director of the museum emailed me back the next day! We know from the markings on the bottom that the crock was made by Knowles, Taylor and Knowles in the early 1900's but even the lady from the museum said in her email that she hadn't seen anything like it before! So fun. I still don't know what it is- she asked for more pictures and is forwarding it on to people on her email list who should know. Something about this whole process has made me giddy. Who would have known that the Museum of Ceramics could make your day? And even without answering my question but just knowing that they care about the ancient art of pottery- it's amazing!

Here's their link: http://www.themuseumofceramics.org/

The Etsy Plunge

  Whew! With a long journey (including taking a bag of Sonic hamburgers to homeless people who weren't there) and some creative spirit Flanders Mercantile is now a seller on Etsy! Visit our Etsy shop at this link http://www.etsy.com/shop/merchantships31?ref=seller_info !!!!!

   Now for the good stuff, it seems like finding your niche in the crafting business is like finding the proverbial needle in a haystack. Good thing dad is a patient man and passed that quality along to me. We could search high and low for our niche until the cows came home and we would still enjoy the journey. Even though we might crawl home tired and hungry if we don't find it someday....

   With Thanksgiving coming soon I've been thinking some about what I am truly thankful for and here it is: I am thankful for wonderful parents who raised me to follow along in the simple life, a wonderful husband who loves that I crave the simple life, two wonderful little boys who are fishing every day this winter because they also enjoy the simple life and many friends and family who encourage us toward a simple life. Thanks to God for the simple life!

Where is Norm Abram when we need him?

   Yes, where is that Norm and is he Flemish? For that matter, are we even Flemish? For all my life my dad and I have been dreaming about our Belgian heritage. We make a big deal out of Belgian waffles, Belgian chocolate and get really excited when we see anything about Belgium in the news. All of this changed 2 years ago when my cousin journeyed over to France and stopped in Belgium to find our city of ancestry.

    She reported that we are in fact Flemish and not Belgian. Now to be truthful we do not understand fully what this could mean. I mean they are the same country now sort of.....right? So for us sitting ignorant in the United States we dream of Flanders and everything Flemish without truly even knowing what we are dreaming about! Our name Verbeke is of Flemish origin and so now my dad and I have changed to looking for everything Flemish, say for instance the GIANT Flemish rabbit I just saw at the zoo and had to report back to dad about. Things like this and also talking a lot about The Battle of the Golden Spurs and that silly Catherine the II and also if we are Duke, Countess or long lost King and Princess of Flanders.

   Now back to Norm. Another piece of the puzzle with dad and I and the Flanders Mercantile is this: We have always enjoyed working on projects together. I think woodworking is by far our favorite and we have watched many an episode of the New Yankee Workshop when I was younger.
http://www.newyankee.com/index.php

    After Dad recently having double knee replacements we have decided that maybe he and I could start really tinkering around with our love of creating and making things with our hands. And what better name for our not yet anything shop except the .......(drumroll please) ...........  Flanders Mercantile!