an unusual lesson

One of my passions is studying architecture. I have been known to be somewhat of a Nancy Drew of old homes as I drive through old neighborhoods. I was thrilled when I discovered these two almost identical homes in the same neighborhood one day and just had to snap some photos.

This day all started as a quest to find old homes with what is known as a

coffin door or casket door.

My fascination comes from my genes---my Great Grandfather was a real life grave digger. He even is buried in the same grave yard where he buried so many others!

My great Grandfather

Let me pull the pieces of the puzzle together for you. In doing genealogy research about my great grandfather I learned about grave digging and that turned into learning about funerals or more specifically wakes held in the home -in the parlour. Without modern medicine and technology there were many unfortunate (sometimes early) deaths that our ancestor's families had to deal with.

Before there were funeral parlours (funeral homes) there was a time of visitation-they were called wakes- held in the home of the deceased. Window drapes would be drawn closed and mourning wreaths were hung on the doors. Family members could pay their respects during a short enough time before nature made things unpleasant to the nose (before embalming became the norm) and long enough to make sure they would not wake... thus making sure that sicknesses that were mistaken as death would not cause a person to be buried alive. Really and truly.

Some people were so afraid of mistakenly being buried alive they even planned to have complicated rope contraptions rigged up going from inside the buried coffin through a pipe for air to above ground with a bell at the end. Really and truly.

Anyway....back to the coffin door. When you see a very old home with a small narrow side door off a side parlour area, it is probably a coffin door. Sometimes now they are bricked or sided over and there is no longer a working door. Sometimes there are vines covering the door that has long been unused. It is just exactly what it sounds like....it was a door to allow a coffin to be easily brought in and out of the house to allow a family wake in the parlour. This eliminated having to possibly maneuver through the rest of the house and make tight turns in narrow halls, around staircases or around other furniture. This side small parlour room was usually only used when the minister or priest came to call and for wakes.

I think it is probably unusual to find two houses with this feature still intact within blocks of one another like I found. Keep your eyes peeled as you travel and you may find one too!

These houses will be referred to as house A and house B.

House A has a coffin door on the right with the darker stone cornice above it. You can also see the ghost of a removed front porch= see the dark stripe at the base of the second story windows?


Here is another angle of House A showing the coffin door and the ghost porch line.


This is House B located just a few short blocks away. This one has the porch still intact and you can see the coffin door ( back in the shadows of the porch) in the same position as on House A!!

Here is House B showing the side opposite of the coffin door.




And then House A from a similar angle.


Pretty cool , huh?!

Snow

The forecast: SNOW. Really and truly...the weatherman has called for possibly a few stray snow flakes to fall from the Ohio sky today. Our ground is still to warm to allow any to stick but Oh, How I Do Love Snow Flakes!



Silly to put a snowflake post right after a post about Halloween decorating? Heck--why should my blog not follow the trend here in town of the retail establishments? Everywhere I go the past few weeks they have been pushing the Halloween stuff aside, and front and center instead is Winter/Christmas.

Outside my window the leaves have not yet even finished changing to their Autumn colors on the tree branches. I admit freely that I get excited about seeing all the Winter/Christmas stuff early; however, I wonder if each year it will be pushed earlier still and eventually we will go directly from back-to-school store offerings to Santa and such. No Autumn anywhere. It will be Christmas in July for real and not just a tease.

I have been making the paper scraps fly with my special cutting snowflakes only scissors. I am known around the neighborhood and at school as "the snowflake lady". I hang them on my windows every year around the last week in November and keep them up until Valentine's Day. We very often have snow in Ohio until late March and sometimes (on rare occasions) into the end of April. I love snow- and snow fits somewhere in there with my ideal temperature range. I am happiest with the weather when it is between about 20-70 degrees. I find I am usually in the minority when unofficial temperature preference polls are taken. LOL

These are some of the snowflakes I have listed in my shop so far. You get 35 snowflakes and some freebies too- for what I hope is viewed as a value price-and I ship without cost to you to anywhere in the US and pretty cheap to all the rest of you.

Some have sold already!! Do not wait to get your own shovel full. I will continue to cut and list. so keep checking back for more listings. To find all of them easily I have them under the category of Paper Snowflakes (surprise!) in my shop's table of contents as they are often scattered through out the shop and harder to find if you browse by listing date.

My secret confession is that I long to have all my Winter merchandise front and center after back-to-school too...only because I love to make snowflakes so much and I long to share them with you.

My paper snowflakes snow comes with a detailed guarantee:

1. never need to be shoveled resulting in shortness of breath or backache
2. never cause a slip and fall accident nor a fender bender accident

3. never cause you to be late for work or any other destination by needing to be scraped off your car's windshield

4. no matter how many you accumulate, it will never result in a snowed in situation causing you to plan ahead and empty off the grocery store shelves of milk, bread and canned soup

5. no matter how many you accumulate, it will never result in an electrical outage from downed power lines

6. they are not messy as they do not melt into grey slush

7. you do not have to skillfully catch one on a black mitten to see the one of a kind hexagon detail

8. sorry kids on this one...no snow days off school

I find that one tiny piece of rolled gift wrapping tape (any brand will do) on the back of a flake is all that you need for hanging on a window. It will peel off pretty easily when you wish to take them down to save for next year. In my own personal collection, I have been using some of the same flakes on my windows for over 16 years now! I used to keep them stored in the pages of a dictionary but I have gone beyond the storage capabilities of any book. I now utilize a vintage tin red and white bread box.

Below are photos from past years showing just some of my flakes at my house. I have cut about 100 more to also be listed very soon in the shop. Stop in often to see them!