My earliest memories are of staying at Granny's house as a very young child. Each visit would start the same. After a brief greeting, I would drag a chair from the kitchen table over to the counter. Climbing carefully up, I stretched to open the cabinet above the fridge. Looking inside – yes, the green glasses were still there.

As the cold winds of winter rattled my house yesterday I found myself drifting off into a daydream of warm summer days, the smell of freshly mowed lawns, and the joy of visiting flea markets in search of buried treasure at the bottom of an old cardboard box.

I love the Blue Willow pattern. My kitchen theme revolves around my Blue Willow canister set. The set is most probably from the 1940’s or 1950’s and from Japan, though it is not marked. My everyday dishes are a supermarket premium Blue Willow pattern, most probably made in China within the last 15 years.

A great and inexpensive collecting hobby to begin is sewing notions. Vintage buttons are fun to look at and useful in so many different ways. There are Bakelite buttons, celluloid buttons, ceramics, black glass, mother of Pearl, Metals, Plastic and paperweights. The older plastic buttons called realistics or goofies are great fun. There are Disney buttons, flowers, vegetables and fruit, animals, accessories like hats, pocketbooks, gloves, boots, suitcases and bows.

My collection is displayed two ways. First, my collections are my household furnishings. In many cases, I use the objects, e.g., furniture, dinnerware, stemware, flatware, tabletop accessories, etc. When I built my house, I had dozens of cabinets and cases installed. My plan was to rotate my collections on a regular schedule, an ambitious goal which I have yet to accomplish. Once a collection is displayed, it has a bad habit of staying displayed.

No and No. Question answered—well, not quite.

While it would be easy to turn this into a do as I say, not do as I do question, I will not. I can count on one hand the number of collectors I know who maintain acquisition and inventory records. Even with all the available cataloging software, free share to purchase, collectors do not want to waste their time cataloging collection when they could be out acquiring new items and handling what they already own.

I recently returned from an extended weekend appearance, my sixth in as many years, in Lincoln City, Oregon. I spent four days lecturing, signing books, conducting verbal appraisal clinics, and doing in-home walk-through appraisals. I renewed acquaintances, including Charlie and Marilyn Short, two former Institute for the Study of Antiques and Collectibles students now retired and living in Lincoln City. I returned poorer and richer—poorer because of the money no longer in my checkbook and richer because of the items I purchased at the Little Antique Mall.

 At last... Pack Rats returns. The whirl and twirl of life spins and we hang on, stand centered, wait for the wheel to rise, to fall – to rise again.

I don’t need to tell any of you that these times are unlike any other. This is true now, and it was true when the same statement was made decades ago. Whatever makes this ‘now’ different from any of the other ‘now's’ is that it holds us in rapt attention, sometimes on the edge of ourselves...waiting…hoping. The invitation of the global community (IMO) is to take responsibility for your place in your community, to take action on behalf of what is the good, caring, and kind action one can take.

It pays to go to those farther away in the country yard sales and get there early.

I went to one that was 45 minutes from my home hoping I wouldn't have to compete with as many dealers.

Not only was there no one there, it was being hosted by a granddaughter (for grandma without any specific instructions) while her grandmother was on a trip. The granddaughter had gone through her grandmother's cupboards and put out for sale all her grandmother's odd colored glass.

When it comes to romance, the French reputation is ... oh la la! So it seems it would be easy to find romantic antique French Valentine's Day postcards. But from all of my research -- after more than five years of buying over 12,000 French postcards and looking at literally thousands more -- I've concluded that antique French Valentine's don't exist.