A step back in time.

6/22/1845-5/16/1923

Gerhard Heinrich Tappel, (the blacksmith's great grandfather) came to America in 1867 from  Twist Germany. Gerhard settled in Osage County, Westphalia Missouri. He was 22 at the time. 

Katharina Lueckenhoff 9/27/1849-7/2/1913

Eleven years later he married a local girl from Osage County. On November 19, 1878, they were married. Sometime in the 1870's they bought 360 acres in that same county and set up household. 

This is that house as it stood in 1988. It had been in the Tappel family for over 100 years. 

Gerhard and Katharina had 6 children. The blacksmith's grand father John Bernard was born in this house in 1882. 

Ben & Cecilia wedding day June 14, 1921.

John Bernard, known as Ben, and his wife Cecilia raised 4 children in the house, including the blacksmith's father, Henry, born in 1922.

Sylvanus Monat, Henry and Delphine Tappel, Catherine Tappel Hagenhoff

September 29, 1948

Although Henry did not end up owning the house, he did start his married life there. Henry and his wife Delphine lived there the first 7 years of their marriage and operated the farm. The blacksmith was born while his parents lived there in 1950.

After they moved away Grandma Cecilia and later her son Jim, owned the place until they both passed away.  Jim had lived in the house up until the mid 1980s.

After Jim passed the farm was sold and an auction was held to dispose of the personal property.

The barn as it stood on auction day 1988.

Auction day. 

The 2 men holding auction items up (you'll see them later in the family picture) is brother in law Doug on the left, and brother Pat on the right.

Fast forward to present. . . December  28th, 2014. 

The Rackers family graciously invited the Tappel clan to come see the house. 

It has been restored on the outside and is used as a family gathering place. It's a hunting lodge, a farming house, and a summer and winter retreat.

Inside, they added running water, including a bathroom, and refreshed the wiring. Much of the interior still looked like it did in June of 1988. Memories!!!

This is the majestic queen as she stands today, completely refreshed with new siding, new railings & floors on the porches, new roof, and new windows. 

The back side. 

The barn has a fresh coat of paint.

All the bedrooms upstairs have these great porches!

Just as Grandma had, the kitchen still has a wood cook stove.

The house has a cut limestone foundation with a full basement. This is a view going up the stairs from the basement.

The house has all the original wood floors. Note next to the sink, they kept the old cistern pump.

This was found on one of the bedroom walls. Uncle Jim must have written this at a very early age, as he misspelled his last name. 

The spring still running.

Inside, the Rackers had even decorated a fresh cut cedar tree for the season. 

The current generation of the Tappels include eight children.  Of these eight, Pat, Darlene, Marla, Bernard (the blacksmith) and Janie made the visit.

The 5 with their spouses. Pat and Doug, (shown on auction day holding up dishes) are the first two on the left back row. 

One last photo, Janie said, "Mom always took my picture on this sidewalk holding a doll." Her youngest brother Pat, was the only doll she could find on this day.

We want to give a big Thank You to the Rackers family for the invite, the coffee and cookies,  and the house and barn tours. It was great hearing stories of the house and farm by both families.

Connor Turns 2

First I must apologize for being so far behind.  Our trip to Florida, then Christmas, New Years, and life got in my blogging way.

We flew to Florida the first week of December. After all, Sarah and Connor both have birthdays that first week. Rusty has one 3 weeks later. So it was time to celebrate.

I appliqued a birthday shirt for Connor. He is a real CARS man!

Of course, his cake had to have cars too.

Grandpa and I gave him his first tricycle. He seemed to really like it right off the bat.

Uncle Jeremy and Aunt Lori gave him what appeared to be his favorite toy of his celebration.

The following Monday it was off to Disney World. Sadly, it was a heavy mist all day long. Did I mention all day?

Connor was a pretty good sport most of the time wearing his Mickey Mouse rain poncho. Here he and Grandpa are waiting in the long line for one of the rides.

The cars was his favorite ride. The rain didn't dampen his spirits. He cried every time we'd take him out. So Grandpa or Daddy would take him back again!

Connor meets Goofy, and from here it went down hill.

He was not happy to meet Donald . . .

. . or Mickey Mouse either.

We did, finally, after about 20 pictures to get one almost good picture.

On Tuesday we went to see Santa. That too did not go well. Had Connor known Santa was standing in behind him, there would have been more tears.

The rest of the week we chilled out at home. The little guy had plenty of new toys to play with. There were daily walks with Grandpa "outside".

It was our coldest trip ever to Florida. Coats were necessary almost every day. It gets harder every time to say good bye. This is our traditional front porch picture.

Our daughter had been nominated for an Emmy. She is a news producer for WFTV in Orlando

The day after we left our daughter and husband got all dressed up for the award ceremony. Aren't they adorable?  Even baby boy #2 is in the picture! She didn't get a statue, but still it is a great honor to be nominated.

That's Connor's birthday week.

Another sewing machine!

As I last mentioned in October, I had no intentions of getting another Singer sewing machine. I was on the wagon!  That is until I got a message from my friend Pattie in North Carolina (a 10 hour drive away), 

. . . asking me if I wanted this machine!  The price was right, F-R-E-E.  Of course I jumped at it. 

Now, just how to get it back to Missouri?  It then dawned on me, we had a blacksmith friend that was going that way in a week to take a class at John C. Campbell Folk school. 

So I jumped into action and called my friend Kathy who lives in Brasstown. I asked her if Pattie could drop the machine at her house, so that Missouri  Bob could pick it up there.

Yes, all the stars lined up.

October 27th, after dropping our daughter and her family off at the St Louis airport, we took a little detour  to DeSoto Missouri. Bob had this waiting for me. 

This is what it looks like after a day with me and my best friend, denatured  alcohol, working together. 

Beautiful!!!

I love the fact that it's a hand crank. It's a 15-K model made in 1904. There were 2500 of them made that year between January and June.

The decals are called Sphinx.  Between the Singer and the Sphinx you can see some flaking. I believe this was done when the lady that used it all the time, had probably a piece of fabric wrapped around there, and that was her pin cushion.  What a "no-no"!

So there is now my 15th machine!

Last but not least one more machine I received F-R-E-E

My brother in law Pat, who is a faithful reader of my blog, gave this to me. He found it when deer hunting last week. It came home and was set on my kitchen island.  About an hour later I went in the kitchen to find ANTS, crawling all over my cabinet!!!

So until I can get it cleaned up, it's in the garage in time out.

I did turn down the following machine. It was in pretty rough shape. It's a Willcox and Gibbs, just like the one I bought at Goodwill for $30. However this one came with it's original stand, which is a killer!! 

She is asking $75 for it. It was her Grandmother's machine.

The cabinet had too much peeling veneer, the metal stand was rusted, the top plate was so rusted you couldn't read the writing on it. It had a drawer full of attachments, even a box of the hard to find needles. The book was there, but in many pieces. Both the keys, one for the drawer and one for the cabinet were there too. 

I will always dream of the stand!

A signature quilt

Five weeks before my niece Callie's wedding I received a call from her, asking if I would make a signature quilt for her wedding.  She was wanting to do a quilt for the guests to sign (since signing a book is so old fashioned).

I pulled out my books and patterns and found a block called just that, Signature!

Sept 19, we met at the quilt store. I had in mind that she was wanting old fashioned fabric, such as these 30's & 40's reproductions. 

However she was wanting more muted colors that would match her wedding theme. 
She picked these 6 fabrics by Moda. She is such a good shopper (being a Textile and Apparel Management graduate helps). All of these fabrics were in the sale bin. Several were all remaining on the bolt and so we got got an additional discount.

As I started cutting the selvages off (I collect them), I noticed something very interesting. There was a theme going on, "Best Wishes", "Together", and Women of Courage".  Could she had gotten anything more appropriate?  She didn't even realize it.

This is the pattern that I first laid out and emailed the photo to her. It's 140 blocks or approximately 50 inches by 70 inches.

I got this reply from Callie, "Aunt Patti, can you add some birds to it? " I said sure, I think I can do that.

"Ok", she said, "How about our names?" Sure I can do that.

"And how about the date too?"  Sure, anything else?  

"No, I think that is all", she replied.

So I found a paper piece pattern for two birds, reversing one so they would look like love birds. 

Here is the finished piece.

If you enlarge the picture you can see I took some of the selvage and sewed it in the birds mouth to represent straw. 

Here is a picture of the finished quilt after I sewed on the binding. 

And here is a picture of the beautiful bride!!!

Here I am with the quilt as it hung at the reception. It worked great for signing. Two ladies attended and supervised the signatures. I had sewn in a pocket to hang it from PVC pipes. It had cardboard against the back for stability.

Soon she will return it and I will hand quilt it. I've also asked Callie's Grandma who is 87 years young to help. 

Best Wishes, Callie and Aaron!

4 weeks out!?!

I've been down.  For 4 weeks I was not well.

I was tested for Mono, tested for strep, had a cat scan on my neck, had a scope put down my nose and throat. . . 4 doctor visits to 3 different doctors, 4 different prescriptions, and in the end I was diagnosed with a virus. The last doctor said he would not rule out internal shingles, which I had suspected for the last two weeks of treatments. (Thank you very much family Dr Larraine). I even put it out on facebook asking my peeps if any of them had ever had internal shingles. Stitchin by the Lake from Arkansas told me her sister, who lives in my town had them. I went straight to the phone and dialed Sherry up. Yep my symptoms and hers matched. Oh to have blogging friends!!

Internal shingles are hard to diagnose and there is really no treatment if not caught early. Symptoms are swollen lymph glands, ear pain, fever, swollen throat, lack of energy, and lost of appetite, all of which I had. I lost 12 pounds the first two weeks. When you can't swallow, the weight drops off quickly. It can last 3-5 weeks.

Today is the 4 week mark and I am on the road to recovery. So today for the first time in 30 days, I thought I'd try a cup of Mocha cappuccino.

Well, my daughter was afraid I'd be climbing the walls with a caffeine buzz!

Don't worry, I got not even half of it down and decided it just wasn't what I wanted. I tell you I had been addicted to them.  I'd drink one every day and some times two. Maybe that craving is now long gone. It's a good thing.

I have so much blogging to catch up on. Today is the first time I have been on my big computer for more than 10 minutes at a time.

I have to tell you about the quilt I made for the wedding that I talked about in my last post, about more sewing machines, about Deer camp 2014, and then there's Thanksgiving tomorrow. I will get back to blogging ASAP.

Today, I have child labor helping . . .

Here's hoping to a happy healthy Thanksgiving to all my blogging friends!