Is love of old things hereditary?

... our son grows up in a house that is more than 400 years old; he eats in an antique high chair; he sleeps in an antique cot; he rides an antique rocking horse (well actually it is a rocking roe deer, but that is another story); he plays with antique building bricks ...

I think you get the idea of it. And it will be very interesting to watch him grow up to become a person who will either love or hate old things. 50/50 chance, I guess ;-)

And here is what I wanted to show you: We found a beautiful antique swing and put it up in the yard. The little one loves it and so do I:

Hungry as a worm...

Another loooong silence over here, although I actually have a lot to post about. Being a working-and-diy'er-mom just leaves little time for blogging. We're all doing great and with our son taking his first steps, life became yet more exciting ;-)

We finally began to seriously work on the nursery, it's about time with the little one turning 1 in June... At first we wanted to leave the hated laminate floor in there due to practical reasons. But in the end we were too curious and just had to peek at what's underneath. After several layers (more in a separate post to come), we found: A WOODEN FLOOR, hurray :-) And it seems to be an old floor indeed as the planks are up to 73 cm wide (and 4 metres long).

In this post, I just wanted to show you the traces of a roomer called woodworm. Normally, we have those little holes:


But in that plank, someone must have been really, really hungry:



Some two years ago, we'd probably been in panic and afraid of the house tumbling down. After more than two years in our witch's hut, we are pretty calm. Typical dialogue:

"Oh, traces of woodworms."
"Any fresh sawdust?"
"Not at a first glance."
"Alright then!"

New windows, part III: Guardian angel

Shortly before Christmas, the new windows were built in, and the day the workers were here, a guardian angel watched over them (and us!). They leaned their ladder against the balcony in order to exchange the windows upstairs:



And a picture to give you an idea in what height that balcony is:


And this is what the place where their ladder stood looked like a mere four (!!!) days later:



I was really shocked when those rotten wooden panels just fell apart as if they were dust. Imagine what would have happened to those workers had they been on the ladder when the wood collapsed. I'd probably never ever have forgiven myself if something happened to them just because of our inattentiveness.

But luckily everything went well and the workers left our place healthy and happy and delivered a great job! More on our new windows in my next post! And yes - that broken patio is yet another project in our long to-do-list...

A little king's throne

About a year ago, when I was just a few weeks pregnant, we bought a nice wooden highchair for our little one and put it away in one of our barns in order not to tempt fate.
By now our son is 7,5 months old and we took our midwife's advice, not to let the baby sit as long as he's not doing it independently. That happened these days (big milestone for us of course :-)) and we remembered that lovely antique highchair.

I love the thought of generations of babies having sat in there and eaten their mash. The chair is about 100 years old and in really good condition - all I had to do was clean and wax it and that's what it looks like now:




I especially like that bit in the center of the seat: You can take it out and put a pot underneath, obviously the way babies used to learn how to use the toilet in former days :-)

Frost pattern - or: yes, it's cold!

First of all - although I know I'm late - HAPPY NEW YEAR to all of you out there!


We've had fantastic winter weather for about two weeks now - snow and frost with lows of - 22°C. This showed us once again, how crucial good insulation and windows are. Or have you ever woken up to see frost patterns on your windows?




Or frozen and iced keys on the inside of your doors?


Anyway - I actually love it, somehow special, isn't it?

Tagged! Seven book facts...

I was tagged by Larry over at Simpson's Folly. Here are the rules of the game:

Share seven random or weird Book facts about yourself.

Well, this is an easy one for me, my pseudonym is "bookworm"...:

1. This is my oldest book:

Martin Opitz: "Collected works"



It was published in Amsterdam in 1646, so it is just slightly younger than our house ;-)

2. This is probably my hardest-to-read "book". It is a diary I bought on a flea market (where else ;-).


A 14-year-old girl writes about her everyday life between 1918 and 1920. The diary is difficult to read because the handwriting is in "Suetterlin". But a very interesting contemporary document!


3. In the beginning of the 90-ies, I travelled to Russia about once a year. And each time I was fascinated by the low book-prices. Therefore I literally bought tons of Russian literature and brought it back to Germany by train. I even had to buy some extra-suitcases... Here's a look at some (and really just some) of my Russian books:


4. In one of those Russian books - Aleksandr Blok's poems - I found false money. 100 $ - and made by obviously the worst forger ever... The paper is almost as thick as cardboard and the print just horrible. But a funny souvenir anyway...



5. I've published two specialised books so far and hope to finish and maybe publish a novel one day.

6. My husband's grandparents used to speak "Plattdueuetsch" (low German) and we got some books from them. Here's an example:


7. This was my favourite book as a child and I still love it: Janosch's "The trip to Panama".


I'm extremly looking forward to the day when I can read this book to my little son!

----

Well, I hope this wasn't too boring!

Part of this game is to tag seven other people. I won't do it because I don't quite know who would like to participate or who wouldn't. So if you read this and thought it good fun, please feel tagged and let me know :-)

Fantastic find - antiquity in the garden

Yesterday, hubby planted about 100 bulbs - hoping that some of them will bloom in spring ;-). He ameliorated the soil with the pickax and suddenly he had the impression he was hitting a stone. But it wasn't a stone, it was this clay bottle:


After cleaning it, we discovered a stamp saying "Herzogthum Nassau" (Duchy of Nassau), a lioncel and the word "Selters" (seltzer):




Let's sum up the information: We found a clay bottle once filled with mineral water, deriving from the former Duchy of Nassau. This Duchy was part of the German Confederation and existed barely 60 years (1806-1866). Folks, that means, our bottle is at least 150 years old, maybe even 200!! So very exciting!

But back to the information: The Duchy was situated in what is nowadays a part of the federal state of Hesse.
The mineral water originates from the well in Niederselters/Taunus Mountains:
* The following information is translated from Wikipedia*
The well was discovered in 1536 and soon the water was said to have curative effects. In the 18th century, the water was verifiably exported to Scandinavia, Russia, North America and Africa.
Between 1806 and 1866, the export of seltzer became the Duke of Nassau's most important source of income.

By the way: Niederselters is about 360 km from Hornburg, quite an amazing distance for a bottle of mineral water at that time! It definitely means that the owner of our house (in the first half of the 19th century) was fairly wealthy!