Baste Your Roasts With 7-UP

From a 1957 Cooking With Seven-Up booklet. (I've got a copy for sale at Exit 55 Antiques; you can see more of the stuff we've got there on our Facebook page.)

Tough Cocoanuts To Crack?

Have a lovely pair of cocoanuts, but you're having a hard time opening them?  The 1967 American Farm & Home Almanac suggests placing them in a hot oven for a few minutes.

Contests As Sweet As Pie

Whether you're a hardcore vintage kitchen Betty, are looking for holiday gifts, or just want to win something, check out the deals at A Slip Of Girl:  

Save 20% off Curvy Couture lingerie -- and enter to win a bra and panty set!  

Save 10% at Shabby Apple -- and enter to win a $75 gift card!

This Blueberry Pie Apron is from Shabby Apple.

Vote

Your grandmother knew how important it is to vote. She and those before her worked so that women would have the right to vote; don't make it a wasted effort.

Extensions For Blouses

In the June 1956 issue of the Workbasket, Lillian A. Chord sent in this item for the "Women Who Make Cents", a collection of money making ideas readers sent in to the magazine. Chord stated that many of her friends "complained about seams of their blouses showing through skirts and blouses slipping out," so she came up with this with this solution.

The missing text (continued on the next page) reads, "They furnish the material -- and old slip, pajamas or other material -- so I have little cost except my sewing thread and I get fifty cents for each blouse I extend."

Nothing Is New In Cleaning Products Either

I promise I'll get to scanning the vintage magazines soon -- I am working on getting the piles into manageable sizes. *wink* One of the things I found organizing was this great old box of CP Wonder Paper.

Dusts - Cleans - Polishes
All At Once

CP Especially for Daily Household, Office and School Dusting, Cleaning and Polishing

Especially for Fine Furniture, Woodwork & Hardwood Floors

Distributed exclusively by Household Paper Products, Detroit and Newark, the box cautions the user to always keep the roll ib parchment wrapper and CP box, "thereby preventing oil spots."

Take that modern day paper sheets with cleaning products on them! You are no longer a modern-day marvel.

Vintage Lessons In Tinkering With Math

As the mother of special needs kids, I know the value of manipulatives. They can be important ways to reach those who learn differently as well as literally make math more hands on. If you think manipulatives are something new in terms of helping children learn math, consider these pages from Study Arithmetics: Grade Three, published by Scott, Foresman & Company in 1930:

 These pages (from the 1940 edition) show using "toy builders", wooden toys like Tinker Toys.

As I mentioned in my article on vintage primers and antique school books, there are still some things you can learn in those old pages.

Vintage Recipe From Creamettes

About a year ago, I shared one of my family's now traditional recipes based on Creamettes noodles. So it probably won't surprise you that I was quite smitten with this vintage package of Creamettes recipe cards.

 (As I wrote at Collectors Quest, the prices on vintage cookbooks are increasing, yet vintage recipe cards remain relatively affordable!)

These cards were still in their original envelope -- and no small wonder with what was printed upon it!

This Envelope*, Madama, Contains Something of Real Importance * Please preserve it carefully among your recipes

Here's one of the recipes:

Creamettes with Tomatoes

A well balanced dish which can be served as the main course or used as a vegetable. A particularly happy combination with all kinds of meat.

1 8-oz. pkg. Creamettes
1 medium sized onion 1/2 cup grated cheese
1 can tomatoes
6 strips bacon

Boil and chill the Creamettes as per directions on package. Put tomatoes through colander. Dice the onion and bacon. Fry until tender. Put a layer of the boiled and chilled Creamettes about one inch thick into a buttered bake dish. Add part of the tomatoes. Sprinkle with fried bacon, onion and cheese. Dot with butter and seaon with salt and paprika. Add one or two more layers until dish is full. Bake in hot oven 15 or 20 minutes.

I also love how the dish is shown served in one of those fancy silver serving dishes I'm often spotting at thrift stores for cheap! It makes me want to actually use one to serve a regular family dinner!  

Things Your Grandmother Knew Update & Link Round-Up

I can't believe I've left you here without a post for so long! Between the new old house to fix up, our expanding antiques & collectibles business, and regular summer stuff, I've just not had the time to get scanning and posting as much as I'd like to. Once the kids get back into school, I will have more time. ...I hope. *wink*

I have been curating at at Pinterest, Scoop.It, and Snip.It. There are collections for my 3-5 year house plans, organization, and, of course, vintage living -- among a host of other topics.

(Also, on a personal level, I've begun collecting vintage Gay Fad glassware!)

Joyce Garris, an avid knitter from Huntley, Illinois, created a time-saving knitting tool called After This Row:

Priced affordably at just $1.99, the After This Row project sheets are designed to relieve the guesswork for knitters returning to their knitting projects. Whether they have put it down for a few hours, a few days or a few weeks, knitters will know exactly where they left off, almost as if they never put their projects down.

(Now all I need to do is learn how to knit and I'll be kept on track! With knitting, at least lol)

In site news, iCardGiftCards is a new sponsor of this site. Keep it in mind for giving sweet surprises and the holidays -- all you need to send a gift is the recipient's email!

Today's Best Value In Home Entertainment, Convenience, And Savings

On a recent trip back home, I think I sold three different households on this fabulous thing which, if you're all about economics in a digital world, I thought I ought to also tell you about. It's Amazon Prime.

You may only know of this service as the way to get items delivered from Amazon with free two-day shipping. While it's only items from (fulfilled by) Amazon, that still millions of items. And you can upgrade to next-day shipping for just a few dollars too -- which is nice when you suddenly remember that you don't have a gift for that five-year-old whose birthday party Johnny's going to on Saturday. *wink*

But Prime is even more than that.

Prime members also receive, at no additional cost, access to more than 17,000 movie and television titles to stream with Prime Instant Video. (If you have a Roku or other box device, I can't tell you how much our family saves for Movie Night, etc. Roku is an amazing thing!)

For me, because I love my Kindle Touch,, the icing on the cake is the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library. It works like a library -- only there's no due dates, so no over-due charges! Each month, you can opt to read one of the thousands of ebooks they have for free. The monthly Kindle offerings include over 100 current and former New York Times Bestsellers, so there's always something you'll want to read -- for free.

Amazon Prime is an outstanding value in entertainment & savings convenience at just $79 a year. Heck, if you just check out one book a month, those savings alone pay for the Amazon Prime membership!

You don't have to take my word for it. Start your one-month free trial yourself and see how much you save today.

We've Come A Long Way, Baby

Or have we. Normally I avoid politics here at Things Your Grandmother Knew, but I have to say that while there's lots we should take from our past, we needn't move backwards And certainly not when it comes to health care and women's rights.