One of the Best Stores You’ll Ever Find

Halloween is here. They say that fall color will begin to peak, earlier than usual, this week on the roadways leading up to the top of near by Monte Sano.
The leaves looked dreamy in the morning mist while my husband, Eric, and I drove up to the Habitat for Humanity Home center to look around for goods to use in our kitchen. We stepped out of our car while the leaves crunched under our feet. My husband and I breathed in the crisp, perfect for Halloween air, before going inside to shop. Habitat for Humanity stores offer home items that are donated by contractors, organizations and local residents for resale and the prices there are easy on the wallet.

Eric had watched the film Wuthering Heights with me and a bag of popcorn, the other night. I pointed out the rustic, sweet old kitchens in the film. Think my husband liked the rustic aspect of the old English kitchens the best. Today at the Habitat Home store, Eric pointed to a couple of thatched wooden chairs, defiantly on the rustic side.

“I like it!” I said.

But then, we both grimaced when we saw the weave in the chairs was ripped, more than we wanted to deal with anyway.
We walked on in the store “Hmmming” in consideration when we saw a shelf that looked fabulous and sighing in disappointment when we discovered a large nick on the piece.
We’re buyers who look for low maintenance, even in a second hand store. That’s just how we are. Maintenance to us sometimes means just as much money to repair, or at least more work than we want to make time for.
But all our careful browsing often pays off in stores some call junk stores. There is always true treasure found even for we buyers in search of low maintenance. In the corner of the store, for exsamle, I thumbed through a stack of prints and paintings. Pulling out 2 farmed prints nicely done, I gave an “Hmmmm” and then I didn’t sigh in disappointment instead I smiled...widely. The prints showed pewter flasks keeping company with rich purple grapes and bright tomatoes all in simple honest still life from. Simple, honest, rustic sweet - those were all the things I wanted in my Moors style kitchen.
I put the prints under my arm and took with me also another great Renoir print for our home kitchen. The still lives would cost me $2.00 a piece and the money I was going to give for the paintings, would go to a good cause to help build homes for families in need. That's how the Habbitat for Humanity stores work.
At the check out for the Habitat for Humanity store, a large man came in totting 2 remarkable chairs right past my husband who was about to make our sales final with his wallet. Then my eyes went big and I gasped looking at the chairs - “Are those just coming in?!” I asked the man carrying the chairs. I think I practically stepped on the poor mans heals following him. As soon as the Habitat worker set the chairs down I picked them up and inspected them. I could feel the real nails planted into one of the chair's upholstery. There wasn't a staple found on this small sweet chair done in Old English style. I taped the curves on the little chair and my tapping donated it was real wood.

It was the same with the larger more ornate chair - all real wood, no staples. Eric shook his head looking on the larger chair though - “”What will you do with that?” he wondered. Then he eased on a smile – “We’ll take both chairs” he said to the check out lady. With Elre's wondering and my own hesitation, I was ready to put the large chair back, but everything happened so fast. Before I knew it, both chairs were in the back of our vehicle ready to become part of our family.
On the way home, I knew where the little chair belonged, in our kitchen. The large Victorian style chair, for now, sits in our dinning room just off our foyer and will be spied by Trick or Treaters tonight. It does add elegance or as Eric puts it - fru, fru to the house. Somehow, I think, that chair will one day add even more to our dinning room.... in some way. That time will come when over dinning room is worked over more. Right now, we focus on the kitchen.
My husband just went back to Habitat for Humanity, one of the best stores in the world, we think anyway. He is purchasing a window to place in our attic upstairs. The window that once hung in a house the was demolished, will hang over a window box and face our leafy street finding good use....again.

Pumkin Place

Still roadside waterways lead travelers into our town after ramping off of a hurried hwy. In this season along the water ways, a pumpkin stand with glowing pumpkins, Mums and pear shaped squash finds a place on a patch of grass. Drivers, giving long glances at the colourful stand as they drive by, often pull into the pumpkin stand that has also caught my interest. I want to go there soon to replace the lone pumpkin I slid off our porch to carve for a pumpkin carving contest, held during a party recently with my newly made Alabama friends.

It's always a treat to go out to the water ways leading into town. When the temps drop, the cold icy air kisses the trees there leaving a streak of red and gold through out the tributary. In time with colder yet November air, the streak will fill in with solid color. The pumpkin stand only highlights the beauty that is already there.

I know there are lots of pumpkin patches advertising hayrides in the valleys below the mountains in North Alabama and Tennessee. But, the water way pumpkin stand just calls out to me the most for Halloween pumpkins. No matter how often I drive through the roadside water ways that lead into our town, I often remember the first time we rode through there with our moving van. The arms of the Tennessee River reached out to me that day welcoming me in.

October Kitchen

On my kitchen stove today, I was tenderly frying red russet potatoes, onions and garlic in Jack Daniel's whiskey from the Tennessee distillery close by. It is October now, and while I was working on a hodgepodge of sweet simmering vegetables some people just call hash, the autumn sun was casting a golden light through the wide kitchen window. The warm house heater roared while I rambled softly - “Whiskey Hodgepodge … no, maybe Autumn Hash…. Hmmm, Red Russet Goulash” Trying to decide what I would call my fried up work of culinary art, I took down some plates from the rickety old kitchen cabinets that I hope to soon replace, and spooned my recipe onto plates for my daughter and I. All the alcohol in my recipe had evaporated with the heat on the stove earlier.
Whiskey isn't just a vice in the Deep South. New mothers slid it on their teething baby’s gums. Grandpas gargle with it to keep ailing bacteria at bay and of course cooks, like me, like to lace deserts and spice up hash with the drink.
Warm, happy fall foods like red russet potatoes, pumpkin anything, cobblers, apple and peach pies are all twice as wonderful with comforting baking scents enhanced by the cool mountain zone air in North Alabama.
My daughter and I watched the movie Vertigo, starring Jimmy Stewart, while we enjoyed our Hodgepodge of vegetables. Jimmy Stewart is one of our favorite actors. Somehow he reminds me of my husband with his quiet, sweet side intermixed with an almost cranky but charming gentleman's air.
I noticed silky red walls in a restaurant that Jimmy Stewart’s Vertigo character, a romantic lead, is meeting beautiful Kim Novak in for dinner. (Mr. Stewart was 50 or so in the film Vertigo playing a romantic lead man most convincingly) “Oh, that restaurant is so… Oh, Wow!” my daughter’s eyes twinkled watching the film. Yes it was, and for a moment I think solid about adding the alluring red restaurant of Vertigo, seen several times in the film, somewhere in my home's decor. But I certainly would not work it into not the room I am working on now - my kitchen. My kitchen is too small for something so glam, though it is endearing.
If all goes as planned, my kitchen will have all the simple, dreamy vibes of a great Jane Eyre classic made into a film that some people state was perhaps one of the most captivating films ever made - that film being the 1972 version of Wuthering Heights. If you don't remember this version of Wurthering Heights, you haven't seen it.