Great Grandma Lora

I get a lot of my Martha Stewart-ishness from my Great Grandma. While my Great Grandfather was alive, she was a school teacher and a preacher's wife. They traveled around to little one room school houses to teach and to preach. They lived in a big house and had nice things. Every day she wore a dress or suit, a jacket, matching hat, stockings with the seams, heels and matching jewelry. Oh, her jewelry was divine. She had dresser drawers stuffed full of it. One drawer all reds and blues, another drawer with pinks and greens and so on and so forth. She bought a lot of it and she made a lot of it too. My mother remembers a dresser drawer full of slips and undies in every color imaginable.

That is not what I inherited from her - her sense of fashion. Indeed, not. I am not fashion savvy in the least. What I did inherit from her was her ability to make a party FUN and festive. If it was someones birthday, she would invite the entire family over and have a big dinner and cake. First, she would decide on a color scheme. She had a huge built-in china cabinet chock full of mint green, butter yellow, pale pink and cornflower blue Fiestaware. Some of it was probably Lu-ray too. She also had a cabinet full of every color tablecloth to match. (See where I am going with this?) Sometimes it was the pink tablecloth and all pink dishes, other times she mixed it up and used all the colors of dishes at once. In the center of the table there was a lazy susan and all the food was placed there in hand painted china bowls and real silver spoons. I had three big uncles that would sit around the table and reach for the food and give that lazy susan such a spin - oh my, I would get dizzy. I was only about four at the time, but I can still remember being able to see under the lazy susan as it spun around and around while bowls went from one uncle to another. My Mama always got me some mashed potatoes and a fried chicken leg. (Thank you Mama.)

Before the cake came, out every donned their party hats. Oh, have I mentioned the party hats yet? We would go to Ben Franklin, or maybe it was Woolsworth's, I can't remember, and get sheets of colored crepe paper. Once home, we cut a large sheet of it, folded one end up end over end to make sort of an adjustable band, then bunch up the top and tie it off with ribbon. Here's a photo of sort of the same hat gleaned via Google. We didn't make the streamers on our hats, though. Too many big uncles for fru-fru hats. Back to the birthday celebration. We would eat our dinner on the pink tablecloth with the pink Fiestaware and then we would don our pink crepe paper party hats, dim the lights and Great-Grandma would bring out the cake. And, this, this is the point of this entire post. Not only would there be confetti sprinkles and a number candle, but these would be stuck in the cake too:

A wee miniature goblet to hold just a sip of wine, punch or grape juice (which is what Grandma served) for a toast to the birthday girl. Or birthday boy. Whichever the case may be. I have always remembered these little goblets, but I really almost thought that I had dreamt them up. But, last Christmas, Heidi included several 1950's magazines in my Christmas Goodie box. As I was leafing through them, I was surprise, shocked and elated to see the ad you see above. An ad for the miniature goblets. A set of 24 for $1.00 - Shipping included. (Man, those were the days!)

I have spent an inordinate amount of time the past several months searching for a set of these little goblets. I want to carry on this tradition of toasting the birthday girl, or birthday boy. I cannot find them anywhere - I have searched ebay and etsy to no avail. So, here is my plea...if anyone has ever seen anything like this, please let me know where I can find them. Or, if you ever see them while you are thrifting, please grab them for me and I will make it worth your while with a 100 lb. swap box. Okay, maybe not 100 lbs., but I would trade heavily for some!

My Great Grandma died when I was six, but I still have all these memories of her. She was a nice lady and knew how to throw a party!