Some Colorful Antique Paper Scraps & A Picture of Old San Francisco -

A meeting invitation for Sigma Phi Society at Shurtleff College with yellow and pink Victorian roses.

This weekend has cemented the joy I feel at being back in my hometown. I love the mountains but I didn’t love living in the mountains. I miss my friends who still live there but I do not miss the lonely isolation that characterized most of my mountain days. It is a relief to be back in my little Central Valley hometown. I can hear the freight train whistle through my bedroom window. The flowers are blooming and when I go for walks, it smells as if I am swimming in a vat of perfume. The sky is big and blue and there is color everywhere.

If my high school classmates read this post, they would laugh. When I graduated, I couldn’t get out of town quickly enough. Since then, I’ve lived in Santa Barbara, San Francisco, Oakland, Los Angeles, and the San Bernardino Mountains. I’ve been to 35 states on a Greyhound bus. And now I am thrilled to be settled down in this comfortable little slice of suburbia.

A vintage Wildlife Conservation Stamp from the National Wildlife Federation featuring the luna moth — A Vintage Wildlife Conservation Stamp featuring the Luna Moth

An antique Victorian birthday card with a pink rose. — Victorian Birthday Card

Antique Victoria Era Die Cut of Queen Victoria — Victorian Era Die Cut of the Queen

One thing I missed while living in the mountains was vintage shopping – garage sales, estate sales, thrift shops. While I haven’t been able to dive headlong into vintage shopping quite yet (I can’t wait for that vaccine!) I have gotten little tastes of vintage fun here and there.

If you’ve read the last couple of posts here on Faedra, you have read the story about the box of Victorian Era paper scraps my mom bought and let me sort through. I told you about the letter from a gal named Elsie to her California miner brothers, and I showed you pictures of a sweet Valentine from a California man to his long-distance sweetheart. Today I want to share some miscellaneous pretty scraps – flowers, colors, and a picture of Old San Francisco.

My absolute favorite thing about this box of scraps was its connection to both early California and the Victorian Era. They are two romances that don’t normally intersect, but they both reside in a huge box of antique paper on a dining room table in suburbia.

(Click on the caption links throughout the post for bits of California and Victorian history connected to these antique scraps!)