Pirates Plunder: I think that linens were a big social status item back in the 1600's through the 1800's, so many ships carried linens that were very expensive and sought after. I would guess that pirates would take any linens that they found aboard a ship they were plundering. I can't remember where I read it but I recall that in some more rich homes there would be a special linen armoire which the homeowner would leave open when guests called. That way the guests could admire the linen collection and the homeowner could passively show off. Oh here it is... Pg 61 of The Miniature House (by Faith Eaton): "...linen presses were very important pieces of furniture....Brides to be and housewives with a satisfactory display to show to friends, could, by merely leaving open a cupboard door, could...illustrate their enviable status in an acceptable and conventional manner." Rich people even had linen drying rooms where they would keep the linen press, and linens that weren't good enough to display.

Lynn in Gainesville

Log Cabin Ideas: Ski lodge, Father Christmas house, Swiss Chalet, Garden centre, Pet shop, Lakeside holiday home, Country tea rooms....

Diana in New Zealand.

Log Cabin Ideas: : I made a log cabin box room from Lincoln Logs that my kids were going to sell at a garage sale. I love the "country" style of decorating, but it doesn't fit into my southwestern house, so the log cabin in mini was a perfect time to indulge myself. Get some old copies of "Country Living" magazine for decorating ideas.

Bonnie Gibson - Tucson, Arizona

Log Cabin Ideas: - A pioneer setting, if you're going historical (in fact, families in remoter areas of the Appalachians lived in log cabins up until very recent time--probably a few still do). This lends itself to great landscaping ideas, too: a soap-making cauldron, linen drying on the grass, a vegetable patch, and maybe a treasured rosebush brought from 'back home.' - Victorian country: the cabin could be the family's original homestead, and now the children play 'house' in it. - If you're doing modern, how about a writer's or painter's retreat? Or a Buddhist or Yoga retreat, with sparse furnishing and a meditation area? You could also make a 'tourist country store' out of it, where an enterprising person is selling local handcrafts, such as quilts, ragdolls, pottery, etc.

Log Cabin Ideas: Years (and years) ago, there was a chain of Log Cabin restaurants which served pancakes all day long. I remember them being painted white with a lot of red trim. They had a few tables and a long counter, with little round, backless stools, that spun around if you were fidgety, and I guess that tells you all something about me. Also in the woods, on US 101 in the Redwoods, there are several log cabin restaurants, and souvenir shops. We once lived in a log house in Tacoma, on Puget Sound, but they were vertical instead of horizontal. They were actually half logs, which had plywood in-between them. One half of the log was outside the other was inside. Caulking was used on the outside. Spider webs held together the inside.

MAP in Puyallup

Log Cabin Ideas: Lots of things to do with log cabins -- I built mine as a vacation retreat I'd like to have in full size someday. I enjoyed the project so much I wish I'd built a larger structure. I've seen a log cabin used as a wild west saloon. How about a contemporary bed & breakfast or even a store of some sort -- a Ralph Lauren or western furniture & accessories??? The possibilities are endless, and log cabins work well in either period or contemporary settings!

Kathy in TX

Pirates Plunder: Let's see - lace, material, furniture, clothing (thinking about those old Tyrone Powers movies!), mantillas (Spanish lace headwear) don't think the spelling is right, spices perhaps?, wine goblets, silver or gold silverware, dishes . . . people were moving to the "new country" and bringing all their belongs - the list is endless!

Marsha, Newark, CA

Pirates Plunder: How about silver candelabra and goblets?

Maureen in St. Albert

Pirates plunder: Pirates plundered all types of things! Gold urns, jewelry, spices (yes, they were expensive and difficult to obtain), silks, teas, fine China, tobacco, just about anything that could be traded or sold.

Marilyn, MI

Pirates Plunder: How about strings of pearls? Some gold and/or brightly colored cloth and maybe a tiny crown or tiara? I made a few pirate chests for my son's Magic Castle set and first I built a cardboard base and glued scraps of gold ribbon over it and then glued sequins, bits of ribbon, jewels of various sizes, the tiny seed pearl strings from the wedding section, a bit of broken fine gold chain and other jewelry findings, then I used a sequin pin and part of a necklace clasp for the lock. It came out really cute, and my daughter decided she wanted one for her mermaid Barbie's!

Crystal (also in San Diego)

Pirates Plunder: Pirates took everything they could carry from other ships and threw overboard what they couldn't use, trade, or sell. In addition to coins and jewels, goblets and urns, medicine and medical supplies were great treasure. Food was also a great treasure! Barrels of fruit and staples, sugar, corn, chickens in cages or crates, and of course, barrels of rum. They also took boxes of weapons, ropes, sails, maps, tools, etc. Many pirate crews also had rules to live by or a Code of Conduct which each member swore to obey. Some were posted on the ships.(perhaps that is where "honor among thieves" comes from?) Maybe a Code of Conduct would be good in a pirate's pub/tavern fastened to a post or the wall with a dagger.

Diane in N.C.

Pirates Plunder: I love the ride "Pirates of the Caribbean" at Disneyland.... In their scene where the loot is they have included along with the trunks full of coins: Strings of pearls, loose gems (mini rhinestones) Golden goblets, urns, pitchers and trays (take your inexpensive metal minis and use rub n buff gold leafing) candelabras, trunks with jewel tone silks spilling out, barrels filled with rum, and then some nastier stuff such as a trunk with a skeleton arm hanging out, clutching a paper that says "dead men tell no tales!"

Bonnie Gibson

Log Cabin Ideas: base camp for a natural scientist's expedition (someone who is studying bears, eagles, wolves), writer's retreat, country decor and/or quilt shop, pioneer general store, ski lodge, pancake restaurant in maple syrup country with nearby sugarbush for processing syrup and tapped trees with buckets so customers know how fresh it is!

Loretta.Sniarowski

Log Cabin Ideas: My personal favorite log cabin is now a museum at the edge of Greer Arizona in the pines at 9,000 ft elevation. Neither palatial nor unduly rustic for its times, "Apuni Oyia" (Blackfoot: "Butterfly Lodge") was built in 1913 as a retreat for author James Willard Schultz. Equal to a small but comfortable city house of the same time, it had all the appropriate comforts and amenities one should expect. There was store bought furniture, built in cupboards, trunks, china, table linens, and kitchen "appliances" To be expected with a resident author, there were also well filled bookshelves, Mr. Schultz's typewriter, a radio for passive entertainment, Victrola, and collected memorabilia from the author's days described in his first book "My Life as an (Blackfoot) Indian (published 1907). The cabin later became the home of his half Blackfoot son who was a respected, very prolific painter and sculptor who had been raised as an Indian on the reservation in Montana and who honed his artistic skills in Los Angeles and at The Chicago Art Institute. Lone Wolf added a third (studio) room to the cabin where both he and his wife worked. Butterfly Lodge is so named because it sets in a mountain meadow surrounded seasonally by wildflowers which, in turn, attract a multitude of the colorful insects.

Mel K.

Log Cabin Ideas: The first think that comes to mind for a log cabin is Abraham Lincoln's birthplace. He was born in and spent his young years in a log cabin.

Rusty in Ky

Log Cabin Ideas: Locally there is a country gift shop and florist in a log cabin. The two girls who own it had the log cabin built just for that purpose! The front is the gift shop and the back 1/3 or so is the office/cooler/floral arranging table.

Martha

Log Cabin Ideas: I made my Adirondack log cabin into an updated fishing retreat. I also did a one room log cabin as a writer's cabin for my daughter (called D.E. Renee's).

Carole Pierce in TN

Log Cabin Ideas: Mine has been done in "millennium modern". Some of the pieces can be described in terms of "rustic, but not in a primitive way". I have the lower section done in two rooms, a store (tourist souvenirs and handicrafts from the local village) and galley kitchen. The upstairs is an apartment, decorated in very contemporary furniture (practical but stylish). I started out with an Oregon Trail, which usually does 2 rooms in 1:12, but I got it to give me 5 rooms in 1:16. It doesn't have much in the way of "vintage" anything (a couple of wicker pieces come the closest to "old"), there is lots of decoupage and painted furniture, a spiral staircase etc. I even have a furby and a Rubik's cube in there. I have many pets in the house, a collie, 2 cats, a guinea pig and eventually a couple of Scotty dogs. It is starting to get some character, even if I do say so myself:).

Kim From Canada

Prairie wagon: If anyone wants to be further impressed with the strength and endurance of those folks who trekked to the West, visit some of the sites on The Oregon and The Mormon Trails, which paralleled each other much of the way. Some of those people walked the entire distance pushing handcarts; no wagons at all. We were in Wyoming in the 60's and happened on a solitary grave of a woman who had died on the way. Such a lonely spot, with nothing but the hottest wind I ever felt in my life to break the silence. I've forgotten exactly where it was, but we had been a day's wagon ride from Old Ft. Laramie on the North Platte River at one of the stopping points on the trail west where the travelers had etched their names into the cliffs. You can still see the wagon ruts near there - and I mean DEEP-practically-over-my-head ruts. It made the hair rise on the back of my neck to contemplate them. Until we saw those ruts and one of those wagons in I think it was North Platte, Nebraska (?), I had never realized how big they were; the top rim of the wheel was well over my head. So, for the person duplicating one of the wagons that traveled on either of those trails, the top edge of the wheel would be considerably taller than the height of a 5'3" woman.

Wanna in El Paso

Log Cabins in Appalachia: I will be 50 years old in July and my first home was a log cabin. Not one of the modernistic types of today, but a rustic old log cabin. My mother talks of going to the creek to haul water in buckets to wash my diapers in because there was no plumbing. And, of course, there was an outhouse. We heated our house with a Warm Morning stove, using coal and wood. Baths were taken in a galvanized wash tub in the middle of the kitchen floor using water hauled from the creek and heated on the stove. I have a scar on my lip that was made when I first learned to walk and slipped on the wet kitchen floor and fell on the wash tub. We did have electricity. The house was located in a place we called Paint Creek Holler. A holler is actually a hollow which is a probably something like a valley. My guess is that the term means a hollowed out place in the mountains. We moved from the house while I was still a baby, so I don't actually remember living there. A Warm Morning, a wash tub, and an outhouse were things that a great many people in this area lived with. And here I sit now conversing with people on a computer. Who would have imagined that back 50 years ago in Paint Creek Holler?

Terry T. in WV

Prairie wagon: While they were traveling in the wagon, they ate off older china plates or tin plates. Their fine china (if they had any) was packed in the lower 1/2 of the barrel of flour. The flour cushioned the dishes & they could use flour from the top of the barrel as they traveled. They packed things in barrels, trunks, & wooden boxes. The wagons were so full that only the very, very old, the very young & the ill ones rode on the wagon. All the rest walked. Some of the men rode horses to herd the few milk cows.

Ann in AZ