I Won Three Awards! Yay!!

I've been awarded these three great awards from Sunday Girl over at The Crafty Corner! Thank you SO much, you made my whole year! I'm just so tickled :D











Go check out her blog The Crafty Corner! We have a LOT of the same interests...fabric, crafting and family history :D

Recycled Christmas Card Star

I found this from Jenny Harada made from Christmas cards. She used it as her tree topper and it was just beautiful. And she has all the patterns and directions on her site. I printed out the star base, and the pattern for the star points. It's a LOT easier to make than it looks! You get the hang of it after you make a few of the pieces. It will be easier for older children, but I'm not going to attempt to have my grandchildren make it,lol. Teenagers could make it,though. It took me a few days, but I only worked on it at night, it took longer for me to score the folds, only because I'm lazy :D

More Papers and Photos

From an old church in Louisiana.





This is another page of the church book.




My son at about age one and a half.



Daughter in law, granddaughter,son in 2001.


Me and Twin at Granny's house.



My son age two.


Me 2003.

Photo From Hawaii, 1941

This is my father and my uncle stationed at Pearl Harbor aboard the Raleigh. All three of my grandmothers children were stationed there at once. My other uncle was on a different ship, and I forget which one. I have other papers from that time, one being a menu for Christmas, and a letter my father wrote to my grandmother saying that he and Uncle Rudy were alright, but had she heard from my Uncle Gene. It has a censor stamp on it (I think that's what it was called, when I find it, I'll know) They all survived.



This is the cover of the envelope the photo was in, a small mat.




The photo of them.



An ancestor, I don't recall the name. However this is an interesting one because on the back she writes something like "mother received the shock of her life when I returned home wearing knickers". This photo suffered water damage. Maybe one of my sisters can tell me who it is, and if I got all the names right on other photos :D



Here's the back of that photo. I wonder how difficult, or is it even possible? to repair?

I'm suddenly very sleepy. Tomorrow I'll see what else I can find.

Tinted Photos

I've been trying to learn how to tint some of my old photos. I'm finally starting to get the hang of it. Here are some photos of Twin and me.


Twins With Polka Dot Ball. I'm on the left here.

Twins Smiling Babies. I'm on the right in this one.


This one isn't tinted. I'd have no idea what colors to use! lol Dad's hair was almost snow white even then.



I hope to get to this photo later today or tomorrow. I well remember these coats; red with black velvet collars, and matching hats. Wonder why we didn't have the hats on here?

My baby girl, Celeste. She hates when I tell people I named her after a ghost ship.




My son and daughter in law in 2004, not too long before he was found dead.

Well, for some reason it won't let me load any more photos. Maybe later today I'll be able to.

A Bit Of Family Paper

I scanned some old papers, I did white-out names,lol! But you could copy some of the writing for collage or altered art. When my paternal Grandmother married my Grandfather, she lost her American citizenship. She had to be "naturalized". There's a bit of history for the younger generation. Years later, she was listed as a "grass widow" because she divorced, a not too common practice, and her husband returned to Germany.

Recorded years and years ago.


A very interesting bit of family history.


Here's a copy of my Baptismal Certificate. I always loved Rev. Knoblochs penmanship.


My brother recently found this while surfing the net, a story in a book written by a woman who used to buy plants and etc, from my mother. Well, the army of small boys she speaks of, are in fact, my mother's army of small girls.....my sisters and myself! There are 6 of us, a sister, then a brother, 10 years older than the rest of us, then twins, then 2 more sisters.



" Mrs. ----'s Shoebox

Some years ago I saw an advertisement in the Mississippi Market Bulletin for a shoebox full of dried plant material for winter bouquets. I sent for one, and when I opened it I couldn't name a single thing in it. This fall I ordered another, from a different person, Mrs. ---- of Saucier, Mississippi, but this time I asked her to label everything. Many of Mrs.----'s plants are familiar—some grow in my own garden—but I would not have known what they were if she had not put their names on them, and I had never realized how beautiful they are when they are really looked at.

The first thing I took out of the box was a spray of crape myrtle berries. They are small, round, oxford gray, and satiny, and set in little pale brown, star-pointed saucers. I know, of course, the prickly balls of the sweet gum, but I am not at all sure that without the label I could have named the granular sand-colored balls of the sycamore, and I know I wouldn't have recognized the sticky brown burrs of the Chinquapin, with spines as sharp as needles.

I might have guessed the slender, papery, cinnamon-colored cones of the tulip tree, and could surely have named the tiny, delicate cones of alder, but I wouldn't have been able to distinguish the cone of the spruce pine from that of our old field pine, though they are very different when laid side by side. There were cones of three species of magnolia: the large ones of Magnolia grandiflora, the smaller ones of M. virginiana, and the very slender ones of M. pyramidata with their tapered and curiously twisted seed vessels.

Some of these things fall to the ground, and are there for the gathering, but others must be picked from the limbs of tall trees. As I unpacked the shoebox I wondered how Mrs. ---- had collected them. She must have an army of small boys at her command. I wish I had one small climber to swarm up the empress tree, and cut for me some bare branches tipped with tawny velvet, winter buds.

Along with the cones there were pods of two kinds of garden okra, one long and thin and curved like a scimitar, the other large and straight, and striped in pearl grey and silver. There were enormous toast-colored pods of some kind of Louisiana iris, and some olive-sheen hibiscus bolls, covered with silky hairs as fine as gossamer. I wanted to make a wreath of these things, but I knew I never would, so I arranged them in a circle in a round wicker tray, and added some mimosa pods (also from the box) the color of amber, and almost as translucent.

Some little white balls on very long thin stems were marked buttonwort. I couldn't find this name in any botany or horticultural dictionary, but after a while I thought of hat pins, and looking in The Natural Gardens of North Carolina I found a picture of them, growing in a grassy marsh with tall pines in the background. Dr. Wells also calls them pipeworts, and gives a choice of three Latin names, none of which, I am sure, are ever heard outside of a classroom.

Some other buttons, larger and on shorter, stouter stems, were honey colored, and looked like small empty honey combs. I put these in a brown bottle. They were labeled "wild sun flower of some kind." There were several tall spikes of small thickly clustered, seed vessels of a rich chocolate color. These were marked dockweed. Dock is a name attached to many different plants, but I take this to be garden patience, Rumex patientia, an old-world weed that is naturalized in this country, and grows in waste places. There were also some great cottony plumes in tones of rosy fawn, on tall reedy stems. These were marked papyrus grass.

I shall write more about Mrs.---- later on, as she has listed seeds of rare native trees and shrubs and wild flowers, that she collects on her plantation near the Gulf Coast.

January 27, 1963 "



That's enough for now. I have some photographs I'll probably add later on today. I am trying to get some from Hawaii scanned when my father and uncles were stationed there, and the anniversary is coming up. I also have Twin photos scanned, and realize more and more how much my son looked just like me when I was a young girl. And how much his daughter looks just like him. His son looks like his mother.....very interesting when you start comparing them all side by side :D

There's A Snake In My House

Yesterday morning my grandson tells his Mom (calmly) that "there's a snake on the floor and I can't get out of bed" and she says "no, there isn't stop saying that"...until she finally went and had a look. Oh, yeah, it WAS a snake. A snake that was just laying there, a couple feet from the bed, just as pretty as you please. Once she started yelling "oh my GOD!" the two dogs took off to save them and the snake slowly turned it's head to look at the dogs and crawled behind the entertainment center....never to be found. A friend of my sons came by and tried to find it, but said it was gone. My daughter put my grandson in the bed last night, but he woke up screaming from a nightmare about it at 1:30am this morning, and I put him in bed with me. Poor baby. We set out some of those huge glue traps you use for rats yesterday, it says it will catch snakes,too. Well, we didn't catch him last night. We even thought about going to the pet store to buy mice for the traps....I'm sure that's why the snake is inside, he's looking for the mice and rats. That's what they do,they're rat snakes.
So today, it's storming and rainy, and both of us, Grandson and I, are in our comfy pajamas home alone. I carried a dining chair over by the sofa and loveseat, moved all the glass off the coffee table, and gave him a flashlight and a sheet to build a fort. He's in there with Teddy and a book, trying to read a story to Teddy(he's 5, and in kindergarten, just learning) . I hope it keeps his mind off the snake.

You know, this isn't the first run-in we've had with snakes. We live on the river in the middle of nowhere, and there are fields of hay all around us. Every time they mow hay, we get a lot of mice. If I told you all my snake stories, none of you would be able to sleep nights :D