Happy Black Cat Holiday!

Happy Friday the 13th to all the kitties and the humans brave enough to embrace rather than fear black acts and the number 13! It makes me sad that black cats are hard to place shelter cats. They say it’s because people think they’re “bad luck.” Really? In 2015? It’s just amazing that will all the very real bad things in our world people still fall for unsubstantiated superstitions with archaic roots and take out their gullible fear-attitudes on innocent animals. We celebrate Friday the 13th as a cat-holiday and have adopted the American St Patrick’s Day attitude for it – “Pet me, I’m a black cat” and every cat is a black cat on Friday the 13th!

Please feel free to right click and save the graphic I made for the holiday and share it on your blog or social media sites too. Make Friday the 13th a fun day; catnip for everyone! (and something with milk, like chocolate or ice cream if you don’t do nip.)


Now I’m joining Heather at Feeling Beachie for Follow Friday Four Fill In Blog Hop. This is a meme I haven’t done in a while, but I really enjoy! Stop over to Feeling Beachie to join the fun!

The statements:
1. The worst ____________ is _______________
2. I would rather____________________ than _____________
3. I can ________ but I wish I could ________
4. The song ________________ evokes memories of _______________

My Answers:
1. The worst thing about autumn is winter is the next season.
2. I would rather sit at a ballpark in a rain delay than watch a parade in the snow.
3. I can spin in circles at the mall in my power chair like a tilt-a-whirl but I wish I could still climb into a real Tilt-A-Whirl at a carnival. (That one was too easy, huh?)
4. The song Mess Is Mine by Vance Joy, my current favorite, evokes memories of how wonderful David is and how lucky I am.


I leave you with my signature for Ginger Snaps this month. The challenge was lots of green in your siggie. I got that, but NO green shamrocks! My green eyes and summer freckles are courtesy of the orange part of the flag! My mom used to tell me that it irritated my great grandfather when she wore green to school on St. Patrick ’s Day because her Irish heritage was orange not green. So while I do wear green too, I’ve always made sure to rock a little orange on that Irish holiday in memory of Dad-dad.

Credits: Break Time by Colie’s Corner, Lucky Me by Aprilisa Designs, 

Crocuses from Vintage Rose Blossom by Carena Designs

Thursday Thoughts

Good gloomy Thursday! All right, it’s gloomy in Toledo, but the sun always shines in Cyberspace, right? I guess it’s not so sunny if you have a cyber-nightclub, but in this cyber coffee shop, it’s always sunny.

I was awakened in the middle of the night by a flash of light and a breeze coming in the open window. It’s not a vivid memory, I sleep soundly, but I recalled it when I looked outside and saw wet pavement this morning. I remember hearing the rain start and saying to David that he should probably close the window. The window is on his side of the bed. Only, David wasn’t there. He’d gotten up for some reason and was coming back into the room and made a comment about “fat raindrops.” I said it sounded like hail. He looked out the window and studied the downpour. He confirmed it was hail and it was coming down hard, making a lot of noise on the metal roof on the enclosed porch off the bedroom. I asked him where Carla was because she gets scared from the sound of rain on the metal roof and the hail was very loud. He said she was downstairs…and that’s the last I remember. I suspect if there was any more conversation, I was talking in my sleep.

Remembering dreams from the middle of the night is much more interesting than remembering reality when the weather wakes me.


Yesterday was Pi Day, 3-14! To celebrate, for lunch I made a perfectly round, and perfectly fat-free, pizza Pi!

A full Pizza Fit ‘n Free is a perfect fit for my new 8” plates!

Pizza Fit ‘n Free  is fat free pizza that tastes just fabulous! The pizzas are shipped with very tasty sauce and the fat free cheese. I added a strip of turkey bacon and a couple spoons of sautéed onions and bell pepper. There is just a trace of fat in the toppings and it adds just enough to make the cheesy gooey. A plain cheese pizza if still great, but the cheese doesn’t get so gooey without the trace of fat the sautéed veggies and turkey bacon added. It was fantastic and a whole pizza id s just 6 WW points!


Since I was going to be preparing the toppings for my pizza, I went ahead and chopped the whole onion and bell pepper, as well as cooking three more slices of turkey bacon to make Quichettes. They turned out great!

Real simple recipe too!

Ingredients

3 strips of turkey bacon cooked medium crisp and cut into squares
1 diced bell pepper
1 diced medium onion
1 tsp. margarine
1 piece string cheese, diced.
1 cup Egg Beaters
2 TBS grated Parmesan cheese

Sauté onion and pepper in margarine. Mix cooled bacon, onions and pepper with string cheese cubes and Egg Beaters. Add Parmesan cheese and stir until blended. Pour evenly into sprayed 12-cupcake tin. Bake for 20 minutes at 350 degrees. Makes 12 Quichettes



Remember my mug cake recipe?  I made a very tasty variation. I omitted the cocoa and used 2 Tablespoons of raspberry jam in place of half the Splenda.

I admit it’s unquestionably uglier. I suspect the raspberry and almond flour combination is what made it turn grayish teal. But for the taste, I accept it as a yummy blue raspberry cake!  Next time I'll add a drop of blue food coloring so I can know I meant to do that!


Okay, so there’s the new “what’s cookin’” stuff. How about something old?


Here’s a neat little piece.

It’s a pin that looks like it was never taken off the paper it was displayed on. It says “souvenir of Newfoundland" and on the back of the British Flag the hand is holding has Great Britain engraved on the back.

detail

Newfoundland was originally part of Great Britain and became the tenth province to join Canada on March 31, 1949. So, this pin is at the very least that old. It was in the box with the trinkets Papa bought back from WW2 and Newfoundland was one of the places he was stationed for a while in the early 40s. I read several postcards he sent grandma in 1941 and 1942 which would have been when he was 18, shortly after he enlisted and when Grandma was still in high school. So my best guess is that it is from the very early 40s.

See more unusual and common vintage pieces at Vintage Thingie Thursday, hosted by Suzanne at The Coloradolady.

Links

Pizza Fit N’ Free

The Coloradolady

Vintage Mug Shots

I hope you all enjoy this as a treat as much as I did putting it together!

First off, I didn’t have any pictures of Grammy scanned when I talked about the women in my family last weekend, so I want to share a couple photos of my great-great-grandmother.

This one is my great-great-grandparents. Grammy was born in 1885, so the photo was probably taken in the early 1900s.

Wonda Pugh

This one is Grammy in the mid to late 60s

And here is Grammy with me in 1966:

Here is my last vintage family photo, the four generations of women before me that were alive at the time of my birth:

Circa 1949

Top to bottom: Grammy, Mums, Grandma and Mom

Now the photos are definitely vintage, but they are not my Vintage Thingie Thursday piece . This is my Thingie for the week:

Monogrammed cups for Wonda and Opal Pugh.

I wanted these cups when we cleaned up Mums’ house, but Grandma trumped me. “You’ll eventually have them, but for now, they’re mine!”

As I’ve said before, Mums was only Opal Pugh until 1922, so they have to be older than that. If they were etched after 1910, there’s probably another one in the family for my great grandmother’s sister, Garnet.

Family Lore: the girls were both named for gems. Had there been another sister, she would have been Ruby.

There you have it, a couple of my most treasured heirlooms and certainly the best “mugs” in my collection!

See more vintage treasures at The Coloradolady, Vintage Thingy Thursday.

Sentimental Saturday

Me and Mom 1999

Yesterday was another productive, although tiring afternoon/evening in the White Tornado world. I got another chunk sorted and cleared in the future woman cave that turned up some wonderful things. I went through a grandma box and a Mums box.

Before I go further, I want to clear up a source of confusion. I realize that what’s simple for me can be very messy to try to read and I’m sorry. But don’t we all do that from time to time? Things that have just “always been” don’t seem to need clarification. My brain says if I made a distinction once, it’s already overkill. That would be true if I was writing in my private journal and didn’t expect anyone to ever read it. Even my private journals I do want read after I’m gone. They are all my secrets that might make insightful, helpful or entertaining reading 60 years or so from now by my nieces, grand nieces and nephews, and greats and so on.

Grandma, Mums and Mom 1945

Anyway, the distinction issue. The other day when I mentioned women in my blog who were here before me, I spoke of “Mom.” “Grandma,” “Mums” and “Grammy.” Those are four different women. It gets more confusing because if I talk about Tori and Rina the names are different for each one. SO the round up goes like this:

I am Nani, nicknamed that by my mother and in 1994 it was intended that I’d be “Aunt Nani” to my nieces. Well, they never called me Aunt Nani, I am Nana, pronounced /NAH-nah/. They are 17 now and I’m still Nana, so I don’t think that’s changing.

When I speak of “Mom” on my blog, I speak of my mother, Janet. Truth there is I didn’t call her “Mom,” I called her “Fluff” pronounced /Floof/. That was a private nickname and to my friends and other family members I still referred to her as Mom. To the Niecii, she was “Grams”

My first communion with Noni and Grandma 1973

Now is where it starts to get a little more complicated. Being the oldest is so cool because you get to name everyone. I had very distinct differences in the names so I could keep them sorted out when I was very young. My grandmother, Wonda, was “Grandma.” She got to keep the American English Grandma because my paternal grandmother, Rosa, was Noni. Oldest grandkid, I got to choose to call my nonna, Noni and all of my cousins followed suit. The girls never got to meet Noni, so they know her as “Noni” or “Dad and Nana’s Noni” Grandma to them was “Grammy.”

Grandma and Tori 2005

Grandma with Rina 2007

We’ll skip a generation for a moment. This is a huge source of confusion. My nieces and I share a wonderful treasure in that we all knew our great and great-great grandmothers long enough to remember them! They called their great-grandmother, Wonda, “Grammy.” I called my great-great-grandmother, also Wonda, also “Grammy,” and their great-great grandmother, Opal, “Great-Grammy.”

I actually have just one vivid memory of Grammy whom I didn’t see very often, but I did a few times. She passed when I was 9. I have lots of pictures and things she wrote on, touched and some of her quilts, but the memory I hold is just a simple saying hello when I was about 5 or 6. It’s just at a family gathering, I made a point of finding her to say hello. I just remember saying “Hello Grammy!” and she said “Hello Honey,” with a smile. We hugged and kissed and that’s the memory. Small, but special because I don’t remember anything else from that family gathering except that it was summer and outdoors at a relative’s home in the country.

Mums and Grandma 2000

Back to the original timeline. My great-grandmother, Opal, was “Mums.” She’d originally been “Mom-mom.” which is what my mother called her, but I eventually shortened it to Mums. I was very close to my great-grandmother. I remember spending the day with her from time to time when I was little. We lived about an hour apart then, so it was a big, just us, holiday for me. When we were building our house that was just a mile away from her we lived with her for a year and we shared a room. Mums snored, shake the rafters loud. I think that’s why I don’t even notice when David snores; it’s actually a comforting sound to me. Once I started driving, I never missed a Tuesday coffee at her house. I was in my 20s, she in her 80s, the first time I heard her say, “Sometimes I feel a little old.” She also told me, “But a spoon of ice cream makes that go away!”

Some of the real treasures I found in the box from Mums’ things that I went through yesterday include a diary that starts on January 1, 1944, which is the year my grandparents eloped. There are lots of very old photos. Three identical photos of a baby in an old brown cardboard fold over frame. There’s nothing written on any of those, but I have a hunch it might be Donald, the older brother Grandma never met because he died from pneumonia before she was born. I think that’s part of why Mums and I became so close. I was hospitalized with pneumonia when I was 2. Mom had told me that Mums was terrified when I got sick and the happiest of the whole family when I came home.

Here is one of the wonderful treasures:

Mums 5 years old

This says “Opal, taken 1912” on the back. She turned 6 in December of that year. What really struck me was that if I’d dressed Rina up and taken her picture in black and white when she was 5, it’d look like they were sisters. Mums is definitely where the eyes come from, those sultry eyes that Grandma had, I have and Rina has. But Grandma and Rina work them, without trying. I’ve got the same eyes, but I’ve never been sexy. All the older pictures of Mums, they’re just pretty eyes, not sexy. Grandma and Rina got the tools and the natural talent. Mums and I appear to have gotten gypped in the sex appeal department. Oh well. Who needs sexy? There’s still ice cream!

On the top of the box were some more current photos. I recognized those as the ones Mums kept on her buffet. She kept every post card I sent her when I travelled, and if I went to the zoo, I sent a post card, and some photos. She used to show off the picture of the production truck I drove for sports and the George Bush presidential rally photo from 1992 to friends and family when they visited. She kept this picture on the buffet too:

Me and Mums 1985

That’s us on New Year’s Day 1985. I kept the same photo framed in my living room. Her buffet is now my buffet and if you visited that same table we used to sit at for our Tuesday coffee, you’d see Tori and Rina’s senior pictures displayed. The buffest still boasts about the women of the current generation.

So that’s the nomenclature of the women in my family you hear me speak of from time to time, especially if I’m talking about my vintage treasures or the origination of some of my quirks.

The New and The Old

We had a little dusting of snow this morning, or so David tells me. I didn’t look. I had commented on Edna’s blog yesterday that I tend to not look out the window in the morning this time of year. I guess it’s fear that I might see new snow. I love watching the sun rise but, even though I’m up before it rises at this time of year, I so very seldom see it rise in winter. The exception is if David and I are leaving for the day before sunrise. Then I see it - from a nice heated car! So the sun is up now and the rain has washed away the dusting. It’s just gloomy looking and wet!

I figured out how to mop sitting down yesterday! That means the area where my first bookshelf will go is swept, mopped and ready for the shelving unit! YAY! I’m really all over myself with the “I can do anything” today. I’m going to be involved in a job-seekers teleconference tonight from 7-8, but then I’ll assemble the unit after that. Yeah, I am more tired and all by evening, but I want to assemble the bookcase when someone else is home, just in case my ambition exceeds my ability and half way through it falls on me. :) If I can get it assembled tonight and David can move it in to the annex, tomorrow will be cookbook and appliance placement day so I can get things moved out of the other half of the room to sweep and mop there. I’ve got two more shelving units to buy and assemble before the annex and kitchen are done and then we’ll have two organized and super user-friendly rooms. I feel more energized and excited every day as I’m working on this project!

Vintage Thingy Thursday

These were from my Great Grandmother’s attic. They were my Great Grandfather’s books when he was an early teen. We only found these three. My guess, and it’s just my guess, is that he originally read the Tarzan series when they came out in magazines and he bought the books for the stories he really liked. Or possible, he had at least all of the earlier books and these were the three that survived until 2002 when I found them.

The Return of Tarzan was the second book in the Tarzan series. It was published in issues of New Story Magazine from June to December of 1913 and the first book was published by AC McClurg in 1915.

Copyright page, The Return of Tarzan

That’s the publishing information from The Return of Tarzan. The other two books are not original editions of the book. They are still super cool finds for an old paper nut like me.

See more vintage treasures at Suzanne’s blog, The Coloradolady.

Tradition!

Nani's First Minestrone

Yesterday was a big day of tradition for me. I finished up and turned in my classwork for the week just as David was getting home. While I was doing my last chapter of questions I also made my first ever pot of Minestrone! The soup, the real traditional Italian soup, is one I’ve loved my whole life but had never made before. There has always been someone else to make it. I’ve supplied my Dad and brother with prosciutto ends for making the soup and well, it was about time I made the soup myself!

Traditional minestrone, made from scratch in our family's traditional way is nothing like you’ll eat in a restaurant. It’s a thicker and creamier soup with a much richer flavor and a hearty consistency. One cup is a very filling meal.

It all started, after David had left for work, with a prosciutto end and a gallon and 3 quarts of water. Big warning here for anyone who might venture to try this at home – a prosciutto end is basically a cured ham, with the skin. The skin and layer of fat doesn’t add a lot of fat to the broth, and you remove all of the end but the meat at a later step, but they add a TON of flavor! One thing hadn’t thought about, and boy I’m glad David had already left when I started, was the smell, The last couple pots of soup I’d made were vegetable soup and the whole house fills with a wonderful aroma as it starts cooking. Not so at all with a prosciutto end! Boiling the end with the skin and everything is anything but a happy aromatic experience! The smell in my kitchen was NASTY for a couple hours! It was the dawn of that nasty smell that told me it was time to add the beans. Then about a half hour later, I added the carrots and onions. The carrots and onions helped the smell a lot. Then it started to smell like soup.

A few hours in, the meat in the end was very tender and very cooked, but still hanging on to the skin! I finally decided it was time to take the end out and separate the meat to add back in. Not long after doing that my Dad called! I told Pop that I was making minestrone for the first time. He knew I was going to, but I don’t know that I told him it would be Saturday. He told me Dave was making minestrone yesterday too. The weather in Indiana and Ohio was just right for it I guess!

Pop asked me if I removed the end to separate the meat yet. I told him funny you should ask that. I was waiting to hear Noni’s voice tell me it was time and I never heard it, so I made the decision to do it on my own. I don’t know if it’s tradition hidden in my own subconscious or intervention from beyond, but when I was developing the recipe for Noni’s crostada, trying to remember how she did it, as I was about to add another ¼ cup of sugar to the dough, I heard my Grandmother’s voice, I mean I really believe it was her voice, I was alone, what could it have been, say “No so sweet!” I put the extra quarter cup back in the canister and the result was the perfect balance of sweetness in my crostada dough. I told Pop I was kinda hoping to hear her voice on the prosciutto end too.

Pop chuckled at me. He told me I wouldn’t hear Noni’s voice tell me to do anything with the prosciutto end because she never used a prosciutto end when she made minestrone! Nono cured prosciutto in the basement of their home, bone and all, and it was the bone that Noni used in minestrone. Pop and Uncle John continued the tradition of curing prosciutto at home for a while, but after they stopped that practice after Noni was gone, it was my father who started using the ends from the delis to make the soup. So, Pop calling me WAS my message from the family spirit. No long distance on this one. LOL

So zucchini and green beans were added as well as Ditalini noodles and while those cooked into the soup, I prepared the last part, which is the magic that makes it the wonderful traditional thick soup. Honestly, while it tasted good, it wasn’t pretty enough to be a restaurant soup, too dark. I chopped fresh basil and added it to a half cup of olive oil and a cup of grated parmesan cheese. That roux is what adds the final flavor and thickens it into the hearty traditional favorite I’ve always loved.

After the soup cooled, I put it into 2and 3 serving containers to go in the freezer. I had containers enough for 25 servings and one left for dinner last night and the opportunity for the cook to test it.

It’s really an easy soup to make and pretty low on Weight Watchers points too. It turned out delicious! I have decided to adjust my recipe to ¼ cup of olive oil for the roux. It wasn’t super greasy, but just a wee bit oilier than my personal taste. It was still very tasty and I’m proud of my first attempt.

I Remember…

Oh the blog world is so much fun! Last Thursday I joined Vintage Thingie Thursday at Suzanne’s blog, Coloradolady, for the first time. I’d been wanting to do that. I love antiques and heirlooms and well, I have quite a few of them as now I am the family matriarch. Grandma was an only child, so was Mom. That pretty much leaves me as the oldest on Mom's side of the family. The next statement will send chills down David’s spine. I’m planning on hanging around a good while and I’m keeping the stuff!

Truth be told, I was very self- restrained in selecting the treasures I kept from Grandma’s place when we cleaned it up, but I still brought home a few, several few, boxes of things. Since things didn’t quite go as planned this year, I’m going to make next year the reclaiming our living space year. We’ll see how things are going once I start my MS meds and physical therapy. I’m seriously thinking of taking the next semester off so I can really put some time in on the millennium cleaning project. Then do an on-campus summer class and really work on practical use of the wheelchair, or walker if things really go well. Not setting a goal there until I am doing it with my therapist! Then I want to get on the job seeking again.

Well, it’s Friday night and David is at a train slide gathering with a few friends. I wanted to get my school work for the week done today because we’re all converging in Toledo tomorrow to take my Dad out for his birthday! We were in Michigan last year and we’ll go to Indianapolis next year, but this year I get to show off for Pop. If you followed the link to La Scola from last night’s blog, is your mouth just watering from the photos? They open at four in the afternoon and you could be on a full stomach from a late lunch when you drive by and the smell will make you want to stop!

So, school stuff done, I did a little reading, and a little writing. I read Suzanne’s post for Five Minute Friday and went back to the source of the prompt, The Gypsy Mama, and read hers. It’s a cool concept. You get a prompt and you just write for 5 minutes, then stop. For me that’s, then stop and fix all the typos, but when I only get 5 minutes, I’m not careful about typing accuracy! But this week the prompt is “Remember.” I do timed exercises like that and I’m always amazed where it takes me when I “just write.” This was no exception. I had a thought in mind that went completely a different direction when I set fingers to keyboard.



I Remember

GO

I remember so many things. One of the gifts I’m most grateful for is my long memory. I remember sights, the lights on the juke box and the look up at the counter. That memory, those pictures in my mind are of the bar my paternal grandfather took me to, to show off his grandbaby to his friends. Mom told him not to take me to the bar, but Nono didn’t listen. He wasn’t doing any harm. Mom said she could always easily tell he’d taken me because I had a handful of chocolate covered quarters, gifts from Nono’s friends.

In this day and age a man could never walk into the corner bar with a child under two, but although they're just little snippets of video in my mind, and stories I was told later, I treasure those moments that have always been with me. I only had 6 years with Nono when cancer took him away from all of us, from me. But I’ll always remember the cherished feeling of being his first grandchild.

STOP

Vintage Thingie Thursday – Post Cards

Honeymoon Postcards, 1965

I don’t know if there is a definitive age that makes something “vintage.” I read on one of the other bloggers in VTT last week that she considered vintage to be older than her. I think I feel the same way. Even if vintage starts at 50, I’m 45, so if it’s older than me, it’s close enough!

I’m sure these postcards predate any essence of me because I was born 19 days after my parent’s first anniversary. The postcards are from their honeymoon! These were sent to my Great Grandmother while they were in Europe.

The Queen Elizabeth

The ship is the Queen Elizabeth and it’s the boat my parents sailed on. They had plenty of newlywed time to themselves, but on the trip, they were traveling with my paternal grandparents, aunt and uncle. Dad was taking his new bride to meet the rest of the family in San Marino!

Republic of San Marino

The Republic of San Marino is where my Dad was born. The family immigrated to the United States when he was 13. Actually, he turned 13 on the boat on his way here. I was there when I was 13 and saw pictures from a recent trip my Dad made. There is a lot that’s modern inside the buildings, but it still looks the same as it did in 1965!

San Marino is NOT in Italy. It is an independent republic that’s surrounded by Italy. They speak Italian, but the passports are San Marinese and until the change to the Euro, they minted their own money too. The San Marino lire and the Italian Lire spent the same in both countries.

Trevi Fountain, Rome

The third postcard is from Rome. It’s the Trevi Fountain, of Three Coins in the Fountain fame! The post mark is from The Vatican.

Thanks for joining me for a little retelling some stories I’ve been told about a time before me!

Break Time

It’s lunch break before getting back to my case questions for this week. While I was using the other half of the capicola I bought yesterday at Sofo Foods, our Italian market and the best source for soup-making prosciutto ends in three states, well, the best source known between my Dad, Brother and me, I came up with the hypothetical company for my final paper. Remember that left brain/right brain stuff a couple weeks ago? I accept that I’m totally left brained. I was struggling with trying to figure out what I’d need to research and how the heck will I do it and how will I write 15 pages about setting up a service desk?? When I came up with a hypothetical company and why it needed a new service desk, BAM! What I’d need and where to look for information became clear in my head. I create just fine when there is a reason to create. I even have a layout in my head of what the service desk office will look like.

My Italian Soul Food
sweet capicola and sliced asiago on Italian

I also got really great news about that capicola sandwich. 2 ounces of capicola, an ounce of asiago and a 2 ounce Italian roll is well within my calorie and fat allowance for lunch and well within my Weight Watchers point allowance. Add a sliced bell pepper and some organic carrots and it was tasty, really tasty, and filling. Fat and calorie-wise I could have a capicola sandwich for lunch every day. Of course, the salt from lunch every day will have me in blood pressure trouble and while I love it, capicola and asiago are not cheap! Think I’ll stick to it as a treat!


Barn Charm

One more new meme this week, then I’m going to enjoy the ones I do and not add more. But this one is very me. I take photos of barns all the time when we railfan. Bluff Area Daily hosts Barn Charm. The blog is based in Missouri and Barn Charm welcomes a look at barns from all over! Pretty cool! So this week, I’m going to start with my very favorite local barn.

Perrysburg, Ohio

I took this one a few years ago, back when I could still walk out into the field by the barn to get this shot. It was to take a picture of the water tower, but I just love the barn! Maybe it’s because it’s green, or the composition with the water tower. Semesters when I have on-campus classes, I drive by this barn every class day.

Thanks for looking at my barn! To see more barns, click the Barn Charm icon!

The Cleanup Is Done!

My brother and I with our spouses and occasional other family members have been going up to Michigan every few weekends since March to work on cleaning up and out my Grandmother’s house and prepare things for the estate sale and sale of the house. Yesterday, we loaded furniture into a huge rented truck to travel to an auction house in Indianapolis, which will be handling the cataloging and sale for us. Before leaving the small town that was my grandparents' retirement paradise, we stopped at the real estate office and signed the papers for sale.

Dave and I agreed that the small town in the woods we enjoyed so much since 1982 didn’t have the charm as a destination anymore. The magic was seeing Grandma and Papa and visiting with them. I remember having enough comp days after the busy spring season when I worked as a producer for local TV that I had an extra week in the summer to spend with them. It was always wonderful! I got to be a spoiled little kid again!

In May 1994, the day after I got my new Camaro, I drove up to visit them for the weekend. I didn’t tell them I’d gotten a new car. When I went in, I tried to sound appalled when I said I’d taken my car in to the dealer for repairs and “you have to see what it looks like now!”

Papa casually got up from his chair and said, “Come on Mom, let’s go see her new car.” Guess I wasn’t hiding the excitement well.

For the first year I had the car, my grandfather was the only person who wasn’t me who’d sat in the driver’s seat! When we went into town to buy some groceries for dinner, they had smiling plush fruits on a display and he grabbed the cherry one. He told me that it would match my “candy-assed red car.” That stuffed cherry still lives in my 16-year old muscle car today!

After Papa died, Grandma took over hosting Thanksgiving Dinner there. Mom and I would go up a day or two earlier and the three of us would prepare the meal. I usually finagled a couple extra comp days or vacation days to make it a week so Grandma and I got some extra “just us” time, which usually included a drive into West Branch for Chinese lunch and a stop for cappuccinos at the coffee shop across the parking lot from the Chinese restaurant.

We have taken home a few mementos and a couple of useful things from the house. Dave‘s stepson is a huge WW2 buff and he’s making a framed shadow box with some of Papa’s Navy memorabilia. I brought home all of the old photos. There are a ton of them! Now I have the scan and document project that will probably keep me busy for a few years!

Yesterday, I found the last very special piece that I was afraid had been lost! Grandma collected coins and she got me started. The pennies, American and Canadian, are my very favorites, especially the old ones, but I enjoy all the old coins and we’d spend lots of time when I visited going through the many dishes of coins she had and finding the ones that were needed to fill the books. She had an Indian head penny book. I really drooled over those! There was of which she had doubles and she gave it to me. She told me, “One day, the rest of them will be yours.” She left the whole coin collection to me, but at that time, she was talking about the Indian head pennies I loved so much.

I was stressing because the Indian head book was missing. We found it at my Dads house, where some of the more valuable things had been moved. David laughed at me because the Indian head penny book only has seven pennies in it. “All that anxiety over 7 cents?” Aside from the fact that an Indian head penny is worth more than a cent now, everyone knew it was so much more than the pennies that was the source of my anxiety. Those were very special pennies, they were Grandma and me pennies.


And now, it’s done. The next time I’ll go up there, it will be to close the last account in Grandma’s bank after the closing on the house. I won’t have anyplace to go when I’m there. It’s very bittersweet.

I was born into a world where I had four grandparents of whom I have fond memories. I was also very close to my great-grandmother. As children there was always that safe place where Dave and I were loved unconditionally and spoiled like a prince and princess. Even as adults we enjoyed those visits where we did no wrong. Noni always told me I had the face of an angel and insisted that I didn’t need to diet because I wasn’t really overweight! Mums, our great grandmother, loved Dave’s long hair in the 80’s and bragged about how handsome her great grandson was to her friends. Grandma and Papa knew and enjoyed our friends and always encouraged us to bring all of them with us when we visited. Now, at 42 and 43 years old, the last house where there are enough photos of us through the years to call it a “Dave and Nani museum” is empty. The last photo we packed yesterday was of Dave and me with Santa, dated 1972.

It’s sad to say goodbye to those wonderful people, grandparents, who loved so much and were always wonderful rocks on which we built our self-esteem. I mean think about it. Through our grandparents, we all get to watch our personal museums grow! When I visit the home my Dad and Aunt share, there are photos through the years of the seven grandkids they have between them. Not so many photos of the kids unless they are in one with their kids! But I don’t mind that there really aren’t pictures of Dave and me at my Dad’s house but photos of Rina and Tori instead. After all, Grandma and Papa, Noni and Nono and Mums did the work of reminding Dave and me how awesome we have always been. It really is Dad’s job to do that for the girls. Fortunately, that’s a job a grandparent always finds easy to do.

To all of the grandparents reading, thank you for the important job you do in shaping the psyche of the next generation and for all you do to keep us always loved and safe!

Busy, Busy, Busy

Stock photo from laptop

Hi there! I’m not lost, just kinda buried under my final project for my XHTML class! I’m doing a page for Journal Camp. It’s all dolled up to follow the requirements for the project, but I am a creative type that has to be creating for a purpose. It takes a lot longer to “make something up” for a subject than it does to create for something that already exists, so Journal Camp it is! The rough draft and copy is done, now I need to put the code in to, hopefully if done right, go from a text document to a web page! That’s kinds like magic. It’s fun!

Last weekend, my brother, Dave and I took our spouses back up to grandma’s house to work on the cleaning out. I was, not even kidding, shredding tax documents from 1958! Grandma and Papa moved there in 1982. You’re supposed to keep tax documents for 7 years. They didn’t even need to bring 1958 tax forms with them from Detroit!

We went up Friday night and left Monday morning so we’d have 2 full cleaning days. We really have made a good dent. I came home with a car trunk full of more old photos in antique frames. After I get a staging area cleared here, I have a major identifying and scanning project to work on. I started a family tree at ancestry.com and I’m filling in blanks and notes as I can put them together from the photos and notes I have. It is a huge task, but it’s kinda fun too. Ultimately, there will be 2 sets of disks with copies of everything, one for Dave and one for me. They can be copied from there, but initially everything will be duplicated for storing. I now have all the photos from both sets of grandparents, so I’m going to archive both sides of the family. Whew! Big project!

I’ll try to make some time to get the best of Monday Mug Shot up this afternoon for this week. I’m just a little back-logged right now! But I’ll get it all together, I always do!

The pre-camp meeting for Journal Camp is a week from tomorrow! How exciting!! The post for that week is ready; just have to do a little uploading. I have one more layout I’m working on that goes with week one. I want to remain ahead on this! You can see that I put up the sponsors list on the right side bar. The links are all working, I just need to get the blinkie locations up! I have 12 fabulous designers who have agreed to provide the random prizes for Journal Camp! I’m trying to use sponsor kits for the remaining layouts for examples to show off a little bit of what you might win.

Okay, now I have to get back to switching a laundry load, then working on my code for school!

Journal Camp Dates

Before I get on with the Journal Camp announcement, a big happy birthday today, to our beloved Feline April Fool! Baggle is 14 years old today!

]Happy Birthday Baggle Buddy!

Announcement of Journal Camp dates

I am pleased to announce the dates for Journal Camp!

Journal Camp will be released every Tuesday starting May 4, 2010 and going for five weeks. There will be a pre-camp “meeting” posted Tuesday April 27 with suggestions for things you’ll want to have handy for the exercises at camp. The freebies start at the pre-camp meeting, so be sure to stop by! It’s my hope that after the five weeks, everyone who comes to Journal Camp will journal better and with more comfort.

There will be freebies, exercises, posting bonuses and random winners every week.



I want to clear up a couple of questions right off the bat.

There is absolutely no charge for Journal Camp.

I’m doing this because I love to journal! I get comments often on my scrapbook layouts about my journaling. Many times people say they wish the could journal like me. I’m not doing this so anyone can journal like me. I’m doing this so if you participate, you can learn to journal like a better YOU. That’s even better than doing it like me!

If you’re wondering what makes me qualified to be the Journal Camp counselor, I wrote the programs and taught Pubic Access classes in cable TV. Members of the community came in to learn how to produce community TV programs and I was the instructor. I wrote classes to make the process of learning studio equipment, editing and computer graphics easy to learn and get results. That’s for what I’m striving with Journal Camp. I want to be able to help anyone I’ve ever read in chat who says, “I can’t journal,” or “I hate journaling,” to be better and more comfortable in adding that important part of scrapbooking to their layouts.

Okay, the big question for those that aren’t regulars in my coffee shop on the Information Superhighway is probably: An extensive tutorial with freebies and prizes for FREE, what’s the catch?

No catch. This is just something about which I am passionate. Before Digitalegacies had the Designs on the end and it was the name I used as my scrapbook designer name, it was a small video company in Michigan. I created Musical Photobooks, slide shows set to music on DVD. I even did a Digital Greeting card, a regular card with a custom DVD inside. I’ve seen those advertised on TV by one of the big photo companies now. My business didn’t survive because the depression we’re in now started in the Detroit area, plagued by the mistakes of the auto industry, first. I gave back deposits on products people really wanted to buy because they got their hours cut or lost their jobs entirely. I met people at business showcases who loved the idea and had many events, gifts, reasons they would love to have one, but couldn’t afford what everyone said were very reasonable prices.

Talking with potential clients about why they wanted my products, it was often preserving their own past, their memories and their family. When things get rough, you really concentrate on what you DO have.

That’s what we do when we scrapbook. It’s focusing on what we have, cherishing it and preserving it. Journaling is such a big part of that. Adding the facts and little stories to the photos that make the picture complete. We’re preserving our heritage with scans of old photos and documenting our current day for the future. Remember, the photos we take today will one day be old photos and the books we create for things going on now will one day be heritage books!

So, it’s important to be able to create the best pages, including journaling. I could have written this class and pedaled it to sites that charge for scrapbooking classes. I could even charge for it on my own. But there are plenty of people who don’t have the disposable income to spend on a class to learn how to journal. I understand that. If it comes down to a choice between a class and a new kit so you can continue to scrap, or if right now you really only scrap with freebies and RAKs because you have other responsibilities for your funds, you shouldn’t be shut out of this and exercises that could make you even better in your hobby. When I had to maintain equipment and buy raw materials for my business, I couldn’t afford to give away free product. I spent about a week to write the Journal Camp tutorials. Any out-of-pocket expense is done. That would be extra coffee because I was writing Journal Camp instead of sponsored posts.

Journal Camp is intellectual property. It’s me sharing my gifts for teaching and journaling. I’m grateful for those gifts and they are priceless really, and so without price, it’s my gift to my fellow family history keepers and all of our future generations!

I will put the tip cup back up on the right side bar. If you really feel you want to leave something, I’m flattered and thank you! The prizes at Journal Camp are chosen by a random generator, so tips have no bearing on your eligibility for the weekly prizes. That’s all I’m going to say about the tip cup. It don’t expect it to have contents, but if it’s something that makes you feel good to do, again, thank you!



Here is the schedule for Journal Camp:

Week 1 – Simple Starter: Helper Journaling and Lists

Week 2 – Just a Little More: Simple and Embellished Captioning

Week 3 – What Really Happened: Making Journal Blocks

Week 4 – A Little Bit of YOU: Journaling Feelings and First Person

Week 5 – Journaling Without A Net: Scrapping Without Photos

June 7 – Final prize drawing and Bonuses*

*As a special bonus, I’m bundling my best-sellers at Scarp Bird: My Blue Heaven, Talkin Baseball and the complete Laura Collection. That bonus bundle will be sent to everyone who leaves a link to their layout for the exercise for all five weeks. If you miss a deadline for the random drawing one week, you can still post a link for that week’s layout to qualify for the program bonus, so even if you start late, you can still catch up!

Photoblog Wednesday

Grandma

This is the earliest picture of Grandma I’ve found, so far, in the treasure box of old photos from her garage. I’m guessing it would be maybe Spring or summer of 1926. She looks to be around a year, non?


Photoblog extended

Notice the tabby cat Grandma is holding in the photo. I have another, blurrier, picture of Grandma standing up holding that cat. She’s a little older and the cat is too. In that photo, the cat looks to be around 3-6 months. I’m comparing to photos of Kaline here. In the blurrier one, the kitty is almost as tall as Grandma is, and very tolerant of being girl-handled by a toddler!

I only knew Grandma to have one pet, Aunt Brandy. They had parakeets while Mom was growing up, but a parakeet isn’t a pet in the same way that a dog or cat is. Birds don’t cuddle!

Aunt Brandy was a toy poodle. Grandma and Papa had a very good friend who was Aunt Brandy’s Mom and who spoiled Aunt Brandy like crazy. When she passed away Grandma and Papa adopted her dog. I should mention that Aunt Brandy was “Aunt” to me, not them. They called her Brandy! When Mom started referring to her as “my furry sister,” I started calling her “Aunt.”

Grandma and Papa adapted their travelling style to include frequent stops and finding pet-friendly hotels. When they came to visit, Aunt Brandy was always in tow. She and our collie, Missy, got along well.

I remember when Aunt Brandy met my cat, Ritchie, for the first time. Ritchie seemed to like dogs, but dislike other cats. I imagined that because he was a runt, the scar on his ear when I found him may very well have been from a scuffle with another cat. If the dogs in the alley around Noni’s house were kind to him, or even just left him alone, that would explain it. The only dogs he knew were the big dogs from the alley and his full-grown collie sister at home. Then he was introduced to Aunt Brandy, a dog he stood nose to nose with. He just sniffed her all over with the oddest look, like he’d never seen a cat-sized dog before. It was a source of giggles for everyone!

When Aunt Brandy died, she was cremated. Grandma said she didn’t want another pet because they traveled too much. Grandma and Papa kept her urn until 1994, when Papa passed. Aunt Brandy’s remains were buried with Papa.

When we were cleaning up at Grandma’s house, Rina saw a painting of a dog in the bedroom and started thinking of dog-fans that might want it because it was a pretty painting. I stopped her there, “No, I want that one.” Rina was surprised because I’m a cat-person! I had to explain to her that it wasn’t just a dog painting, I knew that dog.

Seeing the very young pictures of Grandma with the tabby explains a lot, though. Grandma started the habit of Christmas gifts for pets when we got “Inky,” which was what she called Ritchie because he was “black as ink,” save for a few single white hairs on his chest. There were treats for Missy from Grandma too, but it started when we got Ritchie. We have kitty afghans. Grandma made one for Azzie when she starts crocheting again and she started making Kaline’s as soon as she saw Kaline’s picture on my blog!

When she came to visit us, Grandma always put extra milk in her breakfast cereal. Azzie would lay on the couch next to her while she ate breakfast and she saved a couple spoons of milk in her bowl that she put on her lap and Azzie would sit on her lap and drink. She definitely fawned over Kaline when she first met her too!

Growing up, we had three different dogs. When we first moved to the suburbs, we had Mesa, a German Shepherd/Toy Collie mix, then Gent (Regentitano), a purebred English Pointer, and then Missy (Melissa Mesa of Meadowbrook), our papered Collie. But my first pet was Chinker, the cat who knew just how far to stay away that she could watch the baby without getting grabbed by the baby in the playpen, but Chinker did watch and protect me! I don’t recall being told the whole story in detail, but Chinker was gone before we left Detroit. Dave was a baby when we moved and I think he never knew Chinker, his first pet was Mesa. He’s a dog-person, I’m a cat-person. Hmm…

You may get over your first crush and move on to find happiness and love with another, but that first pet will shape your admiration of the domestic animal world forever!

Happy Pi Day!

Mmmm! Black Forest Pie!
(click image for the recipe!)

Yes, Pi Day is a geek holiday, but geeks know how to party!! We’ll need 3.14 of those for the holiday dessert! Hehe

It’s been a pretty good weekend for me getting a few things done. It’s college basketball tournament time! Yaaaaayyyawwwnnn. Oh nothing at all against the college athletes playing. I know that there are a LOT more college basketball players who use the free degrees they got to make a honest regular living like the rest of us and these tournament games are part of the road to the highest basketball high they’ll ever have a chance to receive. It’s just that I don’t find NBA basketball to be much of a thrill either. That being said, the TV is in plain view from the table where I usually park to scrapbook and I’ve seen lots of basketball whenever I look up and the endings of some of the games have been pretty exciting. Still, it’s a good thing the tournament will be over before Opening Day or the next new episode of Degrassi!

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I’m about half way through the rough drafts for the Journal Camp text. There is no way I’d do something that lasts for more than one blog entry without having at least the first draft done on all of them. That’s why I haven’t announced a date yet. I’m still on plan to announce the dates and start promoting it by the end of the week.

I’m finding out that there IS a method to my journal madness after all. That makes setting up a program a lot easier and I really think I can provide some tips and lessons that can help others. If anyone reads this has trouble journaling or considers it the most agonizing part of scrapbooking, you should come to Journal Camp! Even if you journal well, come for the challenges and the freebies!

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David is feeling better after a nice relaxing day yesterday. I did some extra cooking and kitchen clean-up with him home and not feeling so well and, like I pay to have the driveway plowed once in a while to do my share where I can, since he wasn’t really up to helping out yesterday, he took me out to breakfast this morning! I had a spinach and feta omelet made with egg beaters at our favorite local family restaurant and he had eggs and sausage.

After we got home, I pulled out the box of photos in the treasures I brought back from Grandma’s house. Yes, that box is FULL of photos, most black and white and most I’ve never seen before. There are a lot more pictures of Papa in his Navy uniform than I thought there were and so many pictures of Grandma at 15-18 years old! That shouldn’t surprise me. My Great-Grandfather, Dad-dad, was a big photography hobbyist! There are pictures of both of my great-great-great grandparents on my maternal all the way down side. One that was especially cool was a picture of Baby Grandma sitting on her paternal grandfather’s knee. That would be my maternal-maternal-paternal great-great-grandfather, a man of whom I’d never even seen a photo before today. Pretty cool!

Okay. I need to get my minimum layouts for the day done…and get over this incredible craving for pie!

Coloring Outside The Lines Is COOL!

Big announcement : I’m a Skribbler! YAY!!

If you’re scratching your head, Skribbler, with a K, is a member of Nibbles Skribbles creative team! I’m SO looking forward to working with Manda’s kits!

Things have slowed down on the other creative teams I’m on and I have really had the itch to do some serious promoting for some new-to-me designers. You’ve seen my work with Morning Mocha, Nibbles Skribbles' collab with Little Red Scraps and now, Nibbles Scribbles is selling at The Studio!

Manda’s work is also available at Digital Scrap Ink, which is a new site for me too. I just registered there, so I haven’t posted anything yet, but this is scheduled to be a stay-at-home, rainy weekend, so I’ll have some time to settle in. It’s also going to be a weekend with some scrapping time! I have the latest from Nibbles Skribbles, At The Park!

I have some ideas cooking in my head for this kit! I have great old pictures at the park when Tori and Rina were little. We were big time playscape and playground connoisseurs when they were under ten sand we all lived close to each other in Michigan! Now, they are half way to 16 and we usually find a way to get to a Starbucks when we get together. I’m proud to say I got them started on that with Starbucks steamers when they were about 4. While “cappuccino” for me as a kid was Noni’s drink of vanilla ice cream and a spoon of espresso in a demitasse, the version of kid cappuccino I introduced to the girls was steamed milk with a flavor shot. Rina really liked vanilla and Tori enjoyed cinnamon. They both liked caramel. So I could scrap the girls with At The Park AND Morning Mocha!

I’m also thinking of a perfect reflection page for my own inner child as one of those extra pages I’ve talked about before. We’ll see what I unleash tomorrow!

In a recent The Studio newsletter, it was announced that Nibbles Skribbles had joined the team of designers and Manda gave this wonderful gift to the subscribers:

I was working on a layout with it and thinking about the fact that I’d seen a CT call at The Studio, and stopped mid-layout to send my application. Then I finished this:

redits: Springtime Fun by Nibbles Skribbles,
March10 Template by Kimberkatt Scraps
Fonts: Segoe Print, Going Nuts

I’m scrapping September 2007 now! Remember I started the year with the start of the year 2007. Woo hoo! I have three current pages that I have in folders, so I’m keeping up with 2010 too. Doing well with the scrapping goal!


I’m also keeping up with my Project 365! This week’s layout includes a couple of shots of the treasures from Grandma’s house.

Credits: Cafe by Skrapper Digitals,
template Project 365 template by Sus Designs

The task of cleaning out Grandma’s house and preparing it for sale is a bit daunting. The treasure we’re finding though! I have a couple of boxes FULL of old photos. Photoblog this week was one of my Great-Grandmother punching the time clock at work and I have a totally sweet one of Grandma and Papa kissing. It’s dated 1944, but before they were married! I would think at that time, it was probably a little bit of a scandalous photo! I also found the military permission note for Papa to send Grandma a locket dated 1943, probably that locket I brought home after her funeral. I even found the receipt from the hospital when my Mom was born. Grandma was in the hospital 9 days and it cost under $90 for the visit, no insurance, medications and tests included in that figure. Of course, in 1945 there wasn’t advertising for prescription drugs and doctors didn’t have to drive BMWs. Maybe I should scan that receipt and send it to Washington?

In addition to scrapping this weekend, I’m going to spend a few hours working on the Journal Camp material. I figure I’ll be ready to schedule the dates and promote the blog-camp by the end of next week. I’m planning lessons, freebies and participation bonuses too. I think it’ll be fun!

Okay, I’m finishing this post now so I can get an early start on the scrapoliday weekend, David has been restless with a nasty cold, which probably means I’m next. I think he fell asleep in front of the basketball game and I want to make sure he gets to bed too.

Links:
Nibbles Skribbles Site
Nibbles Skribbles store at The Studio
Nibbles Skribbles store at Digital Scrap Ink

Photoblog Wednesday

Opal Sutton, early 1960s

Ford Valve Plant
Northville, Michigan

I’m mixing it up a little today. I didn’t take this one, couldn’t have! This is one of the many treasures we unearthed last weekend at Grandma’s house. I am so happy that the photos in her garage are mostly in decent shape. They aren’t stuck together, at least not in a damaging way and for the most part, they escaped mouse nibbling too. I will write more about the weekend later.

Opal Sutton was my Great-Grandmother. She was a valve inspector at the Ford Valve Plant in Northville, Michigan and retired just before I was born. Thus, how I could not have taken the photo! I have a small stack of pictures of her with coworkers and on the shop floor that were some of the first, on MANY, I’ll be scanning to document, archive and eventually scrap a number of them.