Remembering... 40 years ago

Sunday was Miss Fiona's 4th birthday and Grammie has earned the privilege of being the birthday cake baker! I love this new role! But, actually, it is just returning to a very old role; a 40-year old tradition.

My sweet Mama gave me her cake decorating books and tips (because SHE wanted to learn to decorate cakes) so I could make sweet cakes for my children. I've reflected at how very kind this was of her.

This was my first grand attempt for Tony's 5th birthday. He wanted a cowboy and Indians theme for his party. Back then, when money was so tight, the 5th birthday was the first one where we had a *friends* party for our children.

I went and bought a new decorating tip just to make all of these fun balls on his cake.

(This is the same tip that I pulled out Saturday to create Miss Fiona's master-piece featured in a separate post!)

As I scanned and edited these old photos, yellowed with time, I started having memories pour forth from these simple images.

I think this photo is the one that really got me. The casual observer only sees Tony and Bekah with his party cake and cupcakes for his friends party.

I see-

• my old Formica table with gold flowered chairs that we bought or acquired when we moved to our trailer in 1974.
• on the window sill is the start of the first shamrock plant I ever had. Mike had been at a week-long training seminar in Shalishan, Oregon in January and brought back the funny little bulbs for me. It is potted in a Lucerne sour cream container.
• also on the window sill is a start of my Mom's Christmas cactus, tucked in behind my stylish curtains.
• out the window I can see our 1970 Chevy Vega, parked at the curb. It was my favorite green.
• Tony's #17 jersey is one I made him. Mike's favorite number was 17.

And this one of my darling family.

• Amanda is 11 months old, Bekah is 3.5. I love how interested Tony's sisters are in his special gifts and how he is sharing the experience with them.
• our not-too-long green shag carpet.
• my little rocking chair from when I was a tiny girl.

I'm so grateful for these happy memories.


**
And as long as we are on the memory train I had to share these photos of my darling Tony and his 2nd birthday cake.

I like doing things ahead of time... doing things last minute stresses me out too much. Fortunately I learned this lesson early on in my life and usually avoid a lot of stress...

but not this time.

We'd only lived in Priest River Idaho for 3 months when Tony's 2nd birthday came rolling around.

(Isn't he darling? I love his sleepy morning face!)

Grammy, my Mom, got him this red wagon for his special day.

He's put his favorite toys and his special quilt, made by Auntie Ann, in his new ride.

I'd made a fabulous cake for him. It had homemade marshmallow frosting that came up in beautiful peeks with swirls of dark chocolate on the top and sides. I put it, for safe and secret keeping, on top of the refrigerator.

Imagine my disappointment when I went to get the cake and found that the heat of the fridge had melted all of the marshmallow frosting down around the bottom of the cake. Luckily I had it in a cake-cover-plastic-deal and was able to smear the, now milk chocolate, frosting back up over the cake.

Funny story, but here's the thing... Tony was thrilled that his 21-year old Mommie had made him a special cake for his special day.

I'm so grateful for all the memories that came pouring out along with Fiona's special birthday cake!

Park Day

I LOVE taking *my* Bitties to the park! When their Mama was their age I took her and her sibs to the park so I've done lots of parks over the years.

Orem has a brand new park that is OVER THE TOP!  It is the All-Together Playground. It is 1.5 miles from their house so an easy walk for this Grammie and the Bitties in their trolley (stroller). Today was DE-lightful! One of those rare 65º days that come around one-in-a-while in March. We made a quick stop at Target for bagels and Bunny milk and arrived mid afternoon.

I've never seen a nicer park! Let's start with the fact that it is completely fenced in... only one way in or out! Always happy news for this Grammie! There is this wonderful composite soft cushion under every thing.

The kids found so many things that I couldn't keep up with photos of all of them... plus trying to keep an eye on this busy girl! She climbed up, around and exited all by herself.

She is absolutely fearless! She took off her shoes and socks to get down with some serious climbing!

My favorite was when three boys, all older than her watched her climb, successfully to the top of this beehive, ALL BY HERSELF and said to one another that they didn't dare try.

This little pixie-princess has me absolutely smitten!

On our way home, at the corner by Target, Fiona looked at me and nicely asked for a shake! Well, how could I refuse? We trekked across the parking lot to the Wendy's and got baby-shakes and a small order of fries. Were they ever happy little children.

Liam is not one whit behind his sister. He took his first taste of his requested (yes, just 2 and requested!) vanilla shake, smacked his lips appreciatively and said, "Yummy!" with a smile guaranteed to melt any Grammie's heart.

And even though this Grammie walks EVERY DAY I, stupidly, wore the wrong shoes and had barking piggies by the time we got back to their house. I drew up a basin of warm Epsom salts foot bath and IMMEDIATELY had two little foot sore companions, who, incidentally, rode in the trolley the whole time!

Let's just say there is now a damp spot on the carpet right about there!

When Mommy got home from work I showed her the photos and commented that Fiona is fearless. Her response was, YES! You'd never see Liam riding on the canopy of the trolley!

Wait? What??

Well, 10 days ago on Tuesday-last, when the Bitties were at Grammie's house we went for a walk (we usually do) but Grammie's trolley has oddly gotten too small for these two Bitties. We tried several different configurations but nothing was working. Finally Grammie had a bright idea. Fiona could ride on the canopy. It was great sport riding the trolley horse. We made it safely all the way down the steep hill, got this photo and then...

YEAH, IT'S ALL FUN AND GAMES UNTIL 

SOMEONE GETS HURT! 

I changed speed too quickly and that DANG trolley horse bucked her right off, straight forward and onto her beautiful little face. Everything went into slow-mo as I watched her skid and somersault on the frozen asphalt! I quickly scooped her up, called 911-Grampy, and we both, Fiona and Grammie cried! 

This poor little lamb! I was just sick! We got her home, got an ice pack, called Mama and put Healer-Harley on the job! (Fiona says, I love Harley! He helps me feel better!)

This was that brave little face on day 3. We've both agreed that we will never do that again!

Fortunately, we know about Vitamin E and her little face looks almost better today. Only one small scab left on her forehead and new pink skin on her precious little nose. (see photos above)

I'm so grateful that these precious babies are so close and I get to be with them frequently. I'm so grateful that this little precious girl was not hurt badly!!

Plumbing Woes

On Friday, laster-week (2/3), I decided to get really crazy and take down my Christmas decoration! (Yes, I know, let's not be hasty!) As part of that job I decided to mop the floors since much of the furniture was already moved to facilitate that task.  I used up the last of the mopping product I use and decided I would look NOW to see if I remembered correctly- was there more under the sink?

It was providential that I made that inspection. Our kitchen sink is situated in the corner of the room on a 45 degree angle to the walls; thus making a very deep cabinet. I took out the trash can (it has to live there to keep one naughty dog out of it). I looked at the nice red gingham-checked shelf liner that I installed when I replaced the faucet a few years ago and SOMETHING just didn't look right! As I stood there trying to puzzle it out it finally dawned on me that the shelf had warped down! OMSH! There must be a leak!

Out came all of the bottles, baskets and cans that live under there. Yes, it was quite wet. I peeled up the shelf liner... YIKES it is very wet!! I finally located the source of the problem! This dirty bounder was leaking at BOTH the on/off valve and the compression valve! The on/off valve had a pin-hole leak that was spraying against the side of the cupboard and then seeping down under the shelf liner, plus down the hole into the dungeon!

I'm not sure why this valve was even in the line as, fortunately, there was a saddle valve on the cold water source pipe and I could turn off the water there.

Now that I'd temporarily stemmed the flood I went to the dungeon to see how wet it was down there!

Not good, but not horrible! The leak couldn't have been going too long or the whole place would have been a mess.

Unfortunately there were several things that were wet! A jute rug was lying flat on the floor and, although wrapped in plastic, soaked up a good portion of the water, also a 26 yard roll of upholstery fabric, chair cushions, a couple of sweat shirts that were practically dripping and then several other items that were wrapped in such a way that, although wet on the outside of the plastic, were not wet inside.

Gordon helped me lug all of this up the stairs and into the garage. I'd deal with the drying out part later, when it stopped raining.

 The most damaged items were two of these antique rubbings from the Cambodian Temple, Angkor Wat. Gordon's mom bought them when they lived there and had them framed before coming back to the States.

Wouldn't you know it? That which is the most irreplaceable!

This one had water damage on the back but it hadn't seeped through to the actual rubbing yet. These went into the family room to dry.

Next day I  spread out the rug and upholstery yardage in the garage and, after 4 days of rain, nothing was drying out! We had a sunny day on Wednesday (2/8) so as soon as we got home from the Temple Gordon helped me move the rug onto the deck and we spread out the fabric on the grass. There were big wet spots in the garage where these had been.

About 7 pm I *folded* up the fabric and schlepped it inside so it didn't get wet from the dew. I left the rug as it was still wet.

They were predicting rain so Thursday night I rolled up the rug and dragged it into the dining room. 

As soon as I got back from my daily walk Friday morning I took the fabric back out to the deck so I started rolling it back onto the slightly bent cardboard center roll. Since I'd folded it up by dragging the ends together, again and again, I was able to unfold and roll. It took me a full 20 minutes!

But I was successful. Louisa May Alcott did her best, along with Marme, Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy, to help me complete the task. (I love to be read to! Thank you Audible.)

I trussed up the two rolls like so many piggies and dragged them back down in the dungeon. I'll use the jute rug on the deck this summer, it is too smelly for indoor use. I still don't know what I'm going to do with the fabric that I've hauled around for the 15 years! Maybe Deseret Industries or Habitat for Humanity?

Amid all the damp drama I also had to replace the float mechanism in my not-even-five-year-old-toilet. I'm a little tired of DIY this week.

**So I started this post in good humor but about an hour ago I heard that a huge area south of Lake Oroville is under a mandatory evacuation order as it looks like the emergency spillway is going to fail. I'm just sick! It makes my little problem come into very sharp focus. They are in my prayers.

Quiet Books- Mission Completed

Back in June I posted about Jude's quiet book. At the time I started his book, and through most of the lengthy process of making it, I hadn't planned on making any others. I'd even warned my other children, who have young children, that this was a special one-time project for Jude. But, by the time I finished, and had time to recover, I thought, "How can I NOT make one of these wonderful books for each of my littles?"

But since I was going to be making [a bunch] more quiet books I decided to create digital patterns that I could print on Steam-A-Seam bonding on my computer so as to avoid countless hours of tracing.

My original idea was to make one book for each of the five families (so 4 more books) who have children under age 5, but as I neared completion Camille suggested splitting the pages into two books so her two Bitties could each play with a book at the same time! (Great idea).

I spent the next two months mass producing pages. I had quite a process of making all of the elements for a 2-page spread down to a science. The land, sea and air pages were a must.

As were the shapy-shaper-tons! And this time I did used Velcro instead of the magnets to attach them to the page.

Sandcastle building was also another set that had to be repeated.

Finally, after working diligently for two months I had all of the pages finished and sorted into file folders for each of my sweet grandbabies.

And I can't decided what makes me the happiest about this photo... all of the finished pages or the folded and color-sorted boxes of fabric in my closet!

I've realized today as I have slogged through about 200 photos that I would have had a less daunting task if I had blogged about this while in the process, but I wanted many of the pages to be a surprise. (Erm... next time?)

And since my sweet grandbabies are not ONE-SIZE-FITS-ALL the books couldn't all be an exact duplicate of Jude's. I had great fun adding specialized pages for each of the littles.

Here are the pages not previously shown in Jude's book.

I knew that I didn't what to recreate the all hand-pieced Armour of God page. So I printed the pattern I purchased on fabric (sure wish my printer accepted 9" wide paper/fabric), bonded it to felt and used those wonderful tiny magnets again

In my Pinteresting I found this idea then found these fun flip-flop buttons on Etsy. Now comes the fun part... I put them on my bed scanner, scanned them and made up the matching pattern for the big flip-flop pieced from felt. I can't even remember now where I got the idea for the beach bag and smaller flip-flops, but I did the same thing here and made my own pattern. I just happened to have some random strips of hand-dyed fabric from a quilting project done years ago that were just right for the body of the bag. Since the buttons came in a two pack, there are only two of these pages (Emmy and Fiona).

Ah, but now I'd created a monster idea. As soon as I saw these darling fish buttons at WalMart I snapped them up for Miss Annabelle and then used fabric from her baby quilt as the background. I found a cool pelican idea here.

I also loved this sea-themed page. I didn't like some of the element so found ideas elsewhere for the Nemo-themed fish.

Deborah was also pretty excited about this repeat of fabric from Annabelle's baby quilt. I had to piece the little amount I had left to come up with the 2-9" pages!

This bunch of bed-jumping-monkeys caused me a great deal of stress! I knew I wanted to make a Monkeys-jumpin'-on-a-bed page but did NOT want to piece a bazillion little jumpers! I finally found this awesome FREE graphic. All I had to do was cut and paste those little monkeys... well, except... there was neither a Mama nor a Doctor. So I went totally PhotoShop crazy and cut and pasted a stethoscope and medical insignia on the Doctor (found in the plethora of clip art I've amassed over the years) and took a cake out of Mama's hands, changed the angle of her arms and gave her a cell phone. Yeah, I'm sick like that!

I played around printing different sized monkeys on paper until I got them small enough for little fingers and then printed them on fabric, bonded that to white felt and sewed it closed. Each little finger puppet is two sided.

Of course, monkeys NEED a bed to jump on. More clip art from the now defunct HugClub by PC Crafter's. The pillows Velcro onto the headboard and the quilt makes a pocket for the pillows and monkeys.

But all of this was just way-too-much for a single page. The facing page is a little zippered pouch for monkey-storage!

This Harley tic-tac-toe page was a must for the two little families that always come to Grammie's house. When Fiona hears Harley whining as she comes to the door (erm... or pulls up to the curb!) she says, "Harley says- My Nona! I love my Nona! My Nona's here!" (Grammie has taught her well.)

"I love to go to Grammie's house, to Grammie's house, to Grammie's house,
I love to go to Grammie's house, and see that Harley-dog! (repeat)
That Harley does some woofing, some woofing, some woofing.
That Harley does some woofing then we take him for a walk"
(Sung to- I love to go to Grandma's house.)

Another idea I gleaned from Pinterest was this one, but I couldn't find ANY-thing that I liked. So I just made it myself, says the Little Red Hen! I had great fun digitally painting this tree a leaf at a time, found a cute popcorn piece (I don't remember where) and the popcorns snap onto the branches. I used PhotoShop again to create the layers and printed it on fabric. I loved digging into all of the fonts and graphic elements I have to find just the right combination.

I sent Camille to my Pinterest board one night and she found this wonderful idea of adding a little envelope with a personalized note for my sweet baby-children.

I laminated the note, but saved it as well in case I need to print a replacement at some point.

Camille also found this ladybug counting page that I liked better than the counting or ladybug pages I did for Jude.

But I quickly found out that the googley-eyes and glued on dots made Little-Liam frustrated since he thought those should come off too. Bless him!

Since I was splitting two of the books I needed to add a couple more single-spread pages to go at the beginning and end of each book.

Another Camille suggestion-

The letters Velcro onto a strip of loop. I had a serendipitous find with this clearanced Velco at JoAnn Fabrics!

This little page got created on a whim! I already had the numbers printed, cute buttons, zippers, and strips from a quilting project, gone wrong, and ended up with this fun!

So here they are...

Fiona-

The edging is older than her mommy!

Annabelle-

With more fabric from her baby quilt.

Cohen-

Fabric from my cowboy-stash!

Liam-

The boy who loves RED and BLUE. He just petted the cover when I gave it to him.

Emmy-

With fabric from her infant car seat cover!

(And wouldn't you think I'd have a pix of the finished book? Nope, just tons of photos of how to put the binding on wrong! AGAIN!!)

And...

Well, I don't know what this baby's name it! He/she is still a gleam in Daddy-Stuart's eyes!

Actually it is the other half of Emmy's book but her Mama is looking ahead.

All of the fabric used in these quiet books comes from my copious stash of fabric. See!! There is a good reason to hoard... erm, save all of that fabric!

And this time... I really will come back and write up a post about how to bind these up. It took me until the last 2 (of 7) before I could get it right from the start.

(It literally took me 6 hours to find, edit, upload the photos, find the ones I missed the first time, and write this blog post!!)