For the Love of Stickers

My grandmother put stickers on everything that she mailed or wrapped. They came on envelopes, postcards and packages. She bought them everywhere. Do you remember the little sticker books that were about 3 x 5" and had pages of punch out stickers? They came in all sorts of varieties and subjects. Most of these are from the late 1960s and early 1970s.I don't know why, but one day my grandmother seems to have gone through all her little books and punched out all the little stickers and I found them all neat and tidy in an old case for a deck of cards. Fittingly it had a rose on it....
I am keeping some of the stickers for sentimental reasons but am letting the rest go. I have listed a few in my shop but I have tons more ;-)

What would you do with these stickers if you had them to use in a project or two or three?

Bedtime Stories....

Did your grandmother read to you? Mine did. My mother read to us all the time and was a wonderful reader with lots of gestures, expressions and different voices but sitting in my grandmother's soft bed surrounded by old quilts while listening to an old story was fun, too."The Little Rabbit That Would Not Eat" by Edna Groff Deihl was one of our favorite stories to read when we stayed over night with my grandmother, something we did often. We loved the gentle pictures and the story of the bad little rabbit that wouldn't do what he was supposed to do. As children made to sit at the table to finish food we hated, we could relate!
This poor old book just fell apart. I found the pages stacked in the bottom of one of my grandmother's boxes and boy, did they bring me back in time....I may keep one of the illustrations for a scrapbook but I have trimmed off the bent and torn places and will be listing the illustrations in my Etsy shop for others to share and enjoy...
I especially love this one of the grandmother bunny tucking in all the little bunnies. Do you remember this story?

What was your favorite story to read at bedtime with a grandparent or parent?

Happy Mother's Day

I grew up in a family totally dominated by women, a true matriarchy, if you will. My great grandfather left when his infant son died, leaving my great grandmother and her little daughter, my grandmother alone to fend for themselves. This is my great grandmother here in 1936 with my mother who was 4 at the time.My grandmother also ended up on her own but not until the children were mostly grown. I never met my grandfather, though, and in my world, she was the queen of the family. This is a picture of my grandmother with my mother on a picnic. My mother would have been almost 6 and I'm assuming my grandfather took the photo.
My own father left when I was around 8 and for most of my life the dinner table, holidays and vacations were inhabited by women. I grew up thinking that there was nothing a woman couldn't do because in my life, the women did everything that men would have done. They worked, they mowed lawns, they drove through the night and they paid the bills. This is my mom at 21 when I was about 3 weeks old in 1954. Doesn't she look young?
At the ripe old age of 22 here is my mom with me at the beach the next spring or summer. And yes, she deliberately raised us to be beach bunnies.
All these amazing women are gone now, all buried next to each other, in fact at a local graveyard where I am about to go and deliver some flowers. These ladies were strong and funny, smart and caring and I miss them all, especially on Mother's Day. Other families may have shrugged off Mother's Day as a "Hallmark Holiday" but in my family it was a day when the woman of the house got to be celebrated and pampered in a big way. No one loved to celebrate Mother's Day more than my own mother and even though she's been gone 9 long years now we always lift a glass in her honor and tell a few good stories so her legacy lives on.

Happy Mother's Day to all who celebrate it today!

Vintage Scrapbooks

What would you do with these vintage scrapbooks from the early 1940s? They belonged to my mom and have pictures of movie stars in them with captions in child's handwriting beneath most photos.

One book has mostly cartoons, jokes, riddles and other little anecdotal type clippings.
I am going to list these in my shop but am curious to know what people might use them for. I've had them knocking around my basement for a long time. They are not in great shape--pages are yellowed, some are torn but overall I think some creative person is going to have a blast with these....What would you do with these?

Garden Memory Walks

Are there certain flowers or gardens that take you back in time? I always think of my grandmother when I see apple blossoms. I remember being with her in the backyard and watching the petals of the apple blossoms fall like pink rain upon the ground. She used to pick them up and toss them back in the air and giggle like a girl as they fell back around her head.When I was quite young my mother discovered a church garden that was full of daffodils each year and every spring she and my grandmother would go to the fancy daffodil tea that the church held in the garden. I walk there every spring in their memory though the garden is not what it once was.
Both my mother and grandmother loved narcissus flowers as well and always had them in their gardens so I do too. I like to put them in the various pewter vases they collected each spring as well.
Our daffodils are beginning to fade as are the apple blossoms....
but one of my very favorite flowers is just about to bust out all over....but more on that later! Do you and your family have a favorite garden to visit?