Tammy

When I was a very little girl, sometime before Christmas, I saw my mom sewing something. Normally I wouldn't have given this much thought, but Mom was having a hard time with her project, and Dad was helping her. They were making hair out of yarn! I asked Mom what she was making, and she said it was a doll. 

"Who's it for?"

She said it was a present for Kelma, a friend of mine. When I told her I wanted a new doll too, she told me something like I should be thinking about other people, and not just myself. Which I didn't quite get at the time.

I just took this picture of her cute face this morning. You can see that she has a little stain above her nose. Tammy was well-loved!

Then Christmas came around and that doll was all wrapped up in a package for me! A beautiful little-girl, rag-doll, with hand-painted face, brick-red yarn hair, and a bright red dress. (That dress was often the bane of our cat, who looked hilarious walking down the hallway in it—
I wish I had pictures.) Denise got the matching boy doll; they were named Tammy and Tommy; Mom named them. In fact, I think I asked for her help naming most of my dolls.

Tammy and Tommy were Raggedy Ann-type dolls, and Denise and I played with them all.  the.  time. Tammy survived playing outside and inside, and several trips through the washing machine, clear up until I had little girls of my own.

And then one of them cut her bangs off! (No pics, unfortunately.)

And her panties disappeared. So I put Tammy away, intending to fix her up one day.

I finally started working on her last January. 

Tammy's original yarn hair had been stitched to strips of fabric, and then the fabric strips were then attached to her head—I had already removed all of it a few years ago. Now (in January) I finally embroidered her new hair directly onto her head. 

Originally, Tammy had straight hair. But I thought it looked so cute curly, that I left it looped. 

Then she sat in my room for a few months.

Well, this week I decided it was time to remake her clothes. I was lucky that I had a little piece of the original fabric Mom had made her clothes with. Yay! But when I compared that fabric to Tammy's clothes this is what I saw:

On the left is the sleeve of Tammy's original blouse. On the right is the fabric scrap that (thankfully) I must have swiped from my Mom's fabric stash years ago.

Well. I couldn't make bright, practically neon-colored panties and still keep Tammy in her faded blouse, so I took the blouse apart to use as a pattern for a new one. I had just enough fabric to cut out a new blouse and panties for her.

I wanted to make the outfit as similar as I could to the one Mom made, so even I sewed it together with green thread, like she did. (Hers was more of an apple-green, but I used the yellow-green color I already had at home.)
I went to the store to get new ric-rac to put on the edges of the neck, sleeves, and the legs of the panties. I don't remember if the panties had ric-rac trim on them or not, but I think they probably must have matched. In the end it didn't matter. The new ric-rac was so big (the only size they had at the store) and so heavy that I didn't like it on the clothes at all. So I reused the old ric-rac on the blouse, and trimmed the panties' legs with lace.

I finished the blouse and panties this morning.
I do think I would have preferred to have the
matching ric-rac on the panty-legs, but there's not much I could do about that. They will be hidden
under her skirt anyway.

I was a little worried that I'd lost the original buttons, but they were in my button box. You can see that the buttonholes are made with the green thread. :-)

And now Tammy is all dressed, she has pretty hair, and she's ready for...

...ready for what?

I guess she's ready to join the other toys in my "grandma stash." And hopefully some day somebody else will love her until she's falling apart.

Ten more reasons I like my husband

 He got up early yesterday (when I woke him from a peaceful sleep) so he could work on the garden that I've been nagging about. And then he worked far longer into the heat of the day than I would have recommended—even when I asked him to stop because it was too hot. ♥

He lets me snuggle up to him and fall asleep while we're "watching a movie." He even stays for the whole movie, with me asleep on his shoulder or lap. ♥

He likes getting a hair cut from me. He even thinks it's fun. ♥

Also, except on very, very few occasions, he remains clean-shaven in deference to my preference.

He takes me out on dates so we can escape the house and the kids. (Yes, even when they're 17 and older, we want to escape them sometimes.) ♥

He lets me know that he thinks I am amazing. ♥

He laughs at my jokes. A lot. ♥

He thinks I am gorgeous, even though I can see that I'm looking older, and even when I've had my hair in the same ponytail for three days. (Although he really likes it when I take care of myself—I guess I clean up nice.) ♥

He works on house projects with me. ♥

He cries over the food I make for him.
Hmm.
He says it's because I'm such a great cook. ;-) ♥

He is an awesome dad to our kids, and an awesome friend to me. ♥

I love you, Bruce! ♥♥♥

Going against community standards.

 This morning I was searching my blog to see one of the tops I'd designed while I was in school—I'm thinking of using it for the top part of a dress I want to make for myself. And then I just started browsing old blog posts because... Why not? It's a lazy Sunday morning.

I came across this post and thought it might be nice to put it on Bruce's timeline, since I still like him, and it's Father's Day, and all.

So I copied the link (which you can follow by clicking the blue, underlined words in the previous paragraph), pasted it on Bruce's timeline, clicked "post", and then moved on to the next thing.

When I checked back a few minutes later, I saw this:

In case you can't read it, it says, 
"An error occurred while processing this request.
Try again later."

So I tried again. And again, and again.

It also says, "If you think this doesn't go against our Community Standards let us know." 
(And yes, "Community Standards" is capitalized—so I will know how important this is, and also know that I should never violate said standards.)

Uh-huh. I've been caught by facebook's Thought Police. Because I like my husband. Perhaps it is the offensive word "husband" that ratted me out.

So I clicked on "let us know" and let them know why I wasn't going against any rational standards (since they never actually told me what their apparently irrational standards are). I told them that I was trying to post a link to my own blog, on my own husband's timeline, telling him (my husband) that I liked him. I may or may not have also called the Thought Police morons. As part of the reporting process, I was also informed that they may not actually read what I wrote to them. They are awesome!

Well, anyway, I really do like my husband. A lot. And if you want to know ten reasons that I liked him eight or so years ago, click on this link (the same one I posted above).

A green-thumb I am not.

We have been working on our garden. Or making the attempt.

About four ...maybe six weeks ago Ryan and I planted some herb seeds: basil, rosemary, oregano, thyme, and marjoram—some of the herbs I cook with the most. They have sprouted and are growing happily on my plant shelves. Yay!

They all sprouted within about ten days. :-)

I also have some cherry tomatoes that I started from seed a couple of months back. And two weeks ago we went to Split Mountain Nursery and bought a whole bunch of tomato plants, pepper plants, a zucchini plant (just one) and some cucumber plants. Yum!

But it was probably not a good idea to buy the plants when we did because the garden still isn't ready for them.

You may not remember that when we first bought our house it had a brick patio on the west side of the shed. I remember it well, because we have removed and rearranged those bricks... a couple of times since we've lived here.

This photo is from 2018, the very first time
we took the bricks out.

That's Bruce, planting our very first garden here in 2018. We laid the bricks down around the garden (everywhere you see bare dirt in the picture, plus a path down the center). I don't remember why we moved the bricks again, but we had to for some reason. And now we are doing it again. But I do know why this time.

The kids and I spent one grueling hour in the heat
of the day moving about half of those bricks. (Which pile did I stack, and which one did the kids stack?)
Then Bruce helped me move the rest of them
early last Saturday morning.

This year I want to build grow-boxes instead of just having regular garden beds. This is because our garden washes into and over the bricks every year. That's one reason that we moved those bricks again.

The garden fabric we had underneath the bricks was no longer preventing weeds and grass from growing up through the brick. (We just reused the old fabric that was under the brick patio to begin with.) That's another, even better, reason for moving them again.

And because we tore out a whole bunch of bushes that first year, and then didn't really level the ground very well, all of the brick paths were pretty uneven.  And with the plants and the dirt trying to take over the brick, sometimes those uneven spots were not very visible. It was kind of a tripping hazard. So that's the third reason for moving them. Again.

Right now our garden looks like this:

It looks like a pretty shady deal, but this photo
was just taken first thing this morning. It actually
gets more sun, for most of the day, than
any other spot in our tree-lined yard.

Well, after we moved all the brick, Bruce and I came into the house and planned out where we want the boxes to be, and figured out what we'd need for supplies. The main garden will be U-shaped. We'll have a smaller box right next to the shed, and put some kind of trellis stuff on the shed walls so we can grow viney veggies (like cucumbers, pole beans, etc.) on the shed—or maybe we'll just put carrots and radishes in there. We'll put brick along the back wall, bordering the garden, but we're thinking of leaving a few open spaces to see if we can grow grapes along the wall. We'll see. And then, of course, we'll put bricks all around and in-between the other sides of the boxes.

Well, when we had that all figured out, we went and spent a fortune at Lowe's getting the wood for the boxes. We are hoping to can hundreds of tomatoes this year—and for the next ten years—to get back our investment. ;-)

Seriously!
What's the deal with the crazy price of lumber?

We had an adventure at Lowe's, too. The nice, young man (Jason North) who was helping us load fourteen-foot boards into our twelve-foot van accidentally bumped a board into our windshield. 

looking out through a cracked windshield
Uh-oh!

But, since Jason was on the clock, Lowe's will pay to replace the windshield. Now I won't have to clean all the bugs off of it. ;-)

And here we are: The bricks are moved and the garden is tilled, but we still need to finish leveling the paths for the bricks. We also need to find where we can tap into the sprinkling system to get water to the shed-wall garden, and the dreamed-of grapes. Then we can build everything.

In the meantime, our "garden" is in the kitchen, sitting on (and around) the plant shelf I built last summer.

Our new plants overflowed the shelf, and
all the big pots I'd bought had to be
displaced. But it's temporary...just until
the garden is ready for them.

There's just one more planty adventure to relate:

A week or so after Memorial Day, Bruce and I were at the grocery store and I saw a basket full of very dry rosemary plants on clearance. They had tags on them that said they were great for grilling, so they were obviously meant to be consumed and were not well cared for. We bought one and brought it home, thinking to transplant and water the poor thing. If it didn't survive, I figured we could at least take the dry leaves and put them into a spice jar to cook with, and that didn't sound so bad.

And then I went through a period of complete and utter non-motivation; it was all I could do some days just to complete one task—which was usually making dinner. So the rosemary sat in front of the plant shelf, and it got watered every now and then.

This morning I looked at that poor, sad rosemary plant and decided I'd better do something about it, since now at least two-thirds of the leaves were completely dry. So I prepared a bigger pot for it, and then tried to remove it from its current pot. It wouldn't budge. And the dry leaves were falling everywhere and getting mixed with dirt. 

So I took it outside where I could be really serious about it, and not as worried about getting dirt everywhere. There I discovered that it had lots of roots growing out of the holes in the bottom of the pot, and the only way to loosen it from the pot was to scrape or cut them off. So I did. 

And it still was not going to leave that darn little seven-inch pot.

I grabbed a knife and cut the pot off of the plant. It was so rootbound that I couldn't begin to loosen its roots, and I wondered if they'd be able to spread out in the new pot. So then I started to perform surgery on it. (I'm sure it thought I was committing herbicide!) I stuck a fork right into the middle of that tangle of root-ball, and started twisting, hearing the roots snap with every turn. And then I had the bright idea to put the sprayer on the hose and shoot water at the roots. That did loosen and remove some dirt, but I really think there were more tangled roots than there was dirt. At least the roots became a little more pliable.

Finally I decided to stop torturing the poor plant and bring it into the house, pot it, water it, and place it on the plant shelf. And here it is:

After a stressful...probably several months...and a tortuous morning, will this plant survive?

Pray for Rosemary.

And my garden.

Playing in the waterfall at Capitol Reef...
1979?

Time it was, and what a time it was, it was
A time of innocence, A time of confidences.
Long ago, it must be, I have a photograph
Preserve your memories; They're all that's left you.

                                 ~Paul Simon (Bookends)

I have taken it upon myself to scan (and repair) and save all of my mom's photos. It's been a fun and interesting project so far...although very time-consuming. It's also made me think a lot about family pictures—what to do and what not to do. I am not a great photographer by any means, but I think I've been learning a lot about what makes a good picture.

Now, my mom is an artist, and she was always looking for beautiful things to paint, so when we went on vacations she took a lot of landscape pictures. And some of them are pretty cool. 

This is a really impressive picture of Bryce Canyon—especially when you compare it to a lot of the scenery pics we have from our vacations. But you can find twenty more just like it online. Now, in all fairness, when the photo was taken you could not find twenty more of these online—you would have only seen it
in a brochure from Bryce Canyon.

This is also from the Bryce Canyon vacation. I know, without a doubt, that Mom thought this was just so cute that she had to take a picture of it. But I don't even know exactly where this is. Is it the Bryce Canyon visitor center? No idea.

OK. These photos are swell, but they hold little meaning to me now; they are just nice scenery. Again, to be fair, some of the rest of us may have taken these pics, not just Mom. But she didn't even end up painting them. 

So here's Pro-Tip Number One:  Take all the scenery pictures you want; really, do. But make sure there are some people that you love in them, too! I can promise you that forty years down the road your family will care more for the picture that you are in than the awesome scenery.

Like this one:

This is some epic, beautiful scenery.
Better yet, that's my mom!
(at Capitol Reef National Park)

In 1978 our family took an amazing vacation to California. We went to see my brother, Peter, who'd been living there (and is probably the reason my parents decided to take a California vacation). We also went to the San Diego Zoo and, if I remember right, the Wildlife Safari (is that part of the Zoo?). And we went to Disneyland, and Sea World, and a beach somewhere. It was an epic vacation!

Just to really pound that first point in, here are some pictures we took at Disneyland:

I could tell you the reason each of these pictures
was taken—the WOW factor being most of it.

The next three pictures are also from Disneyland.

Here's the Disneyland Castle.
And on the left are Paul, Denise, Melanie, and me
(I'm kind of hidden behind Melanie).
Dad is in the foreground. 

There's Melanie in the Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse. Paul's also in the picture, but he's up higher and hidden by the tree branches.

And, believe it or not, this is also at Disneyland.

Tip Number Two:  When you take a picture, think about the framing a little.

If you look back up at the Disneyland Castle picture, our family is kind of a small part of it. And that's kind of OK, because you want the context of seeing the castle. But you also have to consider that when I cleaned this picture up on the computer, I cropped it a lot. Before I cropped it you could see more of the castle, but you could hardly see us at all.

Consider this picture:

This photo was taken at Capitol Reef. In the very center you can almost see Denise, me, and Melanie hiking along. Now there really is something to be said about the scale of everything here. The scenery in Southern Utah is HUGE! But what if Mom—or Dad—had zoomed in a little to cut off some of the foreground? Then you'd see this:

We girls are a tiny bit more visible. What if the zoom had also cut off some of the sides...and a little more foreground?

Now we are even a little more visible, and you still get the scale of us compared to those cliffs. As it is, the best I can do is enlarge and crop on the computer, which messes with the focus. If you can do the work with your camera when you're taking the picture, you should try to.

Tip Number Three:  Label your pictures in some way. I admit I am not great at this, but I am learning.

For the Disney photos I was lucky that they were still in their original package, and that the package looked like this:

There's a lot of interesting things to notice on this package. 1. The film was developed at ZCMI. Does that store even exist any more?
2. We sent it to be developed on August 14 of 1978, and Disneyland was July 24, 1978, only two weeks earlier. We must have been pretty excited to see our pictures!
3. It cost $2.97 for twenty prints—that's about fifteen cents per print. :-) 

But the best thing is that name and date. Hooray!

Most of the pictures I'm working on are not labeled, and so I have had to become Super Sleuth to figure out when they might have been taken. Let me show you.

Clue number 1: Awww, so cute!
This is Melanie, Denise, and me, at my brother's wedding. (I am on the right.)

I happen to know that I was eight years old when Gregory got married. That's one point. Look at the picture; Melanie and I have the same dresses—that's another point. And then, the length of my hair...

Clue number 2: This is me, the following school year. 

Here you can see that I am wearing the dress from the wedding—which is why I'm pretty sure it's the year after the wedding, making it the 1975-76 school year. But look at my hair! I got it cut!

Here I am (with some extended family) on July 4, 1976; I know it's 1976 because Peter was dressed as a revolutionary man in the 4th of July parade in Kearns (for the Bicentennial). You can see that my hair is still very short.

Hm. Or maybe this is before that school picture, which would make that school photo from the 1976-77 school year. This is a dilemma...

Well, anyway, here's another picture:

Here is what, I'm guessing from the last few pics, is me at my tenth birthday party, which would make this 1977. My hair is a little longer, but not much. It's possible this is my eleventh birthday (1978), but another deciding factor is my little niece, Jenne. She looks like she's around two years old in this picture, which makes 1977 more likely.

We know the Disney pics are 1978. After Disneyland, I have to start surmising and sleuthing again.

So put dates and names on your pictures! You can find pencils that are supposed to be safe for printed photos. Or you could write it in your photo album. Or you could stick them in a labeled envelope. Or some cameras will just stick the date on the photo for you (although I'm not a big fan of that). Just find a way to do it. 

Tip Number 4:  If you have packages of old photos—the ones you had to take to the store and wait two weeks for them to be developed—put the negatives in negative holders now! These sleeves will keep them dust-free—which will be fabulous when you decide to scan and digitize your photos. And they will keep them safer than the paper packets the negatives come in. I've run across several that, over the years, have become very attached to their paper envelopes (probably the adhesive used to make the envelopes). And when the bottom edge of the negative is glued to the bottom edge of the packet, and you're not supposed to get your fingerprints on the negative, how can you remove it from said packet? It's hard to do!

This is one of the negative strips I scanned yesterday. It's taken a lot of time to remove the dust from it (using computer software). In the end it's worth it.

Of course there's always an exception. For one thing, maybe your negatives are already forty years old, and dusty. But also, I haven't been able to find negative sleeves for any other film size than 35mm. So they won't work with 126, 127, or 110 film sizes.

Tip Number 5: Take pictures of life! School pictures are nice as a marker of your child's age, and pictures of events—like weddings and vacations—are awesome. But candid photos show your family life and personality, and bring back memories so much better. For example:

Easter egg hunt at Grandpa's house.
Why am I unhappy?
It was Easter.
It was also my birthday.
And Bruce had left that very morning
for a month-long, out-of-state job.

Here are some happier examples:

Rachel, posed for the camera

Rachel, living life (with Tucker)

Jessica, five years old

Also Jessica, at five years old.

Brandon, posed for the camera

Also Brandon, posed for the camera.
But this time it was his idea.

So, yeah. Take pictures of life. The caveat: Don't take so many that you spend more time behind the camera than you do with your family.

Tip Number 6:  Print and display some of your pictures!

These days everyone has a camera. If you have a phone, you have a camera. And you can scroll through those photos every single day. 

But your family can't. Or, even if you let them take your phone and look at photos any time they want to, there is a...something about holding the photo (or photo book) in your hands. Something about seeing several pictures in context, all on the same page. Something about seeing your favorites displayed in your house. Truly! 

I love these people!

Those Disney pics from when I was a kid? I have never seen any of them since they were first printed. Not one. So it's been really, really fun to scan them and clean them up and have those memories flood back in. The same with all of the pictures I've been working on lately. But I would have loved to be able to look at them over and over again when I was a kid. It's worth fifty cents a print to have them in your house.

So, those are my words of wisdom for today. I guess if I had anything else to add it would probably be this:

Get your old photos and negatives scanned onto a computer! And enjoy them to pieces!