That's right. I'm on vacation or staycation as it is called and I should be very productive. Notice that word should. That should tell you how my staycation is going. That's ok. I am relaxing and that IS what a vacation is all about. So what have I been doing?
Well I've been catching up with some of my gaming friends on the internet. Offering sympathy to some and congrats to others. I signed up for a second test pattern from The Quilt Pattern Magazine. I know. I must be a glutten for punishment since they BOTH are going to be due around the same time period. I have been going through old pictures (Throw Back Thursday after all) and I am slowly been working on projects. So let's get to the pictures shall we?
I posted on Facebook my group of pictures for Throwback Thursday. I thought my cousin in Alaska might be able to identify them and that led to a nice back and forth conversation on Facebook about the pictures. They are from my mother's side of the family and Gayla (my cousin) is from that side and has done quite a bit of research into that ancestry. Thanks to Gayla I found out that my Grandmother Chamberlain (Mertie Christman) had sisters and brothers! Really? I never knew that. We only ever knew Grandma. It turns out that Grandma's siblings in order of birth were:
Besside
Mertie (grandma)
Effie
George Ray
Elizabeth
Hester
WOW! That's a lot of new relatives, especially knowing that they had children and married, etc.
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| This was my throwback Thursday collage. |
Then I found out that the kids were Grandaunt Bessie's. This is Grandaunt Bessie.
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This is Grandaunt Bessie and was also the throwback Thursday photo that Gayla posted. :)
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We also talked about trading off some recipes which led me to look around AND I found some of my mother's recipes that I inherited had recipes from some of my relatives. I love how mom would make notes and rename things. For instance she had "Ethel Koltz's Pistachio Salad" and then at the bottom of the index card the recipe was written on it said "Ethel is married to a 2nd cousin in Hinckley. Great people! I love those notes! Now Gayla has some new leads to look up since I remember that the 2nd cousin was called Harold. It will be interesting to see what she can find out. I also ran across an older cookbook.
Mom also made notes in that cookbook.
The check marks were recipes she was interested in making and the note about the sorority refers to the time she was a sorority cook as well as their housemother. She drew two salaries for that and had fun. She did that AFTER she retired (for the first time).
She also liked to makes notes in the back of the book.
Perhaps after my tomatoes and lettuce are ready to eat I'll be putting in a recipe (or at least their picture). Speaking of their pictures, I snuck into the office this week before anybody was there and took these pictures of the progress of lettuce and tomatoes.
Aren't they doing great?!
I didn't let those things distract me from trying to do some crafting. Besides signing up for another test project (and yes I am working on them), I collected up and got organized another project for cross stitch.
I have only one skein of floss to get but am having trouble finding it. I need to double check the pattern and make sure that I didn't mark down the wrong number. The other skeins are all wound up on the bobbins and put into my plastic storage for the project.
The company I got the pattern from also included cards which have the symbols already printed on them. So I took some of the floss and put them on the cards. That way I don't have to carry around the big box if I don't want to.
That's all for now. I hope everybody has a great day.
