Creative Homemaker

Hey there's a cute baby contest here! I am SO entering, because I am/was (who's splitting hairs) just about the cutest baby ever. A few of me. The first one-2 years old, just look at those adorable ringlets! What is with the kewpie doll look? BTW, this is the same picnic table about which I had a terrible nightmare later in life involving a roaring lion and his midnight snack, namely, ME! Third grade, four-eyed beauty! My friend Becky and I-waiting in line for our turn at 4-H modeling at the State Fair. I won two gold ribbons; for modeling, and for sewing that stylish jumper. Sixth grade 1978, so very proud of my handiwork. I did the topstitching by myself you know.

Today's batch was fairly easy to clean up. I had them in the fridge over night so mold would not grow. The first two garbage bags went much faster, but then they were mostly pictures in frames, with their own set of problems. These pictures were stacked closely together, so there were lots of pictures in a smaller space. A few things I learned that I thought would be of interest to you and good info to pass on to our customers. Please take your photos out of the developer's bags/envelopes. They almost always have dye in the paper used to make the envelope. When they get wet, the dye will run and stain the top picture. Fortunately, for Mrs. "C", most of these were double prints, so the duplicate was somewhere in the stack. In the stack I did today, I only found one CD, and while it did work and the pictures loaded ok on my computer, there was only one CD. I was hoping I would find more CDs when I started today, making my task go a bit more quickly. There ar...

I was prepared for the worst. I had water and gloves and tools to scrape the mud, garbage bags in which to put the broken picture frames, tables to lay out the photos. But I wasn't prepared for what I saw when I opened the first bag. I'm ahead of myself-- I was moved to volunteer with the cleanup, and came in contact with Kathryn at Daring Young Mom she referred me to a cleanup volunteer who had the photos. She came with 4 bags and 2 boxes, the bags were mostly pictures in frames, old 70's high school pictures, a black and white or two, and lots of snapshots. I was amazed to see that under an inch of gooey mud, they weren't in too bad of shape. Water really isn't an enemy to a picture, they are developed in liquids, and as long as they don't dry out in this condition, they can be cleaned and made right again. I started in on the first pile. I had glimpsed a black and white in the bag and thought I ought to start on the oldest ones first. They seemed to be the m...

Tomatoes, onions, garlic, herbs and spices. 9 am on Monday to after 2 am on Tuesday. hot stove, sticky floors, 4 loads in the dishwasher, soup and bread for the kids and Hubby, burning hands from the acidic tomaotes. Couldn't have done it without DC and her son. Absolutely exhausted. I'm not blogging very coherantly, nor am I spelling correctly, I don't suppose. I have sat here for the last hour and a half trying to figure out my blog again, it has been nearly a year. Couldn't figure out how to post again. Finally, blogger just kind of figured it out on it's own. Good, cause I have no brains right now. DC and her son came to help me to day and oh, my, what a blessing they were to me. I never couldn't have gotten it done without them. Last week, I made about 50-60 pints and half pints of jams and jellies. My cupboard is full out in the garage. Saturday, we got 5 boxes of Tomatoes, 6 boxes of pears and 3 of peaches. I thought I was going to be doing peaches, and p...