Paper Hoarding

I have a number of blogs that I read on a regular basis.  One of them had a link to another blog that sounded interesting.  The woman on this second blog had the current post and then links to older posts.  I clicked on her post about hoarding and how she wasn't a hoarder, she just had lots of interests, and hates to put things away for fear she won't be able to find them again.  She mentioned she tears pages on recipes and home organization, etc., out of magazines so that she isn't keeping the entire magazine for one article.  She's even started a binder.  It reminded me of some things that we've discovered while sorting through my mother's estate.

One of the things we discovered were boxes and boxes of clippings.  My mother kept clippings on everything that interested her.  Recipes and newspaper and magazine articles (especially on multiple births, adoption stories, celebrities, gardening, baking, cooking, health and exercise, you name it).  Some of these boxes of clippings dated back to 1976.  I quickly discovered I couldn't just dump these boxes of paper in the recycling.  I had to sort through them because in the middle of all the clippings I found family pictures, credit cards, and important papers that had gotten mixed in through the years.  It is amazing how many of these boxes she had. I don't think she ever went back through them after she filled them.

In addition to the boxes, she had scrapbooks of a sort, especially on antique dolls.  She'd pull pages out of a book or magazine leaving just the pages that contained pictures of things she liked, and then add pictures cut from other sources until the pages were a hodge-podge of pictures.  There were so many of these that I've marveled at the amount of time it must have taken her to compile all of them.  Now I know what she was doing when I wondered how she spent her days, when I knew she wasn't cleaning her house.  She was clipping and glueing all those scrapbooks.

One of the funniest things we came across though were the recipe notebooks.  In sorting through the living room, my daughter came across a binder labeled "My Favorite Recipes from the 40's and 50's."  My daughter said, "Oh, Mom, we have to keep this!"  We set it aside to take home.  Later that afternoon we found Volume 2 and again, carefully set it aside.  Not too long after, we found Volume 9 and then Volume 7 and at that point we decided there were just a few too many notebooks floating around to keep and the notebooks, instead of being sacred, became funny.  We eventually found Volumes 3, 4, 5, 6 and 8.....and all were emptied and the clippings recycled.  We kept the first couple volumes.  We are hoping they really are her favorite recipes of the 40's and 50's.  :)

~Jane

Craft Time

Despite the feeling that I am spending all my non-work hours working on my mom's stuff, which I am, I did manage to finish my knit market bag on Sunday.  It was a kit from www.knitpicks.com which, sadly, is sold out.  But it was fun to do and I started knitting the leftover yarn into a dish cloth, since its a nice linen/cotton yarn.

Then I got motivated tonight and tried a new diaper pattern my daughter wanted me to make for the little guy and I think it turned out pretty good for a first attempt.  It's supposed to fit trimmer than some of the others.  I guess we'll see when we try it on him tomorrow.  It was fun to try a different pattern, since all of his other diapers I sewed from a pattern I made up myself.  I have to say I think my homemade diapers have worked beautifully.  I did a lot of research and purchased the same fabrics the commercial diapers use.  I estimated I spent about $4-5 a diaper, compared to $16-17 for the commercial ones.  Since we needed a couple dozen of each size, it saved a lot of money and once I got the hang of them, they sewed up pretty fast.  Of course, before I could sew anything tonight it took me two hours to organize the sewing counter and find the snaps and snap pliers.

~Jane  

New Tactics

I've mentioned my mother passed away this spring and I'm cleaning out her house.  To this end, we've had a couple of garage sales.  The problem is with the garage sale you end up selling everything way too cheap, mainly because of the sheer amount of stuff to be liquidated.  We have managed to reduce the amount of stuff we're dealing with, but wish we could get a little more for it as it goes to new homes.  My daughter and I have decided to try a new tactic.  We are trying to sell some of my mother's linen collection off through her etsy shop  www.etsy.com/shop/littlesproutbasics.  Vintage aprons, hankies and linens, still inexpensive, but slightly more reasonable prices than you can get through a garage sale.  We hope.

~Jane

Happy Birthday, Mom!

My mom passed away February 13, 2010, of the complications of colon cancer after a difficult eight-month fight.  Today would have been her 81st birthday.  There are a lot of firsts that aren't really firsts since we went through them last year with her being in the hospital and not really participating.  Last year we couldn't really celebrate her birthday except with cards, but none of us dreamed she wouldn't be with us today.  Happy Birthday, Mom!  You were such a good mom and I really miss you.

Duchess of Duke Street

While scanning through movies on Netflix, I came across a British series called the Duchess of Duke Street.  There were about a dozen hour-long segments to watch in season 1, and they were there for instant viewing while I worked on my knitting and ironing.  Marvelous.  I liked the storyline and I loved the clothing.  A kitchen maid who has the chance to become a chef and then attracts the attention of the King.  It puts her in the position of being able to buy a hotel and the rest of the stories center on Louisa (the Duchess) and the hotel.  A very interesting series and I really enjoyed it.  I was unhappy though, when I figured out there is a Season 2, but you have to get them on disc, 5 discs, one disc at a time.  I don't know why they couldn't be on instant viewing also.  Oh, well.  They are worth the wait.

~Jane

Jane Austen Addict

I'm sure if you are paying any attention at all to my reading list, you've seen a number of Jane Austen-themed books there.  I don't know why...maybe my life just seems too busy lately and I'm hankering for a slower-paced life, but I've definitely been attracted to the Jane Austen take-offs recently.  I just finished Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict and it was a very good read.  Of course, then I discovered www.janeaustenaddict.com, which has some short videos about the book.  Last night, while ironing hankies and aprons from my mother's stash for my daughter's Etsy shop in an attempt to liquidate some of them at other than garage sale prices, I watched Sense and Sensibility again.  Ahhhh.  I think that I'll hit up Netflix again this evening and see what's available to keep me company as I iron.

~Jane

Reorganizing

I've made a promise to myself that I'm going to make a first pass through my house and start culling out what we no longer need and organizing what I want to keep.  I made a minor attempt a while back at cleaning out the linen closet and did manage to get rid of a bunch of stuff that was my daughter's childhood collection.  (No, I didn't throw it away, I sent it home with her to deal with!)  I need to repaint the shelves there, but got distracted by the small guest bedroom.

The small guest bedroom is where I've stashed stuff that I needed to get out of the living portions of the house, usually because company is coming, or things I want to keep but haven't found a place for yet.  It is the place in my own home that reminds me the most of my mom's, so this weekend I tackled it.  I sorted through a number of boxes of papers, and went through a filing cabinet that I haven't been in since I closed a craft business 20 years ago.  I ended up throwing almost everything in it away, but found a treasure I thought was lost...a silly manuscript that a friend and I wrote in high school.

I washed the walls and window in that corner; washed, ironed and rehung the curtains; and vacuumed the carpets.  I reorganized my doll furniture, quilt tops, and photos into storage containers instead of boxes that were falling apart.  My next task is to go through the books and yarns in the room.  But it is amazing how much I've already been able to throw away and how much floor space I've gained.  It really makes me feel good.

~Jane