The Mantle

I'm not sure if I've lost my mind, but I've decided that I'm going to do a post everyday from now until Christmas. It's not like I have extra time on my hands, but this morning it seemed like a fun challenge because, as you know, daily posting is not something I am usually coordinated enough to do.

Today, I'm going to take you on a trip down memory lane with the decorations on my mantle. They all have a story, of course. So sit back and pretend to be mildly interested as I regale you with the accounts of where I got some of them. 

This tapestry was my mother's. She got it from a young woman, Melissa, from our hometown who lived in Thailand for several years doing missionary work. During Melissa's stay, my mother sent her many care packages and letters. My mother was good about that sort of thing. Over the years, she sent out hundreds of care packages to college kids, people in nursing homes, etc.  

(Packing tip that I learned from my mother. Cookies travel well in an empty Pringles can.)

This was made by a close family friend.  She and her husband are renaissance people and can do just about anything they set their mind to. At the time she made this, one of their endeavors was making rustic furniture.

These needlework trees were made by my aunt. They were especially appreciated because they were made after she started to have problems with dementia. 

This Christmas tree was made by Wally when he was four years old. As you can see, it's a pine cone that's been spray painted green, glued into a wooden spool. Most of the "branches" had sequins glued on them for the decorations. There are only a few of those left at this point.

When I was in college I lived in a trailer park. Next door was a lovely couple who watched out for me. One Christmas, they gave this tree, that the wife had made, so I could have some decorations. I have seen these ceramic trees in the stores recently marketed as vintage trees. It's true. Everything old is new again.

This is the Christmas stocking that I grew up with. There were four of them just alike for me and my sisters.  We didn't have a fireplace, so in the beginning they were hung on a window sill. Later they moved to the steps' railing where the made an appearance every Christmas until my mother entered the nursing home. They were always hung from oldest to youngest, but to avoid confusion, my grandmother embroidered our names on the top of them.  (You may notice, I carefully cropped that part out.) I hung this one along with my other one and have told Santa I'd like both of them filled. :)

This tree and its ornaments belonged to my grandmother. She died when I was nine after living with us for several years, but I remember seeing it in her house. Technically, this is not mine, but is supposed to be rotated among me and my sisters. They deferred to me this year.

And in other news, the passing showers we were supposed to have this morning 
turned into almost an inch of rain followed by snow. 
No real accumulation. That is coming Wed.

Christmas is Coming

Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat... 

That's my Christmas song earworm for the day and no one does it better than Miss Piggy and her friends. 

Christmas is coming and we are busy with preparations. The outside lights are up, however parts of two strands have stopped lighting.  But they are what they are and still pretty all the same. (In a Bah, humbug minute, I'm getting tired of lights not working. We have a large bag full of strands that will only partially light. What good are LED bulbs that will burn forever if the wires between them are cheap. I'd spend more for lights if I could figure out which ones were better quality.) Shortly after we finished the outside lights, I mailed our annual Christmas letter. Christmas letters and cards, for that matter, are very old school, but I'm going to keep them up as long as I can. Because, let's face it, I'm old school for most things.

The tree is also up and decorated, and we declared the inside decorations done yesterday. Nothing fancy, but just enough to make it festive and special for this time of year. Last night, Ward and I sat down and figured out what still has to be done to complete gifts for the people on our list. We making many of our gifts this year and have been busy elves working on several things that I can't show at this point.

And it's a Christmas miracle. I have two poinsettia plants that I got last Christmas which are still alive! And they're blooming!! They are spindly and all of the leaves are falling off, but they make me happy all the same. I think of them as the  Charlie Brown Christmas tree of the poinsettia world. :)

Do you celebrate Christmas? Are doing any decorations this year?

From the files: Yellow

Yellow is not the main color on our mat, 
but this makes me smile all the same.

 Bless at My Two Cents is participating in a winter photo scavenger hunt and recently she featured prompt 19, Something Yellow. That made me think about the various posts I've done focusing on different colors. I found the Yellow one am reposting it below.  It was done as part of the 2019 A-Z challenge in April of that year. 

 Yellow is such a cheery color, I hope you find some that makes you smile today. :)

Y is for Yellow around and about the house.

I think this banana is perfectly ripe. My father would have agreed, but my mother would have said that it was almost rotten. Ward will eat them green or very ripe. What's your banana preference?

This is a very positive picture book about the possibilities of a day. Good pictures and simple words for kids and also, a great message for adults and kids alike. It's one of my favorites.

I snatched this magnet from my mother's refrigerator when we were cleaning out her house. Blue and Yellow (gold) are WV's state colors.

Double sided tape always says school projects to me. Many posters were made with this kind of tape at our house when Wally and Theo were in school. BTW, I learned from all of them that you get what you pay for with DS tape.

Speaking of school, these are scissors that Theo used in third grade. The pen on top is my new favorite. It writes with smooth purple ink.

This is one of my gardening reference books. Like most of the Dummies books, it gives good information in a clear, easy to read style. 

Dandelion and a tiny ant enjoying its nectar. Dandelions are so pretty. I wonder when it was decided that they were a weed?

Leaf scoops. These are handy for picking up any kind of debris around the yard. We bought them on an impulse several years ago and have never regretted it.

The groundcover, yellow lanium, is in bloom. With its varigeited leaves and yellow blooms I think it is quite pretty.

From the Files-My Name

 In the comments on my last post, Bless said she finally put two and two together and figured out my name was June. So I thought it was a good time to rerun a post from the files where I explain the names I use on my blog.

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Leave it to Beaver or the Family We're Based On

You may have noticed that my family has the names of Ward, June, Wally, and Theodore. Some of you may have thought that those were our real names. However, some of you may have realized that those are our aliases based on names from the TV show,  Leave It to Beaver. Leave It to Beaver was a situation comedy that aired from 1957 to 1963 and is still in reruns today. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leave_It_to_Beaver

The show revolved around the Cleaver Family--Ward and June, the parents, and Wally and Theodore, (also known as the Beaver), their sons. The premise of the show was that Beaver and Wally got themselves into scrapes that frustrated their parents but from which ultimately everyone learned a lesson.

When I chose these aliases for my blog world, I didn't think much about the significance except there were the right number and gender in the Cleaver family, and they were from a show that made me smile when I thought about it.

In this post I had planned to talk about the details of the Cleaver family and compare and contrast them with my family. However that's too much work, so I'm just going to tell you a couple of things I found interesting about the making of the show that resonates with me.

--The makers of the show wanted to get gentle laughs. If anything got a really big laugh, they changed the script to make it more of a chuckle or smile. While I love a good belly laugh, the gentle laugh fits with my basic philosophy of life: Everything in moderation.

--June often wore pearls and heels when she was cooking and cleaning around the house. This is often made fun of because it was so unrealistic. However once I heard an interview with the actress that played June, and she explained why those wardrobe choices were made. Apparently the hollow at the bottom of her neck looked strange on film, so they had her wear pearls to fix the problem. Also, as the actors grew that played Wally and Beaver, they wanted her to be taller than them to still look authoritative as a parent. Thus, they had her put on heels. While you'll never find me cooking and cleaning in either pearls or heals, this reminds me that snap judgments are often wrong. Many times you just don't know all of the facts.

--Leave it to Beaver was the first TV show in which the kids were the main focus and not the parents. I don't have anything meaningful to say about this except that I find it interesting.

Another time, I may go into individual episodes, but for now, you know where our blog names came from.

But Wait There's More:

 If you read here very often and you've been paying attention, you may have noticed that several other major and minor Leave It to Beaver characters show up in my posts.

Lists

 Remember the Book of Lists by the Wallechinski-Wallace family? It was a big hit when it first came out in 1977 and contained lists of all kinds of obscure subjects like the breeds of dogs that were most likely to bite to people suspected of being Jack the Ripper. They have published four more list books since then, although it's been years (maybe decades) since I've seen one. I like lists as a way to help organize my thoughts and as a way to remember things. So today, I'm going share some random lists that are bouncing around in my head.

When I wasn't making lists, Ward and I took a walk at a local
Audubon bird sanctuary yesterday.

What we had for Thanksgiving Dinner:

1. Smoked turkey

2. Make ahead mashed potatoes

3. Cuban cranberry sauce

4. Ward's stuffing, June's stuffing (Ward and I grew up with very different kinds of stuffing, so we made some of each.)

5. Roasted butternut squash and peppers

6. Green bean casserole

7. Apple pie

The names of all of the Tawney-Shreve kids:

For a few years when I was growing up, we had a large family living across from us who had nine kids. Just for the heck of it, I've been trying to remember all of their names in birth order.

Jimmy of onion-eating fame. June Ann
liked to eat them that way, too.

1. Sissy (Shelia)

2. Sheryl

3. Jimmy (Rhonda, who liked to eat raw onions like they were apples)

4. June Ann (skinny, cross-eyed girl who later became a model)

5. Sharon

6. Billy

7. Bobby

8. Richard

9. John (named after his dad).

The mother, Opal, was living in her mother's tiny house with her second husband. I didn't understand it all, but I knew that they were all afraid of the first husband/father. I am so lucky that just across the street, I lived with a very stable family and no one was afraid (except maybe when we didn't do our chores or do something we shouldn't have). 

Countries I've visited outside of the US:

Wally celebrated his 1st birthday in Guatemala 
with his great-grandmother and others.

1. Canada-during a trip to Niagara Falls

2. Guatemala-visiting Ward's relatives

3. The Netherlands-with with Ward on a business trip, The first Gulf War started when we were there and getting a plane back became iffy, but obviously it worked out.

4. Brussels-an excursion from the Netherlands, a lot of good French cooking there

4. Japan-visited Miss Landers who was working there. 

I think travelling outside of the country is very important because it gives a different perspective on how the rest of the world lives. It has helped me realize how thankful I am that I was born in the US. With all of that being said, I don't have the travel bug and am a happy to explore what is around me close by. 

On my To Do list for today:

This picture is from a couple of weeks ago when there were still
some flowers around that had survived the frosts we'd had. 
Now they're pretty much all dead.

1. Clean flower beds, collect seeds for next year

2. Pick turkey carcass and make soup

3. Help Ward put up Christmas lights

4. Start writing Christmas letters

5. Finalize gift list

Well, these lists are not nearly as interesting as the ones in the Book of Lists, but it is a post to let you know that I'm still alive and kicking.

Until next time...