Nostalgia!

One of the reasons I started this blog was to keep track of my own projects and to archive the vintage linens in the family collection. My mom has been cleaning out her house and has given me piles of lovely sentimental things and I am hopelessly behind on photographing them.

Among the things she has found in the corners of my childhood home are some art projects I did in school. Here is a very surprised looking portrait of someone:



I made this in 1976 when I was in Mrs. Mustoe's 4th grade class.



In fact, here is a picture of that very class. I'm the girl in the middle row on the far right below the teacher. On facebook, someone tagged the little girl with the glasses in the front row as Liz Phair whose indie rocker career has cooled a bit in the last decade, and the boy below me in the front row is a successful producer of short lived guilty pleasure prime time soap operas.


At any rate, don't think I was particularly talented with clay, but here is a wall hanging we appliqued in art class:



I love that blue burlap. I suppose someone still sells soft burlap like that, but I don't see it at my fabric stores..

Mom also found some very beautiful crocheted things. These were not made by anyone in my family, but they are still lovely.





My grandma gave these thread crochet aprons to my mom because Mom used to hold a little vintage style tea party for a small but lucky group of little students of hers. The tea party was a fundraiser offering at her elementary school. I think I was already away at college when the tea parties occurred.



If I had a vintage style waistline, I would totally wear these.

Maurice Sendak

Watching the hype about "Where the Wild Things Are" has me reminiscing about the books I loved as a child. Do you folks who were kids in the 1970's remember the Really Rosie specials that aired on TV? My mom had a record of these stories in her classroom and I would always listen to them and read along in the books when I went in to her school to "help out".

Here's the catchy "Chicken Soup With Rice":



I especially loved "Pierre". Yes, that's Carole King singing:


Let me know if you remember these too. Once when I was a teacher I had the Chicken Soup With Rice book and I talked to someone about the song and they thought I was totally crazy and didn't remember it at all.

My Own Kids' Baby Blankets

I want to share the quilts I made several years ago for my own sweet babies. My son turned 12 this spring and my daughter turns 9 next week. Where do the years go?

I was a very new quilter when I was pregnant with my son. Before I was pregnant, I tried to make a baby quilt for a nephew who is just a bit older than my son, but that quilt was a total disaster and I never finished it. I learned that I really need to work from a pattern with nice, clear instructions. That nephew received a sewn fleece blanket and a hooded bath towel instead of a quilt.


The pattern was in the book Quilts for Baby by Ursula Reikes. This is a great book and it is still widely available. I saw it the other day at my JoAnns. My son hid from the ultrasound camera so I had to make a gender neutral quilt for him. I hand quilted it. I always intended to quilt the border with some sweet handprint outlines, but I never got around to it and at this point, it does not matter. When he outgrew the quilt, I let my little daughter use it with her teddy bears. My son forgot about it until he saw it our baby photo albums and I told him the sweet story of how I was so excited to have a baby and I couldn't wait to make something special to wrap him up in. He reclaimed it from his sister and I noticed that the quilt was showing up in various places in his room and in his play. It has long since returned to the closet. Seeing it brings back sweet memories of new parenthood.

I have always had a harder time crafting things for boys and men, so just in case I had a baby girl, I made this flannel receiving blanket. Those look like little colorful bunnies, but they are really little stylized flowers.

This was a pattern in a book or magazine I had at the time, but I forget which one. I used fuseable webbing to fuse the shapes down onto cotton flannel, and then I stitched around them with a blind hem stitch using the old sewing machine my grandma gave me. It is two layers of cotton flannel with a homemade double fold binding. I made it while I was dreaming about motherhood, and I didn't use it until my daughter was born.

This animal print blanket was one of the kid's favorites. I found that adorable print at the fabric store. It is backed in flannel and has a fluffy poly batting inside. I wish I knew what brand that batting is, because there is no bearding on that blanket at all. I hate the way poly batting beards...

I cut out some of the animal motifs and stitched them onto some baby clothes that became favorite shirts for our son. We particularly liked the jumping frog and we called our darling son "Froggy Man" when he wore it. I did several other fabric-flannel receiving blankets and another blanket like this one with cars and trucks all over it, but I just couldn't keep everything and those went away to a new home on a charity truck.

There is another gender-neutral quilt I made for my daughter when I didn't know if she would be a boy or a girl, but it is probably down in the basement and I don't want to go down there and face the epic-junk-room-mess, I'd rather be up here getting nostalgic with you.

When I had a new baby girl to craft for, I couldn't wait to sew up this pattern which was in one of my Quiltmaker magazines. I could use various colorful prints I'd collected and I liked the restful blue background. I used these leafy-viney prints to make some little accessories and curtains for her baby bedroom in our first house.

I love this quilt, but it isn't my daughter's favorite. It simply isn't pink and girly or cute enough for her. She prefers the one that is down in the basement, because it has a fun jungle theme.

These babies are growing up! My son is at sleep-away Boy Scout camp this week and my daughter is spending a week away from us alone with her Nana later this summer. Here they are on a weekend trip we took recently to the Wisconsin Dells:

Pom Review and Wedding

I reviewed another pom pom making tool for Craft Critique. Read my thoughts HERE. Turns out that even though it's cheap, it is still not worth it.



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Today is my 18th Wedding Anniversary! The years tick by faster and faster all the time. I was almost the first of all my friends to get married right after college. We were so happy then and it has just gotten better over the years. We sort of only celebrate the big anniversaries every 5 years, but I think we'll go out to a nice restaurant tonight.


It rained on our wedding day in 1991, and that is supposed to be good luck. It was! We had a big traditional wedding early in the day. I was blissfully ignorant about wedding planning and just went with the flow. I remember my Mom planned the food and my younger brother figured out the wine-and-beer bar offerings. We hired a talented florist who was just starting out. I told her that I liked big romantic flowers and pink and she did the arrangements and they were perfect. Actually, the florist was a nervous wreck and my mom and I were calming her down.

Our cake was a delicious chocolate with raspberry cassis. Our baker was being featured in Better Homes and Gardens and she called us up the week before the wedding to tell us that our cake was being photographed for the magazine! It was in the batter stage and the photos never ran, but still! That was fun!

We married in my north suburban Chicago hometown, but at the time we were living in hot and steamy south Texas and hoped for cool honeymoon location. My husband and I do not tolerate hot weather very well. It was our dream to go to Alaska, but we were young and low on funds, so we went to San Francisco instead. It was chilly and rainy there that week, but we loved the weather. Alaska is still our dream vacation and we have never been able to go. We have been to Hawaii and it was nice, but it was not Alaska... Maybe for the 20 year celebration.

Tra-La-La

Lets take a moment to recall one of the shows I watched after school in the 1970s. My parents limited our television, but allowed us to crash in front of the tv for awhile after school. Sometimes, I would also be playing a board game or cards with my brother. I think we pretty much only watched TV after school because I only remember these reruns that aired and I don't recall watching many new shows.

First up, The Banana Splits:

One of the cartoons on the Banana Splits was The Adventures of Gulliver. Flirtacia was the blonde who had a crush on the handsome dark haired giant and hero. One of the Liliputians is a depressed pessimist and he always drones, "We'll never make it..." when the group is in danger.

This is the unforgettable theme to "Danger Island":

"Uh oh, Chongo!"

Another cartoon was The New Adventures of Huck Finn. In this one, live action children actors would walk around in animated environments. I loved the idea of walking around in a parallel universe like this and I would imagine I was Becky. Becky, Huck and Tom are always on the run from Injun Joe.

The Banana Split show was where we kids would see all the Hanna Barbera cartoons like Secret Squirrel and Morocco Mole:

Also on the show were Atom Ant, Magilla Gorilla, Wacky Races and more.

These clips are totally dated and my children are absolutely not interested in the shows I has so much fun watching as a child. Alas...

Happy Easter and Passover Blessings to all!

I went to high school with Dwight Schrute?!

Like I said, I've been digging up old photos and reading lists of names from the past. I went to a gargantuan high school in north suburban Chicago. We had upwards of 5000 students in attendance at the time I attended in 1981-1985. Hallways between classes were a crush of students. I always knew that we have quite a few notable alumni. I knew about Donald Rumsfeld, but not Rahm Emmanuel for example.

It's funny how you hear names in one context and they mean nothing, but then later when you read a gazillion names from your childhood, suddenly it comes back... Hilarious, talented actor from "The Office", Rainn Wilson went to my high school. Here is proof:


I promise you that is him. Unfortunately all my yearbooks have water damage so I can't really browse through their stuck pages.

He was a year ahead of me and he did many of the plays and musicals. I was backstage on stage crew. Here is Rainn Wilson in the show Pygmalion. Seated is actor Jim True-Frost (The Wire). I painted the language chart in the background and was very proud of it. I recall this was a good show but I was mostly focused on the set changes and the lighting cues.


The yearbook notes about the Pygmalion production: "Each role demanded tremendous individual effort by the actor to master the British accent of his character." I think in that photo you can easily see the actual effort expended by Rainn Wilson to affect the cockney vocalizations and body language of his character.

If the pages weren't all stuck, I could tell you what other parts he played in our shows, but I do have him listed as Jud in Oklahoma, so I he must have had a solo singing part at some point. He also played Wint in "Ah, Wilderness" which had the memorable line, "Life is a joke and everything always turns out all wrong in the end."

These classroom photos are so amusing. Here is Rainn Wilson with his advisory (homeroom) in his junior year. Teenage boys have a hard time summoning up the will to smile for pictures. Rainn Wilson is in the center back row.


And just because I know he is reading this and because he and his wife are still good friends of mine, here is a signature from Rob who was 2 years ahead of me in high school:


He calls me a "good little girl"! and well.. it was true.. I was.

This is my dumb stupid brother

Yesterday I fiddled all day doing this and that on the computer and I felt guilty. Today I embraced it and got totally nostalgic. I have very few photos of my childhood. Mom insists that they exist, but she's hidden them away from the light for closing in on 25 years.

I do have some old scrapbooks and this is the page with the school photos of my brother and me. I was only kidding about him being dumb and stupid. Really we were great friends and he was a bright, fun student. Here he is in first grade and I am in second. It is probably 1974.




You know folks, it is Girl Scout Cookie time! Be sure to support your local troop and stock up! This is a photo of my Girl Scout troop circa 1977. We served homemade cookies at the Winnetka Bank on Saturday mornings. This was back when you actually had to enter a bank to do business. I am the brown haired girl on the far right.


During my nostalgia day today I was reminded that one of these little girls, Susie C, got a GI Joe Man head stuck on her tongue and had to have it surgically removed. I am absolutely serious. Ahh.. the things you remember via Facebook.

RIP Isaac Hayes

Sadly, Chicago's own Bernie Mac passed away this weekend, but we were really bummed in our house about losing Isaac Hayes. Our family got hooked on Memphis soul music when we took a family weekend trip there a couple winters ago. My son wrote a report on Memphis Soul for his 5th grade music class and got an A+. He wanted to sample his favorite song, "Theme from Shaft" but decided it wasn't "school appropriate" ("Who is the black private dick who's a sex machine to all the chicks? Shaft!") Son declared Isaac Hayes' gold plated, fur lined, peacock blue stretch Cadillac on display at Stax Records, "the coolest car ever."(Daughter's reaction, "Mom? What does Superfly mean?")

Here's Sam and Dave performing Soul Man, written by Hayes when he was a studio musician at Stax. Son did sample this for his school report:


Seriously, everyone should take their kids to Memphis. We had a blast. We went to the Civil Rights Museum (excellent, but an emotional and difficult history to share with our children); toured 2 very famous recording studios: Stax and Sun records; visited the Smithsonian Rock and Soul museum; saw Elvis' digs at Graceland; experienced the birthplace of the Blues on Beale Street; ate at the delicious historic Fourway Restaurant where Dr. MLKing, Jr. had his last meal in Memphis (not a great neighborhood, but don't be nervous. The proprietors were friendly and the soul food was terrific.)

Another winter, we gotaway to Nashville and found it to be very bland. The economy is better in Nashville, so the city had far less seedy areas, but the country music just didn't have the same allure for us as the rock, blues and soul of Memphis. We like going to cities and seeing social and political history, but it was hard to find any of this in Nashville, except that one of our Presidental homes is there and that was a great tour.

Gadzooks, I ramble! My grammar gets worse and worse. I did find my camera and I finished that sailboat quilt. Stay tuned!

Ebert and Siskel Nostalgia

I miss Siskel and Ebert. (Do people outside the USA even recognize these two?) As a Chicagoan, I watched their show all the way back to their local PBS days when they were saving the aisle seats and "Spot the Wonder Dog" would make appearances. I'm pretty sure back then they didn't even use their thumbs, they just gave films a yes or a no recommendation. I get my love for film and movies from my mom. When my brother and I were kids, we were not allowed to speak or make any kind of noise when the show was on. Of course my brother and I also hung on their every word (I did anyway) and loved the show best when they disagreed and started making personal cracks at each other. Witness the hilarious controversy about the merits of 1993 films "Cop-and-a-Half" and "Carnosaur".

It always used to seem to me that Roger Ebert had more fun at the movies. (He liked "Ferris Beuler's Day Off" while Siskel thought it was irritating.) My husband and I both actually also sort of liked Cop-and-a-Half. 1993 was during our pre-children 5-6 films-a-week phase.

Gene Siskel passed away in 1999 and Roger Ebert suffers from various medical difficulties that leave him unable to speak. The show "At the Movies with Ebert and Roeper" has been dropped by their distributer. I'm not nearly so fond of the chemistry between Roeper and Ebert, but I do like Michael Phillips and I hope the show will live on in new incarnations.

Mr. Ebert still reviews prolifically and has an enjoyable blog. He posted nostalgia about the end of "At the Movies" and his days with Gene Siskel. He put up these fantastic out-takes from their show showing how they both held the other in utter contempt but also loved and respected each other:





Once in the mid-1990's my husband and I were driving on the highway outside Chicago going toward Indiana and we passed Roger Ebert. He was driving a cool looking older Land Rover and he was unmistakable because the license plate was Illinois "Thumbs Up". My stomach actually did flips and I wanted to roll down the window and say something, but thought better of it. He was driving at the appropriate speed in the center lane, in case you were wondering. We were in a hurry to drive back to our home in Michigan and passed him on the left.

I've never spotted Oprah here, but once I saw her make-up guy shopping at my local Target. My stomach didn't do any flipping over him, but I chuckled. Another time my mother-in-law was looking at the same elaborate floral greeting cards as indy-rocker Liz Phair.

Punch-Dancing

Have you every felt such anger and frustration that you need to find a quiet place and punch-dance 80's style? Yeah, me neither, but it sure is funny in the movies!



That clip is from Hot Rod which we saw last summer in the theaters and just rented last weekend. It was really funny with goofy laughs throughout. Our kids also thought it was hilarious. It's PG-13, so it is mildly inappropriate. I like the theme of kids (well, these are adults, but they seem like teenagers) working hard on a big project. The cast seems to be having a fun time and we laughed even more than we have at some of Will Farrell's popular movies. SNL's Andy Samberg was great. Even Roger Ebert gave Hot Rod 3 stars.

The 80's music reminded my husband and I that we need to rent Footloose with the original punch-dancing Kevin Bacon:


Flight of the Conchords also paid homage to punch-dancing:


Got any guilty pleasure summer movies to recommend to us? Our Netflix queue is a little bit heavy with classic Japanese cinema lately. The kids aren't really into those..

Videos and an Update

My summer goal is to get at least one of my new quilt tops quilted on my home sewing machine. My camera is not cleaned out of the pictures from our trip because our summer weather has been too beautiful for sitting at they computer. If you've been to the theater lately you may have seen the preview made fun of in this video.

This video from The Onion is also funny:

High School Tony Awards Honor Nation's Biggest Drama Club Nerds
I was a theater kid in High School so it brings back memories. I never ever did any acting and never wanted to be onstage. I was in the band and on the Tech Crew. As the crew, we sometimes used to joke that our shows would go so much more smoothly if it wasn't for those danged actors getting in the way. If theater kids were considered nerds, I suppose the tech crew was really low on the totem pole, but life is much more fun if you let your geek flag fly!

Anyone watching Swingtown on CBS? I had to take my post about my connection to the show down because I was uncomfortable about all the hits I was getting about it. (I happen to have grown up in the same neighborhood at the exact same time as the creator of the show who loosely based the show on his childhood recollections.) My blog was coming up on the first page of google searches on the topic of the show and I prefer the coziness of supportive crafty blog readers to the snarky judgement of pop culture blogging. My Chicagoland Craft Collective friends wanted to know, so I'll say that the unhappy judgemental woman angrily baking pies is not my mom! I'm also not the young girl who ran away because her mother is more focused on her coke fueled affairs. However, the map she drew to her woodsy hideout is nearly accurate! I don't remember anyone's dad being an airline pilot but lots of people were traders at the commodities market. Our train station does look like the one in the show, but riders to our neighborhood would come out of a spooky underground tunnel which was covered in graffiti in the 1970's.

Dynamite Magazine

Another relic form the 1970's and 80's is Dynamite magazine. I wish I still had my old issues. School aged kids would order their subscription to this magazine through the Scholastic Book Club. The book club is still active at schools, but the magazine is gone.

My favorite feature was "Bummers" which always began: "Don't you hate it when..." THIS SITE has a copy of Bummers. Click on the image on the lower left to see a readable image.

I wish I could find a great magazine like this one for my daughter. I really don't want to order a magazine for her that has regular features about style, make up, and shopping.

That's Jimmy JJ Walker from the TV show "Good Times" It was one of my favorite TV shows. My very own husband has no nostalgia for the television and media I liked from the 70's. He's crazy!

Videos

Some cuteness for a Monday morning. This one is Korean:


Here's a very cute one on potty training from Japan (thanks, Cutesypoo!):


As long as I'm putting up YouTube videos, Here's one from my childhood. Morgan Freeman acting a little stoned and dressed up like Jimi Hendrix with Rita Moreno on The Electric Company. Easy Reader definitely has the hots for Carmelita:


And Stevie Wonder performing an extended version of "Superstition" on Sesame Street:


And this church hymn one is funny. We are switching back to our old denomination as soon as the school year is over. We prefer traditional formality at church and I also like hymn singing with the organ.


This song is so catchy. It knocks Stevie Wonder right out of my brain. And since I did that one, here is another one with "translations" by the same guy. These aren't new, so maybe you've seen them before. For the record, I love Bollywood!

March Madness

So do you all get into the NCAA men's basketball brackets with your friends? We do and let me tell you, it is a sweet, sweet victory to choose teams virtually at random and do well in a bracket pool against people who do tons of research and obsess over the sports pages. My children enter and for 2 years in a row, one or the other of them has made the top 5 in our group of about 20 participants. My now 7-year old daughter picks schools based on the appeal of their school name. We are getting a few more of our friends to go ahead and get into it with us. Winner gets to be first in line for bratwurst at our summer cabin weekend in Wisconsin. Here's the message in my inbox from Kat:

Ok, I am going with the Emma/Sam style of reasoning...have I been to or near the named state/place? Which is the prettier name? I would like a butler, so I will choose Butler. Kim and Jim are from Kansas, so I will pick Kansas. Cornell puts out cool internet ornithological info such as birdsongs and id's, so that trumps that my brother went to Stanford, etc. etc. Fun!

My husband and I attended Indiana University back in 1987 when they won the tournament under legendary Coach Bob Knight (who by the way, hates the press, but is now a new, entertaining commentator for ESPN) therefore we feel this is the greatest moment ever in sports history:

Five Years Ago

Today a big event in our family has been on my mind. 5 years ago, my husband was in a serious car accident. He's doing great, but that was a frightening time for us. Our son was in kindergarten and our little daughter was only 2 years old. I'd just decided not to take a new part time job and it was a good thing because all of our time became about helping his recovery.


This was him five years ago. It really was a bad accident and completely the fault of the other driver. Everyone survived and the other guy had no injuries. At the time, he felt he had to go right back to work. He really isn't a workaholic, but he is very responsible. Looking back, we should have taken a medical leave, but he still recovered. I did have to chauffeur him to-and-from work every day with the kids in the car. We listened to a lot of pop radio and Justin Timberlake and Snoop Dogg had big hits. It gets a little bit embarrassing when your 5-year old can quote Snoop Dogg....

This really was a tough time, and we got through it day by day. We feel extremely lucky and grateful since this event. Although it eventually led to my husband getting what we call an "amicable divorce" from his job. He was able to start his own business and we lived frugally on the settlement money while the business got underway. In many ways, our life is better since this accident. We had to confront some other issues and although I'd say we focused on the right things before, an event like this puts everything in sharp focus.

These days, he still had to drive and drive all over Chicagoland to see his customers. He once liked rollercoasters, but those are forever off limits as is downhill skiing, which we never did anyway. He always avoided heavy lifting or big jobs around the house and yard, but now he has an aching neck to blame.

Just today, I realized this car accident is part of the reason I'm still a stay-at-home mom, even though my children are both at school during the days. Having me at home gives us the calm, low-key life we all prefer. We all have our individual lives, but we are very much a team and support each other.

And completely changing the subject, I've been on a nostalgia trip on YouTube. I saw this several days ago and the tune is still going in my head. Anyone from the USA who was a kid in the 1970's will remember Schoolhouse Rock. These little shorts ran on Saturday mornings alongside the cartoons on network television. Some of us at a certain age can't read the words "We the People" without this tune embedding itself. It is election season here too, so I guess it is timely. My husband and I vote for completely different parties which only increases our resolve to vote in every single election in every race no matter how obscure in order to cancel out the other's vote.



Conjuction Junction is another good one as is A Noun is a Person, Place or Thing.

"I'm Just a Bill" is probably the most iconic of the Schoolhouse Rock shorts:


I also got nostalgic today about classic Sesame Street too. I'll save that for another day.