Strawberry Fields Forever

By popular request!

This is another handout for my Beehives.

This lesson was on Righteous Traditions.

The lesson reminded me of one of my favorite

childhood memories - making Jam.

My mom LOVED fresh berries!

She tried to grow our own, 

but we only ever ended up with a handful.

Still she wanted to preserve the tastes of summer.

We would travel to the fruit stands and buy

OH SO EXPENSIVE flats of fresh fruit.

At home we would wash and prepare 

the sweet, red fruit.  (Raspberries too!)

This week I took Mikensee out

and we bought all the supplies.

Strawberries were only $1/lb!!!

We showed up at my Mom's and

announced our plans.  My 18

year old sister (18 tomorrow!)

had never made fresh jam.

We had a great day and while

preserving a taste of summer

we preserved a righteous family tradition!

TIP:  If you'd like to see this (or any image on my blog) larger, click on the image!

Just 5 Things

This is my 2nd post for today, so if you want to see the other, please scroll down. :)

For a long time I've been concerned about what posterity might know of me if I didn't leave anything behind for them. I love to scrapbook, but scrapbook pages can often be superficial in natural. By this I mean that we don't often tell about our real self -- our true thoughts and feelings. They usually cover life events of our children and families and I know that the pictures I haven't scrapped by far out weigh the ones I have. I know I also tend to scrapbook the joyous times in life of which there are many, but life isn't always joyous. Sometimes life is painful and hard. What have I learned? What do I wish I'd done? For this though I felt photographs were secondary. I wanted to show a picture of myself from the inside out. Where is my heart? What do I value? What hurts? To this end I began working on a list for myself titled Just 5Things. There are 50 topics on my list. This is some of them;

5 people important to me
5 friends I have known
5 things I would do if I had no limitations
5 things I live for
5 things I don't want to forget
5 things I don't want to live without
5 pieces of advice I wish I could have given myself at 18
5 things I'm passionate about
5 things I wish I could change
5 things I do every day
5 challenges that have changed me
5 things I wish I didn't care about
5 days I'll never forget
5 things I spend too much time on
5 reasons I cry
5 things that might surprise you

The list goes on and on. Like I said, I've worked on this list since last March. I also teach a Pictures In Art Class and this is what my list has become:









There are 6 dividers (shown on my class blog) and the 2nd class will be the pages. The class has been instructed to choose 10 things and I've provided worksheets with questions so that they can journal their true thoughts and feelings. This is to be about them. Even if they choose to tell about 5 people they love, it must be what this has done for them, not just a tribute to the someone else. We will be making scrapbook pages (5X7) for the main 5 things x 5 items (which I've instructed them on how to choose) and then the last divider will hold 5 pages bullet style of the remaining 5 things x 5 items. They have photo instructions to help illustrate the first 5 things. My hope is that the class (me included) will continue to complete the list of 50 things and stuff our boxes so that once we are no longer here to tell our stories our posterity will know us. They won't just have our memories, but our thoughts and feelings in a way I know without this I would never explore. I've told them that I hope they won't even share the boxes with their families now. I think it will be of much more value as a treasure later.

Here's my question for you. What 5 things would you want your posterity to know about you and how are you going to tell them?

Taking a Trip . . .

Tonight I was looking at some stamps. . . Particularly this one:

Don't you just love her?

I was trying to explain to Mikensee why I like this stamp so much (and actually all the stamps by this artist) and it hit me. . . Vintage Holly Hobby! So I started to try and show her who Holly Hobby was and the paper piecing pop art of Holly Hobby I made for my room (oh these were the coolest!). I so desperately wanted a Holly Hobby Bedroom complete with bed canopy! While I was showing her Holly Hobby I somehow turned to telling her about Strawberry Shortcake! Remember her? This is what I was lucky enough to own:





I actually had the very first issue Strawberry Shortcake doll and Blueberry Muffin (with the hard plastic hat!) Telling her about this I could actually smell them. I can still feel the plastic smooth hair and how I felt making those little strawberry shortcakes in my very own Strawberry Bake Shop! There was so much that came later but as I told her, I was 9 in '79 and by 1984 when she hit her prime I was 14 and on to bigger and better things! (Probably Punky Brewster!) So funny actually how something so simple could bring back such a flood of memories! We went from Strawberry Shortcake to Care Bears and then on to Rainbow Brite. I gave her Rainbow Brite PJ's for Christmas and she adores them, but it was fun to hunt the story of Rainbow Brite down and read it with her! (Remember Twink and Starlite?) I'm probably actually really dating myself, but I was amazed to discover that I was the first generation to actually have these really cool icons and the flood of what has come since. So, I'm going to encourage you today to spend a little time on a trip down memory lane and dig up some of your childhood joys to share with someone special in you life. I am going to bed with a smile on my face and the smell of semi-yummy plastic strawberries and blueberries wafting in the air.