Christmas Packages and Choir Dolls

For the past couple of days I've been gathering everything that must be mailed to members of my extended family for Christmas. Since I live in Maryland and most everybody else lives in Texas, that's a lot of people. Now, my thing isn't about spending a lot of money and shopping for the next big thing. Mainly because I don't have a lot money...never have...never expect to. Necessity is the mother of invention, so they say. In my family, make that poverty is the mother of creativity!

I don't know if my mother made these because of a lack of money for buying decorations or if it was just a burst of creativity. I say a burst because with my mom we saw a steady stream of creativity and talent every day of our lives. But I remember when she made these choir dolls by folding magazines, spray painting them and adding a few other details. They're made with a copy of Look magazine, one Good Housekeeping and a TV Guide. My dad drew the faces and cut them out. I helped by staying out of the way!

These choir dolls were put on display in a place of honor atop the piano every year at Christmastime until they practically fell apart. I still have these original dolls. One year I started to make new bodies for them, finding current magazines of the appropriate sizes and I made an interesting discovery. Today's magazines have at least four times the amount of pages that magazines had in the early sixties! If I try that again I'll have to do it with with much less than a whole magazine! I'll get to it someday. In the meantime, here's a picture of the originals:

Happy 100th Birthday, Grandma!

Yesterday was my grandmother's birthday...her 100th birthday!

I didn't get to go to the party since she lives in Texas and I live in Maryland, but I sent flowers to honor the occasion. I talked to my sister tonight and got a good report of the festivities and it sounds like a good time was had by all, especially Grandma!

A few weeks ago I was in Texas for a brief visit and my sister and brother-in-law and I went to see Grandma. We had brought along some old family photos we'd found that we'd never seen before. One photo showed what appeared to be a large family gathering of some kind...several couples with kids of all ages, one mother holding her baby in her lap. We showed it to her and asked if she knew anything about it. She perked right up and said "Oh, yes! That baby is me! I was six months old!" She said it was a family reunion and she pointed to each person, reciting their names and relationships, telling us the whole story of the event as though it had just happened last week.

We were spellbound. Well, at least I was. My sister was scrambling to write down everything she was telling us so we could have it all documented!

100 years. She told me once how she used to pick cotton as a child of 6 or 7, with the hot Oklahoma dirt burning the soles of her bare feet as she dragged that long sack of cotton behind her. And yesterday, I was ordering flowers for her over the internet and now I'm sharing the story with all of you. 100 years...amazing....

New ACEOs

The puzzle ball is still in progress, but I hope to finish it today.

I got distracted making some new ACEO's that I had a lot of fun with. I've printed out lots of my photographs in tiny sizes so I can make more soon. Here's what I've added to my etsy site:




Here are two others I made, too. I've given these to a couple of friends of mine, but I'll probably make some similar ones to post on etsy, too:






And here's another one that's not listed on etsy yet, but will be soon:



Now if I can keep from getting distracted by ACEO possibilities, I'll get that puzzle ball finished!