DON’T FORGET:
Those of you interested in Ten Ping’s Christmas dress, remember it ends tonight! (Saturday) If you want, you can click on the picture at the right side bar or you can click HERE to see the listing on Ebay.
It was wonderful reading all your “thankful” comments yesterday and the day before. As hard as this year has been, we ALL do have lots to be thankful for! :o)
I spent some time at our local Food Pantry today, moving LOTS and LOTS of gallons of milk from a pallet to several coolers… what a workout!
…then we sorted produce and THEN we started up on the present wrapping again. On December 13th, they are letting families come and get boxes of food and for each child, they can receive a toy. Generally there is a toy room and the parents can go it and see what’s on the shelves and pick something out by seeing it… Well, because of Covid, it was decided we would still give out toys, but they all had to be wrapped… We’re talking 900 or more toys…
These are the volleyballs I wrapped… Leann, pumped them up and I wrapped…ever try wrapping 25+ balls?
We still have these basketball, kick balls, and soccer balls to go…
Here’s the toy room…
Linda Gronvall sent me a picture of her Kirsten doll in a dress she made …and said this in her email…
Hi Jeanne,
From another one who is thankful to the Lord for you, your daily blog and the sweet women who comment.
I had this 1950’s turkey out to show my grand kids…. but we did Zoom, and I forgot. As I’m putting it away, I’m thinking the Sofa Sisters might like a trip down memory lane, back to when we decorated with these honeycomb figures. Kirsten is wearing a Vintage Woolworth’s special, off the rack. Except for the braids, it’s how I dressed. Mini Maryellen is wearing a failed attempt at a jacket, without the cute edging that you do. Too small!
Happy Rest of the Thanksgiving weekend….. but then it is really a year around attitude!
Blessings,
Linda G
Thank you Linda… Kirsten was cute enough to have been your centerpiece! :o)
Well, I’m going to have to get to bed…it’s already after midnight and I have lots to do tomorrow…
See you Monday or at the finish line tomorrow night on Ebay! :o)
Blessings, Jeanne
I don’t quite know why I didn’t make it to comment yesterday, but for sure I did read your blog, Jeanne! I loved Joy’s family “turkey picture” What a fun family you have, Joy! I remember going to a wedding, and the entire wedding party posed for a picture, all wearing Groucho Marx glasses, noses and attached mustaches, even the bride! Hilarious!
I loved Deb’s music! Such talent in your family, Jeanne! Her husband’s sketch also caught my eye, since I majored in art in college.
I was really tired after cooking a dinner for two on Thursday! Am I old or what? Actually, no matter if you cook for 25 or 2, you still have to do what each dish need, and to get it all together at a certain time! We had a nice sit down meal, but then the clean-up! I just wanted out of the kitchen at that point!
My goodness, wrapping all those gifts……and after a lot of people had big dinners the day before! What’s in the water in Carbondale? It’s wonderful that there are poeple like you who put others first!
Linda, your Kirsten is just adorable, and in such perfect condition! She makes a cute modern girl and little Maryellen is darling in her fall outfit, too small jacket and all! Who would know? Yes, I do remeber those honeycomb turkeys and other things! I believe I still have some!
Please tell me you weren’t lifting crates of four gallons of milk. You’ll feel it today if you did. You continue to amaze me with your energy and generosity! I know I’m getting old, but just standing that long would finish me off. So glad you’re there for your community in this difficult time.
The Woolworth’s dress is the best use of striped fabric I’ve ever seen. It’s funny, but it seems the heavier the person, the more likely the stripes are positioned horizontally on a garment. Kirsten wears stripes wonderfully. Those are sure her colors and of the Swedish flag.
Hope I left a Comment about the wonderful picture of Joy’s family in their turkey 🦃 hoodies. What a fun family gathering with all in the spirit of each holiday.
So nice of you to fit in time at the food pantry and wrapping all of those volley balls. I’m sure you developed a special method for round wrapping. 🙂
Love Linda G.’s striped dress for Kirsten. That is a great pattern. Mini Maryellen’s jacket is so cute with her dress. Those tiny ones make sewing a challenge for me. And I definitely remember Mr. Turkey. In fact, I found a mini photo of one in a magazine showing vintage the other day. Cut it out and glued it to cardboard to use on a dolly table maybe next year. 🙂
Hope your family dinner today is relaxed. Be thinking of you.
I love Linda’s foldout turkey. I still have several of them and even though they are somewhat “limp” they still fold poof up nicely.
Wrapping a ball? Without a box? I can’t imagine!
Linda, I love when stripes run in different directions on the same garment!
How nice you were able to help out at the food pantry. I’m sure the gifts will be so appreciated. I can see, even though they are wrapped, the parents will still be able to choose which is so nice.
Linda, yor Kirsten looks adorable in her striped dress and I love how you positioned the stripes in various ways. Mini Maryellen looks sweet in her candy corn dress. It’s not a failed jacket, it’s a cute little vest!
The honeycomb turkey is perfect. I think my grandmother still had some of those around in the 1970’s when I was a child. We have a set of Gurley repro Thanksgiving candles ( pilgrim boy, girl, and turkey) and then I have the real Gurley candles of a choir boy, girl, and baby angel on a moon that I found at our antique store. I love those dime store items that used to be commonplace.
Thank you so much, Barbara and Jeanne, for your prayers for my friend, Tina. She’s lost her sense of taste and smell, has a sore throat, and was running a fever. I’ll be checking in with her later today again.
My COVID was like a weird sinus infection. It really messed with my claustrophobia. I felt like I couldn’t breathe but it wasn’t in my lungs at all. It was like someone putting a bag over my head. The loss of taste and smell didn’t help. But I have some of the same symptoms when I just have a head cold, but I don’t feel claustrophobic then. Not sure what the difference is. I had a sore throat and a low grade fever too. I’ll keep praying for a quick recovery for Tina.
Loved the photos of Linda G’s Kirsten and Mary Ellen. The dresses are lovely especially the stripes.
What a lovely person you are Jeanne, in spite of being so busy you still found the time to to load milk and wrap presents for others. I think you did a better job than I would have on the balls!
I have had two very late nights in a row and I am so exhausted. My own fault, I stayed up on Friday night to watch the first International cricket match of the season (a T20) and last night was the last Rugby International match of the season. At least NZ won both nights. There won’t be many more cricket matches for me though as NZ Cricket have sold the TV rights to a different company than the sports channel I already pay for and I can’t afford to pay for the new one as well. They sold on Friday’s game to our free to air channel but I don’t think they will do that too often. Did I mention I was a sport nut! Our congregation at church is very small and only one of the men follows the rugby so he and I always have great conversations on Sunday morning after a big game, conversations that no one else understands or cares about!
I guess I had better get on, have to be at church early this morning and then the market this afternoon. Not sure if it will be outside or in, the weather has been a bit iffy this week, we have gone from 25C+ every day last week to 15 and 16C and lots of rain this week. It is supposed to be 19 today but we’ll see!
Hope you had a lovely day with your family Jeanne
Just to give credit where credit is due, Kirsten’s dress came “ready made” from Woolworths dime store in the 1950’s. Yes, it’s Swedish colors, maybe why I liked it. Not sure I would ever have had the patience to fiddle with the stripes! I did make Mini MaryEllen’s dress out of some left over mask material… but struggled with the tiny jacket/vest. Makes me admire Jeanne’s skills all the more! And, Joy? that had the mini campers!
Linda D, I hear you on the same amount of work no matter the numbers! And when you have larger numbers, people always bring part of the food! AND help with the clean up! It was just two of us, so we had to do it all…. prepare all the dishes and clean up! Yummy left-overs and thankful for someone to share it with.
Enjoy your family day, Jeanne.
And now we can dress our dollies for Christmas!
Linda,your striped dress is so cute on Kersten….brings back memories of using stripes on lots of clothes. What goes around comes around…so maybe stripes will come back😳😜🤪
Jeanne, I hope you have a big bottle of Advil handy….Although it would be a great work out!😉
I tried to wrap a ball once. Yours look quite amazing. I imagine you figured out what worked best very quickly and wrapped the others the same way. A woman who san figure out a pattern for re-flooring an old house is not going to be outwitted by a ball.
Kirsten’s dress is charming, and her hair is so well kept. Her turkey does not look especially grateful to have made it through Thanksgiving. He reminds me f a recent news article about a turkey who has been terrorizing people who visit “his” park. He had been well behaved and much appreciated but his personality has changed.
The many healthcare workers I have met during the last couple of years recommend Tylenol as least harmful. I hope you don’t need it but I don’t see how you could avoid some pretty solid muscle pain. At least you earned it doing what you wanted to.
Here’s my secret for wrapping a ball. Put it in a large gift bag, put colored tissue over the top of the ball, and tie the handles together with ribbon. Probably wouldn’t have worked for the current intent, so you definitely have my admiration. I was thinking it was pretty “given” what was in the ball package, but how do you tell what is in the other packages?
I did not mean to say Deb’s composition was not original, but she said she took it from a simple waltz Molly used to play and embellished it. I’ve been involved with music since I was little, mostly singing, and I noticed over the years a good number of pieces of music contain something I’ve heard before, even if it is just a few notes like in Deb’s waltz. So it’s possible the simple waltz may have been taken from something longer and then used in the theme song from “Charade”. It was a great movie back in 1963 with Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. Definitely worth watching. I used to watch that show “Name that Tune”. If I’d heard a song before, I could name a tune after two notes and sometimes three. My brain extrapolates the notes. That is why it’s easy for me to memorize music, which makes it a whole lot easier to watch the director rather than my music when I’m singing. Obviously Charlotte has the same, since it was pretty subtle in Deb’s song. The ability is more natural than trained I found out when I told my music teacher that “Finlandia” was “Be Still My Soul”. She has been studying voice and piano since she was a child and she never noticed that. She said she didn’t think so. So I hummed a couple bars of each and she realized I was right.
I love Kirsten’s dress. It reminds me of many of my school dresses over the years. And I sure do remember the honeycombed turkeys and other things for Easter, bridal and baby showers, etc.
Woolworth’s! It’s been years since I thought of Woolworth’s. When I lived in Bethlehem, PA, it was my go-to store for a lot of things. It was on my way home from high school. We had to walk a long way so several of us would meet up and make the trek together. On the way home we would stop at Woolworth’s for a hot dog and coke. I bought many patterns at Woolworth’s. My grandfather supplied the fabric from remnants from his job at Bancroft Mills so I only had to buy the patterns and notions. Then when I moved to Wilmington, DE, and was working for DuPont I went there for lunch almost every day. I do miss those lunch counters. Good food at a great price.
Speaking of pain killers, one of the best ever for short-term pain was Darvon or Darvocet. It was non-habit forming and really worked. My grandfather used it for his Bursitis and I used it once when I had a horrible issue with my back muscles after shoveling snow. I couldn’t have gone to work without it. What happened to it? Last I heard it was discontinued after being dissed in favor of opioids .
It appears the repairs to my sewing room roof did not take. After two days of rain I noticed water all over the floor again. It just misses my cutting table. I keep hoping for a good wind storm so I can put in for a new roof. We really need one.
I realize this afternoon that I forgot to read your blog before I went to bed last night! So, a quick reply.
Wow, you really were busy with things yesterday! Moving all that milk, wrapping volleyballs, etc. (I found sometimes tissue paper or really inexpensive gift wrap works better for wrapping balls than the really “nice” gift wrap, which is heavier and stiffer. Although I suppose the parents miss the fun of looking at all the toys and wrapping them themselves, it does save them a little time by having them wrapped already. Did they put identifiers on the wrapped packages so you would at least know age/sex of the child for whom it was intended?
Love the striped dress on Kirsten, and little Mary Ellen’s outfit, too! It takes some time and practice to get “good” at sewing tiny things, as I well know! I still don’t sew a Lot for my smallest dolls!
But Woolworth’s….oh, such memories! Although in the little town of Stephenson, Mich., where I grew up, we didn’t have Woolworth’s, but Ben Franklin, and that was just as fun! And, yes, some of my dolls’ clothes and accessories came from there!!
Had a phone call from our granddaughter (13-1/2) today. We had a nice visit, and I asked her what she’d like for Christmas. Her answer? “I could use a new pair of fabric scissors!” Music to this sewing grandma’s ears!! And yes, she’s still sewing!!! Gotta love that girl! I wish they lived a Lot closer!! (My grandsons are all equally dear, but you know, a sewer and all….)