Great Grandma taught the ABCs

Aren't these lithograph printed paper on wooden blocks cool? They belong to
my Great-Grandmother when she taught at rural one room school house.
My grandfather played with them as a child. Mom says she remembers playing
with the blocks at the old family farm, when she was a little kid.
That is a lot of family history. Last year an appraiser from Antique Road Show came through Flagstaff to the "Home Show". Mom took the blocks down to have them dated...1870 to 1880!


My Heritage Scrapbooking Workshop is on Saturday the 10th of October.
Bring a project to work on and we will meet you in the downstairs class room
at Mystic Paper at 4:30 to 6:30...Give Mystic a call to sign up.

Waiting for Grandma

If you remember back to my "Family Connection" blog, I had spent the summer going through family photos, histories and working on genealogy. Most of this renewed interest came about because of the death of my husband's grandmother last November. Grandma's death was sudden. She was 100 years old, and in good health. These pages are in remembrance of her.

The paper has the look and feel of textured wall paper. I rub a white ink pad over the surface, and highlighted with a white gel pen. I used the same gel pen to decorate the laser cut "Waiting for Grandma".

I pulled apart then re-assembled a large white flower. The center is a brad, I covered with tacky tape, and rolled in tiny glass marbles. The "together" tag probably came off a shirt, and the love charm from a wedding announcement. Grandma is hiding in a velum envelope.

Family Connections

I spent the afternoon with my Aunt Louesa and Cousin Sandra organizing boxes of family history items.

This all started out innocently enough earlier this summer. I had asked my Aunt if she had any pictures or stories about a great-great (add some more greats) grandmother. Looking for information turned in to a twice a month get together of going through boxes and files, scanning photos (and writing the names on the picture of the people in them...if we could remember), copying documents and family stories. I enjoy looking at old photos anyway, wondering about the lives and stories of the people in them. When the pictures are of your own grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, it gives you a connection . Realizing their history is really a part of my history and for the most part these ancestors were trying to make a better life for their descendants.

By the end of the afternoon Aunt Louesa, Sandra and I had organized all the boxes and filed about 95 % of the families history. Now the next time we get together ...we're going to lunch.