Notice -“Booming Stats” on Abandoned Blog Today
Five years ago I tried to create a recipe blog from my grandmother’s wooden recipe box and my mother’s recipe cards. I’d forgotten all about it until today when I got a notice from WordPress. Try this link to the blog A friend wrote she had trouble
getting to it
I didn’t stick with this blog for very long.
There were SIX followers. Throwback seemed as if the recipes weren’t really relevant nowadays.
It stopped seeming like such a cool idea.
But today I got a notice “Your stats are BOOMING!” On the Throwback Recipes blog. Rhubarb Cake recipe and the home page
And 65 hits (that’s booming after zero) are from El Salvador, 2 are from United States and 1 from Australia. And in just ONE hour.
So thought I would share about my abandoned blog that got rediscovered today.
Did you ever start a blog and abandon it?
It’s always nice to receive those notices from WordPress.
Here is the Chocolate Pound Cake recipe my mother made
30 Years Ago the Price was $5.99
Can you guess what it cost to bronze a pair of baby shoes in 2016?*
I’ve seen a lot of bronze baby shoes mounted on a photo stand. Derek Jeter had a hat bronzed, I read on their site. (Doesn’t have to be baby shoes)
Wednesday night, I was cleaning out a desk drawer and found this envelope and special value certificate to “use by Aug 11, 1986”. Oooops! My money saver certificate has long expired.
American Bronzing Company is still in business (since 1934) I checked them out and there are a lot of options. Not sure if the ashtray is still available but the company has bronzed over ” 14,000,000 baby shoes.”
Our story begins in 1934, when Violet Shinbach, the “mother of baby shoe bronzing,” established a business that would soon become the American Bronzing Company, the largest and most-trusted baby shoe bronzing company in the world.
*And today it would cost $79.00 to get a pair of baby shoes bronzed, unmounted.
I should have ordered in 1986.
I see you can get silver plate restored too if you have an old tea service that needs spiffing up.
A Charm Bracelet Started in the Sixties
Now I’m in my sixties!
Do you have one of these in a drawer or a jewelry box somewhere? I hardly wear jewelry nowadays. These were popular when I was in 7, 8th grade- freshman in high school. (1966-67). Charm bracelet definition and history
Maybe you’re sporting one of those trendy cable types with the bead charms? Each one a carefully chosen gift by someone who knows you or a gift to self, to commemorate an interest, travel or person in your life.
Funny, I have a guitar and a grand piano on mine but am not skilled at either. I taught myself on a Sears guitar the summer of 1964 and could strum Michael, Row the Boat Ashore but a charm to signify guitar playing is funny. And I took piano lessons, unsuccessfully.
I’ve seen gold charm bracelets in antique stores for a lot of money. You wonder about the owner and the significance of the charms collected. And a full charm bracelets can make way too much annoying noise, jingling in the theatre.
Wednesday afternoon, I was out with a couple of friends and admired one’s bracelet with holiday charms, a charm a month bracelet. I told her about mine. She asked me if it still fit! Hmmmm, how much bigger is my wrist now? It has enough links so yes it still does fit but I didn’t know until I got home, dug it out and tried it on. Ha!
The one charm is a typewriter with a tiny carriage that moves back and forth. Fancied myself a writer?
I think I remember which friend gifted me the Forget-Me-Not. There’s an enameled disk from a 1965 field trip to the UN.
When I came home and found my old charm bracelet and went to photograph it, I mistakenly pulled out a crystal dish I thought would look good under it. The dish towel was a better solution. No reflection.
It’s silver and unpolished. I remember you could have the charms sodered on so they wouldn’t come off. If I were to add a charm for my interests today it would have to be a skein of yarn and knitting needles and places visited would fill it up and then some. Charms for my life now could be so different.
Photographing jewelry is tricky, I forgot.
One aspect I wasn’t really aware of or considering is this- “The wearing of charms may have begun as a form of amulet or talisman to ward off evil spirits or bad luck.[1]”.
Of course…….lucky charms! Duh!
Feel free to send a photo of your charm bracelet or a write about a specific charm. Initial pins were the rage in the late sixties, too.
The dish towel for a backdrop
…compared to my first thought of using a the crystal dish as a backdrop to photograph the bracelet
The shadows from the dish looked better than the jewelry.
Plastic charm necklace from the 80’s blogpost you might remember.
Remembering Mary Therese
No matter if decades pass since you’ve seen one another.
You shared something special and exciting a long time ago.
When you remember, they’re younger and laughing and you’re younger and laughing, too. Life was good.
All those years I didn’t mail Christmas cards.
Wish I’d kept in better touch. You hear the sad news.
These tulips are for Mary Therese who passed May 12th.
There’s a celebration of her life at Our Lady of the Pines in Black Forest, Colorado Friday morning, but I’m in Pittsburgh.
I want to tell her beloved husband, Joe, I’m sorry, I remember and I will keep them both in my heart.
Hers is a life to celebrate!
Mary Therese Bonnet
Sock Monkey Brothers
It’s been awhile since I’ve stitched up a sock monkey. The classic.
One for new baby grandson in Ohio and one for a friend of my sister in New York City. The pairs of socks have been in the house a long time. Once I stitched on the faces, they seem to look at me and smile.
Both Anna and Jack have set up a crew of sock monkeys, told them to smile and photographed them. This evening I placed the newly completed monkeys on the couch in my living room. And took their picture
Very cooperative!
One of the smiles needs a bit of straightening out, I see upon examining the image. Ooops.
And yes, my sister and I visited the Sock Monkey Museum in Rockford, Illinois when we were visiting relatives. (The relatives live in Rockford, not the museum)
Sock monkey duo, going in different directions, more than 500 miles apart.
Here are some old sock monkey photos from previous blogs.
When I was a kid (c. 1958)my family lived in the city of Newark NJ. there was a Youth Consultation Service behind our house on Broad Street. At least a dozen girls lived there and each girl had a handmade sock monkey. My mom thought sock monkeys weren’t appealing but I always wanted one. Some people think they are ugly, others think they’re cute. These two have a bit of scrap flannel from the sock monkey pillowcases I stitched for the grandchildren for Christmas. Going with a theme, here. That will be another post.
I don’t think I owned one until I stitched on in 1976.
The first sock monkey I ever made was for my son Mark (39),father to the grandchildren in the photos above. He name it the Doonie Monkey and it was stuffed with old stockings. I use fiberfill now. And for some unknown reason, I never added a tail on his monkey. He resides with the grandchildren in Ohio, too.
I’ve make pink and blue and purple monkeys but my favorite is the classic.
If you would like to make a sock monkey, there’s a terrific youtube tutorial by Professor Pincushion on how to make the classic monkey. I don’t add the ears or buttons on mine.
School’s out for the Summer and for me? for always! That’s it! Retired!
Thanks Susan for helping me get the job at Carrick and for sending me off at the finish. You and Ava were a big help to me, made it a nice ending with Origami paper flying around the parking lot, your catching it.
Thanks for taking my picture in the parking lot, all packed up and ready to pull out. Hooray. I couldn’t have done it without you.
Remembering Jennifer Sara, Born February 26, 1982- Passed February 28, 1986
We had some fun neighbors on Lowe Street in Fort Knox, Kentucky.
The Army Housing had eight units and they lived on the end and we were in the middle. I can’t remember a single movie we saw together but we sure laughed a lot. Years later when we lived in Germany the whole family came to visit us and we have a video of that occasion.
My friend Sally found out she was expecting her son Jonathan when Mark was just a baby in 1976. Jonathan is headed back from his Army assignment in Korea and I know Sally is glad.
And somewhere in my house, I still have the cute birth announcement for their dear baby girl Jennifer, born February 26,1982.
Thirty three years ago.
This post is to honor and remember little red-haired Jennifer and all those who love her. xxooxx
We Used To Be Off School February 22
First day of March and I’m a week
off but I’m blogging from my phone while sitting in the dark in my granddaughters room. Some of the family already headed out to a swim meet.
Here’s the vein of memory sparked by these photos – not for certain when Presidents Day started but will google.
My mother had a small cookie cuter in the shape of a hatchet.
Baked sugar cookies and the skinny dough hatchet handles would break off so easily.
She also made a pie like dessert with canned sour cherries and every so often you’d find a pit. I remember her stirring the juice on the stove with cornstarch to thicken, a crusty biscuit on top, baked.
This pie, a purchased one, reminded me of her efforts to celebrate Washington’s Birthday when I was growing up.
I’ve baked a chocolate log for Lincoln when the kids were small.
For this impromptu photo op, I pulled out the Presidents’ teapot J gave me and then remembered my parents George plate in the china cabinet.
The year mark (77-78) and I lived in Philadelphia while his dad was in Korea, my mom or dad would rock Mark in the big wooden rocker( it’s in his office now) and he’d look up at the blue plate on the wall and say “George” when you’d ask him “who’s that?”
Two months in the photo- almost 39 now
You may remember the “Dear Photograph ” post two Februarys ago.
My son Mark took this photo in my
living room where the red (faded to
Rose) couch sits.
My dad is holding him when the couch was in my parents’ living room in Philadelphia in 1976.
They are both so happy on this old photo.
Here is the series of “Dear Photographs” I experimented with a couple of years ago.
Strawberry Rhubarb Preserves Evoke Memories
A bolt of lightning knocked out the internet so blogging from my phone
Rhubarb says Spring to me.
When the three kids were younger, we’d pile in the car and drive 7 hours to New York City to visit my sister. I’d park in the lot by the pier on the Hudson and we’d make our way up the five floor walk-up to her apartment. Everyone would be asleep on the floor camping out and in the early morning, Aunt Mary would walk to Zito’s Bakery on Bleecker Street, come home with warm loaves. She’d have the butter out and a jar of her homemade strawberry rhubarb preserves. She’d slice the bread on a wooden board. That’s what the kids woke up to – warm bread and butter and strawberry rhubarb preserves-
Berenice Abbott took this photo of Zito’s in 1937.
Today I went to the Farmer’s market on the South Side and bought two bunches of rhubarb and fresh picked strawberries. I was trying to remember the method and chopped the stalks in one inch pieces, put them into a large enamel kettle and sprinkled with sugar to sit.
Added the strawberries and cooked it down. I wish it wasn’t so late and I could have called for the recipe. Just did it from memory.
The loaf from the Farmers Market on the bread board, a gift from my sister.
Postcard stamp on the back of Zito’s card a dime. I pulled it out of the frame tonight. Read what you wrote.
Before Matthew was born and he’s 33!
Kids grown up and gone but tonight as I taste the strawberry rhubarb preserves, I remember.
P.S. And to answer your question Mary, on the card-
I did get that assistantship and that’s how I was able to get hired at Pittsburgh Public Schools in 1989!
P.P.S. Zito’s is gone now.
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