Family History Pages

Well I haven't had any time for research on my Family Tree but I did find some time to preserve some of the stories of my ancestors and me.  I made some scrapbook pages of my Grandparents Corkish.  It took me all week to make these 7 little pages, but they are done and I am happy with them.  I will write one of my second cousins and see if she can find and send me a picture of my grandparent's home. 

So here are my pages.

 

 

Last Friday while at the Scrapbooking Convention I found these fun design templates and I purchased some and these pages are my first fun with the templates.  You use the templates to shape your pretty paper.  They are from Kiwi Lane Designs.

 

These two pages face each other.

 

Yup that is me as a kid.

 

Our last trip to Nantucket Island. Scanned and printed pictures.

 

Original pictures.

 

 

Some memories.

 

More memories and a picture of my friend Miriam and me at the beach.

 

A lot of the story is in this post, for easier reading.

 

Happy searching!

 

 

Happy Thanksgiving & Memories of Thanksgiving Past

This morning while I was making my stuffing I remembered how my Dad would buy day old bread, cut it into cubes and lay it out on the kitchen table for it to dry out even more.  I don't remember him placing it on cookie sheets to dry it in the oven but he might have dried the bread that way.  He would add his own spices to it and of course saute the onions and celery to add to the stuffing.  I have never made mine from scratch. I think he started using the bag stuffing after we moved to Florida, it was probably too humid there to dry out the bread. 

Wishing all of you and yours a wonderful safe day.  This little video really says all I think of during this special season of Thanksgiving.  May we have an attitude of gratitude all year long.

Week #1 – New Year’s Memories

52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History by Amy Coffin is a series of weekly blogging prompts (one for each week of 2011) that invite genealogists and others to record memories and insights about their own lives for future descendants. You do not have to be a blogger to participate. If you do not have a genealogy blog, write down your memories on your computer, or simply record them on paper and keep them with your files.

I have thought about this prompt since it has been announced.  I have no memories of my parents going out for New Year's.  With my Mom being a nurse and my Dad a fireman I think going out on New Year's Eve would have been a crazy idea.  I think they were of the mind set, it is better to be home and safe and away from those crazy drunk drivers.

I know for myself I worked a lot of New Year's Eves, I was a nurse and I worked mostly 3 to 11:30 PM.  Some of them that I didn't work on or went out late left me with a feeling of disappointment.  Everyone is always making such a big deal about going out on New Year's Eve that it is so much fun and exciting.  Well it isn't that much fun if you don't have a special someone and I really don't like drunks.

One New Year's Day I broke up with a boy friend. He had been my first adult love. We had been going out for almost a year and a half. He had encouraged me to go to school to obtain my RN, I was a LPN when we meet. I believe it was the January before I graduated in May, so about 1972. Something that happened on New Year's Eve just made me feel I don't want to be with him any longer. He isn't growing, I was and it was time to move on, and so I did. I guess I felt like it was a good way to start the New Year. Every couple of years or so we would visit by phone. He hadn't changed, I had graduated with my RN, moved to Miami then graduated with my BSN. Eventually I joined the LDS church, went on a mission. We lost touch with each other. I hope where every he is life has been good for him.

On a few New Year's Eve I went to the Miami Florida Orange Bowl Parade with a group of friends.  Now that was fun!  We get there early to find a place on the sidewall put up our chairs and have a sandwich while waiting for the parade.  I know I have pictures some place of some floats but I can't find them now. 

We never had a traditional meal on the Eve or New Year's Day in my home as a kid and I don't have one now.  I often thought of doing it but never think of it around New Year's. 

My husband and I stay home ad we can barely stay up until midnight.  Traditionally on New Year's Day I take the Christmas Tree down and put all the decorations away. 

My kids would say I am boring, so be it!

Carnival of Genealogy: "There's One In Every Family".

This post has been submitted for the 100th Edition for the Carnival of Genealogy subject "There's One In Every Family". The carnival is hosted by Creative Gene.

I sure my family has some interesting characters I just don't know the stories.  What I do know is a recipe.  My mother use to make this for our Birthday's it is one she grew up with.  It was severed with whip cream and the fruit of the season.  When I was a kid it was bananas for me with a February birthday that was about all the fruit you got get in the old days.  One of my brothers had strawberries.  I don't remember what the other two liked. 

Hot Milk Cake

1 Cup of milk

1/4 lb of butter

4 eggs

2 Cups of sugar

2 tsp vanilla

2 Cups of floor

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp baking powder

Put milk & butter in a sauce pan and bring to a boil.  Beat eggs with sugar & vanilla until light & creamy.  Slowly add flour that has been sifted 3 times with salt and baking powder.  Beat in hot milk & butter.  Pour into a greased & floured tube pan.  Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour & 10 minutes.

Advent Calendar: The Christmas Tree



Christmas Morning 1949

Here I am at age 22 months running gleefully towards the Christmas Tree.  Looking in amazement at the tree and enjoying my very own rocking chair.  That is my Dad's writing, he made the photo albums.

As a child we always had a real tree and I loved the smell of the tree.  I still do but I have had an artificial tree since I brought my first home in 1989.  I didn't want to deal with the mess of the water and needles. 

The year Richard and I married we lived in my little town house which was a 950 square foot.  His boys slept in the living room and his daughter in the second bedroom.  Since the boys slept on the hide-a-bed sofa there was no room for a tree.  We took a card board box, covered it with blue wrapping paper for the background and cut a green tree shape out of wrapping paper and put that on the box.  We put holes into the box and push mini lights into the holes at the edge of the green shape.  It wasn't much but we enjoyed it.  If I can find a picture of this tree I'll add it later. My sister in law as brought us a little pine tree from the drug store, table top tree since we weren't going to have one.

I can remember as a child going to the Christmas tree lot and buying a tree, we usually went in the evening and we were all bundle up to stay warm.  This was when we lived in Whitestone, New York.  It was an adventure to go out in the cold and to see Christmas light.

In Florida we didn't have to bundle up and I think we started going in the afternoon to buy the trees.  It was not a much fun for some reason.

My Dad was in charge putting the lights on the tree.  I use to want to help him and I would get right behind him on the step ladder and he would yell at me to get out of the way, and he added, "If I fall you will become an ink spot."   Luckily he never fell and I never became an ink spot. 

Mom did the fine points of decorating like the ornaments and tinsel.  My Mom would get upset if the boys threw the tinsel on.  I was usually patient enough to put it one one strand at a time.  I don't do tinsel any more, I have cats.



Christmas Tree 2008

 My favorite lights were the bubble candles and I was really glad when they came out again.  So I do have large lights on my tree.  A few years ago I purchased a pre-lite tree and it was fine for two years but now I have a full section where the lights don't work and I have to add a string of lights anyway, what a drag.

Merry Christmas
Christ is the Reason for the Season

Memories of an Exploding Pressure Cooker

Today I was cooking pinto beans in my pressure cooker and I had a little too much water in it and it started coming out of the vent tube, and I mean a lot of water, enough to pool on the stove.  So off the stove into the sink with cool water.  It's Arizona folks and we do not have cold water coming out of the tap here in the summer. 

Anyway it reminded of a time my Dad was cooking lentil beans in the pressure cooker.  I was in my early teens. The pressure cooker explored and there were lentil beans all over the kitchen, the ceiling, the walls, floor and the stove.  It was a mess.  I wasn't in the kitchen when it happened but the noise made me run to see what had happened.  This was in our Florida home after we had remodeled the kitchen, dinning room and added the Florida room.

My Dad was the real cook in my house.  Mom cooked OK but not as good as my Dad did.  He was also the shift cook at the firehouse.  I can remember him making fruit cake and soaking it in some kind of liquor, wrapping it and putting it in the front coat closet until Christmas when we lived in New York.  I think he stopped making the fruit cake after we moved to Florida because there wasn't any place cool enough to store it.  He made chicken and dumplings and lots of other good dishes.  He cooked all the Holiday meals.  He made the best oil & vinegar salad dressing which I could ever duplicate.  I asked him for the recipe and he laughed, he didn't really measure.  A sign a true cook. 

I couldn't resist telling this story, and using the memory that came to my mind today.   

Memory Jogger: Lessons and Hobbies

I forgot which blog I found this suggestion, and I started this post back in May and just found it again.  I haven't been doing much on my blogs too busy with work, organizing my Genealogy files, both paper and computer.  What a time consuming activity that is.  So I'm going to finish this now, why waste the potential.

This was a good memory jogger for me, it was about lessons or hobbies we did in our families. I wanted piano lessons as a kid and wasn't able to have them.  My parents didn't have extra money for something they didn't think I would stick to.  When I was in my late 20's I started lessons.  When I told my Dad I was taking lessons he was curious as to why I would do that since I would never be a concert pianist.  Like that is the only reason why someone should learn how to play the piano. The little bit of talent and ability I had came in handy while I was on my mission in Bolivia.  I used my basic piano skills to teach the first book of piano lessons to the kids in my mission and my companions who were more accomplished did the more advance students. It worked very well. I took more lessons when I came home. But when I married a fellow with 3 kids that was the end of my piano time. Some day I would like to pick it up again.

The similar thing happened with sewing I begged my Mom to teach me how to sew but she didn't want to, I really don't remember the reason.  One afternoon Mom and Dad went out and I took a part one of my full skirts and made a pair of culottes out of the skirt.  I cut out the pieces for the culottes by following the pattern and sewed all the seams back up.  I even had the waste band back on.  The only thing it didn't have was the zipper.  My Mom was so surprised she decide I really wanted to sew and she took me to J.C. Penny's for sewing lessons.  I can remember buying fabric on sale for $0.50/yard around 63.  I sewed all my own cloths for many years, I made a lot of my cloths in high school, my formal for the senior prom, all my cloths for my mission and I made cloths into my 30's.  Now I can't stand sewing cloths.  I made some holiday scrub tops about 10 years ago and that was the end of that.  I much rather make quilts. 

Mary 1965 Graduation Day, in a dress I made.

When I made that culottes my Dad said, "Mary must get her sewing talent from her great grandfather."  My great grandfather Joseph Hartmann was a tailor.