What if our Grandmothers had Blogs...

(All the treasures you see in these pictures are things that I've inherited from my Grandmothers - mostly Mom's mom in these pictures. I'll explain them toward the end.)

Did you ever stop to wonder what it would be like if our grandmothers and great grandmothers and so on had blogs? What a treasure that would be. I was thinking as I sat crocheting last night that our fore-mothers had a different sense of duty. They didn't sit idle. Their hands were always busy even if they were sitting down. We have become such a lazy society with our televisions and computers and technology in general. Great-grandma didn't have that luxury. It was important to always keep the hands busy. Can you imagine how many projects they would have filled their blogs with?

My own grandparents kept journals of sorts. My mom's mother recorded in a ledger different projects she had done - detailed accounts of how much of each vegetable she had canned each day, and sewing projects complete with a list of expenses. I even saw on one of the pages the accounting of how much fabric she had purchased (along with the cost) for my mother's wedding. If I recall correctly, the material for mom's dress and her bridesmaids and all the trim came to a whopping $35. Sadly that journal has disappeared. When Grandma sold her home and moved into a retirement home, she got rid of a lot of stuff. I guess this must have been one of the things to go.

My grandfather on my dad's side used to record each day's weather on his calendar - temperature, precipitation, and so on. He was a farmer, and I'm sure this habit was very helpful to him. We lived near both sets of grandparents until I was 13. After that, they would write detailed letters, telling what they had been up to. We received detailed accounts of canning, farming, charity work and so on. I wish I would have had the foresight to keep these treasures, but as a young teen, things like that didn't seem so important. More than anything I wish I had more things in their own handwriting. I have some, but not much.

Now, we're "busy" but not necessarily productive. I've been so "busy" lately that I haven't gotten much of anything done. Crazy, isn't it? But that's how it is. I would love to go back to productivity instead.

Sometimes, I think that my blog is just for fun, and just for my own personal amusement. But last night, I thought about what a treasure it would be to have a print version of one of my grandmothers' blogs. And so I am inspired. Today we blog. Tomorrow we will be grandparents and great-grandparents. We leave a treasure... even if it seems insignificant now. So I am inspired to continue. And I will continue the tradition of buying a print version of my blog each year... for posterity :)

This is one of the treasure boxes I received from my Mom's mom. Can you tell what decade she last did embroidery in?

This is a view of the inside of her sewing kit. She did a lot of charity sewing at her church. I imagine this was the little kit she took with her. Lots of old thimbles ;)

I was fortunate enough to inherit both of my grandmothers' sewing machines. This was my mother's mother's machine.

And this was dad's mom's machine. They both work wonderfully well, and I do get them out and play with them once in awhile. My daughter will get one of these when she is ready for it. (I inherited a lot of embroidered works from Dad's mom, but I did a post on that last summer. I hadn't posted about Mom's mom yet, so the rest of the things on this page are from her.)

When the sewing stuff was brought to me, there was an extra special treasure tucked inside. This is my maternal Grandmother's wedding veil. What an honor to be the one to get this. I wish I had room to display it properly, but I'm also afraid of sun damage. Maybe when our bigger house gets set up I'll be able to find a place where we can enjoy this, and not just keep it in a box.