Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Heather: How I Learned to Read Before I Could Talk

It took me 13 years before my teeth, tongue, and throat could work together and speak in intelligent words and sentences in a consistent manner. This was especially true if any emotion was involved, and my words got mixed up in mumbled flurries of frustration. It led to constant belittling and teasing by my peers. In a world where "normal and everything in working order" is where you fit in, I often turned towards books as my friends.

The first book I learned to read was Walt Disney's Cinderella in 1978. I was four years old. I taught myself. I was barely saying a few words, and could only lipread a few words. Reading books is the only place that made sense to me. The best way I can describe how I was able to do this is that one sense was missing, so my other four senses took over and got stronger.

My favorite book to read over and over every single day was The Rand McNally Book of Favorite Animal Stories. I got it for Christmas in 1980 when I was 6 years old in 1st grade attending a deaf class in Provo. I already learned how to read before going to kindergarten, but it was mostly from the same Cinderella book as there was only a few books on the shelf at the time. Sometimes I would leaf through encyclopedias that my mom had just to look at the words.  I learned a lot about words, vocabulary, sentence formation, and how people would speak to one another through this RMB Animal Stories book. I remember that reading wasn't promoted in my deaf class, we didn't have story time, or reading time, or even reading groups. They were too busy helping us learn to talk and work in a classroom environment, and learn to follow the instructions or rather the ineffectively shouted commands from the teachers. There was no sign language available as Utah promoted "speaking and lipreading only for the deaf" kind of environment back in the 70's and 80's.


A couple years ago when I was visiting family in Utah in 2009, I was poking around my Dad's garage. There was a shelf filled with old books, Bell jars and even a briefcase I recognized from the 1970's. The more I poked around, the more I thought about the book I got in 1980 when I was 6 years old. I got excited and hoped I would be able to find that book. To my surprise, I did find it under several old books covered with dust and cobwebs:


The book was missing its red front and back cover and half the book was torn away. I lovingly went through each dog eared page and remembered all the lovely stories with the beautiful and colorful drawings. My favorite story was the Mailman From Bayberry Lane. I brought it home with me and showed it to my kids and talked about my experiences from this book.

Fast forward 2 years later and I found the original book in near mint condition at Goodwill! I was SO excited and snatched it right up. Now I was able to read all the stories about the animals that were my friends when I was so little in such a confusing world:


My children are already too old for this book. I plan to read it to my grandchildren. Every now and then I take out this book just to look at the lovely drawing of my animal friends and read a story or two. Every single story in this book had a wonderful moral and I remember as a kid trying to apply it often to my own life. In fact I can still draw life long lessons from these stories. The good news is that I can speak pretty well now and it won't be such a burden to talk aloud about these amazing animals in these wonderful stories.

Here is a 1980 Christmas picture of me with my favorite book:



Here is me at age 2 looking at the children's encyclopedias from the shelf of books at left of the picture, I would sit and read on my kitchen bumper seat all the time: 


Here is me at age 3 taking a nap with my favorite blanket after looking at the Mr Men books by Richard Hargreaves: 



What was your favorite story as a child?


Saturday, July 16, 2011

Thriving with Food Storage

A friend of mine, Amy, runs a program called Thrive Foods. I like this program for the many choices and options she offers, plus she offers tons of information and gentle reminders to work on  personal food storage for the family, which I am currently working on.

Check out her blog and all about her food storage and emergency supplies program that she works for:

http://myfamilythrives.blogspot.com/2011/07/free-give-away-drawing.html#comment-form

Saturday, July 9, 2011

My Vintage Pyrex Treasures!


I grew up with these pyrex bowls from the 70's and 80's:


I have wonderful memories of helping my mother make homemade brownies in these bowls, red jello with whip cream and bananas, putting in peas and carrots for the Thanksgiving table, and making chocolate and banana pudding for pies, and so much more.

These bowls remind me of happy memories from home.

Imagine my surprise last month when I discovered that my Mom still had these bowls, and then she gave them to me. Such a precious treasure to me. I hope to give these one day to my daughter when she grows up and is the queen in her kitchen making brownies for her kids.

This vintage style is hard to find. Some I have seen on Etsy between 55 to 75 for the set.


I hope to find this one someday to help complete the set. I just need to keep looking at Goodwill:



I found the middle two bowls at Goodwill. I also hope to complete the set, which is called Spring Green Blossom, I would love to have the plates set as well:


 The reason I want these Pyrex bowls? They have held up well over the years. All the other bowls have broken and fallen apart on me. These bowls were built to last a long time.

Plus you can't deny the cuteness factor.

What Pyrex styles do you have hiding in your cupboards?

Sunday, July 3, 2011

Decorating: 4th of July

Again keeping to my theme of simple, here is my 4th of July decorating this year.


I finally made a banner of leftover fabrics in red, blue, white, and canvas that I have been wanting to make since last year:





This is something I made on the back of a wooden puzzle that lost all its pieces, a string of a red broken zipper to hang it up, leftover canvas and red ticking, upholstery ribbing (i have a huge roll of it that I use on many projects) and a star I cut out of leftover denim jeans. I painted the board cream and hot glued everything else together:



Simple star decorations placed in containers here and there:



Took out one of my antique table clothes that is sewn in 4th of July colors and draped it over my kitchen curtain:


What have you done for the 4th of July decorating?

Friday, July 1, 2011

Fourth of July Decorating 2011


Here is the so-so but thrifty decorating for July 2011:


I used the three triangle pendants as a mini banner. It is leftover from the long red white and blue banner I made with leftover fabric (which I forgot to take a picture of):


I put in game pieces in the jars. Thought it would fit the "game and movie nights" theme that happens often during summer breaks:


Red strawberries also speaks of fun summer days. I found the card from my scrap book stash:


I made a banner with coffee filters and leftover cupcake polka dot lines in red and white, I didn't really care much for it though, and left it up for only a couple weeks. I will probably repurpose them into something else another time: