The Book of Home

Awhile back I had this great vision of creating a little coffee table photo album/scrapbook using the leftover paper strips and cardboard from the dahlia-shaped wall medallion.  Yesterday I finally sat down and assembled it and while I'm not 100% thrilled with it, it's not bad considering it's mostly stuff that would have been tossed in the trash otherwise...  I'm going to explain what I did and offer some suggestions for things I think you'd be wise to do differently if you want to give a home-made scrap album a try.

First, I assembled all my materials together:  Corrugated cardboard cut to size (determined by the size of the leftover paper strips I was using), the leftover paper strips, a sheet of scrapbook paper, a small stick with attractive bark, acid-free glue sticks and a length of ribbon (not pictured) for the binding.

Then I cut the scrapbook paper so that the cardboard could be glued leaving about 1/2-inch all the way around and about 1/4-inch between the two pieces that will make the cover hinged.  Spread glue on one side of cardboard evenly and then affix to back side of paper.  Press out any bubbles or wrinkles.

Spread glue evenly along one edge at a time and wrap paper over.  Trim to make smooth mitered corners.  I also cut just a tiny tab out of the "hinge" or open space between the two pieces of cardboard because it made it easier to open and shut.

Now trim 2 pieces of your filler paper to hide the raw edges from covering the album.  Make both a front and back cover this way.

My next step was to trim the filler paper just slightly and to add some quotes that I wanted to be part of my album.  If you want to borrow them, or just satisfy your curiosity about what I chose, click here for a .PDF document.  I have pretty decent handwriting and I didn't want to spend hours figuring out how to feed scrap paper through my printer so I hand wrote the quotes.  I left lots of blank pages to hold photographs that document the way rooms looked the day I got the key and both what changes I've made over time and how they look today.  I also chose to include pages to briefly record significant events, memories and visitors to my home.

Then I punched holes in the filler pages.  Unfortunately, here's where I made a wrong choice.  I was too lazy to change the spacing on my big 3-hole punch and the covers were too thick to fit in it anyway so I chose to only punch 1 hole in the center. For the covers I used a large yarn needle to perforate the paper and cardboard and wiggled it in a circle to make the hole the right size.  One center hole isn't enough to hold the pages stable; it really needs 2.

Now for assembly... I cut my ribbon into 2 pieces and, holding together, folded them in half and  tied a simple knot in the center that won't slip through the back cover.  With a yarn needle, I fed the tails up through the back cover, then the filler pages and front cover.  It takes a bit of twisting and smoothing to keep the ribbon flat and tight.

Once they were all worked through this way, I tied knots using 2 ribbon ends at a time around the stick.  Make sure it is pressed firmly to the album cover while you are making the knots.  Now I just need to decide on a die-cut initial and add small beads to the ends of my ribbon tails for embellishment and it will be done!  Oh... and get photo paper and figure out how to size and print my pictures, of course.

This would make a fun gift for a couple buying their first home.  The idea could also be adapted for a keepsake recipe book or as a guestbook at a special party.

The Ambitious Woman

On the last page of every Working Mother magazine is an editorial feature called "The Last Word."  This morning I read that editorial by Carol Evans, President of Working Mother Media, from the February/March 2012 issue and I want to quote a bit of it for you.

I hear the lamest excuses for the lack of business power entrusted to women.  "We can't find qualified women." is a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Women make up 50 percent of the workforce, and qualified women are all around us.  Companies need to give them the power positions to get them ready to advance.

"When women have babies, they go off the career track" is another lame excuse.  Most women have babies, but they can also create a viable career path even if it doesn't look like the typical steady upward climb men can achieve.

"They don't want it" is the worst excuse.  A lot of executive men don't aspire to be CEO either, but no one says men don't want to succeed.

"Women aren't ambitious" reflects conflicted social norms.  Being an ambitious woman can feel wrong, like living in an '80's movie with the big hair and stilettos.  We need to reexamine "ambitious."  [Is it] greedy, unprincipled and cold?  No.  Ambition is the desire to succeed, to get to the next level of responsibility and trust - a strong desire in women.

We need to get past the subconscious feeling that men are better, stronger, more suited to lead than women.

What do you think?  Does Ms. Evans make a valid point?  Based on my personal observations, I agree that in the typical American workplace there is a double standard between what's expected and what's rewarded to men and women.  And that's not right to have such a lopsided system not only in place, but in wide acceptance.  At the same time, men and women are created differently.  We do have different outlooks, different work styles, different strengths.  Perhaps the bigger problem is how those outlooks, styles and strengths are valued.  Perhaps it's in how we, as women, value them ourselves.  Because it is different, is our contribution less valuable?  Or do we accept receiving less than full value for it?

I have, in the past, worked for female managers in male-dominated industries.  I wasn't always a happy employee in this situation because it felt like, in the effort to be taken seriously in their managerial role, many of these women caved and became the stereotypical nag.  They were hard, harsh, often cutting and cut-throat.  I felt less valued as an employee much more frequently with a female supervisor.  Thinking about it then and now makes me sad.  But to analyze from a distance, I think it's because they tried too hard to be something they were not and so their actions came across as insincere and incongruent.  I'm not trying to assign fault, just to make an observation that  when we act outside of our core values and beliefs it's noticed and we never gain the respect and authority we seek that way.

Perhaps women would do far better to embrace our differences and create products, information, position, power and influence based on our God-given strengths instead of trying to become what we innately are not.

Anyway, that's my ambition!

Chocolate Tasting Party

My friend and neighbor, Lorraine Young, recently became a chocolatier for Dove Chocolate Discoveries so I'm going to host a little chocolate tasting party on Wednesday evening... not quite sure what to expect except the yummy, silky, smooth deliciousness of chocolate melting in my mouth!

Don't these pictures just make you want to drool?

Be sure to check out Lorraine's webstore whether you want to host a tasting party yourself or just buy some really great chocolate!

Updated ordering instructions:  If you'd like to purchase chocolate or chocolate accessories, my party will be held open until Wednesday, February 29.  Payment is due to me so I can give it to her to place the orders then.  By clicking the link to Lorraine's store above, you can get information on many of the products AND download a catalog from the lower right on her homepage.  The functionality isn't quite ready to be able to order directly from the website just yet.

In Danger of Becoming Free

"In our society, growing food yourself has become the most radical of acts."  That's a quote from near the end of the video.  And something to really think about...

This is not just a lifestyle I'm interested in but a very needed and sustainable business model as well.  It's something I'm going to be investigating seriously to meet my future income needs.

Grandma's Cookbooks

Born January 6,1897 in Atlantic, Iowa, Emma Engabora Christensen was the second child in her Danish immigrant family.  Her parents had come America as teens when their families were enticed by the offer of free farmland left from the land grants given the railroad companies building the first transcontinental rail line in America.  Through a series of moves, the family ended up in Ririe, Idaho where she met and married my grandfather, Doyle George Clarke.  They met because his older brother married her older sister.  For much of my life this is all I knew about my mom's family history and because there was so little information every tidbit has been a fascinating find.  These were people who did not leave behind written histories and made efforts to hide their vital statistic information.  What I have to guide my search for details of their life and what gives me a sense of familial connection is the things they left behind.  And today the "thing" I want to talk about is grandma's cookbooks.

The nicely bound Searchlight Recipe Book and the wood covered New England Recipes I'm not sure she where she obtained them.  But the little paper one, with the very old Christmas tape patch job on it's torn cover, is one that grandpa brought home to her when he completed a lumbering job in Oregon in 1926-27.

It is the Wallowa M.E. Ladies Aid Cook Book from 1926.  In addition to recipes compiled by the good ladies of Wallowa, Oregon, it contains several pages of advertisements for local businesses.  Some of them made me smile...  like the grocery store that encouraged "Buy your ingredients here and feel sure of success in your cooking if you follow the recipes contained in this book."  And the bank that proudly announced it's capital and surplus were $110,000.  The ad on the lower half of this page, which I'm not sure you can make out in the picture, is a barber shop plying it's selection of Ladies Toilet Accessories.  The facing page of cake recipes begins and ends with submissions from a Mrs. Lillie Timm, Vancouver, Wn.  Both are transcribed here:

PRIZE WHITE LAYER CAKE
2 1/4 cups sugar, 3/4 cup shortening (1/2 butter, 1/2 white substitute), 1 cup liquid (1/2 milk, 1/2 water), 4 level teaspoons baking powder, 3 2/3 cups flour (Fisher's blend or pastry), whites of 10 eggs, 1 teaspoon vanilla, 1/2 teaspoon lemon extracts.  Cream butter and sugar a little bit at a time, cream together thoroughly.  Sift flour once before measuring.  Measure and reserve 1/2 cup to which add baking powder.  Sift four times.  Add flour (except that with baking powder) alternately with liquid, beating thoroughly.  Add flavoring and beat.  Beat egg whites stiff but not dry and add a level 1/4 spoon cream of tartar.  Add egg whites alternately with last 1/2 cup of flour to which baking powder was added, by carefully folding them in.  No beating after adding  either egg whites or baking powder.  Bake in 3 layers in moderate oven until it starts to pull away from pan.

ORANGE CREAM CAKE
3 cups pastry flour, 3 level teaspoons baking powder, 1/2 cup butter,  1 1/4 cups sugar, yolks of 3 eggs well beaten, juice of 1 orange in a cup.  Fill cup with water.  Rind of 1 orange, white of 3 eggs.  Follow same general directions as for white cake.

They're surely written a bit different than what we find in today's cookbooks but I think I could stumble my way through making either of those cakes.

I've linked this post to the The Country Homemaker Hop - Week 7 at White Wolf Summit Farmgirl.