Thursday, May 31, 2007

I smell like my Grandma!!!





It always amazes me how a smell can immediately transport us to another place and another time and evoke such memories with a simple whiff. I was painting our front porch the other day when Daniel walked up, smelled the paint fumes, and said, "That smells like our basement in Chicago!" He had helped me paint a corner of our basement for his classroom. Everytime I use a certain kind of spray starch on Brent's shirts, I can picture standing in front of the ironing board at the home of a kind lady I ironed for while I was in high school.
I had another one of those moments today. I found a great website, familyfun.com, that has a TON of great ideas for things to do with your kids. (also found the subscription to their magazine, a favorite of mine, for only $10 on the website!) So I'm all inspired to start spending more time doing fun things with my kids. We came home today from our mom's day out at the park, and I decided it was time to put some feet to my inspirations. I opened up a bar of Ivory soap that I had stopped at the store and bought for this craft, and my brain conjured up all these pictures of my grandma, who only used Ivory soap...for everything!!! She constantly smelled like Ponds and Ivory. The craft included grating a bar of Ivory and blending equal parts of shavings with lukewarm water and mixing it with an electric mixer for about 5 minutes. It comes out the consistency of shaving cream that you can color with food coloring. The kids used it to fingerpaint on our sliding glass doors. I had to show them how to do it so we were all up to our elbows in it by the time we were done. So now...I smell like my grandma! She's died many years ago, but I've been reminiscing about all the sweet times we had at her house. I was her favorite...everyone will tell you it's true...she taught me to play the piano, crochet, and sew, too...all the things I found incredibly interesting that no one else seemed to care for. I walked out of my room to answer the phone and was hit by this wave of food from the crock pot and Ivory soap...it was like walking into my grandma's front door!
I do have to wonder however amidst all the reminiscing if my next post will show me crying in frustration as I try to get all the soap off the windows! :0)

1 comment:

Tfipps said...

Wow! I just got the Family Fun magazine subscription, and I am feeling inspired as well. Although, I have to admit, that my inspiration stops at all things messy. How in the world do you make soap shavings in the first place? That would be enough to make me not want to do it. It does look like your little Picassos had quite the fun time. Let us know how easy/hard it was to wash off of your windows.