Two-fer - Show and Tell Friday and Garden Bloggers Muse Day

Well, I am trying to put everything together into one blog entry.

I am showing a poem I wrote about a favorite childhood memory - going to the county fair.

Some years I spent most of the week there, with my brother and sis and grandmother.

Head to Kelli's blog for show and tell Friday,

and don't miss Sweet Home and Garden Chicago, home of Garden Bloggers Muse Day !

Did I mention it is the best and largest county fair in the U.S.A.?? Or so I was told...

The Great Darke County Fair by Joyce V.

I learned in school that our school was the best.

Our town the best. Our county, without question, was the best.

Here was The Best farmland, glacier-scrubbed and rich for the plow.

Our fair was not just any fair, it was GREAT.

And as a child, I agreed.

I loved the fair food,

the fried scones dripping with butter and honey,

cotton candy, fudge of every color and flavor.

I loved the parade (always held on Thursday),

with 4-H floats and horses and

bands trooping around the track.

I loved the rides, the noise, the games,

the mysterious mustachioed fat lady.

When my money was spent,

I toured the free exhibits in the Coliseum.

I visited my uncle’s cows,

and my cousin’s pigs in the fair barns.

I studied the quilts, the needlework,

the jars of jam with blue ribbons.

Yes, it’s true; our fair is the Best fair of all.
The biggest, the most fun of all
In my memory, the GREAT Darke County Fair
Lives on forever, superlatives intact.

Show and Tell Friday - 4-H jewelry

Be sure to head over to Kelli's blog There is No Place Like Home to see what else is going on there today.

For show and tell today, I thought I'd show (what I could find of) the jewelry I received in 4-H. I was not in an animal club, our group was mostly girls, and we focused on homemaking skills.

My grandmother was the leader of our club, and two of my aunts were leaders while I was a 4-H -er. I was a member for 10 years, and so received numerous buttons, then pins (I seem to only be able to find my 6 year pin to show today) , and finally a ring.

However, as any one who has been in 4-H knows, it's NOT all about the jewelry. I learned to sew and cook (homemade bread!), among other things.

I was not really one of those outstanding 4-H kids.

The 4-H motto is 'To make the Best Better'- and I am sure my grandmother despaired of ever seeing me do an outstanding project, or sew an outstanding article of clothing, or anything else. I was (and still am) kind of a slap-dash kind of a gal.

But I do love to sew, and made quite a few of my clothes for high school, and for my children (until they got old enough to protest!).

I have a lot of great memories of making things, going to the summer meetings, making a float for the fair, and etc. OH, and the fair! that was something wonderful, but I'll tell you about that another time.

Any other 4-H 'kids' out there?

Show and Tell Friday - a graduation gift

Sometimes when I look back, I realize that remarkable things happened to me that I took for granted at the time. I grew up in a small town, graduated in a high school class of about 90 kids, and all the girls were given a small jewelry box as a gift from a local furniture store. Looking back, I am surprised by the business' generosity . I love my little box, and it is filled with keepsakes, some mine, some my DH's things. My hometown had a showroom for this furniture store, which was based in an even smaller town farther east of us.

Here is a closeup of the inside of the box - it reads " Lane presented by Roark Furniture Company, Laura, Ohio".

Our family moved into town when I was 14. I had always lived on a farm up to that point, and quickly learned to enjoy some of the benefits of small town life. There were certainly more kids to play with, and even though I was one of the oldest to play, I loved the street games we played - does anybody remember playing 'mud gutter' as a kid?

We rode our bikes to the library - I loved going to the library and getting a new book whenever I wanted.

You could go up the block to the furniture store (Roark's) and see if they had an empty refrigerator or stove box, which you could drag home to use for all sorts of things - a play house, mostly. I guess it seems juvenile to play at 14, but I remember enjoying all these new ways to play 'in town' that I had never been able to do before.

that's my show and tell, don't forget to visit Kelli's blog to see who else is in on the action this week!

Show and Tell Friday - Why Red is better than Green

It's show and tell Friday again, head over to Kelli's blog to see what everyone else has up this Friday!

This is a little 'knick-knack' I bought at the local knick-knack shop, it was even a deal.

I see a lot of John Deere tractor 'stuff'' - I think there is some nostalgia for those of us who grew up in the country, but I like the red tractors better than the green ones.

I am a farmer's daughter. My Dad is retired now, at age 74, and even sold his tractor last year. (He was renting out a field so he could 'farm' a little bit.) My Dad's tractors were always red or orange, because he preferred Farmall and Case tractors to the more ubiquitous John Deere.

When I saw this harvest tractor, I thought of him. When I was a child, it was a special privilege to get to ride with Dad on the tractor, as he was coming in from the field. I remember him fixing it when it broke, and even a tractor race he had one day with his brother out on the road they lived on.

Christmas hoopla, Show and Tell

Edge tagged me for this. I've decided blogging is good for my family, because I can reminisce and tell stories to my heart's content, without boring them to death. I am also double tasking today, and have my first Show and Tell. You can see Anita's Show and Tell at There's No Place Like Home.
Here's the rules: List 12 random things about yourself that have to do with Christmas Please refer to it as a 'hoopla' and not the dreaded 'm'-word You have to specifically tag people when you're done. None of this "if you're reading this, consider yourself tagged" stuff is allowed...then nobody ends up actually doing it. The number of people who you tag is really up to you -- but the more, the merrier to get this 'hoopla' circulating through the blogosphere. Please try and do it as quickly as possible. The Christmas season will be over before we know it and I'd like to get as many people involved as possible.

1. Having a ‘white’ Christmas is important to me. I really hate winter (I think it is the duration, changing winter to just one month would be fine with me), but snow on the ground makes it feel like Christmas.
2. I ‘believed’ in Santa (and the Easter Bunny) long past the time most kids give that up. It added a lot of magic to the holiday for me.
3. I got up one Christmas and slept under the Christmas tree (Santa had come by then), but my brother and sis and I were old enough (teenagers!) that I knew they’d all be mad if I came and woke them up, so I waited under the tree.
4. One of our family traditions has been to negotiate a wake-up time for Christmas (and I’ll get in the first proposal: 9:00 a.m.!! ) with the children. After that is agreed to, the children have to come wake us up by singing Christmas carols (hey, maybe they should be bringing us breakfast in bed!!). DH and I are usually awake, and snuggling and anticipating the day before the kids come in (don’t tell them) and we make quite a protest about getting up, and tell them to go back to bed. One year, we reset their alarm clocks. That didn’t work, though.

5. Another tradition is to head to the grocery store on Christmas Eve, so the children can pick out a sugary ‘Christmas cereal’. This started when we only bought the ‘healthy’ cold cereals, with less sugar in them, so anything at all was a big treat. They had to agree on one box, so they had to work that out between them. One year I videotaped them: I remember the oldest (Edge!) doing a bit of eye rolling (she was too sophisticated for this), and little alliances being made amongst the four of them (the youngest hadn’t been born yet). Now it is something that everyone has pretty much outgrown (everyone is an adult except for the youngest, who is 12), but she thinks this tradition is really fun, so whoever is around goes with her, and pretty much just lets her have her way. (No wonder she likes it).

6. A more traditional tradition we observe is to sing Silent Night in German on Christmas Eve. (It’s not all about cereal, y’know!) We act out the Christmas story from Luke 2, with Dad reading the story. We use simple costumes, and I love this part of the holidays, and then finish with Silent Night. My husband’s family is mostly from Germany, as is mine.

7. I was in 4-H as a child, and my grandmother was our club’s leader. She helped teach me to sew, and one year for Christmas (she made something for each of her 13 grandchildren every Christmas), she gave me a few yards of fabric, because she hadn’t finished sewing for all of us yet. I was ok with the gift, and flattered that she thought I could sew well enough to make something, but mom thought it was a pretty bad gift.

8. The 12 year old has major ‘gimmie-gimme’ syndrome this year, apparently. She says she doesn’t get enough gifts. All right, everyone; all together-Roll Eyes!

9. Baking is usually a fun part of the holidays for me. This year I found out my baking powder died. I guess I don’t bake much anymore. I’ll try and post a fave recipe later. So far this year we’ve made ginger cookies (when I discovered the baking powder problem), and 7 layer cookies, with a chocolate-crusted with red and white chips variation, chocolate dipped pretzels, and a super easy, yummy toffee I got from MsGreenThumbJean.

10. Twelve hooplas?????? Couldn’t we have gone with a shorter hoopla??? Oh, well, one of my favorite Christmas songs is Oh, Holy Night.
11. This ornament belonged to my great-grandparents, Charles and Josie Bruner. They had a large family of 11 children, and I loved going to their home for Christmas, and getting together with all my 'Bruner' cousins. I'm glad to have this little keepsake to remember them.

12. One great Christmas memory was the Christmas of 1995. My oldest was home from her first semester of college; the baby was two months old. Our youngest fell asleep mid-morning, through the hoopla of opening gifts.

Merry Christmas to all! I am tagging the 12 year old, Hailey, Jean at MsGreen"thumb"Jean, Kylee at MyLittleAcre, my old friend Jean. Maybe some others. Oh, and if you haven't had a chance to "Elf Yourself" yet, go do it!