I think the first real item I made was a yellow plaid roll-up sleeve blouse in Home Ec. I had no clue that matching plaids would be that involved. Since I was in high school in the 60's I remember making a 2 piece lined wool suit like Jackie Kennedy and of course had the matching pill box hat. Next I made a dress out of a pretty green dotted swiss. We didn't have room to cut out our garments in the Home Ec. cottage so we were taken into the cafeteria to use those tables. When I started making my dress I realized that I had not only lost the back pattern piece to my skirt but also the fabric. My Mother and I went back to the store to buy more but they were out of that color. I ended up replacing the back of my skirt with white organdy and applied a white bow in the back of the waist. What had started out as a rather plain dress became a nice church dress which I wore for quite a while. The dress that gave me such fits turned out to be a favorite of mine. Now I really LOVE to sew and also enjoy "thinking outside the box". Some things are made special because of the work involved. It makes you appretiate the results.

I wrote a while ago about having lots of old jewelry. Its still sitting in my safety deposit box. Some was jewelry given to me as a child. My brother was a police officer in NYC and worked in some bad neighborhoods in NY. That was the days of cops walking the beat. He got to know most of the businesses on his beat. Some were part of the jewelry district in NYC. He kept an eye on their businesses and they did him favors. So, I would get jewelry, as a child which was heavy gold. Charm bracelet which he always added another charm for different milestones in my life. I rarely wore it so its been sitting in the safety deposit box for most of my life. The charms are large, full of stones, some pearls. I told my daughter to sell the whole thing for its weight in gold. The bracelet also. You would never buy anything like this today, nor want to! My father died when I was a child. I only have a few dim memories of him. But I have a pocket watch, 18k gold, engraved with his initials. It is on a long gold chain which is also heavy 18k. I think the watch was originally his mothers and was designed as a necklace. I have no idea. But my mother had a few photos of his mother wearing this watch. So probably from the 1800;s. It is beautiful. Its been sitting in the bank box my whole life. Might be worth getting appraised. I'll leave it to my daughter and she can deal with it. I lost my husband in May. This has been the most difficult thing I've had to deal with. 50 yrs of gifts and photos. The things he loved and spent so much time with. How to dispose of his things? Our daughter and son helped me because I just couldn't deal with it. The things he bought me over the years will stay and our kids can decide. I saved his wallet, his photos and donated his music to a music archive at the library where he volunteered. But I saved his photos which hang on the walls and many are in large boxes in his closet. He was an excellent photographer. I have a few pieces of jewelry that was my mothers. They are very pretty yet they sit in the bank with all the other jewelry. Lots of photo albums, both my family and my husbands. He was an only child and all of his family is gone. My albums are mostly of my kids, dogs and various life moments. I often look at them so they will stay. I have their school papers, drawings when they were little, etc. Jane

No Whole Foods here....yet. One is being built in Grand Rapids, and will be open this summer. When Elery still lived in Jackson, we would sometimes drive to Ann Arbor and stop at Whole Foods. I liked to try new things from their deli and then we'd go home and try to recreate it, with varying degrees of success. I don't remember anything that was outstanding that I couldn't get somewhere else, the prices were usually quite a lot higher than other local stores with similar items, causing us to shrug at "Whole Paycheck", and then go somewhere else. I did check out their meat counter, as they had burger mix ins that sometimes sounded like something I would like and copy. If I had a gift certificate I'd probably use it on seafood, as good seafood is expensive and hard to find here. Enjoy your beer! Annie

Springtails. They should not do any damage to your tree.