I never thought of my mother as an artist when I was growing up, but I realize she was in the true sense of the word. I remember during the Depression years when she’d make a fireplace screen by taking a burlap bag (umm, a toe sack ) and stretch it across a wooden frame she’d hammered together and take ferns from the woods, lay them on the burlap, and use coal from the fireplace to carefully copy the pattern onto the burlap. She’d make bouquets of crepe paper roses, beautiful quilts, some earning her a blue ribbon. She’d dig white mud and dilute it to scrub the fireplace surround and old wooden floors … anything that would add beauty to her home during an otherwise dismal period of history. No one taught her … she just took things that were available and created things of beauty. I never appreciated her creativity as a child, but now as an adult, I am so aware of it.
—Betty Saxon Hopkins
Betty’s memories remind me of the creative things Granny did when I was a child. There was a very small half bath in Pap and Granny’s bedroom. One time she took a pod of okra and cut the top off of it to make her own stamp. By dipping the okra in orange paint she put a border of “okra” flowers around the edge of the mirrors that hung above the sink.
Last night’s video: Tour of All Our Gardens & Looking at the Positive.
Tipper
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Tipper, I’m a day late and a dollar short, but wanted to let you how excited I was to find this story on the BP&A yesterday about my mother and her creativity. Sorry I got behind on my email and missed it. It brought back such wonderful memories of Mama and the many things she has made for me over the years. I could go on and on about all the special things she created for me as well as our home. Wish I had inherited some of her creativity, and I do love dabbling in the arts, but I’m a jack of all trades and master of none, as they say. I do love writing, though, and am in the process of publishing a book about my great-grandfather, Theodore Saxon, so maybe I’ll just have to content myself with writing and preserving their stories. So, stay tuned! 🙂 Thank you so much for sharing!
I had an Aunt who crocheted all the time. She knew I had learned how in grade school, so she started giving me her leftover scraps of yarn every time we visited. There were tiny balls and a little bit bigger ones and I was so happy because my Mama didn’t have any money to buy me any. My sweet aunt also ordered me the “Workbasket” magazine, which had all kinds of crochet and craft ideas. I used these yarn scraps and made a big granny square afghan for my Mama. I also made little Humpty Dumpty shaped toys for my littlest brother and sister one year for Easter. I saved my change for months…a penny here or a nickel there… and I would go to the store across the street and buy penny candy. I saved and hid it in the freezer and made little homemade Easter baskets for them with the chocolates and their multi-colored Humpty Dumpty toys. I still save and use all my scrap yarn. I wish I had my Workbasket magazines from all those years ago. When you grow up without a lot, you appreciate every little thing someone does for you. My Aunt helped me to be creative with the precious gifts of her leftover scraps.
I love the creativity spoken of here. I grew up in a home of handstitching quilts, homemade crepe paper flowers, fashionable clothes and doll clothes made without a pattern, embroidery, cross stitch, etc. Tipper, I heard a new Old SAYING for me today. Have you ever heard tomatoes and macaroni referred to as “Grandpa’s Whiskers.” Love and prayers to you, family from the heart.
Sandi-I have never heard that 🙂
“Necessity is the mother of invention.” as the old proverb goes. Sometimes I think today’s young people are impoverished because they have limited opportunities to think creatively. Instead of inventing solutions to needs, they passively play video games.
My mother knew how to recycle, re-purpose before that was fashionable!
My Aunt Lydia was truly a talented artist. She made so many pretty things. She also had a knack for decorating. She even planted the “touch me not” flowers around her spring where they got their water. I remember many things she did that fascinated me. She even encouraged her children to use their creativity. My cousin Olen (her son) was also very gifted. He had a beautiful handwriting and printing gift. As children we were permitted to sign our names on Grandma Nix’s upper porch wall and the way he signed his name was outstanding. I loved the way he braided bracelets, and I would have loved to have had the plank where he had signed his name. I have many good memories of growing up with family kin folks. I could go on and on about the things I saw using their creativity and ingenuity. We are blessed to have had such times.
Like Betty’s mother, I enjoy taking things and giving them new life. I loved reading how she changed a burlap bag, some fern leaves and wood charcoal into a beautiful fireplace screen cover. I love reading or watching shows where people recycle, repurpose ordinary things into other useful items or into creative art. My mom did that all her life. I would watch her take leftover food from our weekly meals to make an entire new meal or snacks for us to eat on Saturday. I saw her take furniture that most would trash and make them useable again. I watched her take old clothes and alter them into new fashion. I saw her take tissues, newspapers or even old fabric scrapes and make beautiful flowers from them. She took old broken jewelry and made creative wall hangings or turned them into new pieces of jewelry to wear. So I know where I got my desire to recycle and repurpose things from. I am grateful my mom was my first and greatest example that inspired me to create with what I have, see things in a new way and to think outside the norm.
She could have made lots of money now a days. People would pay for her creativity . She definitely had the gift.
I grew up with hearing ‘waste not, want not’ so whatever could be recycled always was. Being thrifty was the big ‘thing’ back then. Also if you couldn’t use an item you no longer needed, someone else could, so just throwing things away was seldom done – another way of recycling. Your garden is coming along good. Praying things are going well for Corie in her final count down or perhaps her birthing time.
My brother received the creative genes in my family. He was ten years older than myself, and I loved him dearly. He made kites with tree branches and newspaper. He made a go cart using a lawn mower engine (Don’t ask me how, I was young, but I remember it well:) I also remember he made a skateboard using some old plywood and some wheels. During his later years he made knives using pieces of deer antlers for the handles. He was always thinking of something to make. Now on my husband’s side of the family my mother-in-law was the creative one. She could take an old dress, redo it, add some little embroidered things on it, maybe a few sequins and wear it to church the next Sunday and folks thought she had on a new dress. She could make beautiful tablecloths with bedsheets and curtains too. She’d make dolls for the grandkids. She was so gifted.
Loved the garden tour last night. It’s beautiful and I know y’all are so proud of it. Continued prayers for Granny and for Corie as it’s getting closer for the little one to make his arrival.
Years ago, a friend gifted me with a dandy back-scatcher made from a forked deer antler glued to a dowel. An antler handle, complete with a lanyard, finished the job. I use it a lot and think of Buddy Morgan, who also made bird houses, carpenter bee traps, and many other useful woodworking items. I’m sure he gave away more than he sold.
talent always finds a way to express itself. I have often wished I had a bit.
I’ve sprouted a pineapple plant from the top of a fresh pineapple, and I’ve sprouted an avocado plant from an avocado seed. I made cute purse out of a little wicker basket. Before I start any craft or sewing project, I see what I can use up before I buy anything.
Once when I was little in one of our Sunday School books there was a recipe for tea cakes (cookies) but they had left an ingredient out. Mom knew the recipe didn’t seem right but made them according to the recipe anyway. When they came out of the oven they were hard as rocks. It was around Christmas time so we painted them and used a nail to make a hole to thread some yarn through to hang them with. We used them on our Christmas tree for several years to come. Mom turned a bad recipe into beautiful ornaments.
Simplicity and Splendor is always best!
Everyone enjoy this beautiful weather. Blessings to all!
Creativity adds so much to life and its longevity.
My mom was the “craft queee” as a kindergarten assistant teacher and I would help her as a child on the projects: paper snowflake cutouts, potato vines ion the window sill to name a few. Now I help my wife with her children’s class projects for Sunday school. Mom grew up in rural Clay county, Ala during depression era so always made do with homemade items. The WPA during Roosevelt had classes for kids they attended so she learned the craft stuff there to I imagine.
I have so much respect for creative people. I have not a creative bone in my body and am amazed at how people can make beautiful things out of everyday items. I’m not complaining though as the Lord made me the way I am. Maybe I was put here to be an admirer and encourager of people who create.
I came along after the depression era, but we didn’t have many “extras” when I was growing up in the late 50’s and 60’s. I remember Mother putting a sweet potato in a pan of water and sitting it on the fireplace mantel. It would sprout and the vines would grow and form a cover around the fireplace. This goes along more with yesterday about keeping and saving things, my maternal granddaddy would save old bent nails and straighten them out to reuse and my paternal grandaddy would flatten out the metal caps from soda drink bottles and make his own nails like the nails the we now buy with the round or square plastic to use for nailing on roofing felt. I have heard some of the carpenters of the past call these nails “simplex nails.”
My mother used to stack up used jar lids to just the right thickness to go under the legs of the wood cookstove to level it so the eggs wouldn’t all run to one side of the pan or the cornbread wouldn’t be thick on one side and thin and burnt on the other.
We didn’t drink those bottled drinks often enough to make saving them worth the effort. We used what we did get for target practice.
Papaw, my Granddaddy would get the caps and save them from the old time drink coolers in the old country store. Remember how the coolers would have a opener and “box” of some type to catch the bottle caps. Some of these stores owners would let kids take the caps outside and look under the cork and see if they could find one the would let them get a free drink. Granddaddy and Grandmother would also line up a row of caps in their yard and shoot at them with a pistol for target practice. She was as good or better than many of the men.
We made whistles from bottle caps by flattening them, bending them in the middle to make half-moon shapes, and punching a small nail hole through of the center both thicknesses. The final step was to open the flattened halves a little. With practice, we could do loud “wolf whistles” and even imitate birds. The whistle should sit on the tongue with the open side facing to the front. Tongue pressure controls the air and changes the sound. I’ll bet you made them, too, Randy.
I think of my grandmother, born in 1883, reusing every zipper, every button, and every scrap of fabric from old clothing. I remember her winding balls of yarn pulling from old sweaters and making wreaths from nature for every season, and she had baskets full of pinecones and buckeyes for decorations and jars of pretty rocks. She made pictures using feathers and dried plants. No dust settled under her feet, and her house was beautiful.
Tipper, While this didn’t happen during the Depression, I remember my mom making Christmas ornaments using aluminum foil and Styrofoam cups. I grew up in Asheville and money was always tight especially around Christmas. My mom made all our clothes and daddy would always find some small toy for our stocking. I will always remember the shiny new ornaments for our tree. I was around eight years old at the time. Great memories
The rich heritage of our grand parents and their remembrances are to be cherished always. I really love not only everything you share but also the comments of others. I thank you. I really enjoyed your garden tour from yesterday’s video. It truly looks like you all are going to have a very good gardening year! Continued prayers for Granny and Corie and all of you! God bless you and yours❤❤