Happy Birthday, Grandma!

Today would have been my Grandma Sylvia's 99th birthday.  I've posted before how her birthday marks the beginning of Christmas for me and how those traditions are still foremost in my head this time of year even though it has been a very long time since we actually went to her house for Christmas.  This was one of the pictures I posted on Facebook this morning:

Is it weird for me to say that my grandma was kind of a dish?  And that coat is amazing.  In honor of that coat, tonight's shoes may or may not be vintage, and may or may not be from the time this picture was taken.  None of them are suitable for snow.

 

I love these.  I would wear them now.

I might not wear these now, but I am imagining the vintage outfits I would pair them with.  My imaginary closets are uh-maze-ing.

 

I would wear these too.  What a delightfully sturdy heel!

Ooooh, I'm not sure I could pull these off, so I'm thinking they'd have to go in the imaginary closet with some more fabulous outfits.

 

Love.  Outfits.  Closet.

A world of yes.  I want these  in real life AND for the imaginary closet!

Tonight I made an angel food cake to celebrate the birthday (yep, baking-fest 2016 continues), and I wore one of Grandma's shirts.  This shirt to be exact:

I miss this lady.

Happy Birthday, Grandma!

I'm feeling a little weepy today.  It's part hormones, part homesickness, part stress, and a very large chunk is nostalgia over the fact that today would have been my Grandma Sylvia's 98th birthday (which also ties in with the homesickness).  I've posted the story on Facebook and here before, so you've probably heard it a million times, but for me this is the day that Christmas starts because this is the day we would go to Grandma and Grandpa's.  The 23rd was for celebrating Grandma's birthday, the 24th was for church on Christmas Eve (and much much much anticipation) and then the 25th obviously was Christmas.  It might not sound so exciting, but it was tradition, and I have so many memories from all of the years we went there.  The crazy thing is that it's been over 20 years since the last time we went to Grandma's for Christmas because we started bringing her to our house when she got a little older.  Grandma died 5 1/2 years ago and I miss her all the time, but especially during this week.  So I'm eating angel food cake to celebrate her as I write this, and following are some shoes in honor of her birthday.

The baby shoes are supposedly from 1917, and the slip was listed as from the 1910s sometime.

This was from the same etsy page and those might be the same shoes?  But I thought the outfit was really sweet and it was listed as from 1917, so I'm going with it.  Maybe baby grandma wore something similar.

 

I thought what the heck and typed in "angel food cake shoes."  How weird are these?  I can't imagine Grandma wearing flip flops, let alone angel food cake themed flip flops.  For that matter I can't imagine her wearing angel food cake themed anything.

 

 

Sylvia shoes!  Love them.

Another example of a Sylvia shoe.  I like the colors, and the style is one I normally would like, but this isn't my favorite.  It came in a couple of different colors, and they all left me a little flat.  But still, the colors are good.

Happy Birthday, Grandma!

Happy Birthday, Grandma

As a kid we would always spend December 23-26 at my mom's parents' house.  The 23rd is  my grandma's birthday, so we'd start by celebrating and eating angel food cake.  (it was really the only dessert Grandma liked, despite forcing 12 different kinds down the rest of us)  So today the seester, Flower, and Laughter drove me back to the parents' and are now staying the night.  The brother came over for dinner and then we all had angel food cake and whipped cream in honor of Grandma, who would have been 97 today.  I also saved the last Christmas tree for today as it has Grandma's ornaments on it.

This is the tree in Mom's room.  Part of the ornaments are hers and part are Grandma's.  I helped Mom decorate it this year and it was fun to pull out the old, glass ornaments that I remember from so many Christmases.

 

This was also Grandma's, although I'm not sure how much it was out.  I vaguely remember it, but not terribly well.  From a distance it looks pretty good, as you can't see how terribly cheesy the plastic figures are.  I don't care if they're cheesy, though, they just help remind me of  how much I loved Christmas at Grandma and Grandpa's.

I really didn't expect to find any vintage, glass ornaments that were shoes, but I was surprised.  There are actually quite a few out there.

 

Frankly these creep me out.  The shoes are fine.  The face in the last one and the cats in the top 2 are what give me the heebie jeebies.  A cat in a shoe, OK, but a baby's face in a shoe?  Why?

 

I like these 2 a lot better, especially the color of  the second one (duh).

Somewhat less disturbing for some reason.

Cute!  And look, the ornament hook is shaped like a Christmas tree!

Fun ornament, but definitely not a cute shoe that I would covet in real life.

This one reminds me of Snow White.

I miss my Grandma.  I miss the constancy of the traditions of Christmas at her house.  There are new ones, of course, and they are lovely and wonderful, but the nostalgia of the Christmases of my childhood will always be there.  

Love you, Grandma.

June 2nd

Today is the third anniversary of my grandmother's death.  My grandma was awesome in so many ways.  She loved us through food like a good, Norwegian grandmother (90% of the stories we came up with after she died were about her feeding us).  She always had Kleenex in her purse, and always made a point to tell us that it was "crumpled, but clean."  Is there a grandmother out there handing her grandkids crumpled, dirty tissue?!  She used to call my brother's car the whoopee wagon, which made us laugh hysterically, but whoopee in her vocabulary meant something different than  hers.  I don't remember my grandma ever wearing anything but sensible shoes in my lifetime.  Which makes perfect sense as she had bad knees.  Apparently, though, she was quite the fashion plate when she was younger, so I'm assuming that came with at least one pair of fabulous shoes.  I don't have any pictures with which to back that assumption up, though.

 

In other news, we had another baptism as church today, and there were so many fun shoes in that family!  Baby's great-grandma had some fabulous green flats on.  Baby's sponsor was wearing really cute white, lacy wedges.  I was scanning the congregation during service wishing I could take pictures of feet like I do with the preschoolers.  But that would just be incredibly creepy and weird.  And people think I'm weird enough as it is.  Oh!  And the baby was wearing a tie with his onesie!  I didn't have any pictures that tied in with today's post, so I did some searching.  Hope you enjoy some adorable baby shoes for baptisms.