A Dozen Cousins, Two Gnomes, and a Frog

"Ida was always my favorite," my mom says whenever the subject comes up.  "I remember she had dark hair and it was up on top."  Mom always tells me about her beloved "A Dozen Cousins" paper dolls the same way, with the same smile and the same words.  "There was a Fred too, I remember."  I've been hearing about Ida and Fred and the rest of their family my whole life.  And then:  "I always thought that was the sweetest idea for paper dolls:  All the cousins all different ages."  And finally, and here you may imagine me mouthing the words sitcom-style along with her as she says them:  "I wonder if kids still play with paper dolls?  Boy, your aunt Laurie and I used to!  For HOURS.  We'd make extra clothes for them too.  Mom would let us cut up the Sears catalog for the pictures. . . ."  

I spent years trying to find a set of these old paper dolls for her.  The one time I saw a listing for them on eBay, the bidding reached $200 by auction's end.  They're never at the flea market.  I've only seen a few mentions of them online.  Luck was with me recently, though, when I found an online seller with an uncut set of the dolls.  Fiiiiiinally!  For less than Mike and I usually pay for a pizza, dark-haired Ida and Fred and all the rest of the cousins were on their way here and will soon be an early Mother's Day present. 

And they are sweet, indeed, and so "Mom."  My mother has three brothers and three sisters and grew up with many cousins in her daily life, as well, so I've always understood that part of her affinity for these dolls, but now I can see why she loved them even beyond that.  Such darling details in these old illustrations. 

Like mother, like daughter:  I would happily wear just about any of the dolls' clothes.  I am honestly surprised, now that I see them, that Mom never embroidered a red-threaded "Valerie" onto the fronts of my undershirts when I was a kid. 

I get to go home to visit my family this weekend, ♥  and the surprise paper dolls are part of my goody bag for Mom.  It is an informal tradition that when Mom, Aunt Laurie, and I get together, we exchange what Louisa May Alcott in Little Women called "bundles":  Sometimes notes we didn't have time to mail pre-visit, flower seeds in the springtime, small tins of cookies, usually notecards and stickers for all our letters to each other, almost always silk flowers from Aunt Laurie, small handmade scrapbooks, thrift shop finds of vintage linens and tea cups and coffee mugs, sometimes a framed photo from a past visit for them from me, tiny bottles of cake decors and sprinkling sugars for cookies. . . .Both Mom's and Aunt Laurie's presents this visit includes gnomes, of course, and toadstool-shaped pencil sharpeners from Target's dollar bins. 

While Mom's little gifts are blue and red, Aunt Laurie's are aqua and green, as is also tradition.  The grocery store sells these 50¢ paper lunch bags in different colors, and I find myself buying them over and over again for small gifts.  Aunt Laurie's got jazzed up with "her" gnomes and frogs this time. 

I was supposed to go home yesterday but have been battling a cold all week and didn't feel good enough for the trip yet.  Hopefully, by the time I see everyone this weekend, I'll be able to enjoy it more--and laugh with Aunt Laurie over her frog-prince without falling into a coughing fit.  :)

Here's to family, dear Ida and Fred and all the rest included.  ♥

A Gnome-Themed Dinner Party for Mom and Aunt Laurie

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When Mom mentioned a month or so ago that Aunt Laurie would be visiting the weekend of October 5th, I knew I wanted to do something special for them as a thank you for the sweet little anniversary party they put together for me and Mike in April.  In 2003, I made a Halloween meal during Aunt Laurie's fall visit, and almost a decade later, she's still giggling over the beef-stew-in-a-pumpkin pot and the sour-cream-and-black-olive-topped-potato-"ghosts."  By this September's end, I had decided to greet Aunt Laurie and her family with  a gnome-themed dinner the evening they arrived.  Mom and Aunt Laurie have a thing for gnomes.  Their flower gardens are full of them, they find odd little gnome gifts for each other, and they openly admit to wishing that they could live in miniature mushroom houses.  I had wanted the meal to be a surprise for both Aunt Laurie and Mom, but since I was holding it in Mom's house, I had to let her in on it, and in about two weeks, in letters and phone conversations, we planned our gnome-themed party.

I found gnome and toadstool stickers, 

and gnome napkins and tiny table decorations.  

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Mom mentioned one night that she'd been making a small table-piece of a toadstool table and chair set for Aunt Laurie to keep and that she had found two garden gnomes on an end-of-summer clearance sale table.  Mom bought autumn-themed paper dinner and dessert plates too.  All of that with a scattering of autumn leaves, pumpkins, and gourds seemed like decoration enough. 

   

I focused on the menu and arrived at my parents' house October 4th with bags of groceries and baking supplies.  Aunt Laurie and her husband and son were to arrive the following evening, so less than an hour after I walked through the door that night, Mom and I were running into each other decorating her kitchen island with all our gnomes and I was baking toadstool cupcakes and gnome-shaped sugar cookies.  As we laughed and tripped over each other, we would spot yet another everyday kitchen item that was suddenly striking us as looking distinctly gnome-ish--"The funnel!  It's a gnome hat!  Look!"--and Dad could be overheard muttering, "Crazy, crazy, crazy" from the living room.  Before Mom went to bed that night, I finished transforming a yellow vinyl tablecloth into a dinner menu-backdrop to hang behind her kitchen island, and we laughed some more as we looked it over together before saying goodnight.

Click to enlarge.  :)

Since I was doing all the cooking and baking, I stayed up to get a head-start on everything I could.  I went to bed in the early morning Friday and got up again to continue cooking around 1:30 in the afternoon, about four hours before Aunt Laurie was to arrive.  And when I finally did see Aunt Laurie and her family pull into my parents' driveway at 5:00, I shouted to Mom and Dad, "Stall them!  STALL THEM!" as I put the finishing touches on the food and took a final few pictures.

Everything on the menu was gnome-themed, and except for the cupcakes, since she doesn't like cake much, everything was gluten-free for Mom. 

We had pasta with meatballs into which I'd rolled-up salami-slices to make "gnome heads-wearing-gnome hats," and tomato-mozzarella "toadstools" with Parmesan sprinkled on top:

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We had two baskets of "gnome hats"--chocolate-peanut butter Bugles and plain Bugles--and I cut gnome shapes out of garlic bread dough to make gnome-shaped bread:

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 I made a tray of fruit "gnome kabobs" and a tossed salad with toadstools carved out of radishes:

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And for dessert, gnome-shaped sugar cookies:

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and because we like what my mom calls "a wide assortment," toadstool house cupcakes:

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 and frozen yogurt gnomes with whipped cream beards and, of course, waffle cone hats:

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When Aunt Laurie walked in, she immediately saw the decorated kitchen and all the food, and me standing beside it, grinning like a fool, and Mom and I laughed in delight at her surprise over everything. 

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I adore Aunt Laurie, if this isn't beyond clear by now.  If I weren't my mother's daughter, I'd be hers.  Who besides me and Mom gets such a kick out of themed food, after all.  Just watching her ooh and ahh over our crazy menu and decorations was fun enough, but I still had to show her, my uncle, and my cousin "The Tree."  Knowing none of us is the wear-a-gnome-hat-for-photos kind of person, I had instead edited a bunch of photos of the six of us in attendance at our little family dinner with the addition of gnome hats and gnome outfits and attached them to the limbs of a decorative tree Mom keeps in her dining room with garden twine, toadstool stickers, and twinkly Christmas lights  If we laughed over the food, we positively howled over the Tree photos.  ♥

Click to enlarge.  :)

Click to enlarge.  :)

Click to enlarge.  :)

Oh my gosh, this was truly all so funny.  My dad, uncle, and cousin had long since headed into the living room to watch baseball or football or whatever it was, and Mom, Aunt Laurie, and I just laughed like loons as we looked at all the pictures and food.  I caught Mom's eye at one point and we just smiled at each other.  I think I can speak for all three of us when I say that if you asked us a hundred years from now about some of our favorite moments together in this life, we would all remember to mention our laughter during this silly gnome party.  While everyone got settled to eat and Aunt Laurie took a few photos with her camera, I escaped into my parents' bedroom for a minute to send Mike, who had had to stay here for the weekend, a jubilant little text message:  "Aunt Laurie arrived a few minutes ago.  Is giggling over everything and loves it all.  Mish-shone accomplished!"  :)

Click to enlarge.  :)

In addition to these cell phone pictures, I took an entire roll of film that night with a disposable camera Mom had bought for the occasion, and I found out from the one-hour photo place yesterday morning that for the first time in the 25 or so years I've been taking pictures, my entire roll of film was blank.  Blank.  An entire roll of film just--somehow--gone.  The store developed it, and it was just blank.  A bad camera or a bad developing job, who knows.  My photo of me hugging Aunt Laurie beside the Tree:  Never to be seen.  The one of Mom and Aunt Laurie laughing beside the gnome-themed buffet and big menu:  Gone.  The candid shot I captured of Aunt Laurie just as she walked in and saw the party for the first time:  Blank.  I spent a couple hours upset about it yesterday, and then I decided just to get on with things.  Aunt Laurie will share whatever photos she took, and I have the cell phone food pictures and at least this one blurry cell phone picture of Aunt Laurie beside the food and photo-tree, 

Click to enlarge.  :)

and that, with my drawings (which will be saved to include in future scrapbook-gifts for Aunt Laurie and Mom) will have to do.  Memories of this little shindig won't fade anytime soon, after all.  Aunt Laurie sent a thank you note this past week expressing as much.  'Updating now to add that she has passed along the following photos she took:

Click to enlarge.  :)

And even without more pictures from the night, "gnome is where your heart is" anyway, as Aunt Laurie and Mom would giggle and remind me.  ♥

I Wish Her the Shire

Mom's birthday was yesterday, and our phone call left me wishing I could send her some carefree days with her beloved hobbits: Frequent tea and snack breaks, warm sunshine and flower gardens, long visits with good friends. . . .Mom has been battling Lyme Disease since last summer, and although she and Dad went out for supper and a movie last night, her tremors were quite severe throughout, making it a little less enjoyable. "I was glad I was in a dark theater!" she reported today. Another doctor appointment this morning and yet another in three weeks. It could be worse, and we all know that, but I'd take away the past six months of stress and illness for her if I could, no matter what it may be teaching all of us. I'm only human, and she's my mama: I just wish her happy days.

In the package I mailed her Tuesday, I included along with the cuddly floor-length blue gingham robe, gluten-free and dairy-free chocolate chip cookies, and other goodies, my latest salt dough ornament, a birthday gnome. :) I added a Daisy, Mom's favorite flower, to his hat, and made him a card to hold, and she oohed and ahhed over it when we talked. It was the smallest thing in her package but also what she got the biggest kick out of, as I'd expected. And that made me quite happy. 

Maybe by next January, Mom's illness will all be but a memory, and maybe it will go on for years. No one knows, of course. In the meantime, I send her hopes and prayers, cookies and tea bags, blue checkered bath robes and well-wishing gnomes. I send her love.