A Beautiful Day in Vermont!

The sun is shining here!  I woke up and did my regular routine start of the morning arriving at the kids house.  Today is picture day for my girls, so they had to go pick out a good shirt for it. 

Julia ended up going out in her tank top and no sweatshirt.  She was being rather slow this morning and finally we just said, "Just get out there before you miss your bus."  Tomorrow, she will have to make sure her backpack is packed the night before.

Last night, before leaving the kids house, I got started on the recipe book for Mom. 

Here's my possible title for the book.  At least it's sticking with me right now.

Memories of Mom, stories and recipes from a Beautiful Life

I started the first page with the title, my name of course and with Mom's high school picture underneath.  Underneath that is when she was born and her death date.

Then on the next pages, I started in with a dedication to Mom and an introduction.

I got a little further and started writing about her early childhood and a little bit of history.  I'm visiting my family this weekend so that should be a good time to get some details my Dad would probably know that I wouldn't.

Well, yesterday something funny came up.  I was posting some of the first batch of pictures of some of Mom's recipes.  One of my aunts started talking about wishing she had kept letters or something.  And Mom had given her some recipes.  I responded back and told her I have a bunch of my Mom's old letters that she wrote to her Nana and other people.  I slipped that I had a few from Dad to her too. 

Ha ha ha.  Well, then my aunt suggested that I put his letters in a scrapbook and give it to him on her birthday anniversary next month.  I kind of said neat idea, but it probably won't happen.  ha ha ha.

So last night, I got laughing to myself as I was attempting to fall asleep.  I got thinking, yeah, if I get this book published and he sees the stack of Mom's letters tied up in ribbon in a picture he's going to say, "Do you have those letters?"  Ha ha ha ha ha ha...........

"No Dad."

"Well, Dad, someday I'll make a scrapbook for you."  Not now.

This happened with some old pictures a long time ago too!!!!  I've always been one to borrow some of the old family photos to take pictures of them.  I've got the macro lens that will get nice and close.  I later returned lots of pictures, but I kept my favorites. 

He would keep saying, "Do you have those pictures?" 

I kept telling him I returned them, which I did for the most part and he kept saying, "Do you have those pictures?"

Finally the last time he was up visiting, I handed him a small folder with some pictures just to keep him quiet.  But I still have my favorites. 

My Nana had given a lot of pictures to my Mom.  Mom got her high school pictures and other stuff that maybe the other siblings wanted but she gave them to Mom.  She gave them to Mom for a reason.  I kind of think it was because she lived the closest to Nana, being only a few streets away and was in Nana's life the most.  They were best friends.

So that's the funny story, I got laughing to myself about.  It's kind of funny how I have my hands on some of these pictures.  But, I think I have them for a reason, as I can do special things with them to share with the rest of the family.  I think my Mom and my Nana would have wanted that.

Which now brings me to this beautiful sunny day in Vermont.  Last night I also watched Rear Window and I want to watch it again tonight.  I watched the Birds earlier this week. 

And then, I kind of looked through my apartment for things to use in my second batch of pictures to take.  Mom's favorite pie dish, the blue Pyrex bowl, an old egg beater, baby spoons, etc... an old box filled with negatives.

I opened up the box this morning and felt a little disappointed as it wasn't my Nana's ancient negatives.  It was just filled with modern negatives from the seventies.  I ended up dumping them all as nobody uses negatives anymore, and I can use my digital camera on all the pictures I like.

I'm forgetting her old negatives are in another box.  I won't ever get rid of those as they are ancient and not from my time.

I grabbed the old letters and some other small things like her special jewelry, her old stocking with her name on it and other stuff.

This morning, after the kids went to school and my ex went to work, I pulled out my mother's old blanket that my Great Nana had made and I started setting down flowers and pictures and other things on it.  I love the art of arranging the collages and set ups.  That is so much fun to see what you can come up with.

I'm not quite sure if I actually have my cover yet, but I might very well have part of it today.

I would like to bring different pictures into my Adobe Elements 7 and do a collage picture maybe including several different pictures.

I started reading the guidelines too for the Kindle Publishing platform.  It seems pretty easy, but there's a few things I'm not quite sure of.  They want it so readers can navigate throughout the book.  So I'm not quite sure how to do the contents page and if I should have the whole thing as a pdf or one of the other formats they want it in. 

I think I will have to start going into the kindlecentral  forum and begin to ask my questions.  There's also a free software that we can download to design (in house design).  I might try downloading it later before I go too far into the book.  Maybe it would be better to do it in that software so that it gets done correctly.

It will be a learning process.  Things I do know is that the format has to be in a basic font, black with no colored backgrounds.

I opened up the stack of Mom's letters and found the envelope with her light hair in it.  I took a picture of it on top of her old Gone with the Wind book with a flower nearby.

Well, I'll let you go for now.  The morning is still young, and I'm thinking of next typing up the next Chapter of The Glorious Money Tree.  I've had it largely hand written a few days ago and will get that going. 

I think one of the pictures I took this morning I will include in that chapter.

Talk soon.

Jennifer Jo Fay

Copyrighted September 13, 2012

This was the last Mother's Day Card I gave my mom and I framed it one year.  The other picture in this one before is a view of Congress Street, Portland, Maine done by well known Maine artist, Jon Legere.  I am remembering that I may have gone to college with one of his younger relatives.

This is the special music box that my Mom gave me on my last visit with her.  We cried.  Her best friend had given it to her.  And I am sure they cried too.    This is the blanket my Great Nana made.  Mom used to have it draped over her rocking chair in the living room.   The little duck is my very first piggy bank.  The funny thing about it is that underneath it is crudely signed Witchcraft.  I don't know if that gives me some inner meaning.  I don't know.  People in college were thinking I was a witch, for god knows what reason?  One of the guys came up to me and told me that's what they thought.  Must have been they saw something in my artwork? 

Maybe that's a sign that I ought to read up on witchcraft and tarot cards sometime for the fun of it (more for the idea of creating a character someday for a novel) ha ha

These were some of her old gloves I found and forgot I had.  The paper butterflies I have had in an envelope for a while, saving them for something to do with photography.  Well, here you go.

The little wicker heart is around the picture of my Nana, my mom's Mom.  Mollyanne wanted it when she saw me bring it back from Goodwill earlier towards springtime.  I let her have it and it's been hanging in the mudroom.  It's funny how we suddenly think we can use something in our photographs.  That's why I am not always quick to throw out something as I never know when something is going to come in handy for this.

That black fabric underneath I used for the set up.  It could later end up being cut up for the yo yo circles, but maybe I should leave a good piece for this.

As you can see, I've got to bring these into Picasa and fix them.  I can hardly wait to get that new Adobe cs5 or cs6 software hopefully by Christmas time.  I've been wanting it since last year and now I see they have the new one.  But either one will be good.  You can download lots of things from Brusheezy but you need at least the Photo shop cs5 to do it.  I do have Mystical, Photo Key pro, and a few others, but I don't think I can do it with those.

I definitely want this picture to be part of the cover.  Maybe I can collage some of the other pictures for the cover and have this one be right smack in the middle to stand on it's own.

Here's the letters!  ha ha ha.......    Long ago there was talk of a mushy letter Dad wrote that is in there.  It won't be published but I might just say there's a mushy letter in here that someday needs to go back to my Dad in some shape or form.  At the time we heard about the mushy letter, I was determined to find it and I DID!!!!!  Along with all kinds of other letters!  There's classics from Nana to Mom telling her and her cousin to be careful about swimming at the pit and to watch out for the boys.  ha ha ha.....

Here's her Gone with the Wind.  You don't see too many books nowadays with the pages all lined up like that.