JENNIFER

Our 18 year old grandaughter (our only one) graduated from Fremd High School and will be wending her way to Bradley University in Peoria come mid August.  She is entering their school of nursing.

Here is a pic of her in her graduation gown on the Sunday morning before and picltures of her and her friend Paul at her Prom the Friday evening before.  Paul graduated last year so is a year ahead of Jenny.  He will be a sophomore at Illinois State this fall.  They make a lovely couple - check Paul's shoes.  I guess something had to match.

Our oldest grandson (her brother) will be a junior this year at Bradley.  He is studying civil engineering.  I guess we are in another stage of our life now with grandkids getting to be college age.
We still have 4 more grandsons coming up. 

 

I omitted  one of the front squares and see I showed one of the inside covers twice.  One of these days I will get it.  It was fun adding all the laces to the pages.

 

 

 



BOOK INSTEAD OF WALLHANGING

I decided I had no more room for another wallhanging and so decided to make a book out of my stone angel blocks.  6 of them were 8" but 2 were 8 x 11" to go either side of the angel photo.  What to do.  I decided to put the angel as the cover then the 2 larger blocks would be the inside of the front and back covers.  The 8" blocks made 3 back to back sets of pages for the middle.   Hope this makes sense.  Now I am trying to decide how to actually put the whole thing together.  Here are the pics.

 



GARDEN CONT'D

I bought this beautiful pillow from a gal who had been at the antique show the year before and I had bought one from her then.  I bought it home and it is on my bed in Chicago.  I also bought the new one home and it is on my spare bed.  I liked the ladies she used on this one.  Mine is an all white linen and lace piece embroidered to a pillow.  Very neat.  She does a beautiful job of her pillows.  The pic shows up light pink in spots bu is not like that actually.

The old album I should have passed by but could not once I had opened it and looked at the old pictures.  There are 46 pictures in this album and all the frames are beautiful.  It must have been a fairly well to do family to be able to afford all these picures.  Written in pencil underneath some say Aunt Bessie, Uncle Jon, etc.  The cover is in a worn shape.  It was a velvet I believe that has rubbed off over the years but the clasp still works.

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GARDEN SALE

Before I left Mt. Dora for Chicago I saw they were having a Garden Sale at Renningers Flea Market.  This is my flea market where I go every weekend.  Just about a mile or so from our place.  I had never seen a garden party advertised before and was curious.  I was so pleased that I did go.  I found all these wonderful gals with their garden items, antiques and wonderful handmade pieces.  I ended up buying a lot of things.  Apparently this was the second year for it.  Last year it was held in June but I was gone by then.  One gal told me they decided to have it earlier before too many had gone north and also before the heat arrived.  I bought both garden and non garden items.  One gal even had the new Jeanne D'Arc Living magazine in her booth. 



I fell for these twin topiaries in an old silver holder and they are living on my kitchen island now.
I believe it is called queens fern.

MAKING LACE

Here are a few pics of a lace piece I have put together from Karen Ruane's lace class.  Her classes are so much fun.  This one was taking pices of lace and putting them together to make your own lace piece and as Karen says you could not buy this.  She has a new class starting for 8 weeks in June just sitting and embroidering with her.  I have taken every class she has had except one for buttons which I will take someday.

 

 

The bottom section was just pinned when I shot the pics but last night I sat and sewed on the lace where pinned and then did more embellishing on the bottom section. When finally finihed I will take another pic.



THE GRAHAM GIRLS

 

Family and friends used to refer to us as the Graham girls.   There were only 4 of us in our family, our Mother and her 3 girls.  The oldest was Irene in the middle of the picture. 

2 years later along came Dorothy on the far right of the picture.  5 years after that along came Freda, far left of the picture.  I am assuming I was around 7, Dorothy around 12 and Irene around 14 when this picture was taken.  It is the only real photograph we have of the 3 of us.  Money was tight for my Mother and no money was available for extras.  Even though times were tough and money tight, we had a happy childhood.

 

We all married and had wonderful husbands and children.  My Mother loved her SILs and we used to kid that she liked them better then her daughters. 

 

5 years ago last Sept. we lost Dorothy to a lung disease called Bronchiactisis.  I had never heard of it until Do came down with it. That was my first real loss in life.

 

Almost 2 weeks ago on april 30th. I lost my other sister Irene of bone cancer that went right through her body. She had breast cancer 29 years ago and had a mastectomy.  When I came down with BC 14 years ago she always encouraged me by reminding me of how she had remained cancer free and we thought she had won the battle.  Well that was not to be.  It came back very quietly and by the time they found she had it it was throughout her body.

 

One week I was talking to her and 2 days later she was in the hospital in palliative care in Barrie, Ontario, north of Toronto where all 3 of us lived until I left at age 30. It was a blessing that the end came so fast for her but hard on her family.  She had just 1 daughter, Janice who is married and her son Jason was Irene's only grandchild.

 

Well the Graham girls are now down to 1 girl but I too intend to go out fighting.  Cancer is a terrible disease and there is not a family among us who has not been touched by it.  Some day there will be a cure and that generation will look back at our fight with cancer as we looked back at tuberculosis which was a terrible disease in our day.  I had an uncle who died of it in his late 20's.

 

This is just a little tribute I wanted to pay to my beloved sisters who were known as "The Graham Girls".

 

Freda Marie Butler (nee Graham)