Not Everyone’s Mama | Not Everyone's Mama

Project 365 Day 11

Posted by Heather Manning On January - 11 - 2010

Yesterday, I took a picture of my most prized possession from my grandma who passed away when I was 14. Today, I thought I’d take a picture of the thing that holds so many memories that I treasure from my grandpa who passed away in October of 2005.

That’s it. Have you seen those before? It’s a coin purse. Do you call it a purse if it’s for a man?

He went through quite a few of these in my lifetime and I’m sure in his, and when my grandpa died, I asked my aunt if he still had one that I could had. This is one that he hadn’t used, but it was there for him because my aunt kept a few around for him to use when the one he was using wore out. (I actually didn’t know he had more than one, there was never a time he didn’t have one of these and I thought it was the same one for years and years until I asked my aunt about it after he died.)

This just makes me think of my grandpa. Whenever the ice cream truck would come down the road with it’s dinging, he would get this out and give me and my cousins coins out of it. When we’d go to the bowling ally for their league, he’d get this out for me to play the bear claw or a video game or to get a pop. Just one of those things that I associated with my grandpa my whole life and I was so happy when my Aunt Jackie sent me one. I opened up the package and this slid out into my head and I swear I could smell my grandpa if I stuck my nose up to it, minus the Old Spice after shave. It was probably all in my imagination, but I don’t care, I’ll hold onto what I have.

So there you have it, between yesterday and today, 2 of my most prized possessions. Isn’t it funny how something so small that looks so insignificant can mean so much to us?

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Project 365

Project 365 Day 10

Posted by Heather Manning On January - 10 - 2010

To you, this might look just like an old box. To me, it’s one of my most prized possessions.

I don’t know how old this Samsonite case is, but I’m 35, and it’s been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. This was what my grandma used as her make up case.

I can remember when I was younger sitting in her kitchen watching her put her make up on. This case would be sitting on a chair in front of her with the lid propped on the back of the black vinyl swivel chair because it wouldn’t stay open on it’s own. She’d lean over the case to look in the mirror to do her make up. Every day. She was so glamorous to me with her hair that she had done every week (as so many of our grandmas did) and her make up that she’d put on just so.

She passed away when I was 14 and part of my heart went with her. I got her make up case, and though it might look like only an old beat up traveling case, I’ve cherished it ever since. I use it for my own make up case and hopefully my girls will have the same fond memories of watching me put on my make up. (I say girls, but that includes Christiano who feels the need to dig through all my make up as I put it on.

The A on the box stands for Alice. Some of you who have been visiting me for years know the story behind Alyce’s name, but I’ll share for those who don’t. My grandma’s name was Mary Alice, but she wouldn’t answer to Mary. Even in the hospital when she was fighting the cancer that started in her kidneys and would eventually take over her whole body, the doctor’s would ask her a question, something simple like, how are you today Mary? And she wouldn’t answer them. She went by Alice. Her name was Alice. Don’t call her Mary. When I was pregnant with Alyce, I came across some papers that showed my grandma’s middle name spelled as Alyce and my mom said she thought that was actually how it was spelled, but that my grandma spelled it Alice.

So, Alyce was named Maria Alyce to give it more of a hispanic flair (For those of you here for the first time, daddy is Mexican, we try to give tribute to his heritage when we name our kids). We call her Alyce because I wanted her to be named after my grandma and I wanted it done just like my grandma’s name. The only thing different is we don’t pronounce Alyce – Alice. We pronounce it as uh-leese.

It helped with Pato’s family that both of his grandmas are and were named Maria.

I turned this into a blog post all on it’s own. I had to explain the significance behind this box that holds so many precious memories for me. I’m not sure where the burn on the box came from, but even that holds memories. It reminds me of the burns on my grandma’s kitchen floor. She had a habit of letting her cigarettes burn out, light it, take a puff, sit it down, let it burn. Woe to the person who tried to put it out so that she could smoke it later as my mom can attest to. Sometimes, the cigarette hit the linoleum and it would burn a mark into it. That mark on the case looks just like one of her burn marks, but I’m not quite sure how that would have happened. It probably seems sad that cigarette burn marks on a kitchen floor are part of my cherished memories, but when it comes to my grandma, every memory is cherished.

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Project 365

Project 365 Day 9

Posted by Heather Manning On January - 9 - 2010

I’m not sure about this one. I tried. I was taking a picture of my plants that I’m attempting to grow. I’ve never been able to grow a plant from seed and bought a bunch of them on Ebay when the kids destroyed my plants on my stand. Only half of my pots have started growing and this is the one that’s the tallest. I’d tell you what it is, but the humidity in the bag faded the print on the paper.

Used my macro setting, but I think this one is stretching the limitations of my camera. Oh well, the whole point of Project 365 is to try new things and learn right? I’ll get the macro setting down before we’re done.

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Project 365

Project 365 Day 8

Posted by Heather Manning On January - 8 - 2010

I’m on a roll. How about you guys? 8 days in a row? I never thought I’d get this far. Today’s picture –

We’ll call this one – rings. My wedding rings to be specific. My wedding rings that I might have taken the time to clean before I used them as a day 8 subject. I thought I’d see how my macro setting did this morning. This is the best shot I got of them. My band is actually pink sapphires, but the black and white just looked better. (possibly because I need to clean my rings.)

For this one I used my In The News PSP Script. Available as always at http://digiscrapping.net.

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Project 365

It’s Quiet Here

Posted by Heather Manning On January - 4 - 2010

Well, unless you count Sesame Street and Abby Cadabby. Alyce is watching it right now as Christiano is sleeping.

My oldest 2 returned to school today. Can you hear all the moms in the US (and other countries?) doing a huge congo line together? I enjoyed having them home during the day and my attempts to sleep past 7 every day during break, but I am so not going to miss the fighting.

No one fights with Christiano, so with it just being Alyce and him, I won’t hear the battling that goes on when the other two are home. Jordan fights with Kat, Kat fights with Alyce, they are beautiful.

I think Jordan is growing up a little. I don’t see him fighting over the little things anymore. Not saying he doesn’t fight. Katiana picks at things until she makes him mad then all bets are off. Kat’s at that age – almost 6 – where she can’t seem to get along with anyone in the family. Everything upsets her, even I can rarely do anything right. Come to think of it, I thought that age was 13, not 5. If this is what she is like now, God help me when she’s a teenager and I really am the most uncool thing to walk the face of the Earth.

So much for Nano sleeping. Pato makes more noise than anyone I know. He just put the ironing board away and hit the door jam thingy somehow, making it go up and down, up and down, making the boing noise, then slammed the closet door, and voila, baby is up. Thank you honey.

He does things like that. Bedroom door is shut – somehow he is able to open it with the noise of a thundergod, Christiano sleeping in bed, Pato bounces getting into it and getting comfortable like waves from a bad storm at sea. And remember how he woke Christiano up the night I needed to wrap Christmas presents? Literally, my husband is a bull in a china shop. 6 feet 2 inches, 230 pounds of I can’t do anything quietly. Love you but you drive me crazy when the baby is sleeping. Mwah!

Got my Project 365 posted. It’s day 4. I’m running out of things to take pictures of in the morning. I may have my pictures posted later on in the coming weeks as I take my pictures while I’m out and about during the day.

Remember my post saying that Craig Ferguson needs to tweet? Turns out that he used to have a Twitter account. He canceled it. Wonder why? Did he decide that tweeting wasn’t cool like Miley Cyrus did? Who has the scoop? I must have missed the episode where he explained it.

I’ll leave you with @Ricky_Martin‘s Inspirational Tweet Of The Day:

Me too Ricky, me too.

(You didn’t even know that was a feature did you? Neither did I! He’s always tweeting something inspirational, I thought I’d just go with it, cuz I <3 him. See what happens when I find out one of my favorite people in the world tweets?)

Have a great day!

ETA – do you ever wish that you played a sport or were involved in something just for the clothes? Ok, it hasn’t happened to me since I have grown up, BUT, when I was younger, I wanted to wear equestrian apparel so bad. Which would have been fine except we couldn’t afford a horse and I have never been very good at horseback riding (see reason A). I love horses though, and not just for the cool clothes the riders wear. What were some things you would have loved to do when you were younger that you didn’t get a chance to do for whatever reason?

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My Life

New Year’s Aspirations

Posted by Heather Manning On January - 1 - 2010

First, Happy New Year! I hope 2010 is wonderful to you (and me)!

Don’t you love the picture! It’s the only one Kat would stand for, she was tired. So, Happy New Year from the crew too!

We don’t do no posed pictures at our house ~~because no one will sit still long enough for me to shoot the picture~~.

I got the idea for my post today from Closet 365. Her New Year’s Eve post was about her aspirations for 2010 with her new site. (Best of luck by the way! I think you’ll do great!) She asked us what our resolutions were for 2010. I don’t have any. I don’t do resolutions. I break them, the same day I make them. I posted some fashion critiques (of myself) and I thought that would be a good jumping off point for today.

Here we go!

Just because I stay home with 4 kids ALL day EVERY day, that does not give me the right to wear yoga pants and a t-shirt every day of my life.

A ponytail flipped under is not the only hairstyle there is.

Mascara is my friend….and lipstick….and eyeliner…and you get the point. Just because I’m home all day doesn’t mean I don’t have to make myself look nice. Pato might actually appreciate the effort.

Fake crocks with the wool inserts are not acceptable going out shoes every time I leave the house. Are they ever acceptable actually?

A nail file would not kill me.

There. Baby Steps. Like once a week I’ll break out a non-athletic outfit to start out with. Wouldn’t want to shock my system like some kind of really scary employee screening. Have you been through those BTW? I’ve taken 2 and they were easy. Maybe it’s because I’m naturally honest? I don’t know.

What happened to me? There was a day when I wouldn’t go up to the gas station without full make up on. Now they don’t know what I look like in full make up. Ok, they do, but they look shocked to see it.

Other aspirations for 2010. I will learn new recipes once a week and ~~hold my breath while I test them out on~~ feed my family a nice home cooked meal. These meals that I try once a week will not contain hamburger – the main part of any meal at our house because let’s face it, cooking is not my forte. It will be though! It will be. Ok, I will never be as good as Picky Palate, but I really want to be. Honestly, if I could take pictures half as well as she can, I’d be happy~~, screw the cooking, we’ve lived this long on hamburger, we’d be good~~.

Speaking of pictures, I’m going to attempt to do Project 365 this year. If you don’t know what Project 365 is, here’s a good description. I don’t think I’ll set up a whole new blog for it. I think I’ll just post it here. I’ve already got 2 blogs. I don’t need another. I take enough pictures of my kids anyway. Working in a picture a day shouldn’t be too hard for me. Got my first one up now, you can see it here.

I think that’s enough aspiring for me. If I start tearing my chocolate habit apart we’ll get nowhere fast. I try it every year and I lose. Let’s not set myself up for failure right at the beginning of a new decade.

So, what are your aspirations this year?

I was reading along my Twitter timeline yesterday and found a new New Year’s superstition. Thank you very much Ricky Martin. Now I have to worry that I’ll have bad luck for like 7 years or something because I didn’t do this.

Now I’m just screwed. No Black-Eyed Peas, no collard greens, no new underwear, what the heck am I gonna do. I know, I won’t do the dishes. That’s a good New Year’s superstition for me!

Happy new year Ricky Martin and to everyone else! Be happy, healthy, safe, and prosperous.