Stampin! with Jaydee

Hi Everyone.   I'm about to reveal a secret.... well, not really, 'cos if you are on the blog hop and came here from Anne Marie's blog, - then you will already know what it is!

If not, I am thrilled-  and honored - to participate in a blog hop especially for the uber talented, fabulous - and now GRANDMOTHER - also known as Linda Callahan!   Linda, congratulations, I am sooooo happy for you!   Grandmother's are so special and you are in for the ride of your life!

Instead of a card for Linda, I decided to share some  a few thoughts about my own grandmother, as well as a poem.

Sadly for me I didn't get all of my grandmother's genes.  She carried the skinny gene, the tall gene - both of which bypassed me.  However, my grandmother did pass on to me the humour gene.  I remember spending 6 weeks with my grandma and my Uncle Jack one summer, they were wonderful to me and I can close my eyes and remember the living room like it was yesterday.  She loved Victorian furniture, but not the overly heavy furniture and stuffy rooms.  The living room was sparsely decorated with a few carefully chosen pieces. 

No clutter, nothing extraneous, a room left with space around each object.  One of those objects was the funniest thing I had ever seen at that age and still find it funny!  It was a tiny little chamber pot that was decorated with roses.  It wasn't the outside that was funny, it was what was written on the bottom of the pot - inside.  A little poem written around a single eye.  The poem read "keep me clean and wash me well, and what I see I'll never tell".  That absolutely cracked me up and even today 50 years later, I can think of that little chamber pot ornament sitting on top of the fireplace and remind me of how my grandmother laughed when I laughed.  Then, I knew we shared the same humour gene.

Decades later, I realized that my grandmother had also influenced my design gene.  I love clean, open spaces with no clutter.  I like statement pieces.  I didn't know it, but that definitely came from my grandmother. 

Another thing I remember about my grandmother...... you could eat off of her floors.  Her floors - and her house - were the cleanest house I have ever been into.  Every surface sparkled and shone.  The house was always spotless.  Monday was wash day.  Tuesday was ironing day.  Wednesday was shopping day....every day had an activity.  Another thing I got from my grandmother - the need for a routine gene.

My grandmother was well into her sixties when I was born and she had lived a very tough life.  Growing up in the north of England in the early part of the 1900s was not an easy life.  She lived through The Great War and the one that followed.  She lost a husband who had been bedridden for the last 10 years of his life.  She looked after him without complaint every single day and carried her family through those tough years with the same love, humour and care that she brought to every situation.  She gave birth to children and buried children and eventually was blessed with 12 grandchildren.  Her genes carry through in all of us, and I am so grateful for all the things she gave to me.  Harriet... you were wonderful.

Linda, I know that you will be a wonderful grandmother.  A grandmother who will share her love, her life, her experiences and pass along many amazing things to the next generation.  To quote Christopher Morley, it as grandmothers that our mothers come into the fullness of their grace! Congratulations, my friend!

Now... don't forget to pop along on the rest of the blog hop.  Your next stop is the fabulous Nance!

Warm hugs and prayers to all you grandmothers out there!

Hugs

Jaydee