Anything from your childhood

That must have been the most popular (affordable) one.
A kid in town (of my folk's friends) had what I believe to be a three story one
crank up elevator and all
Then again, he had every toy imaginable
Huge drawers full

Hated to leave with my folks
No we didn’t have the extended version. We had that exact same one. It offered many hours of entertainment. Far better than any doll.
 
Ooohhh....let's see.

I'm not really a woodworker. I love Renaissance art, but of course shall never own any. So I would go to the National Gallery of Art in DC and buy the poster "reproductions." I then went to a "We Teach You" type frame shop to learn how to make frames and got to be friends with the owner. She showed me how to have them dry-mounted on foam core and then brush decoupage sealer on them to cut the poster glare and to impart brush strokes. I used to play around with this under a heat lamp so the decoupage would get tacky and give me more dramatic strokes. I cover the back with brown paper and affix the artist/title description to it.

I really got hooked on this and found a commercial frame stock place where I could buy period-style material. I cut it at home and bought a 90° frame vise. I bet I did well over a dozen different pictures of varying size. It's been a very long time since I've done this. Here's a couple of examples. Tough to get good pics without ambient sunlight...lots of glare.

The Botticelli is 24" x 30". I don't want to tell you how much that frame material cost me. You can see the decoupage "strokes" in the trees.

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This is a van Eyck, about 6" x 12", front and back:

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Then there was my Egyptology phase inspired by the King Tut tour. I used to hit a West African curio place in Old Town Alexandria. I bought a few papyrus pieces and made mini shadow boxes for a couple of them:

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Man, that was a trip down memory lane.

Regarding breads...I make everything but loaf bread (French,Italian, ciabatta, dinner rolls, pizza.) I've never found a suitable sandwich loaf recipe. Edit to add: From scratch but with a stand mixer. No way I'd knead all that.

Since I'm uploading pics, here's part of the French bread I made for a large church event:

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Cooking is the one interest I have always retained. Everything else has been dive in the deep end for a while and then move on to something else. I do have a set of 4 Thomas Cole reproductions I need to finish and hang, titled "The Voyage of Life." Here are links if you're interested. It's a fascinating series:

Childhood
Youth
Manhood
Old Age
This is really impressive. I only just noticed it.
When I framed the pictures I wanted I also went to a DIY place that supplied the frame stock, tools and instruction. None of the frames I made were cheap. There were very expensive but well worth it.

You have good artistic taste.

You can bake bread far better than I can. That looks so good. Thanks for sharing all this.
 

Mom and Dad....Mom was a seamstress her whole life....She was born in NYC and had to go to work because her Mom and Dad,
needed the money...They had 10 kids....Mom made my clothes up until the 6th grade....I wish she was still here to make me
clothes....I never took after her....I never even sew a button....
My Mom was also a seamstress. She made amazing evening gowns, and made dresses for my dolls with the fancy remnants. We were always well dressed, and asked for the latest fashions. Remember circle skirts that were worn with crinolines? Roses were a popular skirt print too.
 
My Mom was also a seamstress. She made amazing evening gowns, and made dresses for my dolls with the fancy remnants. We were always well dressed, and asked for the latest fashions. Remember circle skirts that were worn with crinolines? Roses were a popular skirt print too.
My mother was not necessarily a seamstress, but she sewed a lot before my parents split up.

I remember that one storage dresser she had in the dining room. You would open one of the doors and all these cheap paper McCall's and Simplicity patterns would spill out.

Every time I buy window treatments I kick myself for not having learned the basics.
 
My mother was not necessarily a seamstress, but she sewed a lot before my parents split up.

I remember that one storage dresser she had in the dining room. You would open one of the doors and all these cheap paper McCall's and Simplicity patterns would spill out.

Every time I buy window treatments I kick myself for not having learned the basics.
I don't know if they sell curtain/drapery fabric here, with the special binding tape that you can pleat and put drapery hooks into. All you do, is measure, and hem. I bought some when I lived in Australia, and made drapes. It was so easy, and I was so proud of myself.
 
I had a bunch of Auburn rubber roadster hotrods that I played with endlessly
Oh, yeaaaahhhh

Mine had the yellow tires/wheels
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They were some of the most detailed toys you'll ever see. You could see the drivers face clearly


Yeah, and that was my prob with the '56 T-Bird
The lady driver with the little kid in the passenger seat

56 t bird.jpg

It messed with my imagination when trying to envision me driving
 
Weren’t those catalogues fun to go through and dream of all the toys you wish you had? Not that we’d get them lol but it was fun to dream
I miss those days.
At the end of each summer, we were allowed to go through the Sears catalogue to choose a new pair of shoes and outfit for the start of school in September. Also for Christmas. We would cut out pictures from the outdated catalogues.
 
I had a nice cap gun that held a whole roll of caps & automatically advanced the next cap with each trigger pull.
Of course, that wasn't good enough for me; I modified it so it would fire more than one cap at a time.
That's turned out to be a bad idea. when I was up to 4 caps, the barrel started to melt. I kept firing it, until I burned my hand. At the time, I didn't know caps had black powder in them & burned at high temperatures - especially after my customization.
I don't modify my real ones, now. Way too dangerous.

I also destroyed several of those rocket-shaped cap bombs. They had fins (like on a dart) & a weighted nose. You throw them up & they land on the nose & set off a cap that you stick on before.
I kept adding caps until it came down & exploded in pieces. Luckily they don't sell toys like that now.
Cap guns and those lead rockets were a blast, yes yes!
 
At the end of each summer, we were allowed to go through the Sears catalogue to choose a new pair of shoes and outfit for the start of school in September. Also for Christmas. We would cut out pictures from the outdated catalogues.
Cut out pictures and hang them on the fridge as a subtle hint. 😂
 
Weren’t those catalogues fun to go through and dream of all the toys you wish you had? Not that we’d get them lol but it was fun to dream
It was the book of dreams
My big sis and I would lie on the living room floor and slowly leaf thru the toy section
We didn't get any of the good stuff
Knew better than to ask, or even hint
Didn't matter
Dreams are like that
 
It was the book of dreams
My big sis and I would lie on the living room floor and slowly leaf thru the toy section
We didn't get any of the good stuff
Knew better than to ask, or even hint
Didn't matter
Dreams are like that
We didn’t dare ask either but we encouraged our neighbourhood friends to ask so at least there was a possibility that we could play with them. 😇
 
I don't know if they sell curtain/drapery fabric here, with the special binding tape that you can pleat and put drapery hooks into. All you do, is measure, and hem. I bought some when I lived in Australia, and made drapes. It was so easy, and I was so proud of myself.
I love to do home projects. There's nothing like daily living with things that were done by your own hand.

You're not the first person to say "All you have to do is hem" to me. Can you see my blank stare???

I can't make curtains, but I finally got around to building a cornice for my patio door a while ago. This let me cover the vertical blind hardware and install a rod to hang shears over the blinds.

Cornice.jpg

It came out more formal that I wanted, but it was a matter of available fabric in my rural area.
And this design matches a mantle I built that's in the same room.
 
Oh, yeaaaahhhh

Mine had the yellow tires/wheels
Yeah, and that was my prob with the '56 T-Bird
The lady driver with the little kid in the passenger seat

It messed with my imagination when trying to envision me driving

Heard that. (y) For a while, I had quite a collection of different vehicles. (mainly because I had to buy a whole lot to get the hotrods). Fire trucks, earth movers, the cool tractor with the farmer looking back, motorcycle police, and a slew of army vehicles. I really thought the caddy convertible was cool.
Buying these toys, I learned that the black tires were the oldest, then yellow, and finally white. (another meaningless factoid) :D:D
Of all the other toys, the only one I think I should have kept was the cool police car. I had a rare yellow one, (blue was the common) that still had both rear antenna, and light bubble on the roof. (most of them were chewed off, like drivers heads and on the hotrod, the headlights).
I have since hunted and found a complete yellow one, but, too expensive. :(

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Everything good I could think of had something negative attached to it, until I finally came up with this: SCHOLASTIC BOOK CLUB!
A few times the school held little "book fairs" with books on display, but mostly it was the newsletters that came out on a regular basis- kids (and/or their parents) could choose whichever books they wanted, and Scholastic would deliver them to the school.
 
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the only one I think I should have kept was the cool police car. I had a rare yellow one, (blue was the common) that still had both rear antenna, and light bubble on the roof.
Can't recall, but I think mine was blue
Yeah, the antennas were the first to go
I'd like to take a moment to thank my little brother...and his dog

Wish I had all those now, but left home quite early, and my brother had his way with them

Still, there are magical places yet today
Places where a goodly portion of Auburn Rubber is enshrined
 
Strangely enough the thing that I have the most emotional connection to is a little Christmas bell I lost on a Los Angeles freeway when I held it out the convertible my dad was driving. It wasn't anything special, but when I think about things I miss that one comes to my heart first.

However a much more practical and greedy desire would be my complete (or nearly complete) set of Monkees bubble gum trading cards. I'm afraid my mother was really good at getting us to throw away things we didn't use even though a number of them would have been worth a decent amount of money now.
 
Cap guns and those lead rockets were a blast, yes yes!
I have both, out in my garage. The problem is that caps are beyond terrible, now. They put a few grains of powder in the caps, and they're not even manufactured with anything that resembles quality. You cannot feed a cap gun, properly, and the rockets do not fire the caps with anything close to the reports we enjoyed, as kids.
 
I have both, out in my garage. The problem is that caps are beyond terrible, now. They put a few grains of powder in the caps, and they're not even manufactured with anything that resembles quality. You cannot feed a cap gun, properly, and the rockets do not fire the caps with anything close to the reports we enjoyed, as kids.

As kids, we used to carefully skin the top of "caps", dump out the powder, and after about 20 or so, we would make a huge firecracker out of the residue! Downside of that was, some times you would scratch to hard, and have a lovely burst of flame in your fingers. lol. Great times though!
 


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