For a few days of the vacation, we stayed with Brian’s grandparents, Cookie and Dottie, who probably have the coolest grandparent names ever.  In fact, I love to drop their names into conversation, like I know a celebrity or something.  Cookie’s mother was quite a painter, and her art is found all over their house.  Here are some of my favorites:

Self portrait of Margaret, Brian’s Great Grandmother, 1945.  Self portraits can show a lot of honesty, and I think this is a great example of that.

Portraits of Cookie and his younger brother, Eddie.  These paintings aren’t very big, maybe seven or eight inches high.  I imagine Margaret painting these very quickly and easily, wanting to capture her boys before they went off to play.

Back in the day, it was actually cheaper to make clothes than to buy them.  My mother made most of the clothes my sister and I wore, and we loved it.  Going to the fabric store to choose a pattern, picking out the fabric for the new outfit, listening to Mom sew and sew until it was all done!  Around the early 90s, the fine people at Butterick came up with a new line of patterns for girls: Busybodies.  The clothes were fashionable, yet could stand up to some time on the playground.  This didn’t mean a thing to me and my sister; for us, it was all about the Busybodies Girls.

The same four (illustrated) girls were depicted on every pattern cover.  A cross between The Babysitters Club and Sweet Valley Twins, they were the girls my sister and I wanted to be: fashionable, carefree, and confident, with beautiful hair and killer accessories.

As anyone who sews can tell you, it is totally awesome to take something that is just an idea, or a picture, and turn it into a unique piece of custom clothing.  Busybodies opened up that door for me.  I fell in love with those illustrated girls, and my mom was able to give me my own little part of the Busybodies world.  It wasn’t too long before I began sewing my own clothing, and eventually, it was no longer about Becoming a Busybodies Girl- it was about making my OWN clothes and developing my own style.

I still have a soft spot for those girls.  I called my sister up to tell her about a Busybodies pattern I’d seen at a thrift store recently.  We still agree that they are the coolest girls we’ve ever seen.

I had my mom make an exact replica of this illustration!  Proudly wearing my new outfit on the first day of fifth grade.

PS: Thanks, Mom for the hundreds of outfits you sewed for all of us!

I think you all will be just as inspired as I am by the beautiful simplicity of this affair:

Don’t you just love the kids’ table?  And what about the stump seats?  They were just as comfortable as any chair.  Anyone else feel the urge to start collecting vintage table linens?