Passing It Down

Once upon a time, when Chick was about 2 or 3 years old, Granny and I were with her in JCPenney's in Little Rock, Arkansas. Christmas was coming up and Granny saw a shirt that she insisted she MUST buy.

It said, "Who needs Santa? I've got Grandma!" And buy it she did.

That little size 3T shirt has now officially been worn by all three of our children. Doing the math, it would be around 15 years old. It's still in good shape too. Who knows? Maybe their children will pass it around too.

There is another little item in our household that is like that. I recently lamented that we no longer had it so Rugrat could play it then Dude found it while cleaning up the desk he uses for school.

It is this game:

My Disney Kitchen. It is just a little CD-Rom game that lets you run around Minnie's kitchen doing things like making cakes, bacon, eggs, pancakes, emptying the fridge, moving around the dishes, etc.

We got it for Chick when she was fairly young -- maybe 6 -- and then Dude played it for a while too and enjoyed it.

Now Rugrat has discovered it.

I often hear at some point during the day -- "I play my game??"

And she's figuring it out a little at a time.

Initially, when we got it, it would pretty much take over the computer. Now, I don't even think the computer we have, even though it's actually pretty old for most now, labors over running it. Our technologies have come a long way. Which makes this sweet little game even better in my opinion.

I have to wonder what else will be passed down through all three of them. Somehow, I don't think the Cobalt will make it. But you never know.

Cleaning Silver

Mostly gone are the days when young couples got fine china and silver for their weddings. Oh it still happens but most couples tend to get much more practical things now.

Which is not to say better necessarily -- just different than it used to be.

My mother received this silver tea set as a wedding gift over 40 years ago. After marrying again a couple of years ago, she wanted to make sure that it was passed on to me.

It's been in storage a few years but I carried it home after our last trip there. If you have real silver anything, you may recognize what's on it in that picture.

All silver tarnishes over time. It just so happened though that this very week, one of my favorite blogs had a tip for cleaning silver.

It's apparently an old tip that housewives have been using for some time. I looked it up because I was terrified of ruining such a treasure. After all, it has value in more than one way for me.

It's very simple to clean actually. You line your sink with aluminum foil, sprinkle baking soda liberally over it, and add the silver. You then boil water and, when it's boiling, pour it on top making sure to cover the silver completely.

After that, it's a matter of letting it soak a bit while a pretty wild chemical reaction takes place. I wasn't sure what to expect. It worked quite well though. I got a little concerned when it initially foamed a little but that was gone quickly.

There was also quite an odor. I understand that sulfur is involved in the chemical process in some way so I suppose it might have something to do with that.

The silver was pretty tarnished. I had to let it soak for a while. When it was done, this is what my foil looked like.

Yuck! It was pretty gross looking. But I guess I knew it worked that way. I took out the pieces and rubbed them down with a soft towel.

I wanted to make sure they were good and dry.

This is what they looked like when all was said and done.

Beautiful, don't you think. Now I just have to buy some more baking soda and figure out what I have that is big enough to submerge completely the tray.

I'll probably do the whole thing again in another week. They were pretty tarnished after being stored and they probably need one more soak for all the intricate little nooks and crannies.

If you want to read the post I mentioned, you can find it here. She is always adding neat little tips and such for green cleaning.

Eggs to Dye For

On Friday last week, we decided to do some Easter egg dying. The Rugrat has never, I would guess, participated in any such thing so she was quite interested in this strange thing we were doing. The Chick had already asked if we would do any dying so she was happy to get going on it. Dude, however, was not interested. I think he's at that annoying age where he thinks he's too big for anything so undignified. Oh, well.


Let me step back just a moment and say that although we like dying the eggs, none of us like eating the eggs. Hubby usually ends up with a plate full of deviled eggs each Easter. Because he can only stand so many before he's done until next year, I usually only make about 6 eggs for us to dye. In hopes that the Rugrat will be another deviled egg eater and since there were now 3 children, I made 9 this time. I guess we'll see how it goes. I do know that she likes hard boiled eggs (from the salad bar at the pizza buffet) so I may save a few from deviling for her, just in case.

The Rugrat doesn't quite have dying patience yet. She kept asking me to lift them up so she could see them. I guess next year we'll be able to explain that they have to stay in to get a good color.
She was also very excited about the box and the various keep-em-busy activities that are included. Not because she was being kept busy by the activities but because she was entranced by the bright colors and patterns.

She seemed to think it was perfectly clever of me to make circles out of the little cardboard egg holders that came with it. And she was amazed when I popped circles out of the back of the box.

It was really quite entertaining to see her reaction to everything - one nice thing about having a toddler rather than a baby who is experiencing everything for the first time. I'm excited already about the next holiday when we'll get to introduce her to more of our little traditions.