Remembering an Aunt and Uncle

As you’ve seen in my previous posts, I have a very large extended family.  But you’ve only seen my maternal side.  Today I am scrapping about my father’s side of the family.  My aunt died last Friday morning and her death is really what brought on this week of Heritage scrapping.  When I got home from work that afternoon, I pulled out a couple of boxes of old photos because I knew I had the photo I used for today’s blog and I wanted to look at it again.

I never knew my aunt and uncle as they are in this photo. In this photo they are newly wed, very young and you can see how happy they are.  By the time I came along they already had three boys and were knee deep in their farming and feeding their cattle. 

I can remember going out to my aunt and uncle’s farm, the smell of manure thick in my nose while I tried to keep up with my cousins who never wanted to play Barbies or house!  No, it was soldiers with their little green army men or cowboys and indians.  If we were outside, we tramped over haystacks and around the the cattle pens which always stirred the cows up and often caused my uncle to check out what we were up to. 

I remember standing on a stool while I watched her make dumplings for the chicken and dumplings we were having for supper.  I remember her telling me that “once you put those dumplings in the pot, you put the lid on and don’t ever take the lid off and NEVER,NEVER stir it.”  Her tacos were incredible!

She had an infectious belly laugh that was a delight to hear.  

My uncle lost his arm to a corn harvester about 45 years before he passed away.  He was lucky to have survived.  When I decided to get married, there was no question that my dad would perform the ceremony.  So with my dad doing the ceremony, I asked my uncle to give me away.  I proudly walked down the aisle on his hook arm.  He was pretty proud too. 

With my aunt gone, its seems to have marked the end of my Dad’s family for me even though there is a younger brother who still is still living.  Her death made me miss my Dad and grieve all the years we’ve lost. 

If you’ve read all the way to here, bless you.  Now for the LO

This is only a 1 page LO.  I don’t do 1 page LOs very often, but with old photos, sometimes you may only have one photo. 

I left the picture uncropped after I scanned it and printed it off.  The background is part of the story..  We came from southeastern Colorado and it is dry and often there’s not much green to see unless it’s yucca plants, cactus, or tumble weeds.  You can see this in the picture. 

The paper is once again from my stash and is old, old, old.  The flower border is from Gypsy Wandering and is cut at 11” long.  I cut two of them.  I cut extra flowers and I curled the petals of the extra flowers to give more dimension and attached them on top of the original flowers in the border.  I put three dashes down the middle of each petal because I thought it looked good. The jewels are from Paper Studio.  Oh, and the font is Gypsy Font. 

I love the way this turned out. 

What I am learning about scrapping old photos is that the most important part of the work that I do putting these photos in a scrapbook is the journaling.  Make plenty of room for it. 

Here are some close ups:

Thanks for stopping by!  Please leave a comment.  I love to read them.