About gDonna
The photo is my son and myself. Now days you can get a photo made to look old like this one. This photo was taken when this was the new look.

Harry S Truman was president when I was born and world war II had ended. I grew up in a time when lunch was put in a brown paper bag and a sandwich was wrapped with wax paper. There was no such thing as pantyhose, we wore stockings that attached to the rubbery clippy things that attached to the girdle. Convenience stores were not common and when we took a trip we packed a picnic basket because many places did not have fast food. Highways had places to pull over and stop, some with picnic tables. Read more ....
 

Donna's Diary Posts

My Favorite Blog and Books
Recent Posts
Wherever home is be You
I did not show you the inside of the pie from the last weeks post. The Pie was delicious and I wish I could have shared it with you. I found myself overwhelmed this past week with learning new things with the internal upgrade to my website, two computers crashed after that, it had nothing to do with the upgrade, some issues I had before the upgrade. Now I am making this post and a video on a completely new computer so I am still learning my way through all of this but I continue to make progress and I feel good about that. I would like to mention that we have some tropical storms (potential Hurricanes) brewing in the Atlantic and look ......
The Thyme we are given
When I was a child and visited my Grandparents, Aunts and Uncles I would tag along as my family would walk along the gardens and talk with one another and admire the blooms of all the plants. There was a special fondness of flowers and I could sense their knowledge of many things that I did not understand.In the past there seemed to be more thought and appreciation for flowers and trees than there are today. When we traveled anywhere, a short distance or a long distance, my mother would name the trees, bushes, flowers and the birds. She came from that impressive generation that seemed so sensible to me.My mother would s ......
Embracing Our Home Part Two
More than ever we need to think about our home as our refuge because that is what it is. Our safe place, no matter what type of home this is or where it is. We either take care of it or abuse it or neglect it. A home will rot, decay and the earth will take it back when no one takes care of it. It is there to provide us shelter, that is what a home is, our shelter.When we embrace our home or even our little space, camper, room, whatever that place is that we reside, then we can make it special and make it how we want it to look. Sometimes it is just giving it a good cleaning and some fresh paint. My mother bought an older home an ......
They Made Time for Others
We live in a fast paced world and so much has been lost to everyday distractions. Our generations before us never had the things that consume our time. I feel that we have too much and many people feel we are suppose to have all of the things that are offered today and somehow think that is being successful.I am not sure this modern world has accomplished making items that make our life easier. When Charles and I started removing items from our house it was a relief and we realized that many things had become a burden. How many appliances can we have? Too many.We did not just remove but we brought in more items that were more functional and purposeful a ......
Living Simple and Intentional
Living simple and intentional can change our lives and get us out of debt, I will explain.My first blog post on this website was July 5 2011. My blog was generations before us. I had posts before 2011 but lost the posts before that doing upgrades. I changed the name to gdonna.com to keep it simple. G stands for grandma that is why there is a G before Donna. My blog was about genealogy, our generations before us and learning to live simple. Charles and I wanted off of the train wreck we seemed to be on. In the 1990's we were both working and eating out often, we had acquired debt because we were just following along life as many people did. ......
Living like the Past
I have just started doing very short picture videos to add to my blog posts. My reason is I want to do something to add some calm, joy and encouragement because of the state of the world. It has taken Charles and I a long time trying to figure out where we wanted to park our History studies and get on with living Like the past. We have not parked ourselves anywhere, what we became is a mixture of the past and we are happy with that. My daughter cautioned me recently after I was discussing decluttering the house. She does not want me to get rid of too much because then it would no longer be interesting and homey and she never feels it is cluttered.She reminded me ......
My Simple Week
Our 1923 Treadle Machine named Clara.I am not sure how our old singer made it to our house from it's original Norfolk Virginia location. I wish I knew where all it traveled since 1923 but I imagine that Mrs. Carney must have loved this machine. Her name was scratched into the case and the year she received it.I love the sounds while peddling the old girl as she smoothly sews along.It has been a simple week full of wonderful finishing projects from sewing, organizing and Charles Birthday.Here is a picture video of our week that I made for you, I hope I can remember how I did this so I can do more of them. Just click on this link to watch and when you finish x out of the video to come ba ......
Contentment
Finding ContentmentContentment comes from within us. Of all of these years that I have lived so far, the people that I have met that I feel had contentment have been the people that lived a simple modest life. They mostly have been from the generation that we often say were the best generation, those that lived through world war 1, the great depression and world war 2. It must have been the trials that they learned to be contented with whatever it was they had.I have seen it on their faces and mannerism. Sitting in a rocking chair just happy with a breeze. A little soft chuckle over a simple thing that they have seen off in a distance. A peace that I rarely see anymore. Many ......
Rearranging My Mental Thinking
Charles and I have been having some serious discussions lately since Charles is considering retirement. It will not be this year and possibly not next year but soon after that.We have always been very close and the older we get the closer we get. We are husband and wife and Best Friends as well. We never tire of each other and I feel that other than the fact that we love each other so very much, we are both creative and enjoy making life and adventure right here at home and that keeps us happy.Charles, is a wonderful man, it seems as if he came from our Grandparents Generation instead of his generation. He is very interested in history which makes our life interesting ......
The way we live
We have had much rain the last several weeks. Quite a bit of rain before the tropical storm Claudette even got near and since then it has rained every day. Mosquitoes are now the problem but we have to take the bad with the good because many other states are in a serious drought. I am thankful for this rainfall.Charles and I live a much more old fashioned life here at our home. Old fashioned compared to those around us but I feel many people are taking a step back as well and going back to basics. So this post is about the way we live and what is going on around our home and garden. The long beans have done well in our small patch of beans. ......
Wonderfully Old Fashioned
I am slowly getting our home to where I really want and need it to be. I moved the enamelware to the top of Windsor, our 1920s icebox, because it is cooler here for the fresh vegetables.I have been going through drawers and cabinets and back over them again because I have lived a good while now and we have accumulated a lot of things by this time. I feel better about it though because it is more comfortable.When life gets unjumbled and uncluttered it is easier to do the the daily things such as cooking and baking. To us there is nothing better that southern cooking when summer vegetables are being harvested. When we are raised on home cooking there are smells that we ne ......
Be The Example Number Two
I originally posted this post on June 1, 2021 but I unpublished it after only leaving it up for a few hours. I felt it was too long and and I felt it had too much of me in this post. The past couple of years I am guilty of letting my thoughts measure good and bad by what I have read in the news. I have tried to not let it affect me but occasionally it leaks out.I had to take some time to pray about this and refocus and keep my perspective of why I am doing this blog. That is to share what I can remember of the past and what we have studied in our history research of the past because I feel it is important.I have brought this post back because someone that read it told ......
Around the Garden
Today is June the 2nd and the garden, I have been painting and cooking and gardening and the garden is getting full but not harvest time. I thought I would just show what is going on in and around the house.But I will go back inside first.I decided to try a new carrot cake roll that I found online because I wanted a small cake.***It is a simple cake and just a sheet cake and rolled in a bakers towel, unrolled after it has cooled and filling spread over...Then it is iced and rolled back into a roll.It is then dusted with powdered sugar and placed in the refrigerator to chill. The cake is more dense than a regular fluffy carrot cake but the rolled cake would be good with a cup ......
One Room Proper part Three
I am doing a part three of One room proper to answer some questions.A long while ago I was trying different cleaning methods for cleaning our home. I did the cleaning card system where you write cleaning jobs and maintenance down on index cards and put them in a box. At first I liked cleaning this way and I did a post about it but I had too many cards after a few months of using this system. I kept trying to add things as I came around to noticing something needed to be done and I could not keep up with the cards. So I came up with a new way and called it One Room Proper where I clean one room really well each day of the week except on the Sabbath. I divided up the room ......
The Kitchen Table
Charles and I have been spending a lot of time at our kitchen table. We have our meals here and we sort items here, we plan here. We recently re-arranged again and put our smaller white table into the living room to use as a planning table.It is important to keep the kitchen or dining table cleared for meals and so this helps us to have a table to sit together and talk with our notebooks and journals at the smaller table.This is where we put our smaller white table. We have learned that not having a plan can be expensive and so we are doing much better planning. We do not set goals as much as we plan and take steps to follow our plan. This is how we paid our home and ......
If We Keep On Moving
Sometimes we find ourselves in overwhelming situations and some household projects and chores seem too much to complete. But if we keep on moving in the right direction it can eventually happen.I love this figurine shown above because it reminds me of a more simple time. I love to imagine stories about this little boy and I do not see him as poor but as a child that will be running along to school with his slate, book and lunch getting fresh air and exercise. For the last year and so many months now, just like many people I have felt lethargic and in a brain fog of sorts with the events in the world.But during this time I have been working towards a goal of having our home sorted ......
Are you waiting for something to happen?
This is our backyard from what we call the bottom end. Our yard is like a triangle. It is not a big yard. Each year we change and add new things after observing what worked and did not work. Gardening is different each year because of wet or dry or hot or cold, pests are worse some years.We are at a point in our small space that our perennial plants are set. These produce each year on their own now. These are lemons, satsumas, berries, plums, pears, peaches, apples figs. Some are still young and some mature. Then we have our annual beds where we plant our vegetables and a few annual flowers. We do have vegetables that are perennial such as our asparagus.Ou ......
We each can change....
We each can change the things in our lives that need improvement. We should never just settle with something that is making our life stressful. If each day, we do just one thing to improve whatever it is, then in thirty days we will be thirty times more improved. Charles and I have been crunching numbers so to speak. We have been budgeting and figuring out how to save money more than we already are.I added a tab to one of my journals that says Study. Some of you may feel I have abandoned our living like the past and our 1930s studies but we have not. We have to live in this real time of 2021 but we are still learning about the past and practicing the t ......
Need to stay steady
Many things have been going on at our house in between posts. We are in the practice stage of Charles retiring. We want to know what we are doing before it is real.We realize since we are considered middle income bracket here in the U.S, we must lower our expenses even more than we have already. Our home is paid for but health insurance cost is very high and so is deductibles, medical expenses after insurance pays and deductibles.We are still studying the past which helps us to understand difficult times. I am not saying that we will have difficult times when we are both retired but we are realistic that there will be quite a difference. I am very thankful that we started these h ......
Part Three Keeper of the home
As keeper of our home, I take my role with utmost importance. I was born before computers, cell phones and television. I remember a time that was more quiet and respectful.I grew and changed and experienced and now I realize the burden of too much. The way this world is today has become scrambled, out of balance and spilling over. I want our home as simple as it was long ago. I want to be the Grandma with graying hair that has a garden and wears baggy overalls and old shoes and a big floppy hat. The wife, mom, grandma, great grandma that wears an apron as I am all of these things and I want to resemble my Grandmother as I remember her and hope I can become as ......
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