Comments On Article: What I Do When Starting A New Study

Lina ,

Your homemade ornaments bring back so lovely memories for me.

I was first married in the middle 70's and we were so young and so broke....going into the oil embargo and everything seemed up in the air. 

I carefully opened English walnuts, used the nut meats in holiday baking then glued the shells back together and glued some glitter on them for tree decorations. I glued an ornament hanger into them when I glued them back together. I still have some of them. 

I also made angel ornaments from salt dough, painted them and glued pieces of embroidery thread on them for hangers.

I am loving all of these stories and comments, they are comforting.

When I was young my family would make gingerbread men and sugar cookies in the shape of stars, and hang those on the tree.  Then after Christmas we each got to eat one a day until the cookies ran out and the tree came down.  

I no longer celebrate Christmas, but I think that's the one tradition I kind of miss!

Joan

 You can purchase a non electric beater on lehmans dot com

Another great post, thanks so much. I've also enjoyed reading all the comments. I love making decorations and will post some pictures once I pull them out to decorate. I also made paper chains as decorations. I used old magazines and cut the pages in strips and stapled the links together. :) 

My husband and I went to Seven Springs Lodge in Tuscumbia, Alabama for Thanksgiving. At the Lodge there were some wonderful vintage items and artifacts. I found this wonderful steam iron! It was very modern for it's time. I've never seen one before and thought you all might enjoy seeing it.

Tandi S -- Thanks for posting about the steam iron! That's fascinating. The past is often presented as very lacking in conveniences, but the more history I read, the more I realize that's not true. 

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Others have talked about reading magazines during the study. I have three issues of Better Homes and Gardens from early 1931 that I'm going to read next year since it looks like the US got off to a slower start to the war, and there's not much change at first. I wasn't expecting the change of year, and I think it's a good way for me to finish up my 1930's goals and then I'll be ready for the switch in May. :)

Kimberly, your mention of using what you have on hand reminded me of my mother, back in the 60's/70's, stringing a large trash bag full of styrofoam "peanuts" that she had been given by someone.  In my memory, I see her sitting in her little rocking chair with her needle and thread, creating lovely chains made from S-shaped peanuts and ones shaped like discs to resemble re-useable strings of popcorn.  Those "peanut strings" saw at least 25 years of use, before she discarded them.  Thanks for the memories!  :0)

Gayle H, that is a very good reuse of the styrofoam packing peanuts!  I am glad we don’t get those kind of packing peanuts anymore, though.  Grandma Donna, thank you for creating a topic for our homemade and vintage Christmas decorations!

My husband will be retired in 2026 and today I started working on an annual budget.  I already made a monthly retirement budget and we have been using that since summer, but I wanted to look at the numbers an easier way, since we won’t have a monthly retirement income (no pension, too young for social security).  It doesn’t make a lot of sense to be putting funds from savings into a monthly budget for annual expenses.  The only category I had concerns doing an annual budget for is the grocery budget, as I was worried that only seeing an annual number I might overspend for the month.  But then I decided I will withdraw the monthly grocery budget in cash and use the envelope system for grocery spending.

I was very inspired by Tea S and her post last June in the Budgeting in the Past topic about budgeting for the coming year with funds from the previous year.  I already budget each month with income earned the previous month, plus part of our retirement preparation included aggressively saving to have two years worth of expenses saved.  Putting that together with Tea’s method, I decided I would use one year of that savings for our first year of retirement, and then put the 2026 withdrawal into savings to use for 2027.  Once we start drawing social security we’ll do the same thing and save all of it from one year to use in the next year, which will help us know exactly how much we will have to take from the retirement funds.  It really is a brilliant way of budgeting if one can get to the place to do it — thanks for the inspiration, Tea!

I’ve been thinking about how people were impacted by WW2, and how budgeting would have been very important.  Rationing was a form of budgeting, of course.

Grandma Donna Wrote,

Kimberly F, I too like Tea's method of budgeting.  We do not have the one year method as Tea has but we are doing our best to stick to living only on Social Security and only using savings for unexpected issues should they arise.  We are set up so that we are living on income one month ahead.  Our social security for this month of December is not to be touched because it is for January. The money we are using this month came from November. We have a reserve month should something happen to our social security check.  With increases, especially medical,  it is very tight to live only on social security and so far we have been able to save each month from our grocery budget by staying under our $400.00 per month even with family visiting and Thanksgiving.  It is not easy but we are figuring out things as we go.  Edit here... Also our savings on our electric bill. We do not turn on anything unless we are using it or in the room that we are in.  Grandma Donna

I was just thinking about christmas and the way life was as a younger person,

The excitement getting the home made decorations made "those strips of paper that you licked to make round circle's and then joined them together so they became a chain of loops to hang on the walls etc,

As the day's got nearer it was important to be your best & not naughty (He just may be watching your house?)

And the time's you asked your mum how many more sleeps until "He arrived?  "

No problem going to bed early on christmas eve !!!!

Yes it's a good thing to remember the nicer things in life,

Anyone of you lot have any thoughts on past christmas?

I couldn't sleep on Christmas eve as a child! I was too excited.

But there was more than one Christmas ruined by my parents fighting. So we kids would go off to our rooms and play with our new toys and try to ignore them.  It's a wonder I didn't come to hate Christmas.  But even as a child I understood it was about the Savior's birth. I love the church being decorated and the music. I realized my dysfunctional parents were not the reason for Christmas.  

I have a couple of questions if someone can help please?

We're pound cakes baked in loaf pans, fluted tube pans or a bundt cake pan? I've never made one before, but it's always been something I've wanted to try and bake.

When I click the checkmark to notify me when someone replies back is that for someone replying back to my comment or on this thread as a comment to grandma Donna? 

I can't figure out how to join the discussion with everyone all these years unless I go to the specific post and see what everyone's written. Sort of checking the status of it. Is there a notification I'm supposed to get? 

I'm not sure why but I feel better popping back into 1941 and going into 1942. Can't explain it. 

Andrea B.,

The checkbox is for being notified of all comments on the thread.  We don't have a way in this forum of replying to a specific person, except the "tradition" of bolding their name like I just did yours.

I generally uncheck that box if I remember because I'd rather not receive a bunch of notifications by email, but instead I go directly to the forum "main page" whenever I feel like catching up.  I do this by typing "gdonna forum" into a search engine, but you can also click on "forum" in the menu found on her regular blog.

On the main page, you see the title of each thread, who most recently commented, and when.  The ones with the most recent activity will be at the top of the list (after the two pinned threads at the very top) and you can easily see which have had activity since you last visited.  

That's the best way I've found to keep up with the conversation here.

Can't answer about the pound cake, never been real sure what one is.

Andrea B,

Pound cakes have traditionally been baked in tube or Bundt pans. If I want to share a cake with someone else I will bake it in two loaf pans instead.