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

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Recent Posts
Working on the budget and 1942
One of the hardest things for me with living like 1942 is breaking my addiction to news. After the type of election we had this past year and all the disturbing news I have had a hard time breaking away. So I have started listening to 1940s music and that is helping me quite a bit.I find I myself tapping my feet quite often:)We purchased a couple of CD's since we do not have record player anymore. I am still reading through the 1940s cook books trying to work out some menus and for now I am just keeping to basic food. This is rice, ground meat with onions, corn and green beans. I know it is heavy on the starchy foods but it is homemade so that counts.I am still organizing d ......
Quite Interesting
I dug this bedspread out of our old trunk. It fits very good in our new year of 1942. It is quite interesting as we find our way back in time how many things have changed and how it seems that 1942 is better than the current time for many reasons.Our 1930s couch is a tough old couch. It was recovered with something that came before plastic. It is tough whatever it is. I decided I will crochet cushion covers just to make it not as cool and slidey.I am going to start with a granny square and make it the size of the tops of the seat cushions then crochet the sides of the cushions and add some elastic to the bottom of the sides to make it draw at the bottom. I will ......
Easing into 1942
Cheerioats were introduced in 1941. The name changed a few years later. One thing we are learning so far is we cannot just jump into 1942. This is a slow process to go backwards. We learned a lot about 1943 the year before last but we focused on rationing.Now we are trying to live more like 1942 in our home and we thought we were fairly prepared but we are not because there are many things still to put away that do not fit into this era.Food will not be difficult for us because we already cook from scratch. I can say that presentation seems to have more importance in 1942 than the current year now.Yesterday I made an old family favorite breakfast dish from ......
Eight Sided Pot Holder
The blog post that I did about getting ready for 1942 had this photo about an eight sided crochet pot holder.I want to thank all of you that searched for a pattern. Last night I received an email from Kathy in Japan and she found a pattern very similar and very vintage. The only changes it will need will be to the color of the threads. The design is very close. Also the round side ring.Here is the link to a free crochet website that has this pattern. http://freevintagecrochet.com/free-potholder-patte...Again thank you all for looking and thank you Kathy for sending the link so we can share this vintage pattern with others.Grandma DonnaAn older post from the past ......
It is finally 1942!
It has been a busy time getting ready for 1942. We did rearranging and painting and organizing (we are still doing that) and reading.We finally put the house back together so we could enjoy our New Years Day.We woke up this morning and we had moved to 1942!We ate a light breakfast of toast, ham slices and Cheese. We were having a nice New Years Dinner and our Son and his wife were coming over to eat and play some domino's. Our Grandson was going to drive over but it was a two hour drive and we had almost 5 inches of rain since last night so for safety reasons he did not make the drive. We did miss him though.POT ROAST OF BEEF4 pounds of chuck, round or rump of beef1/2 ......
Tick Tick Tick......
As some of you know we are getting ready to start our one year living like 1942. I have explained this in other posts so I will not go into that again.It is taking a lot of research to prepare ourselves to do this better than we did our year of 1943. As I am writing this article this evening it is December 28th. If it were December 28, 1941 then we would still be traumatized by what has happened to our Country. We were attacked at Pearl Harbor only 21 days ago. Our President Franklin D Roosevelt declared that the US was at war. Our study will be the homefront. We all have heard many war stories but the homefront is something that has less infor ......
Crochet can be useful for the home
Some people like crochet and some prefer knitting but there are some very useful things that can be made with yarn and a crochet hook. I did not want to put a rug under our table but the chairs scratch our painted floors. The stick on felt pads would not stay on so I decided to crochet booties for the chairs.. Bernadette decided to walk through when I snapped the picture, she looks like a cat to me. :)All I did was make a magic circle and crochet rounds until it was the size of the bottom of the leg then reduced it to bring the sides up.You can look up the magic circle on youtube and they have very good demonstrations how to make them. For the chair booties I ma ......
I Do Not Want to be a Minimalist
Few things in life are clear to us but one thing that has finally become very clear to me is I do not want to be a minimalist. For quite some time we have been downsizing our household things with the purpose of not having so much for our children to deal with when we have passed on. In the process of doing this we both have found that we like things around us.We cannot be a gardener without tools, I cannot be a seamstress without fabric, thread, and notions. I cannot be a cook without pots and pans, ladles and spatulas. I can be neat and tidy and have a clean house but a minimalist I cannot be. My husband and I enjoy our home and tablecloths, dinner napkins ......
We are getting ready for a change....
We have been doing some serious organizing the past few months. Our goal has been to catch up on repairs and organizing the house. We will never be finished because we live here but we have made much improvement.We have decided to go back to the early 1940's again. Those of you that follow my blog know we did the one year experiment of living like 1943. We wanted to learn about how it was to live in the home front during 1943 and learn about the rations. We learned so much more than we expected during that time. We moved to 1948 for awhile to see if that was where we wanted to be but because of the upcoming election we started keeping up with the news so w ......
Walton...
Meet Walton. We have been very busy since Thanksgiving. The end of November we went to buy a small amount of sod to replace an area that died due to drought. We passed this poor old primitive cupboard and fell in love. We did not get it that day because it was so banged up, broken, it had holes and the inside had fake grass where it had been used as a display at the nursery.. But there was something that just kept pulling us to rescue it.After much thinking about it the decision was made we would go get it and bring it home to restore it. (This was just before Katherine's herniated cervical disc).This was the back and after much inspection we found the entire cupboard was made out ......
Fruit Bread and...
It is not snowing here at this time. The preview photo is a picture from the past. But it is expected to get in the 20s this week. I have three things to mention before my post on fruit bread.It is really amazing how things change. I posted recently about a desk that came to us that belonged to my husbands Grandfather. Now we have this small sofa that belonged to my husbands Great Aunt. It had been passed down to my mother-in-law many years ago and she ended up storing it for many years. It was recovered with a Fort Knox proof covering and now it has made it's way to our house once again. I say once again because when my husband and I married we had it for a brie ......
It is more than Happiness
Photos taken about an hour and forty five minutes drive from where we live.We can find beauty in nature and also inspiration. But happiness is quite different. Standing here looking could cause, wonderment or even sadness if this spot is a memory we had with someone no longer with us. Either way it is beautiful.When we see this beauty looking at it in a picture we can study the image and be in awe of natures beauty.But when we are present we feel the wind and we hear the sounds and we start becoming part of something.To Feel seems to me to be the most important link to happiness.Life is about change. We and things around us are constantly changing so we have to adjust t ......
What to do....
Thanksgiving has come and gone. We had a nice visit with family and friends. Thank you Sue for the beautiful flowers.Just before Thanksgiving we got a call from a family member that my husbands grandfathers desk was needing a home. It had been donated years ago to a church and they were buying a new desk for the pastor. We were asked if we wanted his desk and being that it once belonged to my husbands Grandfather we said yes, we would like to have it. Many many years past he was a sheriff of a small town in Mississippi. The desk came with much history.It caused a shifting of furniture and chairs throughout the house. So we have made changes once again.&nbs ......
Letting things happen naturally
Yesterday we harvested our lemons and satsumas. These came from two small trees that we nearly gave up on several times.Our little lemon tree struggled to grow and for three years we could see little improvement. We thought it was dead once and considered digging it up and starting over but we left it due to other things that needed to be done.Two years later it started growing and produced long wild limbs and took on an odd shape. Then this year to our surprise it produced Lemons that you see here. The satsumas are basically the same story. We just need to be patient because some things just need time.This started me thinking...Many people today want instant gratific ......
Whew....
Last week was a blurrrrr... I am glad it is over. I must admit I was exhausted after the election. I needed time to absorb all that happened. I needed time to talk things over with God and to settle myself. I needed to do what I said and that is to do the things that I can control. Remind you I was hoping for a President that was intelligent, sensible, had lived a good life, carried no old baggage, was respectful of others and had the ability to make good choices and decisions. I would have felt this same grief whoever won but the exhaustion was much worse than I expected and for my husband as well. I felt like each day we have been going to a h ......
Voting Day in USA
Well, we finally made it to the most difficult election day that I have ever known. I just do not understand how we got to this point. I have been feeling sad and for the first time in many years I have considered not voting but my husband and I dragged ourselves to the polls.We prayed and made a final decision which I will not post, just know that we did not like our choices and I hope whoever wins will step up and be more than we expect them to be at this time.So how can I turn this around and make something positive about it? Well we have decided that the only thing we can do is do the best we can at the things we can control. We cannot worry about what others are doing ......
A different Perspective of Priorities
The last article I wrote was to address some questions of how I go about doing what I do during the day. I do not work all day because I know that my body needs rest but while I am on my feet I try to keep going and get all I can done that needs to be done.Do we have our priorities in order?People are very busy these days and there are a lot of things that are causing stress so what I am going to post about is a first priority.If we set our day with the first priority being that all the family members get adequate rest then our day could start off much better.There is always something to do and if we have the rest we need then our body would be stronger to do the things that need to be done. ......
Five Twenty Four
A popular question some of my blog visitors ask is could I post my daily schedule. I don't have one so this week I paid attention to my routine and did my best to take pictures when I could. I do certain things on certain days but often I change that for various reasons.I paid attention for several mornings and found that I do many of the same things each morning. But each morning is different.I took pictures of my stove clock so I could keep up with what I had done by a certain time.The morning I took the photo above of the clock that says 5:24 AM I had been up since 4:00 AM, my husband had already left for work when I took this picture. Part of my early rise time is get ......
Listening to my Grandmother
When I was a child I loved to lay my head on my grandmother's chest. I would put my ear on her chest and listen to her talk. I could hear what her voice sounded like from the inside.I didn't want to move as she talked, it was a different sound hearing her voice from inside her chest. It often would lull me to sleep.It was comforting...Life was so very different during the time I was growing up. I started out in a time that was more simple then it seems everything took off in a rush.World war two was over and we were moving into a time of new innovations. We went through the age of poodle skirts, then bell bottoms, leisure suits, long hair then short pin curled hair, then lo ......
Saving water and how we repurpose
Our Grand dogs Rosie and Riley are ready for Halloween. For them it is not mean or cruel to dress them up because they like it :) They think they are children anyway so they want to take part in anything that is fun. I thought this would brighten your day.When I posted about our outdoor bath and laundry area little did I know that we were on our way to a drought. We have been trying to reduce and reuse our grey water even before we started going into a drought. When we garden we become more aware of the needs of the small plot of earth that we reside. We understand the importance of water, too little or too much and how we can deplete or enrich the soil.&nb ......
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