From Melanie Hinds: Growing up in Chicago we always had artificial Christmas trees, and my mom seemed to appreciate trees that were made of any material and any color other than a traditional green evergreen tree. One year we had a white flocked tree with turquoise garland and ornaments. (I thought it was so cool!)  This is a picture of a Christmas tree we had in the late 1960’s: silver aluminum with purple glass ornaments. What you can’t see behind all these presents is the color wheel that we always used to illuminate our Christmas trees. Many of you might remember the color wheel: it was an electric wheel contraption that was divided into 4 quarters, each quarter a different color (usually red, blue, yellow and green) that could reach temperatures of about 4000 degrees hot and cause 3rd degree burns if you were silly enough to touch it! (Don’t ask me how I know about that.)  And our color wheel squeaked as it made each revolution. I always wondered why my dad never oiled it but ma

  Courtesy Pixabay Pandemic It was October 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic. The whole country was asked to social distance, wash our hands, wear masks and stay home. Since we were staying home we were all trying to keep busy and were doing cleaning, filing, sorting, etc.  Cleaning the garage This day in October I decided to clean out the garage, something I have needed to do for a long time. On a top shelf way in the back, I found a box marked "old dolls."  I remembered this box is where my old dolls were and the china heads for dolls. I opened the box and yes, there were the old china dolls, but there was more than dolls.  Hidden treasures In the bottom of the box were a lot of my oldest daughter’s baby clothes. I took them all out of the box and into the house, decided to wash them as they were all wrinkled. After washing them and they all looked so much better, I got to thinking, "Do I have any pictures of her in any of these clothes?"  Red Polka Dot Dress