(Compost) A little bit about scrabooking crops
No commentsBy Josef Strong
Quilting bees served a dual purpose for women in the 1800’s and beyond - they created a necessity, a warm quilt, and created an opportunity for women to socialize. Quilting bees were a time when women would gather to help each other complete quilts, tell their personal stories, exchange recipes, and give advice on children and family. In addition to the socialization, women could exercise their creativity and share their creations with other women.
Outside of quilting bees and church gatherings, the lives of women who attended quilting bees were usually quite insular. The heavy demands of life kept them in the home much of the time, secluded from other women.
Today, the heavy demands of life, inside and outside the home, still often keep women secluded from each other. While quilting bees remain in some form in the United States, the number of women who participate in them is limited. Many woman still desire the type of social interaction that quilting bees offered. And so, they have found other social and creative outlets. One of these relatively new outlets is scrapbooking.
In the 1990’s many women began to create photo albums that were more than simply photos stuck in magnetic albums. Using albums and materials that were specially designed to preserve precious photos and memorabilia, they began to create albums that were works of art that also told stories. Journaling - the practice of writing stories and memories along side of the photos - became important.
As more and more women began to take up the hobby of scrapbooking, they began to form groups who would gather together regularly to work on their scrapbooks. These gatherings are commonly known as “crops” because of the cropping of photos that occurs during the gatherings. As the women sit around working on their albums, they socialize.
Much in the same way that women socialized during quilting bees, women socialize during crops. They talk about their days, share advice on family and children, exchange recipes, health tips and most importantly tell stories. Scrapbooking crops offer a unique opportunity for women to tell their personal stories. Their stories are all laid out right in front of them in photographs, and as they place their photographs into albums, they naturally begin talk about the stories that are behind them.
The women share the stories of their lives while cropping and it often forms powerful bonds between them. Their relationships will frequently go beyond these crops. They become a network of friends who enjoy each others company, help, encourage and comfort each other in times of need.
Consider a group of women in southern New Jersey who came together when one of their fellow scrapbookers was diagnosed with terminal cancer. When their sick friend was no longer able to work on her children’s albums, her fellow scrapbookers gathered together in her home while she was in the hospital to put albums together for her grade school aged son and daughter. Then those closest to her would take the albums to the hospital and help her journal in them.
During this time, women laughed, cried, shared memories of their sick friend as well as their own personal stories. They were able to help their sick friend in a practical and meaningful way. Now that she is gone, her children have albums with their mother’s memories in them.
With over four million women in America now scrapbooking, stories like this are not uncommon. Scrapbooking has become a social and creative outlet for many women, and a way to connect them in important and meaningful ways.
To learn about clematis varieties and blue clematis, visit the Clematis Care website.
Tips to Help you with the Challenges of Home Gardening
By Jeffry Bullock
When you decide what brand of aquatic plants you wish to have, remember that the plants should only cache around half of the water. Plants can be free floating, beneath, or sideward. Which you choose is all a matter of personal favoritism. Some plants are good for their perfume, some provide moreover oxygen than others and will keep the pool health, and pretty are just charming. Fish are not only delicate to look at but they are also absolutely beneficial. Fish help keep debris at a minimum and help in directing larva and more insects.
There are many new trends surfacing in gardening, and water gardening is one of the capital new interests. Water gardening can be in the form of waterfalls, ponds, fountains, all of which can be enhanced by rock work combinations and lighting, plants, and fish. Water gardening doesn’t have to be a pond or natural water base either, it can consist of just a plastic tub, basically anything that can hold water.
Gardening is not an easy task; you have to fight against many outside forces, such as forecast, insects, disease, and weeds. Even the most exercised of gardeners will seek out gardening advice once in a while. Who wouldn’t when there are so many forces that could take a garden out’ There is a lot of general gardening advice on the market which goes for any plant, but if you look a small harder you will find definite advice for that one plant that is the only one giving you trouble. Gardening aid is relatively easy to find, and while you may come across the seldom bad apple, most of it is relatively sound and will help with any gardening question.
If you want gardening plants that you can actually use instead of almost look at, vegetables, herbs, and fruits are all very fitting. Edible plants add an excitement to gardening because of the produce available at harvest time. The main vegetables grown in smaller, home gardens as well as larger ones include corn, peas, cucumbers, potatoes, squash, peppers, onions, carrots, spinach, lettuce, and beets. Favorite fruits are pears, plums, tomatoes, blueberries, apricots, cherries, and strawberries. Herbs are used for their wonderful fragrances, to spice up a salad, and in cooking.
Maintaining a flower garden is even easier than planting one. Still they might create it on their own, a bag of fertilizer appertained in the early spring is a good idea. Pinch backward any blooms latterly they initiate to dissolve and last them good and watered. To save yourself work during the next season of flower gardening, rid your garden of all debris and cast out organic nutrients like peat quag or compost. Don’t forget to turn over the soil to properly mix in the fertilizer and rake smooth when finished. If you have perennials planted be careful not to disturb their roots in this process.
Often times gardening books will give readers ideas they had never thought of before. For example, there are hundreds of vegetables and herbs out there that many folks would never consider of growing in their courtyard, but would be absolutely good to grow in your own personal garden. There are additionally millions of flowers many people don’t think nearly but which are very beautiful. There are hundreds of people that would probably trade their rose bush for an exotic flower, and with a gardening codex they could read about what types of flowers are available and will grow in their area.
The most decesive thing to consider in water gardening is possibly the spot chosen. Since plants and fish both duty plenty of sunlight, places in direct bright elsewhere from trees and bushes is the greatest place. This will also help prevent leaves and debris from aggregating in the water.
Information on celosia cristata can be found at the Celosia Flower site.
How to relax at home
By Josef Strong
Everyone is entitled to a good, relaxing weekend after five whole days of nothing but work and school assignments. Each family member wants and deserves a weekend of pure relaxation. Too often, people take out-of-town trips and vacations to unwind. Not too many people know that there are endless possibilities of doing stress relief activities right inside their very home. Of course, these stress relieving activities may vary depending on each of the family member’s unique personality, preference, and lifestyle.
For parents, it is double the stress since they have to go to work, do their job, and at the same time manage their home. Managing a home is not that easy since these parents have to deal with their children and schoolwork, daily family meals, bills to pay, cleaning, and basically maintaining their home for good and healthy living. Since the only time they spend with their family is on weekends, there are limitless possibilities in pursuing relaxation right at home. Starting with women, they have a lot of stress relief techniques in mind when it comes to simple relaxation. From going to the spa and having a whole body massage, to simple aromatherapy for relaxing their senses — these are only some of the things that many tired, stressed women miss out on. Some women want to give and make their family happy through the simple act of baking cookies or a yummy chocolate cake for the kids. By seeing her loved ones happy, this would make her heart smile and makes the day worthwhile. Going on with the family man, he has his own way of relaxing, depending on his personality and his interests. For some, carpentry or woodwork can be an amazing source of stress relief, since they get to work on a home project that will make both him and his wife happy. Another would be cars. This is a total giveaway for men, since cars have this certain impact on their masculinity. Whether fixing or restoring it, this can be a good reward after all the work that they have put on it. If the family man is not the “Mr. Fix-it” type, they could opt for a trip somewhere with the family. Going outdoors by camping, swimming, or just a simple picnic by the park would lessen the thoughts of work and focus more on family relations. Simply put…it’s all about family bonding. Of course, during such special family moments, everybody would feel more relaxed and also have fun at the same time.
For the children, it is especially crucial to have them exposed to creative activities in order to keep their creative juices flowing. From video games to boardgames, to backyard activities such as baseball, basketball, swimming, to the very fun trampoline, these kids can surely have fun and learn at the same time. Of course, watching TV is like breathing air for them, so for the parents, they have to at least monitor what their children are watching and make sure that what they watch is fun and educational.
Relaxation for the family is not as hard as it seems, for they only have to know what their interests are, and how to have fun at the same time. Relaxation time can also mean family bonding time, since weekends are the only whole days they spend with each other. By just being together and having a great time, this is relaxation in itself.
Want to find out about clematis flammula and clematis integrifolia? Get tips from the Clematis Care website.
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Wednesday, March 31st, 2010 at 8:55 am and is filed under gardening. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
