A Charlie Brown Christmas tree

I don't know who is more excited (or sentimental) about Maryellen's silver Christmas tree - Momma or Maryellen.

Momma has fond memories of her paternal grandparents' silver aluminum Christmas tree - complete with color wheel.

Aluminum Christmas trees were first made around 1955 and continued into the 1970s. The aluminum Christmas tree was even used as symbol of the commercialization of Christmas in 1965s, A Charlie Brown Christmas:

Charlie Brown: Well, this is one play that’s not going to be commercial. What our play needs is the proper Christmas mood. We need a Christmas tree. 

Lucy: Hey, perhaps a tree. A great big shiny aluminum Christmas tree! That’s it! Get the biggest aluminum tree you can find. Maybe paint it pink!

Admittedly, the tree of Momma's youth is long-gone, but this is the next best thing.

 

Salad days

Momma found The Best tutorial for dolly-sized salads at Joanne's 18" Dolls blog, so Clementine and I are happily dining upon salads this week in anticipation of Thanksgiving.

The word "salad" comes from the French salade of the same meaning, from the Latin salata (salty), from sal(salt). In English, the word first appears as "salad" or "sallet" in the 14th Century.

Romans and ancient Greeks ate mixed greens with dressing. In his 1699 book, Acetaria: A Discourse on Sallets, John Evelyn attempted with little success to encourage his fellow Britons to eat fresh salad greens. Mary, Queen of Scots, ate boiled celery root over greens covered with creamy mustard dressing, truffles, chervil, and slices of hard-boiled eggs.

(Incidentally, Mary helped popularize marmalade.  She brought it back to Scotland from France and ate it when ill - hence "Marie est malade" or marmalade.) 

The United States popularized mixed greens salads in the late 19th Century, although several other regions of the world adopted salads throughout the second half of the 20th century.

Momma's got a toy box

Whee! 

Look at what Momma found for me today at Cracker Barrel!

The World's Smallest toys!

The Duncan Toys Company is an American toy manufacturer based in Middlefield, Ohio, best known for its yo-yo line. The company was founded in 1929 by Donald F. Duncan, Sr. The Imperial yo-yo is the classic model that made Duncan yo-yos famous; a fixed-axle plastic yo-yo in a traditional silhouette. Available in many colors, the Imperial is the "starter yo-yo" in the Duncan line. (She's getting the red yo-yo for Clementine today.)

Etch A Sketch is a mechanical drawing toy invented by André Cassagnes of France and subsequently manufactured by the Ohio Art Company. The Etch A Sketch was introduced on July 12, 1960 for $2.99 and sold 600,000 units that year. It was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame in Rochester, New York in 1998 and in 2003, the Toy Industry Association named Etch A Sketch to its Century of Toys List.

A Rubik's Cube is a 3-D combination puzzle invented in 1974 by Hungarian sculpter and professor of architecture Ernö Rubik. Originally called the Magic Cube, the puzzle was licensed by Rubik to be sold by Ideal Toy Corp. in 1980 via businessman Tibor Laczi and Seven Towns founder Tom Kremer, and won the German Game of the Year special award for Best Puzzle that year. As of January 2009, 350 million cubes had been sold worldwide making it the world's top-selling puzzle game. It is widely considered to be the world's best-selling toy.

Best of all? They all work!