Everyday Wonderment

Its gentle back and forth motion feels soothing whether you’re a newborn, 100 years old or anywhere in between.  They are used both in and outdoors – many people love rocking on a porch during the summer months and in front of the fireplace when it’s cold outside.  For sure, it’s been around for a long, long time and it’s still one of the chairs we look for when relaxing is in order. 

What are your rock chair memories?

A good-working paper cutter is a useful tool to own (or borrow) when you’re looking to cut precisely.  The ruled board helps cut paper to a desired size and the cutting knife attached to one side makes cutting a snap.

The next project you have that requires exact cutting, reach for a paper cutter – it can’t be beat!

The tools for knitting are quite simple – knitting needles and yarn.

The movement of the yarn between the needles…feeling the yarn and needles with your fingers and hearing the click, click, click of the needles – tranferring a row of stitches from one needle to another – repeating this process over and over again – a length of fabric takes shape…

it’s magical!

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When there’s a job to be done, there’s a tool ready to assist and aren’t we grateful that we have them!  These well-loved tools are a sampling of what one might find in a household toolbox.  They help us pound and scrape and drill and measure…

And, in case you don’t have hand tools and don’t ever plan on getting any, it’s been said that sometimes your best tool is your checkbook.

Learning to sew was one of the two skills my mom wanted my sister and me to acquire.  (The other was to learn to drive a car).  We are grateful to her for learning how to do both.  Pictured above is my collection of spools of thread that I have sewn with over the years – some in every color of the rainbow.

Whether you sew or not, everyone can bathe their eyes in the large selection of beautiful colors that thread is available in.  Take yourself to your nearest fabric store and find the display of spools of thread.  There you will be met with thread in every color and variations thereof – your eyes will thank you!

The smell of a crayon is one of the most recognizable smells for adults.  Have you smelled one lately?  Give it a try – see what you think.  Let a crayon roll between your fingers.  Feel the paper it’s wrapped in.  Check out the color name, too.  Do you think the name fits the color?

Remember peeling down the paper from the crayon wrapper when you wore down the point of the crayon?  We can re-sharpen a crayon with a crayon sharpener or continue to use it as is.  Some people like to remove the entire wrapper and hold the bare wax stick with their fingers.  Does anyone ever use up an entire crayon?

We use and love them from early childhood and I would imagine will continue to do so for a long, long, time.  Happy coloring days!

Libraries and bookstores are chock full of them.  You can find a book, a treasure trove of knowledge and fun, written on every subject imaginable.  These wonderful, printed pages are bound inside a hard or soft cover.  Hold a book in your hands – feel the cover, smell the cover – feel the pages, smell the pages.  What is it we love about them?  Can a day go by without opening a book for one reason or another?

Fire and a fire hydrant go hand in hand.  Although the fire hydrant is pretty simple in the way it works, it plays a huge part in extinguishing a fire.

Each hydrant is connected to a large, underground pipe that carries water.  To get water out of the hydrant, firefighters use a wrench to open up one or more of the covers and connect hoses to the openings which are like the spigots on your faucets at home.  Then they use the same wrench to turn the stem nut which is like your faucet’s cold or hot water knobs.  Water comes up through the pipe, through the openings and into the hoses.  The hoses may be attached to a fire engine which can use a pump to boost the water pressure.

We walk and drive by fire hydrants every day.  We know it is illegal to park our car within a certain distance of one and we know most any dog can hardly pass by one without making a “stop,” but for sure the fire hydrant is another example of when you need one, you NEED one and another item to add to one’s gratitude list.

I’ve been snipping paper snowflakes for several years now.  Every year I hang them from my living room ceiling (quite like a snowstorm).  I’ve been hired to hang them in other people’s homes and they’ve been on display in public places, too.  It never ceases to amaze me that no two end up exactly the same.  You just can’t fold the paper exactly the same way again or make each cut exactly as you did before.

The same is true in nature.  The next time it snows – even if it’s just a dusting – look carefully.  There are millions and millions and millions of snowflakes and yet…there are no two alike…never to be repeated.

It’s almost unbelievable, isn’t it?  And yet, the same is true for you!

Quite frequently, we purchase food in glass jars.  Once the food is consumed, it doesn’t cost a penny to re-use those jars to hold rice, shells, paperclips and much, much more.  Yay for glass jars!