Echoes of Summer - At The Camp

Long before I was born, back in a time when life was slower and easier and far less complicated, my grandparents, my dad's parents, acquired a small house on Lake Winnipesaukee that came to be called The Camp. No one seems to know how this name came to be, but when we tell family members we are in New Hampshire, we always say, "We are at the camp."

The camp is a rustic white cabin with forest green trim.  It sits barely fifteen feet from the water's edge. The garage sits only a few inches from the road.  

There are so many things about this cabin that didn't change for years and years. A tree grew through the edge of the roof over the kitchen. It was finally taken down when I was a teenager. The refrigerator sat on the porch - outside. It was the kind that kids could get trapped in as it had a pulldown handle on the front and latched shut. It was not replaced until the mid 1980's. The cellar was terrifying with a sand floor and all kinds of creepy crawly creatures. A real floor went in sometime in the 80's as well. The potable water came from a well.  My brother and I would take a bucket designated for this purpose and walk the twenty feet from the back door out to the well. We would open the door (the well was inside a tiny little shed) and shoo away the spiders and skeet bugs and even the occasional frog, dip the bucket inside and haul it back to the house. It was the most delicious water I have ever tasted and I swear it stayed cold for hours. I do not recall when the well was connected to the house, but I mourn its loss.

There is a bedroom accessed through an exterior door from the kitchen. You go out the door after unlocking it with a skeleton key, go up the stairs and into what we called the annex. It was a terrifying place, but my brother loved it. Now it is plush and comfortable with its own bathroom. It still has no hot water, though. All the beds were wrought iron with rope supporting the mattress instead of a box spring. There was no shower in the downstairs bathroom, just a tub with a hose from the spigot for those who just had to wash their hair. The upstairs bathroom, just a sink and a toilet, had two doors - one into each room. It still does - and it still has the same sink and toilet. 

My mom had six brothers.  Many came up to the lake - to the camp - with their families. Together. Some summers, so I am told, a dozen or more people managed to fit themselves into the four bedrooms. One or two might end up sleeping on the screened-in porch on a bed that did not vanish until sometime in the 1970's. When things got too crowded, my parents bought a very rustic camp well away from the lake at the top of a dirt road for the overflow.  We called this tiny cabin filled with bunkbeds the Eagle's Nest. I cannot even find it anymore although I visited it many times.  

  

My mom's parents came as well. Until recently, my grandfather's hat still sat on a hook in the downstairs bedroom they used. I do not know when it disappeared, but I wish I had taken a photograph of that hat on that hook. It is just that I figured it would always be there.

I figured many things would never change. I had hoped some, like the well with its bugs and frogs never would though. But, of course, they always do.

Layout and Photo Notes:

Photo Postcard: The technique used to make this postcard was described in the post just preceding this one. Technique courtesy of Chris Peters.

Camp: I created the template or stencil for these tree many years ago, cutting it from a piece of sheet plastic. I have used it many times since. 

Supplies: patterned paper - unknown; cardstock - The Paper Company, Coredinations; ink - Ranger Distress Ink, Versamark; film letters - Heidi Swapp; paint- Plaid; alcohol ink: Tim Holtz/Ranger; rub-ons - Basic Grey; marker - Ek Success, Y&C Gel Extreme; trees - handcut; drangonfly - handcut based upon a stencil from The Stencil Collection; Pearl-Ex: Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist.

Echoes of Summer

Pumpkins have begun to dot the landscape. Leaves have begun to collect on lawns, A jacket is definitely a necessity when I walk the dog in the morning.  Clearly, fall is upon us and summer has come to an end.

Although I much prefer fall and winter to the warmer seasons, my house is filled with little reminders of summer that do not get put away come the cool days of autumn. I use a mug with a moose on it every day. On the shelves of my living room are tchotchkes from summer vacations. There are sweatshirts and t-shirts in our closets advertising one tourist attraction or another. There is a solar windchime on a table in the living room and a glass globe hanging from a wrought-iron hook on another.

They were all purchased in New Hampshire. 

Pictures of New Hampshire serve as the background for my phone and tablet. They are often featured on my Facebook page. One adorns the top of this blog. I check the weather there almost daily.

But, no, I am not obsessed. Well,not too much, anyway.

I have spent part of every summer of my life (with one or two exceptions) on the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee in the tiny town of Alton Bay on a finger of land known as Echo Point. While I have lived in various places in Massachusetts and New Jersey in my fifty-odd years, this spit of land is the constant. It is the place I call home. When we leave each summer, I always wonder why we do not simply stay there and live. I know why, however. To live there would be to ruin the magic.

So, to hang on to that magic for a little bit longer, I think I will write about those summers in the lake. They began long before I ever came upon this planet and, with luck, my children will be able to enjoy them long after I am gone.  Echo Point isn't going anywhere.

Layout Notes:

Welcome to the Lake

I failed to mark down any of the supplies for this layout. The photo was edited in Photoshop using technique found in an article in the Somerset Studio Gallery Winter 2011 edition, "Vintage Inspired Photo Postcards," written by my good friend and fellow scrapbook artist, Chris Peters. Unfortunately, that edition is sold out. Perhaps I can persuade her to allow me to share it here. Her work can be found at www.mementosofthejourney.etsy.com.

Echo Point

Supplies: paper - Heidi Swapp; stickers and tags - unknown; acrylic title letters - Heidi Swapp colored with Ranger Alcohol Inks; chipboard title letters - Maya Road covered with patterned paper (unknown source); beads - Blue Moon; mosaic tiles - unknown.

The Silence is Deafening

It has been quite a while since I visited this page and wrote a blog post, but it has been a whirlwind of a summer.  My son graduated from high school and then went off to Italy with a friend, staying at the apartment of the friend's aunt and uncle.  I had the good fortune of going off to France with my choral group for a tour celebrating and honoring the sacrifices of those who stormed the beaches at Normandy seventy-years ago.  No sooner had I returned than we all went off on a family vacation to New Hampshire with my husband's siblings and their families.

It was a whirlwind indeed.

And then we returned and the shopping and packing and readying began.  We were readying for our two boys to leave for college and leave me with an empty nest.

And on a cool and cloudy day (thank goodness) in late August, we loaded up the truck (thank goodness for that, too) and our spare junk of a car and headed south on the Garden State Parkway and then the New Jersey Turnpike. It rained a bit (oh, no), but it passed.

When we hit the Delaware Memorial Bridge, I knew this was real, that when I returned to my humble house, it would be empty, empty of boxes and bags, of folding chairs, computers, printers and bins of clothing.  It would be empty of boys.

It was a bit of a confusing afternoon.  My youngest was moving into his freshman dorm, into a room roughly the size of the back of my truck. Managing to find room to stand was no small feat. Managing to fit everything else in was a challenge.  There was barely room for the furniture that came with the room let alone a printer, a small TV and his desk lamp.  This was one seriously small room.

My older son, by comparison, moved into a palace, a gorgeous apartment he was to share with three of his friends.  It has a huge living room/kitchen combination with stainless steel appliances and granite countertops. The air conditioning is amazing.  They have a washer/dryer off the kitchen. They each have their own spacious rooms with the biggest closets I have ever seen.  There share two bathrooms.  My house only has two bathrooms. He did, however, have to build his own furniture from Ikea.  So far, it hasn't fallen apart.

My husband and son went off to get the younger one his textbooks while I took the older one to the market for food and to Home Depot to get his brother a desk fan.  The floor fan did not fit in the tiny dorm room.

When the dorm room was finished, it was nearly time for the floor meeting and their first dinner in the dining halls.  We said goodbye and then went off to dinner with my older son.  As a junior, he knew the ropes and didn't need any time to acclimate.

And then there was nothing left to do, but say farewell.  My older son looked at us and asked how parents did it.  He wanted to know how you raise children for eighteen years and then just say goodbye and leave them at college.  I found it an odd question to come from one who was only twenty years old.

But we did it.  We raised them or eighteen years and then we said goodbye and headed north back on the New Jersey Turnpike and the Garden State Parkway.

School began this week and I realized that fifteen years of drop-offs, bagged lunches, field trips, permissions slips, books covered in brown paper, parent-teacher conferences, PTA meetings, fundraising events, snow days, summer reading lists, homework, book reports, dioramas, yearbook photos, playdates, field days, soccer games, proms, concerts, report cards and pick-ups are officially over. As Jackson Browne once sang, "They say in the end, it's the wink of an eye."  He would be right.

And the silence in my house is truly deafening.

So long, my lovely boys.  Be well.  Have fun.  Be the best you can be.  This is the time of your life.

             

                

Bow Ties and Buttondowns

Today is Father's Day. As with Mother's Day, there are really no words, cards or gifts that can adequately reimburse our parents for what they have given us. Yet, as a parent, I expect no reimbursement. I only want and hope that my kids will become happy, loving adults who carve out lives for themselves filled with years of contentment and occasional moments of pure joy.

My dad just turned 89.  He has had eighty-nine years filled with the excitement and adventure of his youth, the anxiety of his education and working years, the joy (I hope) of fatherhood, and the relaxation of retirement. My brothers and I heard stories of his year of schooling in Switzerland, of learning to fly, of serving in the military during World War II, of becoming a doctor. We remember games of baseball in the back yard, tennis tournaments on local courts, driving to and from the school bus and him bringing us our lunches when we forgot them. We remember best, however, years and years and years of vacations in NH and day trips to parks and beaches and local tourist attractions, amusement parks and museums.

He seemed to do all of these things as if he truly enjoyed them as much as his three children did.

When my dad retired from the practice of medicine exactly 25 years ago, we had a big party with a tent in the backyard and tons of food on a beautiful July day. For his seventieth birthday, my mom threw him another party to which everyone anyone could think of came and celebrated. Little did my mom know that a few weeks later, he went water skiing in New Hampshire on a part of the lake she could not see from their summer house. For his eightieth birthday, we had another party, but on a smaller scale. For his eighty-ninth birthday just three weeks ago, my husband and I visited along with one of my brothers. Our children are scattering, much as we did, and it is getting harder and harder to bring us all together as we once had all those years ago.

People who see pictures of my dad in his button-down shirts and bow ties (I have never seen him in any other kind) tell me he is cute.

And you know what? He is. He still is.

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Layout Notes

Me and Dad and the Glass Bottomed Boat

Unfortunately, I did not record the supplies I used for this layout, but it is one of my favorites. The orange shapes are Tim Holtz Fragments colored with Ranger Alcohol inks.

Talk to the Animals

I believe these photos were taken somewhere in NH, but the date and exact location are unknown.

The sun embellishment was made bystamping a foam stamp on to a metal sheet. I then cut out the stamp and dry embossed the image with tools from Hero Arts.  I sprinkled and heated gold and copper embossing powder on the rays and then dotted on dimensional paint.  I did the same on the bear and moose charms and the bear paw and used the same dimensional paint on the border and the tag.  I aged the letters by painting them, covering them with Tim Holtz Crackle paint and rubbing ink into the paint after it dried. The paw was painted with spray ink using a paint brush and then coated with Diamond Glaze.

Supplies:  cardstock - Basic Grey; patterned paper - Tim Holtz; metal - unknown; foam stamp - unknown; embossing powder; Viva Pearl Pen; die Tim Holtz (tags); metal animals - unknown; chipboard paw - Chip Off the Old Block; markers - Y&C Gel Extreme, Micron; bear charm - Dondero's Rock Shop (N. Conway, NH); embossing tool - Hero Arts; ribbon - unknown; ink- Ranger Distress; gems - Prima; paint - Making Memories; glaze - Distress Crackle Paint, Diamond Glaze

Doctor, Grandpa, Father, Friend

I did not record the supplies used in this layout.

Dad

Supplies: cardstock - Bazzill, Paper Company; patterned paper - Tim Holtz, Bo Bunny; chipboard letters - Target; chipboard butterfly - Dusty Attic; photo editing software - Photoshop Elements 9; flower medalion - unknown source; paint - Plaid; Stickles; marker - Zig by EK Success.

Wonderment on the Eve of the Wider World

In exactly five days, my son will be a high school graduate, attending the party in the high school gym that the parents put together. This party is a much-anticipated annual event and planning begins in the February of our children's junior year, more than sixteen months in advance. In some towns, it is called Project Graduation. In our town, it is called Grad Ball.

Grad Ball is not a project for the feint of heart. It takes lots of planning, designing, painting, hammering, painting, cutting, painting, pasting, painting and heavy lifting. Did I mention painting? In other words, it takes lots of hard work. Some parents put in hours that add up to days and weeks of effort. I think they go weeks without seeing their children.

It is one of the greatest tangible gifts that the parents in this small town can give to their children.  It is the only gift that all the parents together give to all of the children as a class.

It begins with a meeting at which we twist the arms of two talented couples to become the Grad Ball chairs. Next, more arms are twisted to chair the many committees. Some are tough jobs like running the annual fundraising event, the Beef Steak Dinner, and some are smaller, but just as important and time consuming like gathering each senior's baby picture and framing it for display at the event.

Next comes the most important decision in the life of a senior parent - choosing the theme. One would think choosing a college is more important, but, in truth, it most definitely is not. The choices are narrowed to three and and each chosen parent must build a miniature version of the event. Every skill learned in helping small children create dioramas in a shoebox is put to good use at last. The winning diorama, chosen by popular vote, becomes THE BOX. The box is carefully guarded and secured with a padlock when not being used for reference.

The big fundraising event - with auction items and great food - takes place in November. Work on the decorations begins in January in what is called the Rifle Room. I have no idea where the name came from, but it is jammed with the ghosts of Grad Balls past - signs, posters, boxes, decorations, wall panels, floor boards, cans of paint, and on and on and on. Serious work takes place in the Rifle Room - repainting the wall boards, building the dining tables, creating the decorations. Every night, parents populate the dim low-ceilinged room and have a very good time.

We create collages for ads in a journal that every graduate brings home. It is filled with words of wisdom, wishes and expressions of pride, joy and love. (Some parents wisely choose not to reinvent the wheel from one child to the next!)

Things move into high gear on the Friday before Memorial Day. Construction begins in the gym. The windows are blacked out to prevent senior spies from learning the theme. The floor is covered with tarps and then boards that have seen innumerable Grad Balls and have been trampled on by hundreds of parents and new graduates. The walls are covered with the panels created in the Rifle Room. Suddenly, the gym is not longer a gym, but a giant set.

For the next few weeks, parents labor in the gym to create something magical. One year, Hogwarts rose from the floor. Another year, a TV studio complete with a Cash Cab with a lighted ceiling came to life. Many years ago, the Titanic made its fateful trip once again. This year, well, the theme for this year will just have to wait.

I do not paint or hammer or decorate, but I do photograph.  So, I have many many a trip to the Rifle Room and the gym over the last few weeks to take photos of the progress being made there. With only five days to go, things are moving along quickly as the set takes shape. Not until the lights dim on that last night, however, will the full effect be revealed. Not until that night will the efforts of many parents come to fruition in the most wonderful of ways. 

Sometimes I think that the monies spent on this event could be used for something better, but when I see the friendships that are created from parents working together closely for a common cause, I know it is worth it. When the set rises from the floor of the gym for an event that will keep our children safe and under our watchful eyes, I know it is worth it. When I realize that this will be the very last time that all the kids in this class will be together before going off into the wider world, I know it is worth it. When I see the look of wonderment on the faces of our usually jaded teenagers, I know it is worth it. 

It is worth every single penny that was raised, donated, haggled over and spent. It is the last thing that we parents do together for our children, the event we have been waiting 13 years to help create, an event that we had hoped, somehow, would stay somewhere off in the future and never really arrive. 

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Layout Notes

Party

The story of this event in on the card in the pocket just under the title.

Supplies: cardstock - Recollections, Paper Company; chipboard letters - Pressed Petals; paint - Ranger Paint dabers, Viva Paint Pen; ribbons slides - Making Memories; glitter - Ranger Stickles; marker - Micron; other - invitation, journal ad; tape - Queen and Company.

On the Side of Living

Eiffel Tower

If you look very closely at this photograph, you will see from the cars that it was not taken recently or even anytime in this millenia. In fact, this picture dates back forty years to my childhood when I had the good fortune of being in the right place at the right time.

I had the pleasure of going to France when I was thirteen.  Without my parents, but with my friends and my favorite teacher.

In the sixth grade, I started studying French. My teacher was a French native whose name, Mr. Dupuis, was quite simply the most perfect name for a language teacher that I could imagine. He was the curmudgeonly type, growling at our horrible accents and terrible memories, but he had his moments.  That first year, he collected popsicle sticks from the students at recess (we could buy frozen confectionary treats in a store run by the eighth graders) and took the entire school year to build an Eiffel Tower. The next year, he built a guillotine and even added a little piece of copper for the blade. He used to threaten that he would cut off our tongues if our pronunciation did not improve.  Oddly enough, he did not return the next year.

That was where the eighth and ninth graders in my school got lucky. Mr. Dupuis was replaced by Miss Fitzgerald. She had plans. Big plans. She decided to put together a trip to France during spring vacation. I asked my parents to let me go. They cited the fact that my confirmation was to take place in the middle of the trip as the reason to say no. They argued that I could go always go the following year. I hardly ever asked my parents for anything, but I begged and pleaded and made a general nuisance of myself. They relented. Good thing, too, since there was never another trip. Another teacher took over the French program the following year.

Pont Neuf and Notre Dame Cathedrale - 1974

And so I went. We flew to France in April of 1974 with my French teacher, my wonderful and beloved homeroom teacher and my classmates. We saw all of Paris. We saw the chateaux of the Loire Valley. We saw the beaches and cemeteries of Normandy. We visited what I consider the most beautiful place on earth - Mont St. Michel. Each graduate from that particular school had to create what was called a copper plaque that was hung on the walls of the school. Mine hangs there still.  

This trip created a monster. I became someone who loved to travel. I became a francophile. I continued studying French through high school and into college. After graduating, a friend and I went to England, Ireland and France, visiting all the places I did not see in 1974. I have been back with my husband, three times. I bought a pair of shoes that last time in 1996 without uttering a single word in English. I have them still.

Mont St. Michel - 1974

It has been more than 17 years since I last saw Paris. I miss my favorite place on this planet.

Let me digress. I sing with a regional chorus here in northern New Jersey.  In 1989, we went on a horrible cut-rate tour of Italy that was absolutely awesome. Thereafter, children came along and those wonderful trips were no longer a possibility. In the last twelve years, members of my chorus have gone on tours of Prague, the Czech Republic, Austria, China and Australia - twice. I stayed home, seething with jealousy because I could not visit places I had yet to explore.

This summer - in just six weeks - the chorus venturing off on a tour of my beloved France. My children are now 18 and 20. They really do not need me for much of anything anymore except car keys and cash. So, I have been brushing up on my rusty French, buying black clothes and comfortable sandals, airing out the luggage and making plans. I am going back to France. One woman from that fateful trip to Italy is coming as well. We will celebrate the 25th anniversary of that trip (and of my 29th birthday) in Rouen, France.

Vivre-Live (Art Journal Page)

Many years ago, my mother gave me a fairly plain silver bangle bracelet. Engraved on this bracelet are the words, "Il faut vivre and non pas seulement exister."  We must live and not merely exist. I am definitely in favor of living.

And that bracelet is coming with me to France. I plan on wearing it - every day.

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Art Journal Page Notes

I created this page in anticipation of the trip to France coming in July in my Smash/Art Journal.

Supplies: Smash Book - EK Success; paint - Plaid, Ranger Paint Dabbers, Liquitex Acrylic Color; ink - Ranger Archival Ink, Ranger Distress Ink; embossing powder - Ranger, Sparkle and Sprinkle; stencils - Simon Says Stamp, Stampers Anonymous, unknown; modeling paste - Liquitex Basics, Dreamweaver Translucent Emobssing Paste; letter stamps - My Sentiments Exactly; stamps - Stampers Anonymous/Tim Holtz, unknown (Paris postmark, fleur-de-lis); mica pieces - unknown; images - downloaded from the internet (altered in Photoshop). 

Everyday Beautiful

Although I have graced this planet for over fifty years, no one would ever accuse me of being the sharpest knife in the drawer. On the other hand, I am hardly a dim bulb either, but you would never be able to tell that from the fact that there has been a glaring fact of my life that I did not notice until about a year ago.

I grew up on Bay Point Road.  I summer on Echo Point Road.  They both have point in the name. 

Nope. I never noticed that until, as I said, a year ago. See?  Dim.

But let me get to the point.  Those two points are quite possibly the most beautiful places I have ever seen and I have seen a fair amount of places. I do not mean Alps beautiful or Norwegian fjords beautiful or Inside Passage beautiful. I have seen all three and that kind of beautiful takes your breath away and makes you wish you had a better camera and a longer vacation, more money and retirement on the horizon.

No. I mean everyday beautiful. The kind of beautiful you live with and love every day.  The kind of beautiful that you miss when you visit that other world beautiful. The kind of beautiful that means home and peace and contentment.  The kind of beautiful that means family and parents and cousins and friends, games and picnics and barbecues and sleeping under the stars on hot summer nights in the years before air conditioning. The kind of beautiful that makes you remember climbing trees and riding bikes and drinking lemonade on the back steps, watching it snow and sledding on the hills and snowball fights. It is the kind of beautiful that you have to work for by mowing the lawn, washing the floors and replacing lost shingles, by planting the flowers, shovelling the snow, and sweeping the deck. Not extraordinary beautiful. Just everyday beautiful. 

I may not live on a point anymore, but I get to visit.  And both of those points scream home to me. They are the best beautiful of all.

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Layout Notes

Beach

These photos were taken from the point in the first photograph.  It dates back many years so I did not record the supply information.  However, I recognize the letters as old ones from Making Memories. Mica can be obtained from US Artquest.  It was probably painted with Plaid Paint.  The sand effect in the background was most likely a spray paint called something like "Make It Sand." I have no idea where those gold shell stickers came from.

Echo Point

Supplies: paper - Heidi Swapp; stickers and tags - unknown; acrylic title letters - Heidi Swapp colored with Ranger Alcohol Inks; chipboard title letters - Maya Road covered with patterned paper (unknown source); beads - Blue Moon; mosaic tiles - unknown.