I took Lily out glampin’ a few weekends ago to a Forest Service campground near a beautiful Idaho lake with white-sand beaches. I have to say that I have a new appreciation for campgrounds. I’ve always tried to avoid them, but this was a Butters family reunion, and so a bona fide campground seemed like the easiest thing to do.
As it turns out, I loved it—the sounds of all the people coming and going, the voices of children, babies laughing, people singing around their campfires, guitars, even dogs barking! Walking around the campground at night, I saw every kind of nationality, family size, RV style and size, kids on skateboards, people on bikes … and in thinking about it afterward, what I loved most about it was how happy everyone was. They were, for a tiny fraction of their lives, exactly where they were hard-wired to be. Outdoors.
My Airstream is named Lily because of a beautiful vintage painting that adorns her bedroom partition.
As were leaving the farm and getting on the road (my husband driving his own truck/camper), I looked behind me to see if we were still a convoy, but he’d disappeared. My son and his wife were in a Jeep with a teardrop trailer in tow and my daughter and her husband were in a truck pulling our Tabitha. As it turns out, my husband had hopped out to pick a matching pink lily from my garden for me to enjoy all weekend. What an aroma they give! My lily smelled like a lily all weekend. (And my husband is a big ole sweetheart!)
Slacker came too.
And four of my grandgirls.
Here are some glamour shots of Lily adorned in her vintage gelatin molds. They always put a smile on people’s faces.
And some interior shots I’d taken earlier. I actually bolted a 4′ cast-iron bathtub to the floor. I use a propane on-demand hot-water heater to fill it. Luxurious! And the floor is a portion of a basketball court that was up for grabs from our local building recycler.
The linen curtains and bedding are made from some rather ugly curtains on sale at Bed-Bath-Beyond that had big 2″ grommets in the tops. I cut those off and used an entire extra curtain to make the ruffles. Love linen fabric that is gauzy like these are!
It’s not every day that one happens upon a word as fabulous as:
Flibbertigibbet.
I mean, really, it’s almost addictive—you can’t help but giggle when you say it …
Flib-er-tee-jib-it.
Try it three times fast and see if you can keep a straight face.
Something of an unsung onomatopoeia, flibbertigibbet (see, I had to say it again) refers to a talkative, flighty, “light-headed” person. While its origin is obscure, Dictionary.com tells us that this 15th-century term “is thought have been formed as an imitative representation of the sound of chatter or gossip.”
Are you thinking what I’m thinking?
Flib-er-tee-flib-er-tee-flib-er-tee-JIB-IT!
Of course, here and now, amid the modernity of the 21st century, we politely shy away from placing gender restrictions upon our adjectives, but, for the record, flibbertigibbet is generally reserved for young women. So, I suppose this would be more fitting …
Photo by HerbertT via Wikimedia Commons
And, speaking of poultry, you may recall the gabbling goose in E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web declaring, “I am no Flibberty-ibberty-gibbet.”
Image courtesy of Wikipedia
Perhaps the one instance of flibbertigibbet’s utterance that packs the most parodic panache, however, is this (click to listen) …
Unless you’re one of the few devoted fans of the 1990 film Joe Versus the Volcano …
Theatrical release poster courtesy of Wikimedia
… you may not recognize the satirically sultry speaker as actress Meg Ryan, playing the ravishing (if a bit bird-brained) redhead, Angelica Graynamore.
Your turn to get flibbertigibbety. Cluck away in the comments, dear hens.
The adorable, always humorous MBA Jane is my way of honoring our Sisterhood Merit Badge program, now with 5,965 dues-paying members who have earned an amazing number of merit badges so far—8,526 total! Take it away, MBA Jane!!! MJ
Wondering who I am? I’m Merit Badge Awardee Jane (MBA Jane for short). In my former life …
For this week’s Cleaning Up/Shopping Green Expert Level Merit Badge, I graduated (with honors) from the whole I-own-lots-of-cute-reusable-shopping-bags-but-I-always-leave-them-at-home thing, to the not-only-do-I-own-lots-of-cute-reusuable-shopping-bags-but-I-nearly-always-remember-to-take-them-shopping thing. This graduation deserved three cheers, a toss of my figurative hat in the air, and several slices of cake. You know. To celebrate.
But this was not enough for me. Nay. Never let it be so. My love for reusable shopping totes was not going to stop there. I was off to convert someone. Share the love. Spark some interest.
And also:
party.
A bag party! A swap meet of sorts. An evening with my fellow farmgirls, chatting, sewing, trading, admiring, and re-gifting our collection of shopping bags. What could be more fun than never having to hear the condemning words from our friendly local cashiers again,
Would you like paper or plastic?
Shudder, gasp, PSHAW! As if!
Since I was hosting, I figured I should have the most bags to begin with. I mean … okay, it’s not a contest, and it’s not like I’m greedy or anything, it’s just that I wanted everyone to go home with plenty. So I stocked up. I learned how to make the cutest totes from old T-shirts, and since I kinda got on a roll and made approximately eleventy-seven of them in one afternoon, I thought I’d share a little tutorial with you all.
1.) Raid your husband/father/friend/Aunt Sally’s closet for vintage Ts, or better yet, tank tops. Do they have to be vintage? Nope. But they turn out awfully cute. P.S. Make sure the fabric is somewhat heavyweight. We don’t want your container of organic mango sherbet crashing to its tragic death on the way out of the garage. Been there. Done that. Have the T-shirt. Hah!
2.) Flip inside out. Sew the bottom shut (using a sewing machine or serger, this will take like two nano-seconds). Using a large bowl, or just eyeballing it, draw a semi-circle along where the original neck hole is. (You’re just enlarging it is all. You know, so you can fit in the family-size cheddar-and-sour-cream potato chips without squishing them.) Cut. Hem (or skip the hemming and just use pinking shears if the fabric isn’t the fraying kind; I won’t tell).
3.) Remove the sleeves. Hem. (Step #3 not necessary if using tanks).
4.) Voila!
Other ideas to get your creativity juices flowing:
Once you have a nice collection going and you’re basking in the warm glow of all the compliments you receive when out shopping, share the love. Have a bag swap. (And invite me).
Buy props used in MaryJane’s books and magazine!
5% of profits will benefit www.firstbook.org, a non-profit that provides new books to children from low-income families throughout the U.S. and Canada.
Here’s how:
MaryJane will post a photo and a description of a prop and its cost along with a few details as to its condition here: https://shop.maryjanesfarm.org/MaryJanesCurations. It’s a playful way to be the new owner of a little bit of farm herstory.
