Cooking With Cricut Challenge: Grandparents

Happy Wednesday and welcome to Cooking With Cricut Challenge Day!  This week Melin challenged the Design Team to create a project in honor of Grandparent's Day (which was this past Sunday). 

My last living grandparent -- my maternal grandmother, left us in 2002 at the ripe old age of 96.  I decided to create a heritage layout focusing on her parents, my great-grandparents, Minnie and Walter Zurn.  And even though I was only six when Pops died and 11 when Great-Grandma died, I remember them fondly.  They were a major influence in my young life.  I believe I was about three years old the first time Great-Grandma tied an apron around my waist and let me help her make sugar cookies.  Pops always told the greatest stories.  By the time I came around he was legally blind, so all of the stories were of his childhood and that of my grandmother and mother.  It wasn't until much later in my life that I realized that his childhood chum, Harry, whom many of the stories centered around, was in fact President Harry S. Truman!  I uncovered several letters between the two before, during and after his Presidency.

They lived in a two story Victorian house that had the most fabulous wooden banister that my Great-Grandma kept polished.  I'm certain I must have given my mother heart failure when I came whizzing down it from the second floor!  My grandmother sold their home to a local optometrist after my Great-Grandma's death.  Dr. Marshall has completely restored the home and converted it into his offices.  (I love to go get my eyes checked and visit their old home!)  Don't forget . . . you can click on the photos to enlarge them.

The oval pictures were their high school graduation photos.  The large center picture was taken on their wedding day.  Here is the recipe:

• Fiskars ShapeBoss with the PL Heritage embossing stencil to decorate the white mat.  (Yes, this is old school -- I don't have a Cuttlebug, yet!) 
• K & Co. Black & Ivory Fusion 12 x 12 paper pack (purple patterned paper)
• Black card stock
• White card stock
• Plantin SchoolBook cartridge -- text cut at 5/8" tall.
• Accent Essentials cartridge -- flourishes cut at  2 3/8" tall.
• Self-adhesive pastel purple pearls from Michael's.

The photo on the top left was taken to commemorate their 50th wedding anniversary.  The text box on the top right gives a little genealogical history.  The two drawings on the bottom left were drawn by my Pops as a gift to his young bride.  He also wrote the two poems.  I scanned them into my computer and printed them out -- the originals are quite brittle and are not in great shape -- of course they are 106 years old!  The picture on the bottom right is one of my favorites!  My Pops always had a cigar or pipe -- every time I smell pipe tobacco and peppermints I think of him.  And he could always make my Great-Grandma smile.  They both had a great sense of humor and love of life and each other.

Thank you for joining me on my stroll down memory lane!  I hope you'll link up a project at Cooking With Cricut in honor or in memory of your grandparents or great-grandparents.   You could be this week's Top Chef!

Thank you all for your sweet words and your prayers for my family following the recent death of my father-in-law.  You will never know how much they touched my heart!

~ Jen