MY FIRST KITCHEN

 I must apologize for going AWOL on you yesterday. It seems I got sucked through a wormhole, back into the late 50s, early 60s. For some reason, when I was doing my morning pages yesterday, I found myself making a list of some of my very favorite childhood memories. Many of them involved favorite toys or activities:

• building a four-poster bed for my dolls, out of a cigar box and some peg clothespins, with my Mimi 
• playing school with my siblings in our mudroom-turned-playroom that contained a couple of antique school desks Mom had wagged home for us
• getting to pick out a Gumby Colorforms set as a reward for not pitching a fit at the doctor's office 
• finally saving up the $3.00 I needed to buy my first Barbie
• the box of hand sewn, oh so chic and sophisticated Barbie outfits Mimi gave me for my birthday that year, and the orange plastic Barbie convertible she and Granddad gave me for Christmas
• the fabulous (cardboard) Barbie Dreamhouse that Santa brought

Thinking about that cardboard Dreamhouse, and all of its cardboard furniture and accessories that had to be put together, reminded me of the play kitchen I got when I was four or five, and that got me to wondering if I could find some images of these things on-line. Sure enough, I found a set from Sears that looked just about like mine, though I don't recall it being pink. Maybe white with red accents? The most exciting thing about that kitchen was that, after I got it, Mom took me to the local Five & Dime to shop for some accessories for it. Only, instead of buying toy stuff, she bought me some REAL kitchen utensils, dish towels -- maybe even a little dish drainer -- just like hers! I was sooooo over the moon.

Check out those outrageous prices!

But that's when I fell through the wormhole, for I went from looking at pictures of kitchens, to searching for images of all the other toys I remembered from my childhood...

printing them all up, and then spreading them out on my work table -- trying to imagine how I might combine them with some pictures of myself at around the time I played with them...

and with some retro-looking papers from my stash, and the oh-so-cute Vintage Girl hangtags that I saved from my coat-of-many-colors.

I'm still thinkin' bout it. Anywho, the day was more than half over before I finally thought, "Oops! I never got around to writing a post this morning!"

Know what really blows me away? The realization that in just four short years, this little girl went from her fiberboard play kitchen to a cardboard dreamhouse with no kitchen at all, and from wanting clothes and hairstyles just like those I saw in my beloved Shirley Temple movies, to wanting to look like Annette Funicello in Beach Blanket Bingo, to dress like Barbie, and, more than anything, to own a pair of white Go-Go boots so I could dance in a cage! That's quite a leap, no?