I recently purchased this magazine.
I say recently, but it was way back in 2010.
I have no idea why I would purchase a magazine called Do it yourself, since I don’t do anything myself. There must have been something that caught my eye on the cover, but now…..who knows? This is one of those mags that if you have nothing to do all day except create adorableness from egg shells and paper, this is your heaven.
It does have some extremely cute crafts in it.
See, I even dog-eared this page on crafting with felt. Felt makes me happy. Not that there’s even a remote chance I’ll be frolicking with felt in the future.
This is an old railroad tie used as a mantle. I love it. We have a similar piece of rustic roughness found in an old building that we are going to use as a mantle in our little trailer house on the prairie. Maybe in 23 more years or so.
But the point of this whole post is this:
These canisters.
My old grannie had an ugly-as-sin, avocado green tin canister just exactly like the one in the back of this picture.
It sat on her countertop next to the stove, and she sometimes stored goodies such as homemade peanut butter cookies in it.
I remember stealthily trying to lift the lid off to sneak a cookie or treat. The “swoosh” of the lid coming off the canister echos in my head. I would try not to make a sound, and inevitably always would pling, plang, and gong one against the other, giving myself away. Like sneezing during a game of hide-and-seek.
Sometime during my childhood, we got a new step cousin in the family. He wasn’t one of us, and I remember treating him as an outsider. When memories like these flood back, I always try to blame my sister. But truthfully, I don’t know who was the instigator of being harsh with him. It could’ve been my idea, or my cousin’s (his step-brother) or my sister’s, regardless I remember the four of us being outside huddled under a tree, being ugly to our new family member and telling him that “WE (the privileged real grandchildren) knew our grannie’s secret hiding place for goodies and that he had better be nice or we wouldn’t let him know.”
I wish I could go back under that tree and change that conversation. I hope he doesn’t remember. I’m ashamed.
Seeing these burnt orange canisters in a magazine stirred something inside me. I asked my mom, who now lives in my grannie’s old house, if she knew where that avocado green canister was. She said it was around there someplace. Then about one week later, I received a call, and lo and behold, the little criminal she has living with her (another story for another time) was cleaning out the garage and it turned up.
Here it is. On my kitchen countertop by my stove.
It’s not in as good of condition as the orange ones in the magazines.
Why I have this in my house, in my blue and yellow kitchen, is something that I must explore deep within my soul. And maybe discuss with my therapist, which happens to be Marie, my school librarian.
Why, when I am desperately trying to simplify and minimalize, did I bring this old junky, unfashionable, semi-unpractical item out from the dust and mire of a dirty garage to sit purposeless on my already cluttered kitchen counter?
Why do I sometimes go to my kitchen for no other reason but to lift the lid just so I can hear the pling from my childhood?
I know why.
It’s so I can see my grannie sitting in her chair with a poodle on her lap.
Or standing at the kitchen counter pressing out the peanut butter cookies. She would let me mash on the cookie dough with a meat tenderizer to create the little indented designs and then sprinkle sugar on top when they came out of the oven, soft and warm.
I’m suddenly having a peanut butter cookie hankering.
And I need a tissue.
Angel Wheeler 
