Elements Of My Childhood

When I was young, my mom and my nana made a lot of my clothing. My mom sewed and my nana crocheted. A while back, my mom gave me a bag of what remained from my childhood. I carefully washed each piece, but that's as far as I got. Since then I've just been moving them from one area of the house to another, planning to eventually photograph all of them for posterity. Well, I finally got around to it. I went to Joann's and bought some white muslin fabric to use as a backdrop, laid it out on the living room floor, and carefully placed each dress, coat, skirt, and sweater in the middle of the fabric, one at a time, until I had photographed all of them. As I was styling each piece, I realized how much love and care went into making each of them. All of the dresses my mom made had pockets in them. One of them even had a little appliqué turtle sewn on the front, near the collar, like a Lacost alligator. Each button had been carefully selected. Each sweater edge had been expertly finished. Each lining lovingly sewn. Even the dirndls, a traditional German dress, which came from my aunt and uncle in Germany had been sewn with great care (albeit in a factory, but well made none-the-less). No detail was overlooked, from the appliqués to the buttons, to the matching aprons and decorative edging.

And now comes the slightly difficult part, letting them go. I know it's just clothing, but it's also a little piece of my past wrapped up in love and happy memories of feeling special and pretty, as every little girl should feel at some point. But it's time to pass them on. I'm giving them to two very dear college friends so their little girls can feel special and pretty.  Who knew a carefully selected button or a delicately stitched sweater edge could be so powerful. Thanks Mom...Thanks Nana...for making me feel special and pretty.

Skunks Pick Vegetables Deliberately

I've been designing and programming websites for about six years now and everything I know, I taught myself. But for some reason, I just can't seem to remember all the terminology. Probably, in part, because I work alone, so I rarely have to communicate with others about CSS or XHTML. There is that rare occasion when I do need to explain something (usually to my husband) and it's then that I realize how ridiculous I sound as I try to come up with the words necessary to prove I actually know what I'm talking about. Words like "selector" and "element" and "declaration." Today I decided enough is enough. I'm sick of not being able to communicate my CSS knowledge, so I'm going to use the old school technique of creating an acronym that represents what I want to remember.

First, a quick lesson in CSS for anyone who is curious. According to the w3schools website, "A CSS rule has two main parts: a selector, and one or more declarations." This is what the CSS code looks like:

Typically the selector is an HTML element (a.k.a "tag") that you want to style to look a certain way. In the example above, the "p" element stands for "paragraph." So you're telling your website, "hey, I want to style all paragraphs to show up bold with 12 point text." I'm not sure why you would want to bold all your paragraph text, but now you know how to.

There are three main types of selectors: id, class, and element. "In addition to setting a style for a HTML element, CSS allows you to specify your own selectors called 'id' and 'class.'" You use different selectors depending on what you want to do. "The id selector is used to specify a style for a single, unique element" whereas "The class selector is used to specify a style for a group of elements. Unlike the id selector, the class selector is most often used on several elements."

Like I said, I have trouble keeping all these terms straight. It's ridiculous really. So I'm calling on my old friend "acronym" to help me out. I need to remember that a declaration is made up of a property and its value. And the whole thing styles a specified selector.

And here's how I'm going to remember it:

Anyone else struggle to remember stuff? Everything was so easy to remember when I was a kid. Wish I could reclaim that clarity and memory skill. Speaking of being a kid, stay tuned for a post I'm working on about some of my childhood clothing made by my mom and nana.
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** All quoted text taken from the w3schools website. They're a wealth of knowledge, so check 'em out!