Out of the Closet!

This morning one of the first blogs I looked at was

 Shorpy's photograph page.

And there looking back at me was an old photograph of men cutting out teddy bear skins. And what pops into my mind? Why, the image of my teddy bears hidden away at the top of my closet, that's what! So, I hauled that white bag down and pulled out my teddy bears. I bought these bears for my daughters in 1976 or there abouts. The grandpa bear was a bear we bought for Papa Henry one Christmas. Why was I keeping my bears in the closet? Don't know, don't remember. I guess it seemed a good idea at the time? Anyway, those bears are outa there!

These bears reminded me of an old song

and I went searching for it and found it on YouTube.

The Teddy Bear's Picnic by Ann Stevens.

I think this is from Britain in the 1950's.

[edit: I went searching and found this page on Amazon with the record for sale. I have searched for some information about Ann Stevens but can't find anything other than on Amazon.]

Teddy bears always make me feel happy. The girls and I used to use the bears to tell stories and the bears all had names. The big black bear was Mama Bear, then Honey bear [edit: Kathleen messaged to say that Honey was Honeysuckle! And Kristine agrees, so that's that. Thanks Kathleen,] Blackbeary, and Snowball? [edit: no, it was, Icicle, says, Kristine.] I'll have to ask Kathleen or Kristine what the names were. [Edit: Kathleen messaged that Honeysuckle was hers, Icicle was Kristine's and Blackbeary was my bear. Kristine says that we got Momma bear first.]

I do remember I made up a new 3 bears tale. Instead of a porridge story, in the summer I substituted watermelon and had the Mom and Dad bear take the watermelons to the river to have all the watermelon sit in the running water to get cold, and then instead of eating all the watermelon the little bear cut plugs in them until he found a good one and ate that one. I had those bears up to a lot of mischief and I had a lot of fun making up stories. Sometimes we would take turns telling stories.

That's our firewood under the plastic in a wheelbarrow.

That's about as close to the wood stove

as we can get the wood without bringing it inside.

And we don't want to do that and bring in the bugs.

Morgan would like to go outside and run around in the rain.

She kinda looks like a bear from this angle doesn't she?

Morgan the bear!

I'll be making another stew on the wood stove today.

This isn't a recipe blog but if you want

to see my wood stove stew

click here.

Those posts will show up below.

At least they did the last time I checked.

Well, anyway I am enjoying the fire in the wood stove!

Hope you are all well and warm and dry.

[5 eggs so far]

Smiles