This week we enjoyed living life. We’ve been doing school all summer so we continued with it this week. We also took the time to cross off one of Caroline’s summer to do list items – a visit to the Grand Rapids Public Museum.

So on to the pictures!

A few weeks ago I won this lovely giveaway from the website Isabella Alden and I wanted to be sure to share a photo. The journal is absolutely beautiful inside.

If you aren’t familiar with her, Isabella Alden (known as Pansy when she wrote) was a very popular Christian author in the late 1800s and early 1900s (interesting bio here). Her niece was Grace Livingston Hill. I enjoy the Isabella Alden site as it is full of interesting historical posts and photographs. Go here to see Isabella Alden books on Amazon.

My parents came for a visit recently and my mom said, “You need some new bedding.” Thanks to a gift from her, we were able to purchase new bedding (Laura Ashley Keighley Lilac Quilt Set) and paint our bedroom. It was the last room that hadn’t been painted since we moved in eight years ago. I may do a separate post on it, but in the meantime I wanted to share these lovely prints we hung on one of the walls.

I found them online and, since they are in the public domain, they are free! So we purchased the three white wooden frames at Michaels and printed off the pictures on cardstock. They did have a yellowish background so David changed the background to white since they look better that way with the white frames. You can see the Pierre-Joseph Redoute collection we selected them from at RawPixel. They have lots of public domain images they have made high resolution.

(This RawPixel link is an affiliate link so if you sign up for a free account to download free images, I do get more free images to download each day that I can use for my site and such. Thank you if you do!)

As I said, we went to the Grand Rapids Public Museum to see the TOYS! exhibit that ends soon. They had separate areas for the Baby Boomers, Gen X, and Millennials.

First, we had to stop at look at the huge suspended whale in the main hallway.

By way of comparison, we took this one in 2012 when Caroline was six.

I’m not going to share pictures of the entire exhibit, but wanted to share a couple of things that were funny and most enjoyable to us.

First up, the 1980s arcade they had set up with video games, pinball games, a jukebox, and change machine. We bought a couple of dollars worth of quarters and had fun!

David especially enjoyed this part of the exhibit. A lot. I also have a video of David and Caroline playing PacMan, but opted not to put it online. It was fun to watch them playing while listening to 80s music in the background.

They had an exhibit of Dangerous Toys. (So 2019ish)

This was one of the examples they gave of dangerous toys.

I LOVE THE LITTLE PEOPLE CAMPER!!! LOL! My parents still have this for their grandchildren to play with. This is one thing I would keep.

It’s a wonder we all survived the 70s and 80s.

Next up, Worst Toy Ideas.

Now I laughed out loud at this one because I own one of these toys and I had no idea it was that controversial. Does anyone else have a Growing Up Skipper?

If you aren’t familiar with this doll, when you turn her arm she gets taller, thinner, and gets breasts. You know – like most girls do when they get older. Here is the description about what made it so bad.

I found a YouTube video of the commercial.

Seriously. I had NO IDEA this was a controversial doll until I saw this at the museum. LOL!

So there’s a little peek into our cozy life this week!