<P><FONT face=arial>Another addition to this album.&nbsp; This is my maternal grandmother.</FONT></P><P><FONT face=Arial>Techniques - I sanded the strip along the right edge of the right page to make it match the other elements and paper better, torn the highlighted words out and used liquid chalk to define the edges, the postcard is cut out of a piece of K&amp;Co patterned &amp; embossed vellum, the library pocket that holds the journaling is covered with a piece cut out of the same vellum.&nbsp; It was perfect actually because the postmarks and addresses on the vellum are from the midwest, including Chicago where my&nbsp;grandma&nbsp;lived&nbsp;several times during her life.&nbsp; I cut a slit along the lace in the patterned paper and inserted the corner of my photo into it to make it look as if it were held down by the lace.</FONT></P><P><FONT face=Arial>Warning - journaling is really long, but I wanted to include it.&nbsp; I printed the journaling in a typewriter font (in memory of all the typewritten letters I received over the years from Grandma) and cut it out into 3X5 cards to insert into the library pocket:</FONT></P><P class=MsoNormal>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; There are women in a young girl’s life who leave lasting impressions.&nbsp; These women have an enormous impact on how that young girl thinks and feels and acts as she grows into adulthood.&nbsp; My Grandma Cumpton was one of those women.&nbsp; The time I spent with her growing up, the letters we exchanged when we were too far to visit, the comments she made, both good and bad, regarding my appearance and my manners, all had an effect on the woman I am today.</P><P class=MsoNormal>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Gertrude Louise Kohles was born to the children of German immigrants.&nbsp; She was a second generation German-American, with a little English thrown in for good measure.&nbsp; She was born poor, raised poor, and fought poverty during the most character-shaping periods of her life.&nbsp; Throughout her life, even after there was money to spare and plenty of food on the table, the effects were apparent in her “hoarding” techniques – keeping extra canned goods in the pantry and meat in the freezer, clipping coupons and rebates, and reusing disposable items.</P><P class=MsoNormal>She had her first child at the age of 19 years and 19 days.&nbsp; At the age of 31 years, 4 months and 21 days she birthed her last child (my mother).&nbsp; When all was said and done she had five living children and three who hadn’t survived infancy.&nbsp; After she was done having children, Grandma left an unhappy marriage and found true love with the man I consider my grandfather, the man who raised my mother.&nbsp; He had two children from his first marriage and they adopted another child, the more the merrier my grandparents always said.&nbsp; She remained by his side until she took her last breath.</P><P class=MsoNormal>Grandma had enough love in her heart to go around, and she did her best to show it.&nbsp; She spent her first 40 or so years on this earth in constant motion, moving around every few years, living by the motto “the home is where the heart is.”&nbsp; There was never any doubt, wherever Louise lived, that was a place that you could call home.</P><P class=MsoNormal>This was a woman who inspired great love, who had a passion for life, and who was fiercely protective of her family.&nbsp; As a child I knew that if I were to marry, I would want to inspire in my husband the type of love she inspired in Grandpa.&nbsp; I would want to be adored and yet allowed to make my own way and be my own person.&nbsp; </P><P class=MsoNormal>Once, in a move very out of character for a woman who didn’t speak much to me of her own past, Grandma told me “As a teenager I always wore shoes that were wildly different than any shoes other girls were wearing.”&nbsp; This was news to me, this coming from the woman who hated my second earring piercing (although the first was her idea) and constantly worried that my sisters and I would become “teeny-boppers” (whatever that was).&nbsp; I could, at that moment, picture Grandma as a young lady rebelling against propriety in the only manner she knew how, through her clothing. &nbsp;It was something we had in common, although she only shared this with me after I’d lived through my own rebellious stage.&nbsp; I credit my grandmother in part for my ability to resist peer pressure and retain my individuality, for I never saw her cave in to the opinions of others.</P><P class=MsoNormal>Grandma thought the world of her children, her grandchildren, and her great-grandchildren.&nbsp; She would go to great lengths to keep them close, and to make sure they were happy.&nbsp; She may never have thought anyone was quite good enough for us, but she did accept our choices and make these people a part of her family.</P><P class=MsoNormal>I believe that I take after Grandma more than anyone else, and I know that I’ve always looked up to her as a role model.&nbsp; She was a perfectly flawed woman in my eyes – beautiful, independent, strong and strong-willed, caring, generous, witty, true to her beliefs, purposeful in her actions, and uncompromising.&nbsp; She loved and lost, gathered up her broken heart and loved again.&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;I admired her ability to be vocal with her opinions, regardless if they were popular or even right.&nbsp; She made mistakes, took the consequences in stride, and kept right on living with her head held high.&nbsp; She survived many years of poverty, finding ways to feed and clothe her children and her husband and any other person who happened to walk in the door, maintaining a generosity of spirit always.&nbsp; She remembered birthdays and celebrated holidays with gusto.&nbsp; She wrote letters and made phone calls to keep in touch with her family and friends.</P><P class=MsoNormal>Going to Grandma’s house was always a treat.&nbsp; She treated me with respect and always looked at me with a love shining in her eyes.&nbsp; Everyone knew that to Gertrude Louise Kohles Jackson Cumpton, family was number one at all costs, and that she expected no less from the rest of us.</P><P class=MsoNormal>I learned a lot from my maternal grandmother.&nbsp; I learned to love with all my heart, to hold my head up high and steel my back straight during every heartbreak and humiliation.&nbsp; I learned to laugh hard and cry harder, and to hold those tears in when they might give someone else too much satisfaction.&nbsp; I learned to value family, to be there for them in times of need, to celebrate with them during times of great joy, to offer my shoulder to them in times of great sorrow.&nbsp; I learned the value, and the necessity, of sacrifice for those you love most, and that it can be done without compromising who you are and what you stand for and believe in.&nbsp; Most of all, I learned that to be the matriarch of a family is full of hope and heartbreak, joy and pain, and ultimately, is an achievement of the highest honor.</P><P>-----------------------------------------<BR>Supplies:<BR>border strip&nbsp;- Marcella by K&amp;Co<BR>3 dimensional stickers - Life Journeys by K&amp;Co (courtesy of my secret sister)<BR>postage stamp alphabet stickers - Rebecca Sower<BR>patterned paper - Karen Foster<BR>patterned, embossed vellum - K&amp;Co<BR>Book Pockets - Boxer Scrapbook Productions<BR>stencil letters - Creative Imaginations</P>