Backyard Memories

Earlier I had mentioned that our assignment was to draw something from our past. This is what I chose to draw. It was quite amazing how many details I could remember. This drawing shows my sister and I under a tent built in our yard with blankets and my dad's clips (which he used to hold his candle molds together) on our clothesline. In reality...the clothesline was not attached to the tree...I don't know why I drew it like that...We used to play in our back yard all summer long. The lilac bushes in the background created great forests for our Barbie dolls. We loved to play house and pretend we had families with our dolls. We used old milk crates, boards, just about any junk lying around in the barn that we could turn into some kind of furniture for our tent-houses. On rainy days we would build tents in our basement...they weren't just a blanket thrown over a couple of chairs, they were elaborate labyrinths of rooms and hiding places with beds and furniture and battery operated "lights". I remember one year we created a restaurant and served an enormous menu of felt food. We had plastic silverware and paper dishes, and plastic flowers in vases. When our friends came over they were elected to be our waiters and waitresses as we would visit our 5 star restaurant with our pretend husband or wife. We wrote out menus and assigned our friends to creating the felt food for us. One friend, Amber, I remember, was a particularly creative felt "chef".