Whisk Broom
Today in the Ozarks the skies are dark, pouring an icy rain that makes me wish we had a fireplace. If I had a fireplace, I’d have an even harder time carrying through with my holiday giveaway. Earlier this fall, I wrote about my summer visit to the Ozark Folk Center, near my home in Arkansas. I purchased two beautiful handmade brooms. One is a standing broom for my own home. The broom works so well and glides so easily that I genuinely do more of my share of sweeping than I did before I got this household treasure. I also bought a gift for one of you, my dear readers, a whisk broom made in the same historic style as my standing broom.
As with the standing broom, every detail on this whisk or hearth broom is natural. The broom measures a foot long and 8 inches wide at the base. It retails for $25. This broom also works as well as the standing broom, whether you decide to use it to sweep your hearth or whether it becomes your whisk broom to tidy up the end of a sweeping session. Of course, it can also just be a decorative feature that might fit your country holiday or year-round decor, hanging next to your fireplace or in your kitchen.
If you are interested in winning this hearth broom, please post here with a special holiday memory or tradition, even if it’s just a sentence. It doesn’t have to be long or eloquent; just share a little. If you’d like two entries, please post about this giveaway on your own blog or tweet it, and then indicate here in a separate comment that you’ve shared it. Entries close Sunday, December 5, at noon Central Standard Time. I’ll announce the winner, selected randomly, by Dec. 6 at noon, so that I can get your address and get your gift in the mail to you in time for holiday decorating. Regardless of which winter holidays you celebrate, I wish you a happy, healthy season!
Legal stuff: I am not a spammer and will keep your information private. Readers from outside the US are welcome to post and enter, but you are responsible for any customs charges.
Entries are officially closed. I’ll post the winner by noon on Monday.
Copyright 2010 Ozarkhomesteader.
I just love this little whisk broom and also loved your big broom. I’m not at all surprised you’re finding yourself sweeping more with it; that’s what quality tools are all about! My special holiday memory would have to be baking and decorating gingerbread men with my mother — real thick, spicy huge cookies, decorated with buttercream frosting and all kinds of raisins, nuts candies, etc. It was a big project, with lots of spoon licking. Mysteriously, a special gingerbread man that looked a lot like the ones we’d made would always be popping out of my Christmas stocking. Hmmmm.
Eleanor, what a great story! You’re making me crave gingerbread cookies.
When my kids were young picking out the Christmas tree was a family event. Being in the country we had the advantage of going straight to a farm, walking through row after row of beautifully groomed trees.
One year after hiking up and down the hills of many trees we found ours. Straight trunk, heavenly smell, and perfect shape. My husband got down on the ground and began sawing. Everyone was excited and helped drag the tree back to the car. After hoisting it to the roof, tying it down, and paying, we headed home.
Now this may come as a shock to some but a tree in a field does not appear as LARGE as it truely is.
Once we got the tree untied and onto the front porch we realized it was not going to fit. After a fit of laughter we took the front door and the inside door off their hinges. While three of us pushed from the outside the other three pulled on the trunk and lower branches from the inside. Finally the massive tree, minus many needles, made it to the room where it would take 900 lights to make it sparkle.
The kids have all grown and the tree farm has closed, but we still laugh about the giant tree and the task of getting it into our house.
Was it too tall also? That’s happened to me. Welcome to the blog, Ann, and thank you for sharing! Nine hundred lights?!? Wow.
We moved to Arkansas the week our youngest child graduated from high school. We’d lived in Los Angeles all of our lives and couldn’t wait to give rural living an opportunity to change our lives for the better. In the city, we always had an artificial tree. The weather being mild in December, dried out the live trees quickly.
Settled into our new home, we could not wait for Christmas or even our first snowfall. We had never experienced four seasons before. The day after Thanksgiving, we stepped outside our door with a tooth saw in hand and headed straight for that “perfect tree” we had selected months before. We all layed down on our bellies and scooted under the branches. Even the dog joined us under there.
It took three of us to haul our freshly cut Christmas tree into the house. The tree seemed so much larger after it was cut and would not fit through a standard 3’ doorway. The trunk was much too large to fit in the metal tree stand that had been in the family for 25 years, so we placed a cinder block into a large Rubbermaid tub and place the tree trunk through the hole in the cinder block. It worked perfectly and provided more than enough water to keep our tree nice through the holidays.
We never had an 11’ Christmas tree before so we didn’t have enough decorations to garnish the tree. We made our own just like in the days before artificial trees. It was nice to sit down as a family and make a paper chain together and reaching the top of the tree from a ladder proved more than a challenge with the bottom branches stretching out so wide. Every dilemma brought surprises, delight and laughter to our family.
This year we are spending our last Christmas together with my husband. He is succumbing to cancer and we are temporarily living in a small apartment in a large city where medical treatment is close by. The day after Thanksgiving, we stopped by the Christmas tree lot within the city center. They had several beautiful 11’ Christmas trees on display. Immediately, we had see how much these trees that reminded us of our first country Christmas in Arkansas, were going to cost, had we wanted to purchase one. WOW! $799.99 With raised eyebrows, we looked at each other and giggled. We were in total shop and awe! We left with a much, much smaller Christmas tree, but the memories of that special first Arkansas Christmas kept us busy reminiscing the rest of the day.
Welcome to the blog, G. Your story has warmed my heart and made me both laugh and cry. I’ll be keeping your family close to my heart through this special, bittersweet holiday for you.
Another Christmas tree memory: Growing up in West Tennessee, most Saturday mornings after it got good and cold, I went quail hunting with my father (I was an only child; when he discovered he wasn’t going to have a boy, I became the sub). The first Saturday in December, we’d hunt, and then on the way back to the truck, I’d pick out a tree (cedar), and he’d cut it. We’d keep a sharp eye out for mistletoe, too, which one acquired by shooting it out of the top of the tree and picking it up. Then we’d go home, where Mama would make hot chocolate and lunch, and we’d decorate the tree and then have fried quail and dressing for dinner.
Been a long time since I went out and picked out a tree for someone to cut. I may have to do that this year.
G, God bless and sustain you this holiday season. You and your family will be in my prayers.
Kay, what wonderful memories! I decided one year, perhaps in late elementary school, that I would get a cedar tree from the woods for our family room. I dug it up and my father got a big bucket for it. I decorated it with things like popcorn garlands. Then I planted it back outside come January. I did that three times.
My all time favorite Christmas memory… my parents would make us sleep in the basement on Xmas eve so Santa could work his magic without tripping over a bunch of kids. We would sneak upstairs around 4am to check out the scene. I remember my brother finding a weight set under the tree with his name on it. In his excitement he hoisted the bar over his head to show us how cool it was. Santa had not secured the weight stops on the ends of the bar. So first one side and then the other crash to the floor waking up everyone in the house as we scrambled down the stairs.
Merry Christmas
Woody, I’m cracking up! My parents once thought my sister and I were misbehaving during the holidays. They staged an elaborate scene whereby a neighbor got a ladder and tromped around on the roof. My father then said he heard something clunk in the fireplace and “discovered” a lump of coal with a note from Santa wrapped around it, threatening that he could give our Christmas presents to someone else. I’m betting if we’d done what your brother did, we might have been missing some presents when we came back upstairs. Were your parents laughing or mad? I’d be trying really hard not to show I was laughing if I came across my kids doing that . . . .
We all still talk about how damned loud the sound was of those weights hitting the hardwood. I was only a little guy but I do remember the look on dad’s face as he rounded the corner. I think he thought a truck had hit the house.
I’m trying so hard not to laugh too loudly, since the rest of the house is asleep, but I’m still just about laughing so hard I’m crying. Thanks again for sharing!
About 30 years ago, soon after my father-in-law died, my husband and I and our two older children (the others were born later) took a trip to Colorado from our home in Michigan in an effort to forget the pain of loss. We packed up for the long trip to be with my brother who was stationed in Fort Carson, and his wife for Christmas. We broke down just outside of Manhattan, Kansas on Christmas Eve. We managed to get to a road side area before the car quit. While my husband was out in the dark and snow trying to find out what was wrong, I was huddled in the car with my son, aged 4 and my daughter aged 2. About an hour and a lot of prayers later a police officer stopped by. Because I was cold, worried, and angry, I was testy towards the officer. After talking to my husband, who assured him that he could get the car going, the officer left. As I watched the taillights of the patrol car go down the road, I started to cry and got angrier at myself for not taking him up on his offer of help. So, I prayed that God would send us someone else to help and I would be more receptive to offers of help. I prayed for almost another hour for help or for the car to get started. Help came first. The officer came back. And the car got started. The officer led us about 3 miles down the road to a motel where we stayed the night. We were warm and the motel staff gave us supper. However, that was not the end of that memorable Christmas. The next morning, there was a knock at the door and the minister of a local church invited us to spend Christmas with his congregation. One of the motel workers had called him. He even drove us to church since my husband’s attempt to restart the car failed. We were treated like royalty. We were also persuaded to stay for Christmas dinner. The members of the church celebrated Christmas with each other and many were responsible for picking up older members so they did not celebrate alone. While we were answering questions about where we were going and what happened to the car, one member of the church said he knew something about cars and asked if he could look at it. He and his family took us back to the motel. He took a look at the problem and said he knew of someone who might have a part we needed. He and his wife helped us pack up our belongings, the motel refused to charge us and we stayed with this wonderful family for the day. A call was made (on Christmas Day, no less) and the afternoon was spent putting the part on the car and gassing it up for the rest of the trip. Our only cost for all of this was for the part for the car and that was paid for by our host. When we got back after our trip, my husband sent a check to reimburse him. The garage owner who had the part for us put it on and did not charge for it. It was a Christmas gift, he said. In all my years of celebrating Christmas, I have never had one like this one. It brings me joy and comfort (and brings me to tears) every Christmas since then, when I remember the kindness of strangers and prayers answered.
Caroline, welcome to the blog, and thank you for sharing such a beautiful story. Every time I start to lose faith in humanity, something like this happens. I’m crying tears of joy right now.
I love the little broom!!!
I don’t know about a memory, but how about a tradition? Every year on the Saturday after Thanksgiving week(today!!!!) we go to the Christmas tree farm and cut our tree to bring home. We always take a dog or two along, and had the best time. Sometimes I make hot chocolate for us, and we always listen to Christmas music on the way there and back.
Well, of course, a tradition is a memory! Thank you, Polly, that sounds like so much fun. May I come this year?
I can’t type much due to shoulder surgery, but here goes.
One year while getting all 5 kids ready for the Christmas Eve bash – bathing, dressing, etc – I came down from upstairs and there was my youngest, age 2, eating one of my precious glass ornaments. Blood trickling out of his mouth while he is smiling broadly.
First year we only had lights and candy canes, as a substitute for the beautiful glass ornaments that I had hastily grabbed off the tree and thrown in the trash. Totally outraged that those big bad ornaments had hurt my darling little baby boy. (Who’s big sister felt pretty damn bad, as she was supposed to be watching him while I bathed the other little brothers.)
Oh my stars! That’s awful, Miss Blue. I’m guessing you rushed him to the emergency room. Thanks for sharing–I needed a story that didn’t make me cry, as I’m running out of tissues.
I hope your shoulder heals quickly. It’s so nice to see you.