What were your toys from growing up?

That's nice that you've developed ringlets . Isn't it funny, people with straight, curl it. People with curly hair, straighten it. Frankly, I like it short and practical.
That sounds a lovely idea, miniature gardens. If you do your new project, it would be great if you posted photos on CF. I hope your health will improve.
And I have to admit, years and years ago, when I was at college, my room-mate and a friend waved my hair and made me up (I drew the line at their plucking my eyebrows), and I did look really good. But even if I was particularly bothered about that sort of thing, I wouldn't have time. LOL

tansy said:

That's nice that you've developed ringlets . Isn't it funny, people with straight, curl it. People with curly hair, straighten it. Frankly, I like it short and practical.
That sounds a lovely idea, miniature gardens. If you do your new project, it would be great if you posted photos on CF. I hope your health will improve.
And I have to admit, years and years ago, when I was at college, my room-mate and a friend waved my hair and made me up (I drew the line at their plucking my eyebrows), and I did look really good. But even if I was particularly bothered about that sort of thing, I wouldn't have time. LOL

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I don't know if I'll actually start wearing makeup or not, lol. The photo was taken almost two months ago, and I haven't yet ... But it was a surprise to me that I had thought about it.

It is funny about people with their hair. My daughter grew ringlets as a small child. People used to ask me if I curled her hair. I had to laugh ... she would barely stand still long enough for me to BRUSH it - there would have been no question of curling it! But when she became a teenager, she wanted it straight. I couldn't talk her out of it. Some people pay BIG money for a perm to get the kind of curls she had naturally, and she wanted to iron them out every day!

She's almost 21, and has been becoming a lot more "natural" regarding hair and makeup over the past few years. What silly things we do as teenagers, lol!

I wonder if that means I'm regressing for thinking about wearing makeup again. I've sometimes thought about the poem "When I am old I shall wear purple" and thought maybe I'll be like that on purpose. Sounds like fun! I was far too serious as a child the first time around.

sticks and rocks.

..and by sticks and rocks I mean dirt. We played with dirt.

FenderTL5 said:

sticks and rocks.

..and by sticks and rocks I mean dirt. We played with dirt.

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You can have a lot of fun with dirt!

I cleared out a little place in the forest, and my uncle gave me an old jackknife, which I used to cut out underground garages for tiny cars, with ramps to drive down. The dirt was the thing. I have no idea why I thought a garage should be a hole in the ground, lol.

And toad-houses. I loved making toad houses. Though one day I was bitten by a cow-ant while making them.

And along the road were little "cliffs" that ranged up to about 20 feet high. Erosion by the roadside. But I imagined images I'd seen of mountains out west, and climbed up and down them, carving them out and making little seedlings and twigs to be craggy trees growing on the sheer face. I was maybe kind of weird, lol. But I wish I had photos of my little miniature mountainscapes. I wonder if they might not pass for real mountains, if one didn't examine them too closely. In my imagination they surely did.

~Anastasia~ said:

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I wonder if that means I'm regressing for thinking about wearing makeup again. I've sometimes thought about the poem "When I am old I shall wear purple" and thought maybe I'll be like that on purpose. Sounds like fun! I was far too serious as a child the first time around.

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LOL, I can relate to that - maybe it comes of being the eldest child (apart from my brother who was 5 or 6 years older than me, so by the time I was 11, he'd joined the Navy. Which meant I had to be quite sensible and responsible as I had four younger siblings. But learnt a lot from that. And my parents couldn't afford some of the stuff other children had or did, but we never went without.

FenderTL5 said:

sticks and rocks.

..and by sticks and rocks I mean dirt. We played with dirt.

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LOL I love dirt, even now

~Anastasia~ said:

You can have a lot of fun with dirt!

I cleared out a little place in the forest, and my uncle gave me an old jackknife, which I used to cut out underground garages for tiny cars, with ramps to drive down. The dirt was the thing. I have no idea why I thought a garage should be a hole in the ground, lol.

And toad-houses. I loved making toad houses. Though one day I was bitten by a cow-ant while making them.

And along the road were little "cliffs" that ranged up to about 20 feet high. Erosion by the roadside. But I imagined images I'd seen of mountains out west, and climbed up and down them, carving them out and making little seedlings and twigs to be craggy trees growing on the sheer face. I was maybe kind of weird, lol. But I wish I had photos of my little miniature mountainscapes. I wonder if they might not pass for real mountains, if one didn't examine them too closely. In my imagination they surely did.

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Definitely not weird, just using your imagination and creativity. When I was a kid, I used to play at being a spy. I used to creep around the banks at the edge of the playing field at school,ducking down amongst tufts of grass and bushes, and pretend to take photos by blinking my eyes once. The little yard place by the school kitchen that had a wall around, was the spy HQ. I'm sure if anyone saw me playing this all by myself they would have thought THAT was weird LOL
I have an elderly friend who told me that he used to play at being a miser, counting out pennies into little bags. I nearly rolled on the floor laughing when he told me. He said 'what's so funny?'. I said, well, most kids used to play cowboys and Indians or cops and robbers etc, I've never ever heard ofanyone playing at misers before.

Action Man and Hornby Railways!

tansy said:

I have an elderly friend who told me that he used to play at being a miser, counting out pennies into little bags. I nearly rolled on the floor laughing when he told me. He said 'what's so funny?'. I said, well, most kids used to play cowboys and Indians or cops and robbers etc, I've never ever heard ofanyone playing at misers before.

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Lol - that doesn't even sound like fun though!

~Anastasia~ said:

Lol - that doesn't even sound like fun though!

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Perhaps not, but it was fun for me making him a 'Miser Kit' for Christmas although he was in his early 70s when he told me about it! I put in a little stubby pencil, a small notebook, a little lump of coal, a 'Scrooge' type pointy nightcap thingy, some old gloves with the fingers cut off etc. And I put in a little 'leaflet' listing things like Standard Version - sixpence, Deluxe Version - one shilling and so forth. He thought it was hilarious

tansy said:

Perhaps not, but it was fun for me making him a 'Miser Kit' for Christmas although he was in his early 70s when he told me about it! I put in a little stubby pencil, a small notebook, a little lump of coal, a 'Scrooge' type pointy nightcap thingy, some old gloves with the fingers cut off etc. And I put in a little 'leaflet' listing things like Standard Version - sixpence, Deluxe Version - one shilling and so forth. He thought it was hilarious

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Oh, yeah, now your gift sounds hilarious! And fun!

I just can't imagine as a child having fun playing at being miserly, lol. Maybe because in a sense I was naturally miserly. Not for money, but I was a great collector, of my toy farm animals, and of books - which my grandpa made me bookshelves of scrap wood, and I categorized my books, and listed them all and numbered them. I had a regular little library going - about 8 bookshelves crammed full. So I was miserly in my own way. Maybe that's why I can't see making a game of it.

~Anastasia~ said:

Oh, yeah, now your gift sounds hilarious! And fun!

I just can't imagine as a child having fun playing at being miserly, lol. Maybe because in a sense I was naturally miserly. Not for money, but I was a great collector, of my toy farm animals, and of books - which my grandpa made me bookshelves of scrap wood, and I categorized my books, and listed them all and numbered them. I had a regular little library going - about 8 bookshelves crammed full. So I was miserly in my own way. Maybe that's why I can't see making a game of it.

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I was a collector of books when I was a child too, and my father made a bookcase for me as well. When I moved out of home, a whole load of my childhood books disappeared. I think my brother may have chucked them when he took over my bedroom. But I found copies of them as the years went by and replaced them all, along with far too many more books.

joyshirley said:

I was a collector of books when I was a child too, and my father made a bookcase for me as well. When I moved out of home, a whole load of my childhood books disappeared. I think my brother may have chucked them when he took over my bedroom. But I found copies of them as the years went by and replaced them all, along with far too many more books.

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I can understand that. I have run across copies of books I especially loved as a child and don't have anymore (I don't know what happened to mine either!) and have replaced some of them. Some were so old I'll likely never find them though. I don't know how, since I was not really knowledgeable about such things, but I really did have some very nice books in my collection. I haven't thought much about some of them in a few years ... this thread is bringing back memories!

~Anastasia~ said:

Oh, yeah, now your gift sounds hilarious! And fun!

I just can't imagine as a child having fun playing at being miserly, lol. Maybe because in a sense I was naturally miserly. Not for money, but I was a great collector, of my toy farm animals, and of books - which my grandpa made me bookshelves of scrap wood, and I categorized my books, and listed them all and numbered them. I had a regular little library going - about 8 bookshelves crammed full. So I was miserly in my own way. Maybe that's why I can't see making a game of it.

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Wow, I don't think I've ever been that orderly! I'm the kind of person whose school exercise books used to be all curled up at the corners. Other girls used to manage to keep them pristine and flat, I have no clue how! But then, my hands used to get covered with ink, whether it be from fountain pens or ball point, or felt tips. But actually, I really love getting grubby even now LOL. When my kids were little and I was making pastry, I used to get flour everywhere, but then the kids would run their toy cars through it as though it were snow,and there would be little 'snow drifts'. It would get all over the floor, but it was a lot cheaper to 'waste' a bit of flour than for them to perhaps have something expensive that got broken or even not played with. We tried to get things they would have most fun with for longer, if it was expensive, like push-bikes or board games etc.

tansy said:

Wow, I don't think I've ever been that orderly! I'm the kind of person whose school exercise books used to be all curled up at the corners. Other girls used to manage to keep them pristine and flat, I have no clue how! But then, my hands used to get covered with ink, whether it be from fountain pens or ball point, or felt tips. But actually, I really love getting grubby even now LOL. When my kids were little and I was making pastry, I used to get flour everywhere, but then the kids would run their toy cars through it as though it were snow,and there would be little 'snow drifts'. It would get all over the floor, but it was a lot cheaper to 'waste' a bit of flour than for them to perhaps have something expensive that got broken or even not played with. We tried to get things they would have most fun with for longer, if it was expensive, like push-bikes or board games etc.

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Playing in flour can be fun ...

We are alike - and different - in that. I was obsessively orderly about my books. Maybe from spending hours and hours in libraries, lol. I wasn't always that orderly about everything.

As for my hands I'm kind of peculiar. I love to get my hands in stuff and make things - whether in art, cooking, gardening, etc. Yet ... as soon as I'm done, I want them clean (doesn't happen with gardening soil and often not with other things either). But I hate having sticky hands especially. I couldn't stand it as a child either, lol.

~Anastasia~ said:

Playing in flour can be fun ...

We are alike - and different - in that. I was obsessively orderly about my books. Maybe from spending hours and hours in libraries, lol. I wasn't always that orderly about everything.

As for my hands I'm kind of peculiar. I love to get my hands in stuff and make things - whether in art, cooking, gardening, etc. Yet ... as soon as I'm done, I want them clean (doesn't happen with gardening soil and often not with other things either). But I hate having sticky hands especially. I couldn't stand it as a child either, lol.

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I am the same in that I don't like sticky hands, like when ice cream melts too fast onto your hands on a hot day, and it's ok when they get grubby from gardening or whatever, but I work on getting my hands perfectly clean as soon as the job is done.

My mother used to make homemade playdough for us with flour and salt and water, I think it was, and some food colouring for fun. We spent ages playing with that when we were little.

Dolls, paper dolls, ten-in-one scope, teddies, marbles, toy iron, printing set, blackboard, chalk, jigsaw puzzles, bubble blowing stuff - I forget what that was called. Those are the only ones I can remember at the moment.

Marbles, hopscotch and hula hoops were all popular at primary school level. Us girls also played a game we called line tig, so called because we played it along the lines of the netball court in the school playground. You had to stay on the lines and to make sure you could get away from whomever was 'it', you had to get to a junction before they did so that you didn't end up bumping into them. The person who was 'it' at the start was the one who was last to touch the goal post after lunch. One poor girl was nearly was always 'it' as she went home for lunch, which several of us did, but her home was on the other side of town. Her dad would leave her back to school and she would come racing through the playground with her arm outstretched, trying not to be last to reach the post, only to discover that the rest of us were already there. Poor girl.
I have 5 siblings and one of our aunts and uncles gave us a Waddington board game for several years when we were kids, until our mother asked them to stop. We had great fun with those, especially when we were staying at our grandparents' home for Christmas.

Someone mentioned Whot on this thread. I was talking about that to my family recently and they looked at me blankly. That was fun. Does anyone remember Summit, or maybe it was called Sum-it? It was to do with making your cards add up to a certain amount of money, I think. I saw a copy of it in a museum a few years ago. Happy Families and Snap were also popular. I remember making a rule that, whenever someone didn't have a card they were asked for, they had to say, 'Sorry, not at home'. I think some members of the family still play with that rule.

One thing my siblings and I loved doing together involved just an old rug, which we lay on the stairs, then took turns at lying on it, while the rest of us pulled the rug down the stairs. There was another activity we did which ended up with me damaging my forehead just above my eye. We had stripped the bedding off both single beds in my older brother's bedroom and were taking turns at jumping from one bed to the other. The bed we were jumping on to was up against a built-in wardrobe and when I jumped, the mattress I was jumping on to slipped forwards and I was thrown up against the wardrobe, with my head being dragged across the panelling. There was blood everywhere and that was the end of the game. I had to get a stitch in my eyebrow and still have the scar. The first person my mum rang was my dad and his first thought when my mum said, 'It's Gillian' was that I must have locked myself in the toilet again lol. I don't know why she didn't ring the doctor first.

Better get back to my present life again.

Gillian

It's fun reminiscing these things, isn't it?

Talking of games played in the school playground, we used to play things like touch, green touch, buzz touch, kiss touch, queenie ball ball ball, cabbages, coloured eggs, what's the time Mr Wolf, and the boys would play things like football and British bulldog.

I don't remember toys that much but I do remember doing lots of drawing and a lot of reading. Saturday morning was my time in the local library changing my books