(This is a repeat from my files that I reread recently. - Oh the "good old days" at BYU!)


This is one of the stories in my autobiographical collection.

The Relief Society Homemaking Project- decorated waste baskets from ice cream barrels, early 1960's 37th Married Student Ward, on BYU campus.

One of the many Relief Society Homemaking projects that I will never forget involved ice cream barrels that we procured from the local ice cream stores in Provo, UT in the 60's.

Some of us would call the ice cream shops and pick them up before they were thrown out.Then we would wash them and dry them.

Then, we would decorate them in Relief Society Homemaking Meeting in the basement of one of the Wymount Terrace buildings on campus.

I remember putting all kinds of funny things on them: tiny pom-pom balls, rick-rack and covering them in cloth or wall paper! We were recycling even back then!

One Christmas as very poor students, I decorated one waste paper basket for my mother and one for my mother in law as presents and managed to get them in our little car and drive them all the way to Portland, Oregon.

The one I gave to my mother was kept by her favorite over-stuffed chair in the living room. Mother had polio many years before then suffered many strokes and now spent a lot of time in her favorite chair next to her small bookcase reading and doing crossword puzzles, and napping.

Mother loved her dogs. She had a little white cock-a-poo-mix, called "Cookie" that never left her side and used to sit by her on the wide arm of her large chair. "Cookie" got old and a little blind and would often sleep on the arm of that chair with Mother. Most days both of them fell asleep in the chair.

One day, when I called home, I asked about her little dog "Cookie." Mother told me that "Cookie" died. "She is pretty old," I said, "I guess it was her time."

"Well, mother said, "Cookie fell into the waste basket and broke her neck!" I gasped! "The waste basket?" I asked. "Yes," she said, "you remember the one you made me for Christmas a long time ago?"

I have never been sure whether "Cookie" died on the arm of the chair and fell off or fell off in her sleep and the waste basket broke her neck and she died. Either way, that little decorated ice cream barrel is forever associated with the death of "Cookie" and a Relief Society Project of recycling by very poor students at Christmas time!

Ahh, the days of Relief Society Projects!

Great story. I enjoyed reading every word of it.

Good story.

Thanks for the sharing. Ok, who has a story about those stupid grapes that all the women made?

I thought those grapes were cool! I still like them a bit, My mother recently told a story about her cousin, a Utah TBM. A non-member was visiting the area. She had seen these grapes in every LDS home she had visited.

She asked: "What is the religious symbolism that the Mormons attach to these grapes I keep seeing?"

Colorado. They were selling for $23.

They were highly desirable. We called them "clackers."

We made dough from bread and water,there might have been one other ingedient. We formed them into shapes, let them harden and then painted them. I made snowmen, attached earing backs and proudly wore them to my company christmas party. When I was reaching over the buffet one of the little buggers fell off and landed in the salad bowl. I made several attempts before I retrieved him

Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! What a funny/horrible story.

I remember most of the RS projects involved gluten--wheat-based paper mache, or molded wheat dough. I still have a pumpkin soup tureen I made, which is on the table right now. It was full of beef stew today. Fortunately, I don't use the RS stew recipe with gluten gravy made out of wheat and lard. LOL! Some of those projects are lethal!

Anyone want a terrarium made out of an old 2-liter Sprite bottle? It was cute until the plants died and it started to stink.

Remember "decopage"? Get a piece of wood, paint it brown, glue on a picture from a magazine, smear a starch mixture over the picture, shellac the whole thing, put rough string between two thumbtacks on the back, and voila! A masterpiece for your bedroom! We could decopage Joseph Smith and the Articles of Faith!

Thanks for sharing more of the projects. Some were very useful, and some were just silly. I never made those grapes! The funniest was the turkey carcass sleigh some of the ladies made!

The first & only one I ever saw, was at DH's cousin's house in Spanish Fork, Utah. She had it proudly displayed with her other Christmas decorations. It was spray painted gold with sequins & beads, as I recall.

Does anyone remember when the RS had it's own magazine? Fun things in there, too.

Yeah. The ice cream barrel was a dog killer all right. Much like a red velvet cake that was baked by gramma gave gramps a heart attack and killed him...