Cracked Ice and Chrome – Lovin' the shiny and the retro

October 27, 2025October 27, 2025

Atomic Cats for the Win!

I’ve been a “born again” Etsy seller for a few months now.

I saw “born again” because I started selling tablecloths on Etsy in about 2008, and that lasted for a few years. I enjoyed finding and selling tablecloths, but it was also time consuming because I was obsessed with rehabbing soiled cloths, which required weeks of stain removal and a good amount of hours in sunlight. In summer, this was easy. In winter? Not gonna happen. As my kids reached adolescence, time to rehab tablecloths dried up.

I reopened my Etsy shop under my new name – The Starburst Creative. Shipping is more expensive these days and I have had a couple of orders MIA thanks to the postal service, but I have replaced those items the same day that people reported the problem. I aim to please.

It has been fun to personalize consumer purchases, for I always include a little note into the package, thanking people for their purchase. The other day I sent an order to Iowa – my former home state – and it made me a little nostalgic. I loved Iowa (and South Dakota – my original home state!) this time of year during harvest season. The drier, cooler air, the dust from the combines, the colors of the prairie grasses . . . it was magical. Illinois has that as well, but I dunno . . . it’s just different and not as familiar to me. When I was a fairly new teacher and overcome by the stress of the job, I remember going home to my parents’ farm and just breathing in the air when I got out of the car. It was familiar and calming, and I felt the same way recently when I went back to Iowa to get my granddaughter for a week-long stay at my house. I was getting gas at Casey’s and I just took a moment to breathe the air. It was comforting and familiar. I suppose different places have scents that the brain always remembers, but that science will always fascinate me.

The science of smell is fascinating. I remember reading a study about how the sense of smell is more acute than any of the other senses, and it stuck with me. In college, I encountered an exam question where it asked which of the five senses depicted the most vivid memories, and I chose smell. It was wrong, and that wrong answer sticks with me as being something I would love to argue today. I smell the perfume that I wore as a sophomore in high school (Tatiana) and it brings back all the senses with it: sights and sound and feelings from the fall of 1990. It dredges up memories I thought I had forgotten. The most fascinating part of the human brain is the fact that I can smell that perfume even when it’s not with me. How is that even possible?

Anyway, back to my Etsy adventures . . .

My atomic cat coasters have been so popular that I am struggling to keep up with demand. Part of that struggle has to do with finding suppliers of tiles that are reputable and reliable. I got a “bum order” of coasters that resulted in dozens of them having flaws; the glaze did not seem to be of high quality, resulting in color gaps and just bad appearance overall. Luckily, I requested a replacement and received one, but it resulted in a lot of wasted time and effort before that point.

Such is life for an Etsy seller, I guess.

My newest obsession is bedazzling – as corny as that may sound. I bought a heat pen and a few rhinestones on a whim, and my mind quickly starting working overtime to think of what I could make with these supplies.

Naturally, my attention turned to Elvis – the king of bling.

I used the Phosphate font to do the HTV in glitter vinyl. I love this font because it has an open strip in the middle of the letters which just works perfectly to contain 16ss-size rhinestones. This first picture doesn’t capture the brightness of it. See below.

Cheesy? Maybe. But we all know that Elvis loved him some bling. I’m working on putting rhinestones on the rest of the designs this week.

So if you don’t hear from me for a while, you can assume I am hunched over my desk with my magnifying glasses on, bedazzling an Elvis bag.

September 13, 2025September 13, 2025

It’s been a hot minute . . .

So my last post was in June.

It’s now September.

Obviously, things have been happening around here, including almost letting this domain slip away from me because I forgot to renew it. Truthfully, I would have been devastated if I lost this site because it has kind of been my diary for the past 17 years.

When I was younger, I was diligent about keeping a journal and writing in it nearly every night. Those journals are some of my most treasured books, for it helps me remember all of the trials and tribulations of a teenager. Later on in life, I tried and re-tried to re-establish that routine, but life seemed to always get in the way.

Throw in a couple of bad relationships where my trust was violated from people thinking they had a right to read those journals without my permission, and all of a sudden, writing down my personal thoughts didn’t seem too appealing.

I suppose it seems odd that I have transferred that writing into a very public forum, and I’m sure some psychoanalyst could have a field day with that one, but nowadays I feel more comfortable writing a blog than I do writing a journal. It probably has to do with the fact that I’m choosing what people see, which takes away the awful realization that your privacy was invaded by someone you trusted. Even though those “breaches” happened years ago, it still stings.

Anyway . . . life in the Chicago ‘burbs has gone on as usual.

In one of my posts this year, I expressed the urge to delve into crafting. In June, I made that happen by purchasing a Silhouette Cameo 5 and a heat press. This pretty much explains why I haven’t written anything on here since June. I have been BUSY! Buying a vinyl machine and heat press has rocked my world and has unleashed my creative juices. It’s been a learning curve, but I think I finally have the things I made regularly down to a science.

This past weekend, my husband and I had a show in La Crosse, WI, and I set up my first ever merch table. I went in not knowing what would sell, so I made a little bit of everything – some band t-shirts, keychains, and koozies, and some other items that were non-band related. I thought the t-shirts would sell well; they didn’t. But the bags were a hit and I sold out of those, along with a few inexpensive items like keychains and koozies. I sold two sets of atomic cat coasters, so I was thrilled about that also. At the end of the weekend, I sold about $300 worth of merch, and I was happy about that. Did I recoup all my costs? Heck no, but that weekend gave me valuable insight about what people want.

I think some people didn’t understand the intent of my merch table. They would come by, look at the band merch, and say, “This should say Elvis on it.”

Well, yes, but it’s a merch table for the band, so . . .

Dealing with the public – always an adventure.

I think my favorite items to make so far are koozies, coasters, and cutting boards. Koozies are quick and easy, and I have the creation down to a science, and coasters take longer but the end product is impressive. I use ceramic coasters, and the end product comes out vivid and shiny and beautiful. I love making t-shirts as well, but I’ve found that making a design and then ordering that design as a DTF transfer is a far less messy way to go.

It is important to me that what I make to sell is from my own design. I know Etsy is full of people who just download the same designs as everyone else and slaps it on a t-shirt or cutting board or whatever. I really don’t want to do that. Whenever possible, I make the design myself.

I took this pic as I was walking to work the other day:

I go to work hella early in the morning to avoid having to face rush hour traffic twice in one day. Getting home is already a chore; I just want to get to work without any slowdowns in the morning, so I leave my house about 4:30 a.m. to arrive downtown an hour later. Honestly, it’s my favorite time of day. The city is quiet, and after I swing by to get my coffee, I cherish the time that I get to walk, observe, and sip coffee. I am lucky to work in a place where work times are flexible, otherwise, I would be spending even more time in traffic going and coming home from work.

I have used the phrase “the city is waking up” before, but the truth is, it is never sleeping. My husband and I had to bring a bandmate to the airport at 3:30 a.m. a few weeks ago; we thought we would be traveling on pretty empty roads, but the truth is that we had good company. I am still kind of used to life in Iowa; if you ventured out at 3:30 a.m., you would enjoy miles of empty roads. Not true here. In fact, when we were coming home from Midway and longing for bed, we got stopped by an accident that set us back about 30 minutes. We just kept looking at each other and saying, “Really?! At this hour?”

The city never sleeps, and neither do we, apparently.

My Etsy store is online but is a little scant on merchandise right now because I’ve been concentrating on building up the band merch. However, Fall and Christmas items are filling my head! You can find me on Etsy here: https://www.etsy.com/shop/TheStarburstCreative?ref=dashboard-header

June 3, 2025June 4, 2025

A Recipe Treasure

A few weeks ago, I was at my mom’s house, and she showed me a cookbook she had discovered in a box. She imagined it came from one of my relatives who had passed away, but my eyes got big when I saw this cookbook. It was a vintage lover’s dream.

It’s not even the cookbook itself that is exciting; do you see all the newspaper clippings hanging out the sides? This little book is STUFFED with all sorts of handwritten recipes and recipes cut out of various publications. (I see an article about bladder irritation is hanging out for your viewing pleasure. You’re welcome.).

This book is fragile, as are the pieces of paper, so I will take care to scan everything in as carefully as possible. In the meantime, enjoy this little nugget that was buried in the middle, all about the wonders of LARD.

Of course, working in and living near Chicago now, I notice when things are published in Chicago. This little pamphlet was published by the National Live Stock and Meat Board, which had offices in the Old Colony Building at 407 South Dearborn. This from Google Maps:

And a pic from the Old Colony Building in its heyday:

This article talks more about the buzz surrounding this building during its construction in 1893. This will be one I make sure to include on my lunch walking tour next time I am working downtown.

On the back of another recipe clipping, I found this funny little ad for Marvene soapless suds.

It’s not a full ad, of course, but I was intrigued by this soapless suds that I had never heard from. I found this from a Winona, MN newspaper:

And this from the 1944 Midland Reporter Telegram:

Google couldn’t provide an answer to when these “soapless suds” stopped being made, but the ads seem to dwindle shortly after the end of WWII.

Stay tuned for the fun scans that I will be sharing from this cookbook!

May 19, 2025

A week of chaos

I had my granddaughter for a week while her mom and dad were on a cruise.

I don’t think I’ll ever recover.

Don’t get me wrong — time with her is precious and wonderful and it goes by way too quick.

But I. Am. TIRED.

I forget about the energy it takes to keep up with a 2 1/2 year old. I forgot about the days when you really couldn’t shower until nap time (and sometimes not even then) because you’re picking up toys that have been scattered around the house like a tornado blew through.

And the things is that she is a really, really easy child to deal with. She takes a nap without protest, willingly goes to her room to go night-night (no tears and no fighting it), and very rarely throws a toddler fit.

I think the biggest battle I had the entire week was figuring out what she would eat. I learned to not ask what she wanted – to just give her food and she would eat at least a couple bites of it. I was amazed by how she would hardly eat anything and just live off snacking on Cheerios and chocolate milk, yet she would have the energy of a thousand suns.

In addition to all of this, I was working from home. I didn’t want to take any time off, so I tried to juggle both. I was moderately successful. I got things done, but I couldn’t keep a thought in my head because I was constantly responding to the demands of a toddler: I want more milk! I want more Cheerios! I want to watch Miss Rachel! I want to watch Mickey Mouse! I was in and out of my chair about 358 times per hour, it seemed.

And now the house is silent, but I still have Miss Rachel songs in my head, which is sheer torture in itself (“One little red fish, swimming in the water . . . ” and “I’m soooo happy!”). Her favorite game was going upstairs to say hi to grandpa and look at my Kit-Kat clock that hangs in her room. (She didn’t like the eyes moving from side to side, so she would want me to still the tail and shut it “off.”). While I was working, she would go upstairs and then announce (over and over until I joined her) that she was “downstairs!” “Gamma, I’m downstairs! Gamma, I’m downstairs!” (She doesn’t yet realize the difference between going upstairs and downstairs, so everything was downstairs.). So I’d leave my computer and join her upstairs, and we’d make all the rounds to all the rooms, then we would head downstairs again. As soon as we were downstairs, the upstairs routine commenced again.

I kind of wish I had an Apple Watch so I could have calculated my steps during the time she was here. My phone, which sat on the kitchen counter most of the time, chided me for being inactive.

Smart phone?? I think not.

On Friday night, my granddaughter saw a commercial for pizza and then immediately wanted pizza. Not wanting to go to the store and get some, I did a quick search for a thin crust pizza dough, and I found this one from King Arthur flour. Guys, this thin crust is THE BOMB. Super quick and easy, and my picky little granddaughter actually said “Mmmmm!” when she bit into her simple cheese pizza. I did not let it rise because I wanted it as thin as possible. Here’s the link to the recipe. This is now my go-to for thin crust.

Well, that’s all I’ve got: pizza and adventures with the granddaughter. Will be returning to scanning some fun vintage things in upcoming days.

May 8, 2025May 8, 2025

A little slip of paper

I am giving my office a much-needed cleaning today, and I found this little tiny square of paper with a recipe on it.

I don’t know where it came from. The reverse side shows some text talking about some product designed to help pigs gain weight, so it must have been clipped from a farm magazine. Don’t know how it got into this plastic storage tote, and I am amazed that it is in unwrinkled condition.

The recipe actually sounds kind of good. Lots of sugar, of course, but that was life in the 50s (assuming this is from that time period). I mean, this was the regular Jello mix that already had sugar; you’re adding MORE sugar and fruit to this mixture – yikes! I try not to eat extra sugar, so I probably won’t make this one for review. However, one of YOU brave souls might want to take it on and report back.

May 4, 2025

Ads from a bygone era

It is fascinating to me to read old magazines from the 50s and 60s and look at the way our advertising world has changed. I suppose this could apply to television ads as well. I think the drastic change in our advertising completely shows how our world is different now and what the “powers that be” have decided we need in our lives. Think about it: when’s the last time you have seen an ad for . . .

. . . shower curtains? Now, this ad did send me down a bit of a rabbit hole because I had never heard of Kleinert’s before. This from their website:

Isaak B. Kleinert founded Kleinert’s, Inc. in 1869 in College Point, NY, initially known as I.B. Kleinert’s Rubber Company. As an innovative inventor, Kleinert created many enduring products like the shower cap, shower curtain, dress shield, and waterproof baby pants. By the mid-20th century, Kleinert’s had become an international manufacturing powerhouse, supplying rubber life rafts to the US Air Force during WWII.

From the 1970s to the 1990s, Kleinert’s expanded its product line to include children’s clothing, footwear, and personal protection products. Embracing e-commerce in the mid-1990s, Kleinert’s launched its first website and grew its direct-to-consumer business.

Since 2003, Kleinert’s, now headquartered in Elba, Alabama, has been a leading manufacturer of products for excessive sweating and incontinence. We proudly produce all our goods in the USA, supporting local jobs. Our customers include Disney, Broadway shows, military academies, and more.

We continually innovate, offering advanced products like Fabrapel-treated fabrics and Sweat Shield Ultra wipes for hyperhidrosis. Kleinert’s remains committed to enhancing lives and extending the longevity of clothing.

The more you know, I guess.

Continuing . . .

When’s the last time you saw an ad for . . .

. . . good ol’ regular curtains? These, of course, are quite prevalent in magazines such as Better Homes and Gardens from the Midcentury. Heck, you could even get a free curtain booklet.

Now, tell me . . . When’s the last time you saw an ad for . . .

Fake stick-on tile? That color rocks my world, by the way. It is always the color I am drawn to when I am buying vintage items. The picture is great as well. He pauses mid-installation to look back at his ecstatic wife in her apron and oddly maniacal expression. Obviously, this was a marriage that worked — for whatever reason.

Oh – notice the “Magic Congowall show” advertised on the inset text? Why does that sound like something I’d like to attend?

When’s the last time you saw an ad for . . .

. . . refrigerators made by tractor companies? (I apologize for the non-straight scan here; this ad came out of a bound book full of Better Homes and Gardens magazines from 1950 and it’s pretty huge; it is impossible to straighten the pages enough to get a straight copy.) I had never seen this company name attributed to appliances until I ran across this ad; I only knew it as a company that made farm equipment. However, Google informed me that IH did venture into the appliance manufacturing sector from 1947-1955, and then they sold out to Whirlpool. I love the totally sexist “femineered” sales pitch and the “Egg-O-Mat” storage option. “Diffuse-O-Lite” as well. Just so 50s and so fun. At some point they would offer colored door handles to match your color-coordinated kitchen:

(Note that they were really set on the “femineered” sales pitch.)

I do miss how one could get appliances to match their kitchen. Now we have white, black, stainless, black stainless, gray, dark gray, light gray, medium gray . . .

I jest, but the color options are severely lacking.

IH also gave housewives a great idea — or should that be “great” idea? Cover your fridge with fabric to match your kitchen!

I notice the third line touts a “door pedal” . . . for what? Why doesn’t my fridge come with a door pedal??

Even more interesting is the text at the waaaaaaaaay bottom, which says that IH was based at 180 N. Michigan Avenue in Chicago. I now work just a few blocks from there. Here’s the building after its completion in 1937:

And here is the building today:

And, finally . . . when’s the last time you saw an ad for . . .

. . . a TV with a 19 1/2″ screen — or just a TV in general?

I think manufacturers have just assumed that we are going to go to Wal-mart hunting for the best and the biggest TV we can find.

Back then a TV was part of your household; it wasn’t going to be replaced every other year. It sat like a rock in your living room because after it got wrangled into your house, you were too old and tired to wrangle it back out.

My husband and I grumble while watching our TV provider – Hulu – because it seems like every freaking commercial is either Burger King (with that ultra-annoying off-pitch singing) or an ad for a drug company. Look at the ads in modern magazines; modern medicine has a firm hold on our advertising, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.

Bring back the ads for curtains and stick-on fake tile. If I have to watch one more time the Wegovy group inexplicably walking down the street like a pack of zombies, I just might be shooting the TV, Elvis-style.

Of course, if this were 1950 and my TV weighed as much as a refrigerator, I would have to think very, very carefully before taking such drastic action because then I’d have to get it out of my house.

Chalk another point up for 1950’s design right there.

April 30, 2025May 4, 2025

The Psychology Behind Car Ads

Back in my teaching days, I would always look forward to teaching one particular lesson about connotative and denotative meanings of words. While the subject itself is rather dull, I taught the concept through the topic of car design. Why did Ford decide to use the name Fusion? Why does a Chevy Malibu sound like fun to drive? Why does a Dodge Hellcat appeal to a select group of people? Even more fascinating is the psychology behind crafting the car ad. I always had a selection of ads to show my students and we would discuss what the target audience was for the ad, along with the connotative meaning behind the name.

In 1955, Ford employed poet Marianne Moore to help them come up with a name for their hot new product, which ended up being the notoriously unsuccessful Edsel. However, Marianne had submitted several suggestions, with some of them being just completely ridiculous. Here are some of her suggestions:

Hurricane Accipter (hawk)
The Impeccable
Symmechromatic
Thunderblender
The Resilient Bullet
Intelligent Bullet
Bullet Cloisoné
Bullet Lavolta
The Intelligent Whale
The Ford Fabergé (That there is also a perfume Fabergé seems to me to do no harm, for here allusion is to the original silversmith)
The Arc-en-Ciel (the rainbow)
Arcenciel
Mongoose Civique
Anticipator
Regna Racer (couronne a couronne) sovereign to sovereign
Aeroterre
Fée Rapide (Aerofee, Aero Faire, Fee Aiglette, Magi-faire) Comme Il Faire

After looking at her list of names, you might feel the way Ford Motor Co. felt when they kept getting these rather strange suggestions thrown their way. In the end, Ford ended up using the Edsel name, and the rest is history.

This story is often used to show how some executives can be completely tone-deaf when it comes to marketing and understanding what people want in a product. However, reading these letters and that story in general is how I became rather fascinated by the psychology behind marketing.

By the way, you can purchase the book that Marianne Moore ended up putting together of her letters between her and Ford Motor Co. It is called Letters from and to the Ford Motor Company.

I once was part of a focus group when I was just out of college. I had a friend who took part in focus groups often as a way to make money, and she convinced me it was very little work for decent pay, so I signed up for one. We were tasked with discussing the renaming of a local hospital, and the whole process took about four hours. We had to listen to their vision for the rebranding, we had very lengthy discussions about different names. I don’t remember all of them, but I remember one of them being Heartland and another being Crossroads as alternatives to the name they did go with, which was Avera. Ironically, that was the name I liked least of the four they presented us because I thought the name sounded like aloe vera, which I guess was probably part of the point. Healing vibes, right?

And now when new car models come out, I think about all the thought and energy that went into that name. It’s got to be getting tougher to name cars these days because – let’s face it – all the good ones have already been taken. Thunderbird . . . Rocket . . . Mustang . . . Falcon . . . Puma . . . names that evoke speed and power were some of the first ones to be used. And we have a Montana, a Colorado, a Santa Fe, a Durango, a Tucson, a New Yorker, a Dakota, and several other place names that are already taken, so obviously car companies are going to have to get more and more creative as time goes on.

My favorite part of the car lesson was the end, where students would be turned loose to design an ad around a fictional car, the name carefully chosen for its connotative meaning. I love seeing the creative names they’d come up with; however, every year there was always a jokester or two that tried to slip something rather inappropriate by me and I always had to give a stern lecture at the start of the project: be appropriate or you’ll be doing it over. I remember getting a car design that was entitled “The Milf.” One was called the “Shaggin’ Wagon.” Many teenage boys tried to work the number 420 or 69 into their model name. But overall, the majority of the names were fun and they made me laugh.

That’s not to say that the real car companies didn’t try to inject a little sexual connotation into their advertising. Behold, the series of 1968 Dodge Toronado ads that liked to recycle the phrase “bold, brawny, and massively male” throughout the texts of the ad series.

I mean, they weren’t even TRYING to market this car to women.

Some other gems:

So not only are they pretty much claiming that their car is as fast as a plane, but they are also claiming it is aerodynamic. Uh . . . I beg to differ. Look at what the inset picture is bragging about: push-button driving! The fifties were so fantastic for this reason.

I always loved this ad because of the incongruity of the picture. The kids are already playing in the water, dad is getting the floaties out of the trunk, but mom just sits there, so in love with her new red Chevy that she doesn’t even want to get out of the car. This was great marketing to women – the color, the perfect family image (always one boy and one girl), and a mom who has been entrusted to drive the car. Bravo, Chevy!

This ad has A LOT going on, and it’s an older ad from 1937, hence all the text. Ads now have little to no text because they know that we’re too busy to read anything. This one’s like a novella. First, the picture. What . . . is . . . happening? Woman driving, which I think is interesting for the year. She is obviously living out some cowboy fantasy here as her car flies over the hills on a ranch somewhere. The best part is the panel of “experts” that Chrysler has picked to offer choice words about their product. We have Lady Mendl, a designer and stylist; Tony Sarg, an illustrator and author; Irene Hayes, a florist; and Isabella Taves Miller, a fashion promotion editor. Why wouldn’t you trust the opinions of such high society?

It’s easy to get lost in some of these old ads, but if you have some hours to kill, check out this site, which has TONS of old ads scanned in that you can search by make, model, and year.

Even after teaching this lesson for 20+ years, I still could not figure out the justification for calling a car a Gremlin. Small and fast, I get it, but do you really want to market yourself as a small, quick, and UGLY product?

Discuss. 🙂

April 28, 2025April 28, 2025

12 Pies Husbands Love Best

This little pamphlet caught my eye because, well, I am an Aunt Jenny to my nieces and nephew. Spry used this character in its marketing materials and recipe books. I’m not sure if Aunt Jenny was not a real person; she was more of an idea of a cook like Betty Crocker. As with many things that I write about on this blog, wondering about how Aunt Jenny came to exist sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole, where I learned that Aunt Jenny also had a radio program that ran the astonishingly long period from 1937 to 1956. Considering that the character of Aunt Jenny was invented to sell shortening, this is marketing brilliance. Read all about that radio program and listen to some episodes over at the Internet Archive.

I discovered a tiny little pie pamphlet with my other cookbooks. I have no recollection of picking this up anywhere, so I imagine that it was probably thrown in with some other items that I purchased somewhere. It’s a short little book, but it does have some wisdom about how to successfully craft and bake a pie. I am no pie-baking expert, but I do know that it is a skill to be able to make a good crust that isn’t too thick, isn’t too thin, and won’t fall apart when it’s baked. The title is cute, too: 12 Pies Husbands Like Best. It’s just so 50’s.

Of course, we will have to assume that these recipes will work with <gasp!> Crisco, since even Aunt Jenny couldn’t save the fate of Spry.

Check out the full booklet here.

April 21, 2025April 21, 2025

Serve your guests this particular appetizer, and you’ll never have to entertain again!

I am continuing scans of the Good Housekeeping cookbook series. There are a lot of them, so it will take me a while, but I realized that I had two of the latest scan – Good Housekeeping’s Appetizer Book. Then I remembered that waaaaaay back in the day when I was starting my blog and scanning journey, I had acquired this book somewhere and was looking through it for ideas. To my horror, I saw the following recipe:

I mean, C’MON. Some flavors are just not meant to meld together, amirite?

I decided to use my family to test this concoction out. Their assessment was “not bad,” although I didn’t have the guts to try it. Are YOU brave enough?

Check out this lovely recipe (p. 4) and many others here.

April 16, 2025April 16, 2025

Need . . . More . . . Cookbooks!

I’m kind of on a scanning kick, y’all. After about a year of not having a scanner because my old one didn’t survive the move, I purchased a new one a few months ago, and now I’m ready to make it earn its keep.

Last week I scanned the wonderfully corny MEAT POWER cookbook, courtesy of Swift. I now have a smattering of other cookbooks that I’d like to scan in, particularly a collection of Good Housekeeping cookbooks that I found all grouped together in a disintegrating binder. The binder’s gone, but the cookbooks live on, and some of them have such great crazy 60’s graphics that I just have to scan them in. Case in point:

Lots of crowns going on in these illustrations. Not sure what that’s about, but it’s goofy enough that I like it. Also lots of angry-looking people with crowns and dorky-looking animals wearing crowns. I dunno . . . but I’m drawn toward funky graphics that have no point.

Ok, I get the first two things are lobsters, but what is that other thing on the right . . . with legs? A table (since there’s a vase on it)? Why does it just look so out of whack?

We may never know.

Check out Good Housekeeping’s Gourmet Foods Cookbook, and, if you’re adventurous enough to try some of the recipes, let me know how they turned out!