Making Donut Animals

The following advice on getting children to play with their food is from How To Run A Successful Party: Party Ideas, Games, Fun, For Children & Grown Ups!, written by Elizabeth King (Fun Editor of Parents' Magazine), copyright 1945, Doughnut Corporation of America.(More from this vintage booklet here.)

How To Clean Black Out Of Aluminum Coffee Pots

If you collect or use aluminum kitchenalia, this tip from Good Ideas: An Interesting Collection Made By Eddy's may be of interest to you:

To clean inside, slice a lemon and put the slices in an aluminum coffee-pot with plenty of cold water. Let come to boil and keep boiling until the inside surface can be cleaned with a cloth and made to look like new.

Mysterious Holes In Laundry

As published in the May 1961 issue of Good Housekeeping...

Of the many laundering problems that come may way, the most baffling are tiny holes in cotton clothing, sheets, pillowcases, and other items. They're usually notices soon after laundering and most often appear in white rather than in colored goods. When a number of pieces are affected, the matter is understandably distressing!

The Good Housekeeping Institute laundry laboratories have studied this problem through the years as readers have reported it. By examining representative damaged articles and by chemical tests and other means of laboratory detection, we've searched for the answer. While even with laboratory equipment it is difficult -- sometimes impossible -- to pinpoint the exact cause, there are several possibilities that merit exploration by any homemaker who discovers mysterious holes in a wash load.

The specifics are contained in the scan below, but note that the big three reasons listed are bleach, the washer and dryer, and "the great unknown".

Save Up to 50% On Magazines -- Plus Win Subscriptions! (Enter My Giveaway!)

Zinio has top magazines from around the world from which you can browse and purchase subscriptions or single issues instantly and read on your computer or mobile device. Right now, they have a sale, where you can save 30% on Better Homes & Gardens publications and 50% off other magazines. There are a lot of titles to choose from (some of my favorites are shown here), so you'll probably find some you like for yourself -- and a few to gift to others as well!

The kind folks at Zinio have also given me nine magazines to give away!

That means there will be nine winners!

Entries must be received before December 23, 2012 (midnight, central time, on December 22, 2012). Only entries listed below, with email address for contact, will be included in the random draw on December 23, 2012. Winners will be notified by email on December 23 -- and will have 24 hours to reply or another name will be drawn.

There are three ways to enter -- use one or all, everyday!

Enter by leaving a comment stating which magazine subscription you'd get -- and be sure to leave your email address, so I can contact you regarding you should you win.

and/or

Post your entry at your blog -- if you do this you must include in your post both a link to this post and to Zinio and email your link, or post it as a comment, so that I don't miss your post. (Be sure I have your email address!)

and/or

Tweet your entry -- to do this, you must include a link to this post -- here's a cut and paste tweet you can use:

I entered @DPopTart's contest because I want to win a magazine subscription from @zinio! Enter here http://bit.ly/UEVHWJ

(Follow me on Twitter, or leave a comment with your Tweet and email address so that I can contact you should you win!)

Full disclosure: I was given a digital magazine subscription in exchange for posting this contest.

Baste Your Roasts With 7-UP

From a 1957 Cooking With Seven-Up booklet. (I've got a copy for sale at Exit 55 Antiques; you can see more of the stuff we've got there on our Facebook page.)

Tough Cocoanuts To Crack?

Have a lovely pair of cocoanuts, but you're having a hard time opening them?  The 1967 American Farm & Home Almanac suggests placing them in a hot oven for a few minutes.

Contests As Sweet As Pie

Whether you're a hardcore vintage kitchen Betty, are looking for holiday gifts, or just want to win something, check out the deals at A Slip Of Girl:  

Save 20% off Curvy Couture lingerie -- and enter to win a bra and panty set!  

Save 10% at Shabby Apple -- and enter to win a $75 gift card!

This Blueberry Pie Apron is from Shabby Apple.

Vote

Your grandmother knew how important it is to vote. She and those before her worked so that women would have the right to vote; don't make it a wasted effort.

Extensions For Blouses

In the June 1956 issue of the Workbasket, Lillian A. Chord sent in this item for the "Women Who Make Cents", a collection of money making ideas readers sent in to the magazine. Chord stated that many of her friends "complained about seams of their blouses showing through skirts and blouses slipping out," so she came up with this with this solution.

The missing text (continued on the next page) reads, "They furnish the material -- and old slip, pajamas or other material -- so I have little cost except my sewing thread and I get fifty cents for each blouse I extend."

Nothing Is New In Cleaning Products Either

I promise I'll get to scanning the vintage magazines soon -- I am working on getting the piles into manageable sizes. *wink* One of the things I found organizing was this great old box of CP Wonder Paper.

Dusts - Cleans - Polishes
All At Once

CP Especially for Daily Household, Office and School Dusting, Cleaning and Polishing

Especially for Fine Furniture, Woodwork & Hardwood Floors

Distributed exclusively by Household Paper Products, Detroit and Newark, the box cautions the user to always keep the roll ib parchment wrapper and CP box, "thereby preventing oil spots."

Take that modern day paper sheets with cleaning products on them! You are no longer a modern-day marvel.

Vintage Lessons In Tinkering With Math

As the mother of special needs kids, I know the value of manipulatives. They can be important ways to reach those who learn differently as well as literally make math more hands on. If you think manipulatives are something new in terms of helping children learn math, consider these pages from Study Arithmetics: Grade Three, published by Scott, Foresman & Company in 1930:

 These pages (from the 1940 edition) show using "toy builders", wooden toys like Tinker Toys.

As I mentioned in my article on vintage primers and antique school books, there are still some things you can learn in those old pages.