Friday, April 03, 2009

Butcher Paper

Last weekend my husband bought a roll of butcher paper. He wanted to use it to make a big sign. Butcher paper is relatively cheap, and pretty good quality.

When I was a child, my parents had a roll of butcher paper. I was allowed to use as much of it as I wanted. This was one of my favorite toys. I remember making paper dolls, small books, and more from it. However, I don't remember it ever being used for meat.

I was remembering the other day a float that my mother made for a parade in her hometown. She complained that not enough town people got involved in the parade. She took a big piece of butcher paper and made a sign that said, "Evil takes over when good men do nothing.", and taped it to the front of the car. This was paraphrased from English philosopher Edmund Burke's saying, "The only thing necessary for the triumph [of evil] is for good men to do nothing." She decorated the sides of the car with red white and blue bunting and such. I dressed up like Uncle Sam and sat on the top of the car. :)

I don't play now like I did as a child. I don't make little books and paper dolls. (That might change once grandkids start coming.) But I'm excited to have butcher paper in the house again!

4 comments:

GoodyMom1 said...

when i was a kid my parents took one corner of our living room, put two rolls of butcher paper on the floor, one on each side, and pulled the paper up and taped it near the ceiling. it was my "mural", where i could draw and have my art displayed for my family and guests. when it got full, they would pull more up, tear the old off, and i could start over.

Lindsay Logic said...

I remember doing this at my Grandma H's house. I think her roll of butcher paper was used for everything, from coloring to wrapping meat, though. We loved it. I'm going to have to remember the mural idea when I have kids. That's such a cute idea!

Ramana Rajgopaul said...

One learns all the time. I had to go to wikipedia to find out what butcher paper is. Interesting. When we were young, we used papier-mache to make all kinds of things by using discarded old newspapers to make the mache.

Inklings said...

I remember that when mom made that float the parade was still on Main Street back then, and tourists driving through kept honking and giving her the thumbs up sign when they read it.
I used to buy roll ends of newsprint from the newspapers and let kids draw on that. Sometimes we traced their bodies on the paper and then they drew in their features and clothes. Like a life-size paper doll. :0)