Reminiscing About the Days of Analog

This is the phone from my parents' house.
I admit that even back then--the 1980's--this phone was considered old fashioned, and we did have a push button phone and a ridiculously large cordless phone with an antenna, but this was the phone that I loved to use. When my Mom and Dad decided to sell their house a few years ago--the house of my childhood and all its crazy memories--I grabbed this piece of memorabilia and hoped it would find a place in my own house. But, as luck would have it, it didn't fit in any of the little nooks where the phone jacks are located. (Darn these old houses with their little phone nooks!) So this phone sat in a dark little corner of our basement closet and I forgot about it.

And then I had an "a-ha!" moment while searching for some free stencils online last week. What if I made a cut cork version of my beloved telephone? So thanks to someone named Zen on flickr, I found this lovely photo:

So I made my own stencil on some white paper bound for the recycle bin:

As per my m.o., I cut out the telephone pieces out of cork:

I painted the phone pieces black using watercolor paint, and then glued it to a larger piece of cork. This is where it is now:

It decorates this little phone nook in my house. Whenever I see it, I think of the many nights in my parents' house, where I would drag that poor phone into my bedroom, the cord tangled and knotted behind it. And I find myself wondering if my own daughter would have the same attachment to the digital cordless phone we have. Because that black analog phone was my lifeline as a teenager, and the feeling of the receiver cradled in the crook of my neck is something I dearly miss.