Erin Napier Reveals the ‘One Final Gift’ Keeping Her Grandmother’s Memory Alive

YouTube Erin and Ben Napier makeover Wetumpka Alabama.

Erin Napier is keeping the memory of her late grandmother alive thanks to an unexpected find: her recipes.

Napier’s Mammaw, Ouida Walters Rasberry, died in May 2020. At the time, the “Home Town” star thought all of her beloved dishes were also lost. However, as Napier wrote in an article for Southern Living, when her family carried out the furniture for Goodwill, “the door of the dining room console flung open.”

“Inside were two ceramic canisters, shaped like a ripe peach and a basket of strawberries, stuffed to the brim with her recipes that were scribbled on any paper she’d had handy,” the 35-year-old continued. “They were all there: the peanut brittle, Jim’s favorite Christmas cake, spaghetti and meatballs, and her famous creamy layered dessert called Chocolate Delight—a simple and frequent character on her dinner table alongside the hand-battered fried chicken and butter beans.”

As Napier put it, the find “felt like she was alive and well and giving us this one final gift that would carry on in us and our children and their children.”

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By trade a graphic designer, the Laurel resident scanned the scraps of paper for “The Book of Ouida,” a gift she gave to everyone in her family for Christmas. It also featured magazine clippings of helpful hints and photographs from her home.

“This year,” Napier concluded the Southern Living article, “I expect we’ll have a buffet of all her recipes at our holiday dinner, and when we hear ‘Blue Christmas’ on the radio and sing it loud enough, we’ll hear her and Pappaw joining in, too, with an off-pitch piano accompanying us all.”

Ben and Erin Napier Recently Welcomed Their Second Daughter

This year, Napier and her husband, Ben, will celebrate a new family member sitting around the Christmas table – daughter Mae.

The couple announced her birth on May 28 to People, telling the publication she was born at 8:23 a.m. weighing 7 lbs, 1 oz and measuring 19.5 inches. She is named after Napier’s Aunt Mae.

“While we are excited to have another daughter to love, we are more excited to see the bond she and Helen will have,” the “Home Town Takeover” stars told the outlet. “They’re already so in love with each other!”

Another Season of ‘Home Town Takeover’ Is Not Coming Anytime Soon

The HGTV stars took their show on the road for “Home Town Takeover,” helping the town of Wetumpka, Alabama rebuild.

While it was a hit, Napier got candid about the future of the show when asked by a fan on Twitter about a possible “follow up show.”

As she tweeted in response, “i’ll be honest, the takeover life is not all that simpatico with family life. it was an amazing adventure for us, but likely the only one like it until (maybe) our girls are much older.”

The couple has made it clear they are prioritizing time with their children. During a recent appearance on the podcast, At Home with Linda & Drew Scott, “There’s a lot of demand and requests for how much can we do, how much can we handle, what all can we pile on your plate. And we’re very good at saying ‘no’ because Helen is more important. And it makes it very easy, yeah like, if we say yes to this, we’re saying no to time with her and she’s only going to be little for a little while.”

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