Another She Shed

So, yes, I do love little houses. 

This one's a bit more elaborate than my garden cottage. 

It belongs to the brother of one of my walking partners. 

I thought it was amazing. Lavern's brother was a school teacher and did construction in the summers.   The man has skills! 

Spiral staircases are always fun!! 

And here's a shot of the loft. 

The front door has a peek hole 

With a little door on it! 

And here it is opened. 

This is a side view, I love how he mixed the brick and stone. Great job Cslvin, thanks for letting me share your talents! 

An Up And Coming Junker!

I had this cute boy for a few days ...."but junking must go on".  Here he is at fellow antique dealer's yard sale !!  Love those!  

Another dealer sale and an hour at a second hand store ("We were in that store too long Grandma !")  and we headed to Vine Street Antiques, a favorite stop! 

These are a few of my favorite spots in the store. 

This amazing Victorian stick and ball crib is beyond charming! 

Then we hit Trader Joes, he loved the shopping cart that was just his size!  And so was the watermelon. 

I'd planned to take him to McDonalds  and its play place for lunch, but he's 'too old for that,' evidently.  I offered Cafe Rio and he was on board. Who knew this 6 year old had such good taste!! 

Gotta train them young, right? 

Having Tea with the Help

This is the help. Pretty cute girls, eh. Their names are Marysa and Hanna.  I bought them back in June!! 

Yep, you heard right,  they were for sale at the girls' camp fundraising spaghetti dinner and auction!  Here is my husband between good friends Jane and Brent (with Eli photo bombing) 

This is the other goodies I bought at auction!!  I paid $20 for two twelve year olds to do yard work for a hour and a half.   

The first picture of this post was taken the first time they came in June. After that I hired them to come weekly, except when one was on vacation, for the rest of the summer. 

The first time, when they were pulling errant mint out of the Rose bed, they commented on the smell.   I explained about herb tea, and asked if they'd like to try it.   They agreed. We usually had our tea in my garden house, I just never thought to take pictures. 

As you can see, one day I served them their tea on the front porch. 

Over the summer we had rose petal tea, lemon balm tea, camomile tea,  mint tea and lavendar tea, all from my herb garden 

Here they are on our last day. I asked them to write to the niece of a fellow Pyrex Pirate who is their age, loves snail mail and who has cancer. 

Then it was out to my free spirit garden, where I allow morning glory volunteers to climb and bloom among my tomato cages ... where they worked on saving the rises from being choked out by free ranging fgrass 

Then it was time for our final tea party 

What fun girls, they've added so much to my summer, and best of all I've spent at least an hour and a half every week in the garden!! 

I shared this link on Rose Chintz Cottage and Have a Daily Cup.

Back to School Mantel

A little late perhaps, since neighborhood kids tromped off to school earlier this week, but it's still a bit early for Halloween.  Do you like my bouquet of freshly sharpened pencils?  Do you get the reference? 

So this is my back to school mantel.

I tried hard to simplify, since I have been known to run amuck, with the belief more is more.

Just a stack of books and a trophy filled with rulers.

One old school picture, one Apple.

Here's the overdone July mantel I replaced!

Simpler is better, right?

My Garden House on TV!

I had fun today in the dentist chair. Yes, yes I did. KSL Studio 5 aired the article they'd taped last month, today at 11:10 AM at the exact same minute as my dentist appointment. Fortunately My dentist is a good friend and watched my 3 minutes of fame with me!

I had made this Jane Austen banner just for the show.  Not that it takes much too motivate me to make a banner.

I'd brought out my dining table's 'tea things' centerpiece that I'd made using the reproduction mail sorter my son Trevor and his wife gave me for Mother's Day.  I tucked in some cookies and had put mint herb tea on to steep in the house, just in case.

Here I am at the side of the garden house where most of my narration took place.

These two are the photographer and producer of the piece.

At the last minute the producer, Jane, suggested bringing my grandchildren out for a tea party. I happened to be watching two of them that day and my son, Davin, had offered to come over and watch them during the shoot, bringing three of his own. None of them were dressed up, so I was surprised to see that they used this bit in the show. Still, even scruffy, my grands ARE pretty darn cute!

The girls weren't too sure about the whole thing ....

but what the heck, free cookies!

They finished off the segment with me reading the first paragraph of Emma to 3 year old Addie, as if, but maybe when she's older... 

If you'd like to veiw this on Studio 5, this is the link

If you'd like to see how we built our garden house it in this post. 

Walden Ladies and Shakespeare.

Here we are at our yearly book club retreat. Our club is called the Walden Ladies Book Club. There were only five of us who could make it this year, about a third of our membership. We stay at a condo in St George for a few days while we spoil ourselves with plays, both at the Tuacahn Theater in St George, and at the Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City,   Four of us are shown at the condo in the picture above. 

The first night we went to the Tuacahn. 

This is Suzanne and me, we saw Beauty and the Beast first. 

Here are Ann, Carolyn and Lillian. We saw Sister Act the second night. 

Here three of us join the Bard himself.

This is a cake model of the Globe Theater. 

Here three of the girls pose in front of the festival's version of the theater, between plays. 

Besides the two Tuacahn plays we also saw Charley's Aunt, a play that came out in 1892 and has been in production ever since. When it first appeared it broke all attendence records for plays of any kind in London. Oscar Wilder's play The Importance of Being Ernest came out in 1895, and has much the same feel to it.  I loved this play, and I'm amazed I've not seen it before. 

Dinner that night was at the Mongolian BBQ back in St George  Yum! 

Our last day we cleaned up the condo and headed to Cedar City. We had lunch at the Brick House, because Ann found it on a list of top sandwich shops in Utah. More yummy!! 

Our last play was The Taming of the Shrew.  The Festival had sold out evening performances for this week, and they added a matinee. Lucky for us. We adjusted our dates to see it! Petruchio was played by Brian Vaughn, a long time actor at the Festival, and now the artistic director. His wife, Melinda Pfunderstein, played Katherine, both are talented equity actors.  Maybe this contributed to the fact that the production was amazing!! 

So that was our quick book club trip to the festival. We're already making plans for next year!!