Tea in style

We just spent a few days at the lovely Mount Washington Hotel (picture from here). What a fantastic place. You can just imagine the rich and famous settling in here for the summer, dressing to the nines for dinner, enjoying wonderful music, and doing whatever else the high society R&F did back in the day.

I sampled a bit of this glamour at high tea, appropriately held in the Princess Room! Not at all like how tea happens in my house - mug in the microwave, paper tea bag plopped unceremoniously in the hot water. No, tea at the Hotel is an event. It starts with a lovely wooden box filled with hand-labeled glass jars of tea. Each little bottle held a wonderful mix of leaves, berries, fruit rinds and tea. I was tempted by the Mt. Washington blend, feeling like I should stay in the mountain spirit of things, but I was scared off by the yarrow in it - a weird flavor in my opinion. I decided on the Eros - a nice vanilla flavored spicy mix that was in keeping with the romantic atmosphere.
The silver tea service was beautiful - tea strainer, lemon wedge squeezer, jam holder and tower of treats server. Nice things do make a difference - no sense saving them for some special event. Reminds me of the Thoreau quote; "To affect the quality of the day- that is the highest of arts".
What better to go with a pot of steaming tea than a tower of treats! The top plate held three little tea sandwiches- dainty bites of salmon, watercress and shaved ham. Underneath that were little pastry bites- scones, cream puffs and fruit breads. All the chocolate goodies were at the bottom, including a cute little Grand Marnier chocolate covered hedgehog with slivered almond spikes. It was so indulgent to linger over this treat, waiters hovering nearby just in case there was something more you wanted. All of this plus a fantastic view of snowy trees and the beautiful grounds and a great book - bliss!

Hoping and wishing and thinking of spring!

Like everyone living where winter loves to linger, I'm so very ready for spring. I'm trying to follow this advice: "It is better to find joy in every season than to be hopelessly in love with spring." This view from our deck makes that a bit difficult:

Here is a page I made for my 2010 calendars that speaks to my hate-hate relationship with winter. I stamped the flourishes with acrylic paint, then added the text (distressed a bit) from a wonderful French flower book. I cut out the flowers from the same book, sanded and added a bit of Rock Candy Stickles from Tim Holtz. I love the sentiment - a Kay Foley stamp from River City Rubberworks. I love this stamp and all of Kay Foley's stamps!

Check out those beauties from Hello Naomi. Until spring actually makes an appearance, enjoy these lovely treats and remember, " No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn."

Rescued at last!

I found this little guy at a thrift store several years ago. I didn't have any immediate plans for it, but knew that it would be fantastic somewhere. This little piece survived 2 moves, a stint in storage, and has recently been hiding out with the camping gear in the garage.

I sanded off most of the kiddie decals, then mixed some paint to coordinate with the bathroom tiles. The color seemed a bit too much, but a swipe of antiquing medium toned it down. A touch of sanding added to the aged look.

I glued distressed dictionary pages to the fronts. It's a great technique from Tim Holtz :12 Tags of Christmas. It allows you to remove the sometimes weird words in the dictionary - while we may all be a bit dysfunctional, no need to display "dysfunctional" where you have to face it every morning! The technique also makes pages look well-used, so new pages can fit in with a vintage look.

I took off the little wooden knobs, and because I really wasn't concerned about how easy it is to open the drawers since they aren't really functional, some old buttons worked fine.

No project would be complete without a couple of tags to hang off the little hooks !

Is it wrong to love an iron?

Let's be clear - I hate ironing and do as little as possible. About the only thing I iron are the Captain's shirts. Everthing else gets one of three treatments: wear as is, back into the dryer for another pass (I know it's pitiful), or a generous spray of Downey wrinkle releaser. My youngest son knew the system - he'd come out dressed for school, pull his wrinkled shirt tight and say "spray me".

However, I do some ironing for my paper arts - pressing snips of ribbon, flattening crumpled paper, or the fantastic faux embossing technique that requires "ironing" off embossing powder. Consequently, my iron often get goobered up with bits of glue, embossing powder, and even paint. Clearly I should be using a different iron for my projects !

I was wandering around the thrift store this week and came upon this little vintage beauty for $1.99! I found an outlet at the shop, plugged the iron in, and it actually worked !

A key to its age is on the enclosed registration card that says, "Attach 2 cents postage". Postage was 2 cents between 1952 and 1957 (no, I don't remember this, I looked it up!), so my little iron is over 50 years old!

I've had lots of irons - my last one a fancy digital affair that died within 3 months - fatal computer failure according to the manufacturer. So how did they make an iron (in Connecticut!) that still works, still looks fantastic, 50+ years ago? Quite an engineering and design feat from back-in-the-day.

I think this little iron and I have a bright future together.

Blog award

My mother used to "need" something sweet after eating in order to "take the taste away". Then after the sweet thing, she needed something salty - you get the picture! Well, after my earlier serious post, I needed something to clear the deck and what better than a blog award from une femme curieuse ! Thank you so much! This is very exciting for a novice blogger.

I'll be passing this award on to some of my favorite blogs in a future posting.

I feel better already!!

"Making Toast"

We just listened to this amazing book review on NPR . Making Toast, written by Roger Rosenblatt, is about grandparents who moved in with their 38 year old daughter's three children and her husband after she died suddenly.

Much of the book is about Grandpa Rosenblatt's struggles with his faith in God - how does a benevolent, loving God allow such senseless tragedies? Why do bad things happen to good people , when to quote an ED doc I worked with, "scum rises to the top"? What infinite plan depends on the suffering of innocent people?

People who know me know that I have "issues" with religion. One of my first dates with the Captain was to see What Dreams May Come. I ended up bawling - why does a woman who committed suicide because her children died end up going to Hell? Didn't she suffer enough? What's the point?

So, I like what Roger Rosenblatt arrived at as he tried to make sense of things -if there is a God, he set things spinning and said, "good luck". Somehow that makes far far more sense to me than trying to understand the reason things happen. James Joyce has the same idea - get over the idea that God is watching and orchestrating from on high - he's just "paring his nails".

On a positive note, it's wonderful to hear about good people stepping up to the plate to do the best they can and in the process, making life better for everyone around them. Seems like that may be all there is , and it's good enough for me.

Aprons

Last week I splattered gesso on 2 shirts. I did find out how to get it out on Claudine Hellmuth's lovely blog, but I decided I need an apron in my art room. I could, of course, change clothes before I get started on a project, but that's not likely to happen, so covering up seemed the safest choice. I found a nice denim apron, begging for something to spice it up a bit , so a few stamps, swirls of paint and pencil-eraser dots later, I have a lovely apron. Now I just need to figure out how to get those little bits of dried glue out of my jeans!


I can't think of aprons without thinking of my grandmother. She wore serious, full front -to-back coverage aprons every day, not like the lovely little foo-foo aprons from Anthropologie. I remember asking her why - it seemed like twice the laundry - and she said it was to "save her good clothes". Now this serious (but loving) woman hardly HAD any "good clothes" and rarely had occasion to wear them anyway, but she was sure as tootin' going to keep what she had in pristine condition! She wouldn't be amused by my paint-on-everything wardrobe.
Here she is holding me - the patterned part of her dress is the full-coverage apron:

One last word about aprons - Somerset Studio has a lovely magazine devoted to aprons - Apronology . There are wonderfully creative aprons featured here - not the paint-splattering nor the German grandmother kind.

Thanks for the fond apron memories, Gramma.

I have a big girl phone!

This weekend I picked up my Christmas gift from the Captain, a Blackberry Tour. This phone is a serious upgrade from my old phone, a little flip job that, get this , also TOOK PICTURES !! In change management theory, people who are not afraid of change and embrace new ideas,technologies and science in their personal lives and work are called "early adaptors". People resistant to change are the "laggards". Does that describe me? I am always well behind popular trends - technology, fashion, cars and even art trends.

Case in point - there is this lovely pear stamp with text that was wildly popular in the 90s. Did I have it then? Of course not. A few months ago I decided that I couldn't live without that stamp and had to track it down on EBay, no doubt sold by someone jumping on the current "it" stamp. I've resisted the current (although somewhat waning) trend to add dunce caps and wings to all people and animal images. (I am beginning to warm to the wings thing, but the dunce cap toppers just don't do it for me). I love this pear stamp, even though - perhaps because- it is out of style!

I love my Blackberry, or at this point, the idea of my Blackberry as I still don't know how most of it works. I'm off to watch a tutorial so I can learn skills mastered by every 12 year old in the free world!