Louie 12/1/95-5/26/07

He was the best dog. Happy.

So affectionate. Tolerant.

Loving.

The best traveller.

A mighty swimmer. An awesome retreiver. Even a good babysitter.

A house without a dog is a home without that daily reminder to be affectionate, to greet each other with total enthusiam, to love each other unconditionally. We're going to have to try to remember that without Louie there be a constant reminder.
I'm trying to put his things away, but I'm having a hard time with this. Joe suggested we put his bowl up over the cupboard where we can see it. When we saw this bowl years ago we knew we had to have it...Life is good....because that's the way Louie saw each day.

Mother's Day

Joe cooked dinner for me, my mom and my aunt....and the guys too of course. I set the table...with my pretty "new" pink cloth I found at a garage sale. Five dollars for the table cloth and 12 napkins...gotta love a deal like that!!
The centerpiece is part of the gift for my mom...some flowers for her rock garden.


It was a beautiful day to eat on the porch.
Loading up. Wish I had a shot with all the goodies. It was yummy!

Louie wishing he could have just one of those pork chops!

Indulge me for a moment....

My baby is growing up. She went off to her prom looking beautiful and elegant. And I am so proud that she is truly a beautiful person on the inside..energetic, kind, funny, and true to what she believes to be right. I don't talk about my kids too much on here, so indulge me today...I'm a lucky mom. At the crowning she and a friend were voted junior class Lord and Lady.

Working hard at the shoppe...

As I mentioned in a previous post, I am back in the shopkeeping business. I took over management of the Old City Hall Shoppes at the beginning of the month. My look is different from my predecessor's, so things are changing quite a bit. We've been rearranging to better use the space in the hallway for displaying merchandise. This is a shot of the hall, next to the sales counter. It's starting to get that cozy look I like. My mom and dad have been a huge help. And my hubby too...he got the sound system in the place working again. I spent the day today listening to big band music while doing the bookwork. Since I thought I was never going to run an antique store again, I had pretty much sold all the stock I had....there was less left than I thought. I have a large space in this store, and it's looking too bare. So you know what that means....I'm on a big treasure hunt for new stock at the right price! I went to an auction last weekend and found these beauties:
I still need many larger pieces of furniture, but maybe I'll have good luck this weekend and find a few that fit the bill and the budget.

Dinner on the Olympia (sister to the Titanic)

My sister is a history buff and former museum curator. She is facinated by the story of the Titanic and recently took us all on a cruise on the Olympia, sister ship to the Titanic. A month and a half ago 8 friends of Jennifer received invitations to dinner on the Olympia. In the weeks following we recieved other mailings with our identities, an authentic recipe or food to bring, our boarding passes and other historical info about lives and times of the passengers aboard the Olympia and Titanic. The guests at this cruise were all female and, since wine was to be served at each course, staterooms would be provided....cool.....a grown-up slumber party!!

We were instructed to dress formally and to dress up our outfits to reflect the period if possible. We took this to heart and embellished liberally:



As the cruise got underway, we received telegrams and gifts from our character's husband or companion:


It appears we were very pampered and appreciated women!



The table was beautiful....Jennifer collects dishes. She researched the menu and used one from the Titanic. The original was 11 courses. Jennifer edited it to seven.


At each place was an envelope containing a short script for each character to read...it told something about each woman's life. We were suprised to learn that there were several divorced and/or remarried women. Some of the women had careers in various fields and were more independent than we expected. My character was a Renee Harris... who produced plays.


Those Edwardians really knew how to eat. Everything was delicious. We each contributed something to the meal. Jennifer and Kevin cooked all the main dishes. Kevin stayed in the kitchen and manned the stove so Jennifer could mingle more. He's such a sport.



After dinner we retired to our rooms while Jennifer hid items for an "artifact hunt." There were papers with odd tidbits of information about our identies or the ship hidden around the house. The guest who found the most won a beautiful pair of earrings.


Another fun activity was making portraits. We each selected a pose from a book of John Singer Sargent's paintings. Then we took turns having our portrait made in our selected pose... we each received a sepia toned framed portrait as a favor. Here is one pose that we did of Jennifer, Holly and I:


And here is the whole group together:

That's me in the rocker with the bottle. Hmmmm. We finished off the evening by changing into our jammies and having a good old slumber party.

I know this party took a huge effort of time, energy and resources for Jennifer. But what an unusual evening! She carefully selected people she knew would be interested in the history and enjoy the dress-up and acting involved. We learned, ate, and laughed all evening. Thank you Jennifer!

Getting his kicks....

on Route 66!

Joe and I love the soundtrack from The Blues Brothers and the kids were raised on it...it was our traveling music. When they got old enough we let them watch the movie. It's one of our faves too...takes us back to our dating days. It came out the summer after I graduated high school.

We took these photos of Mike at the Polk-a-Dot Drive In on old Route 66 in Braidwood, Illinois. It's a wonderful 50's style drive in. If you ever get the chance you should stop in. You could have your photo made with Betty Boop or Elvis or one of the others around their building.

3 Generations of Handsome/Silly

Mike, Grandpa Joe, and Joe
These are three very good guys.

Sock Monkeys...

These guys and a few more to come are going to the shop. This is the first time I've made sock monkeys and they are pretty fun! The stripey one I made out of one pair shorty socks and one pair toe socks...stitched together to make the shorty socks long enough for monkey legs.
I made a little taggie blanket to go with the brown monkey...look at that cute sock monkey fabric. I'm planning to make four more of these monkeys. They are for a little room that I want to stock with baby and kids stuff...handmade and vintage. A young mother I know is making some baby blankets too.

New baby....

If you've been reading this blog for a while you know about our standard poodle Louie. He's such a sweetie and wins everyone over with his sweet personality. He's a cuddler...that's him snuggling with me on the couch.
Today my mom and dad (who are our neighbors) got a dog...he's a small standard and just as pretty as a picture. He's 11 months old. He was rescued out of a sad situation by a woman nearby who is a groomer. She has been working with him for a couple of months and he is coming around and learning to trust people.
Isn't he a cutie? Just look at those paws crossed so neatly. His name is Bojangles. They have been calling him Bo.

Shopkeeping.......

Once, several years ago my mom and I had an antique shop called Home Again. Actually we were two separate antique businesses sharing expenses on one store, but our stuff blends so well.
When we first opened we were in this tiny little store that used to be a barber shop. It was tiny but cute....really more the size of a few antique mall booths.
After a very short time we decided to move around the corner to the shop in the front of the building. Still a small shop, but it faced the square and was much bigger than our old one. Our husbands were so sweet about this....because they did a lot of work moving us in and then moving us again.

We stayed in this building for two years, but eventually we decided to close our doors. We had some wonderful loyal customers...intown and from out of town....but we just couldn't seem to generate enough traffic. When fuel prices went through the roof we closed our doors and moved to an antique mall. I was a little sad, but fine with this....it left me more time to be at home and I love that.

Fast forward to today....and there is a new development. We have a beautiful historic building in town that houses an antique mall...in fact ten years ago my sister and I had space in this mall and worked there a couple of times a month. Their manager is moving to a space of her own and the powers that be have asked me to manage the mall. I think the arrangement will benefit us both. The not-for-profit that administers the site gets a manager, and the manager gets a large amount of space in the store. After much consideration (I really like my time at home!) I've decided to give this a try. I'm excited, and a little nervous. Stay tuned.

God, grant me the Serenity...

Well now, you know with a shot this close up that the rest of the room is kind of messy right? But I just put fresh sheets on the bed and that's always such a nice feeling. Aren't these the sweetest pillowcases with roses and bluebirds? I got them at an auction some time back and I like them so much. Every night we go to sleep on these pillows and the prayer is certainly a good one. My teenagers are such nice people and so much fun, but you know how moms worry.....this prayer is a nice reminder that some things are just not in my control.

The blue paisley sheets are some Ralph Lauren that I picked up at TJ Max. I would love to get some more but I don't know the name of the design and haven't been able to find them on ebay or anywhere. If you know the name of the pattern please leave me a message...that might help me round up a few more sheets.

Patching

Our son patching holes in daughter's room. He has never done the painting and all before and he's less than enthusiastic about all the prep work it takes. This is, however, proving to be an educational experience. We are almost ready to paint. Took the windows to the glass guy yesterday........Joe could do the windows, but he's right in the middle of an outage at work and working insane hours.

Progress....

Joe took out the windows and I will drop them off at the window guy's on Monday. The putty is just falling out of them...and one was broken. There are four windows in this room. This took a while because they were pretty stuck...he has it scraped down to bare wood in the window frame. I'll be so glad to be rid of the old cracked paint.
Our hardware is pretty charming but most of the latches no longer work. We'll have to see if we can get them working.
I love these hinges. Looks like hugs and kisses to me.
And here's the inside.