It has been 2 years since I went to Vermont and met up with several total strangers!  Well, they weren't complete strangers.  I had known them from the internet for at least 5 years prior.  I felt like I knew each one of them.  We all gathered in Brattleboro, VT and then took a little trip to see Tasha Tudor's garden.  It is great fun to be able to say I've walked in her garden!  We had a great time.  Memories I will cherish always.

Here is my own flower garden, a work in progress, inspired by Tasha's garden book and then that lovely walk through it for real.

That is the south side of our house.

Some gorgeous irises.

The one below is unreal!  Purple and lavender!

I've written here before about my Tasha Tudor friends.  I belong to a group who adore Tasha in one way or another.  We've all become friends and they have brought a lot of joy to my life.  One of the things we do are exchanges, Christmas ornaments, Easter, Valentines, etc.  This year we were struggling to come up with something just a bit different and Suzanne, list mum, suggested the Colonel Bunn Exchange!  Perfect and so it is!  Colonel Bunn is a bunny Tasha drew, shown here below.

Suzanne got busy and created this lovely bunny for her exchange.

Kristin decided to try her hand at painting Colonel Bunn.

I decided to take a page from another of Tasha's books and created a wool bunny like hers in

I decided to take it a step further and spin the wool for the yarn for the bunny.  Before I sent it off to Kelley in her Easter basket, I took a picture of it in front of the open book.   His ears are needle felted and the whiskers are from my beloved pony, Jesse. 

A few posts back I told you about Linda and I going to the bins.  Well, you just HAVE to hear about them, especially if you're a thrift store shopper!

The bins are the end of the line for Good Will merchandise.  Good Will Industries are thrift stores where people donated used stuff.  When the stuff doesn't sell or has been in a shop too long (I am not sure what their exact criteria is) it gets sent to a huge warehouse in Portland.  Linda calls it "The Bins".  There's another one in Vancouver too!  All of this merchandise is dumped into these bins and put on huge rolling carts and rolled out for everyone to root through!  Jim calls it root-hoggin' and that is a perfect name for it.  There's some really good stuff to be found in those bins, if you are willing to dig.  You have to be careful because things get broken and there's broken glass in some of them.  That makes it easy to get cut. 

All of the "fabric" is on one side.  By fabric I literally mean anything fabric.  You might find a pair of pants right next to a huge drapery panel or an antique quilt stuck in the bottom of a bin, so you have to be willing to dig.

There are 2 big rolling carts full of books.  Books are $1 ea.  Then there's the glassware.  It's priced separately and is cheaper than the rest of the merchandise, which takes up the rest of the building, all in bins!  You see, you pay by the pound and the more you buy, the cheaper it is by the pound!  They have a scale you roll your cart right on and they weigh it that way.  I am telling you, it's a junker's heaven in there!  I found the most gorgeous cut-glass basket just tossed in with the regular stuff.  When I first grabbed it, I thought it was plastic.  Why on earth would a gorgeous cut-glass basket make it to the bins?  It was dirty and had some hard water residue in the bottom.  It looked a smokey gray, but it cleaned up quite nicely.  When all was said and done, we counted the items and figured out each one cost us 24 cents each!  What a bargain! 

Here's the haul from day 1!

Linda and I were having such a great time neither of us realized she had dropped her debit card there.  As a matter of fact, neither of us realized it until we went to gas the next morning and she didn't have it.  Panic set in and we went right back to her house to start looking.  We tore everything apart and couldn't find it.  Linda had the receipt from the bins, so she called.  She only got a recording.  I was running around looking through and in everything we'd had with us, including the car and the trunk and the bags we used and the garbage and.......................Linda was ready to be sick, literally.  She called he husband, Jim at work and told him.  We were going to head over to her bank to cancel the card when she called the bins one more time.  Yes, they had her card!  Someone had picked it up and turned it in.  An answer to our prayers, but darn!  That meant we has to go back to the bins a second time!    We didn't plan to root-hog, but just "skim the surface". 

I don't have a picture of day 2, but I can tell you we had a car full!  We found Linda a quilting frame, in the original box with all of the hardware, a nice crocheted rug, bags of "littles", which are just fun things commonly known as dust collectors and so much more I can't even remember it all!  Linda and I dubbed ourselves the "Queens of Stuff"!

The bins really have a life all its own.  It's like a mini eco-culture in one building.  There are many people from many different walks of life root-hoggin' together for various and assorted reasons.  Each item they take home with them has found a new home and was saved from the dump.

I can honestly say it's a good thing we don't have them here!

I can't believe almost a full month has passed since I've written here on my blog.  Apparently my brother and daughter are not paying close attention because they have not called it to my attention!    I have so much to tell here so I guess I'd better get back online and get going.

I had the occasion to go visiting this month.  I went out to Oregon to see my friend Linda.  We then drove up to the coast of Washington to Port Townsend.  We spent 2 nights there in a castle.  Since we had dubbed ourselves "The Queens of Stuff", staying in a castle was very fitting, don't you think?  The sunrise from our window was beautiful! 

We shopped all over Port Townsend and then met up with 2 other Tasha Tudor fans, Angie and Clarice. 

 We all know each other from the Take Peace list on yahoo groups.  Linda and I had never met Angie and Clarice in person, so this was a real treat.  Clarice invited us to her home and had prepared a lovely table with soup, tea, scones and soft molasses cookies.  Clarice has two daughters who were all smiles and unbelievably polite!  They were so helpful to their mom and so gracious to us.  They showed us all of their newest creations and doll houses and bedrooms and were just plain FUN! 

Angie arrived with her 2 little ones just after we did.  Little did we know that we had mistakenly passed her house while looking for Clarice's.  We went clear to Bainbridge Island and had to turn around or take a ferry ride!    Since neither Linda or I like water, we turned around!  Within minutes we were calling Clarice to find her little cottage in the woods.  She went down her winding driveway and watched for us.  We had already gone by!  Again we were headed for water, this time crossing a bridge.  Since we didn't really want to go to the undersea museum, we turned back around once again and looked for Clarice!  Finally we found each other in the dense forest that is western Washington!

Clarice had a current copy of Somerset Life, in which there is an article about her blog, to show us.  Linda had posted to the list about it, so we knew, but Clarice was very humble.  It was fun to see it right there in her own home!

 Angie shared some of her knitting and needle felting creations with us since she had just given a demo and had the stuff in the car.  It sent all of us into a "let's all craft together" frenzy, but there just wasn't time.  After all, there was good food and tea to be shared!  Angie had also brought along some fresh-pressed apple juice.  Oh my was it ever tasty!  I've been salivating over that since the first sip.  I really could have drank the whole jug, but did think that was the thing to do with a 4 hour drive home.

Three hours at Clarice's just flew by!  I do think the four of us could've spent 3 days and never even known it!  Plus, Linda is known for loosing a day now and then, so I KNOW we could have at Clarice's! When Linda and I left, she paused at the end of the driveway, took a deep breath and I said, "My face hurts!"  We had laughed and smiled so much.  What a treat it was for all of us to gather in such a welcoming home with good friends and good food.

I few blogs back I showed you the ornament I made for the exchange in my Tasha Tudor group.  I had Janice's name and I made her a felt egg with a buuny on one side and a chick on the other.   Well, Kristen, aka Dr. Dolly, had my name and this is the ornament she made for me.

I love that she put a little doll in it!  She made the whole thing out of some sort of modeling compound and then added the glass triangles and micro beads!  Just awesome!  The inside of the shell was painted with some sort of special paint and it looks like the inside of a mother of pearl sea shell!  If I am not mistaken, she poured the doll and fired it herself!  She also painted her, dressed her and gave her hair!

Here's the back side!

The Desiderata is something I had read as a teen in highschool, but I hadn't ran across it or even thought of it in years.  One of the ladies on my Tasha list happened to mention that Tasha keeps a certain poem on her fridge and she shared this one.  I recognized that I had read it before, but couldn't remember where.  Another lister wrote back and shared that it was the Desiderata.  Ah ha!  I will share it here with you. 

Desiderata

Go placidly amid the noise and haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrender
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons,
they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain and bitter;
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.

Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs;
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals;
and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself.
Especially, do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love;
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment
it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.

You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be,
and whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy.

Max Ehrmann

Sweet Kindred Spirit Valentines!

Those Kindred Spirits have been at it again!  We are all part of a list or yahoo group who are Tasha Tudor Fans.  For the second year now we have exchanged Valentines!    It has been a lot of fun.  They do not necessarily have to be home made.  Those of us who have Annabelle dolls also exchange mini Valentines amongst the dolls too.  I loved my Valentines from last year so much that I have to confess I still have them up!  http://www.homesteadblogger.com/serenitysheepfarm/45640/

Here's some of the Valentines from this year.  They are sitting among some red roses from my son.  He surprised all of the ladies he works with today with a single red rose.  What a guy!  Plus, I got the leftovers! 

And here is Annabelle in all of her Valentine glory!  Notice her Valentine cookies on the cake plate, she received a bunch of flowers from a Secret Admirer and I must say that Annabelle of Oregon is quite the little shopper and seamstress!   The red and white doll apron on her lap is from her as well as some other little ditties scattered about! 

I found the quilt at the thrift shop!  Perfect back drop!

My Valentines were mailed Monday via Chickadee Post.  Frau Tussi Chickadee was most pleased to put her stamp of approval on them.

While waiting to have them all stamped, a lady asked me if they were all for grandkids.  I just laughed and said, "No, I have 15 friends!"  Some of the Valentines were addressed to Annabelle as well and the Post Mistress was curious about that.  I told her they were dolls.  You should've seen the look!  Then I promptly said, "Yes!  We all play with dolls!  And I've told my husband that if he ever has me committed, I'd like to take my toys with me!"

There are probably people in my life who are sick of me talking about my "Tasha Friends", but I don't care.  I just have TOO MUCH fun with them to keep it quiet!  We are having a Valentine Exchange among us.  There are 16 participating.  This is our second year to do it and it's just a whole lot of fun!  Last year I felt like a school girl again receiving all these cards in the mail.  They were all hand made.  It's not required, but we have quite a talented bunch out there and some of us have enabled other to become more crafty as well!  I sat on Valentine's Day with a cup of tea and opened my Valentines!  What fun!

This year I had a hard time gathering my supplies for my Valentines, so I am a little late in getting them sent out, although they will be mailed in the morning.  Keeping with Tasha Tradition, some of us have created imaginary Post Masters or Mistresses.  Hers was always Sparrow Post .  Mine will be sent out tomorrow via Chickadee Post.  (It's the only bird around here right now aside from sparrows and crows.  Oh yes, eagles!  I saw 6 in one tree yesterday!)  Anyway, Post Mistress Frau Tussi Chickadee shall put her stamp of approval on my Valentines via Chickadee Post of Serenity Farm!

Finally!  My daughter sent a response to my blog!  It's been over a year now since I started it!  She suggested Madeline, or Maddy for short, so Annabelle's dog has a name!

Thanks, Juliana!

It's been bothering me for a while now that Annabelle's dog has no name.  Since she's Tasha Tudor-inspired, I thought of Tasha.  No, that won't do.  I thought of Daisey.  No, that won't do.  Something old-fashioned for sure.  Any ideas? 

LaVonne

I wanted to post a picture here of my Annabelle doll all set for Christmas!  There's lots I could tell you about her, but the short version is that I made her.  My friend Linda made her dress.  It has been fun collecting little things for her.  I decided to set her out on a shelf in a "new" old cupboard I recently purchased.  It's decorated for Christmas!

She has other accessories, including 2 other spinning wheels.  She's about 10 inches tall, so that gives you a little perspective. 

Below is a faux feather tree I made YEARS ago.  The base is a spool.  Some of my Annabelle Club ladies wanted to see it! 

I finished up my shopping today and get to stay home now until Monday morning.  I am sure I will be making a trip to the grocery store though!

In case I don't blog anymore before Christmas, have a wonderful Christmas!

LaVonne