Claudia — Page 1681

Decorating the Blog Giveaway (& One More)

August 19, 2009 at 9:38 am by Claudia

You might have noticed there has been some decorating happening on the blog this week. It all started a few months back when I won Mandy’s giveaway of custom-designed sidebar labels. That experience was so fabulous that I knew I would be back for more. Last week I asked Mandy to design a button for MHC as well as a signature for my blog posts. I sent her some of my favorite photos and she came up with a beautiful design. She also sent me a whole bunch of font styles to choose from and I picked one for the button and another for my signature.

I loved the results.

So…another idea which had been bubbling under the surface of my mind rose up and I bit the bullet. I decided to have Mandy design a new banner for me. Change is always a bit hard for me and I know a lot of you love the old banner with the McCoy Pottery. Nevertheless, I decided to be daring and I am over-the-moon about the results. And…if you miss the other banner just go to the awards button on my sidebar and click. You will be taken to anotherpage with another MHC banner that has my beloved McCoy in it! So we have the best of both worlds here at MHC.

Mandy has a wonderful blog and an Etsy shop. The link for the shop is on my sidebar. She has graciously offered to give one lucky blogger a free signature. I love mine – I think it finishes each post so nicely. Now, there are a couple of things to know: your blog has to be hosted by Blogger/Blogspot. And you have to leave a comment on this post. When you leave your comment, please indicate your blogging platform. I will put all your names in a hat – or a random number generator – and pick a winner. You have until Friday night at midnight EST. The comment has to be on this post. (I was going to add if you become a follower you get two entries, but that always makes me uncomfortable – so I decided not to. If you want to become a follower just because – lovely.)

I’ve written before about my happy experience working with Mandy. She is talented, creative, understanding, patient (I think I might have driven her a little nuts with my tweaking) and a lovely person. You will love working with her.

Oh, one more thing – my pal Elyse is having a giveaway! Stop by her blog. You’ll be glad you did.

Collecting Furniture For The Dollhouse

August 18, 2009 at 12:54 pm by Claudia

Look how happy the birds are about the new arrival at MHC! Oh my gosh, could this cabinet for my dollhouse be any cuter? (Frankly, my husband and I would like a life-sized version for MHC.) My friend Marsha wrote about a cabinet almost exactly like this one that she purchased at a show. The cabinet was made by Dollhouse Land. I fell in love with it and wrote her to ask about the maker and how to contact them. As luck would have it, Marsha was going to another show the next weekend and she volunteered to check out Dollhouse Land’s exhibit and buy one for me. Isn’t she a sweetie? She even emailed a photo of it from her phone!

I love it and can’t wait until it finds a home in the dollhouse. Moving on – the other day I was in an antique store and I saw these:

Now this will show my age, but I remember when these were a big deal. I was a kid – not sure what age – and Ideal Toys came out with a whole line of Petite Princess dolls and furniture. I remember thinking it would be so cool to have a collection of this stuff. My parents, alas, didn’t go along with that idea. The antique shop had several different items from the line in the original boxes.

Of course, I had to buy two of them – they were marked at a very low price. I bought the “Palace Chest” and a wing chair. The palace chest is made of plastic, but I think I could make it work in a Shabby Chic way in the dollhouse.

Do you see what I mean?

The wing chair is pretty flashy and would definitely have to be toned down. After all, my dollhouse isn’t a palace. I will have to perform some kind of magic.
It has potential, don’t you think?

And I finally got my Petite Princess furniture. Shall we say, a ‘number’ of years later?

Dog Days (& Feasts)

August 17, 2009 at 11:23 am by Claudia

Greetings from MHC. It is hot, humid and we are certainly in the dog days of summer here. I stall as long as I can each day before I finally give up and turn on the air conditioner. Me + humidity = crabby, irritated and congested.

Speaking of dog days, Don and I were in Woodstock yesterday. You might remember I was going to hear him perform? (He was wonderful, by the way.) Our trip kept us out a bit past Mr. Riley’s dinner hour. Maybe an hour. Not hours. When we walked up to the side door, I spied this on the floor in front of the refrigerator. (This has been restaged. I was so dumbfounded at the time that I didn’t think of taking a photo.)

There were many torn pieces of paper and bookcover strewn everywhere. I ask you to imagine these extras. Riley had eaten my bird identification book.

When he was a newly rescued dog, he would get into things due to separation anxiety. Once he tore open Don’s backpack and ate a bunch of gum. He chewed up one of my McCoy identification books. We learned to put everything away that he might get into before we left the house. He hasn’t done anything like that in a long time. Until yesterday. He has always had a liking for books. When you or I like them, we read them. When Riley likes them, he eats them. I will occasionally catch him putting his teeth around the edge of a book as if to imagine what it might taste like. I always issue a sharp “NO!” and move the book out of the way. It seems that I somehow missed the foreshadowing of yesterday’s feast. Now we are back to putting everything up and out of the way when we leave. He knew he was a bad boy. At least he got some roughage in his diet.

I am in the midst of some new designs on the blog. Check out my new button on the sidebar. Mine doesn’t have code so if you want to add it to your blog, just take the jpeg. My banner will be changing, too. I thought it was time for an update. This is all being done by my friend Mandy of a la parisienne. She designed my sidebar labels, remember? I hope you enjoy it when it is all installed.

Oh, I was kept awake for hours last night with an itchy ankle from that darn yellowjacket. I thought I would go mad. Stay away from me bees, you hear?

Have a wonderful day!

Decorating the Blog Giveaway (& One More)

Collecting Furniture For The Dollhouse

Dog Days (& Feasts)

Lambs Like to Party

A Note

Archives