Mockingbird Hill Cottage

Mockingbird Hill Cottage

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Wonderful Gifts from Bloggers, Pt. 1

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I am so grateful for the friends I have met through blogging. You are all so dear to me. I hope you know that. Lately, wonderful surprises have been showing up in my mailbox and on my doorstep. I’d like to share some of them with you over the next few posts.

Look up at my header. Do you see the McCoy bird planter on the left? I have two of them in turquoise, and a smaller one in white.  I love them dearly. They may be my favorite pieces in my collection.

Yesterday I received a package from my friend Kim of Flowers and Art. Kim is enormously talented and among her talents are miniatures and dollhouses.  Imagine my surprised delight when I saw this:
Oh. my. goodness.
This chair is sitting on the dollhouse porch. Let me show you the scale:
Sorry, President Lincoln. I didn’t mean to turn you upside down! I’m delighted, amazed and so grateful that Kim took the time to make this priceless miniature. She also sent me this ornament that she created:
She used a Santa light cover, then created the giant snowball and the little snowballs in his lap and then painted his coat and cap in the perfect shade of turquoise! My favorite color. Thank you, Kim. I am blown away by your creations.
Remember my post about my love for the scent of pine? My friend Suzanne of Privet and Holly said she wanted to send me something that she thought I would like. It arrived yesterday.

Let me tell you, the scent coming from this votive is incredible. My husband said it smells better than the Frazier Fir sitting in our den! Suzanne has a friend who’s sister designed this scent for Thymes. I feel my shoulders drop just from the unlit scent of the votive. Imagine what it will be like when it’s lit! Thank you, Suzanne.

A blessing beyond measure – the warmth of friendship. More in the next post.

Baths, Photographing Trees & Presents

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Oh lordy. Today is dog bath day. I’ve mentioned before that this is a major undertaking. Unlike those of you who blithely give your dogs a bath in your own home, we must journey several miles away to a dog wash. Scout and Riley are fairly large, extremely hairy dogs. Riley hates getting a bath. I repeat: Hates It. Lifting him into the tub will accomplish nothing but the spectacle of a big, wet dog escaping and then running around the house, shaking every part of his body. At the dog wash, we can put on his muzzle, secure him to the tub, and wash away…all the while telling him what a good dog he is. He gets clean, we don’t get a fear bite, and all is well. Scout, on the other hand, loves getting clean. She’s a girl, through and through.

We put this off until we absolutely have to. We have to. Afterward, both dogs will be exhausted. The next 10 days will be about chasing tumbleweeds of dog hair around the house. Hopefully, by Christmas all will be in order again.

We got our tree on Saturday. Yesterday, we decorated it. I’ll have some photos later in the week, though I always get frustrated trying to take photos of the prettiness I see in front of me. Last year, I googled ‘photographing Christmas trees and lights’ and read all sorts of advice, but the running theme through all the posts seemed to be that it is next to impossible to take a successful photo of a lit tree unless you are a professional photographer with lots of equipment. This year I will adjust my expectations.

Once again, I have been blessed with treasures from my friends. When my friend Elizabeth and I got together in New York, she gave me a little present.

You know I’m loving that dress form. What was inside?

Homemade caramels. Oh boy. They are scrumptious! Thank you Elizabeth!

My friend Betty wrote me a note around my birthday saying she had something in her house that kept reminding her of me and she had decided to send it to me. It came on Saturday.

Gasp! Yes, indeed – it reminds me of me! Is this not beautiful? Here’s the other side:

I’ve done some research. This pitcher was made by Hull and the pattern is Sunglow. Uh oh. The collecting urge is starting again. How many kinds of pottery can I collect? If you were in my home right now, your answer would be: ‘Apparently, a lot.’ I cannot help it. I know. I’m hopeless.

Hey, I don’t smoke. I don’t drink. I never did drugs. I’m a vegetarian. This is a relatively harmless vice, don’t you think?

My new obsession? Saving my pennies for a new camera. (Sssh! Don’t say anything about it to my current Canon. ) I love my camera. I just want to be able to do more. I really love photography and it’s time to step it up a notch or two. Or three.

I’m just putting it out to the universe.

Gifts & Giving Thanks

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Thanksgiving always brings a flurry of activity, doesn’t it? Around MHC, we stay low key. We try to be thankful every day – of course, it’s easier to be thankful when everything is going well. We’ve had our share of adversity here this year. The challenge is in staying thankful despite the stress, loss and worry. Since we don’t eat turkey or meat, our dinner will be side dishes. They’re always my favorites. Mashed potatoes and biscuits and yams and green beans and cranberries – yum!

Elyse sent me a box full of goodies for my birthday. I thought I’d share a few photos with you.

This is what I saw when I opened the box. Definitely my colors!

These pretties were inside the pretty pink flowered box.

And I opened this sweetly wrapped package to find these:

I can’t wait to play with everything. Thank you, Elyse!

A few weeks back, I sent a little gift to Elyse as a thank you for her friendship and constant support of my writing and this blog. I made another Boite de Vignette, inspired by a comment Elyse made on one of my posts. She liked one of my figurines and I realized it looked rather like her gnome-like tinkerer.

Now, I know I’m a rank amateur at all this. I’m learning….very slowly.

So be kind.

This is the outside of the box. I wanted it to look like a door into Elyse’s tinkered world.

This is what you see when the box is opened. I used the background on E’s blog, some ribbon, the tinkerer and lots of glitter. My first foray into the world of glitter, by the way. Martha Stewart glitter.

I would love to make more of these in the future: creating little worlds inside a box that are specific to each giftee. I don’t know…maybe that’s silly. This form of creating is new to me and I am sometimes so intimidated by what I see my fellow bloggers create. The talent in blogland is amazing and humbling.

But you never know what you can do until you try, right?

Lambs Like to Party

Lambs Like to Party

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