The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 17,000 times in 2014. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 6 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
Bring some extra cheer to your holiday table by folding the napkins into Christmas trees.
www.instructables.com/id/Christmas-Tree-Napkin-Fold/
I heard this on the radio and thought it was so interesting-
Interview with David Hoffman, author of the book Kid Stuff: Great Toys from Our Childhood
So many of the classic toys never started out as toys. Lionel Trains began their popularity when a toy store owner used a train as a store display, in a toy shop, to show off other toys. |
 David Hoffman |
When people walking by saw the display, they didn’t want the toy it was advertising, they wanted the train that was carting other toys around.
Play Doh is one of the craziest things; it was formulated as a compound to clean wallpaper. The sister-in-law of the guy who invented it complained that the kids in her nursery school class(she was a teacher) really couldn’t play with clay because it was too firm for their fingers to manipulate. So he said, “I have something, it’s non-toxic, it’s great because if you keep it in a tightly sealed container, it stays soft and if you leave it out, it will harden just like clay does.” Mr. Potato Head was originally supposed to be just a premium in a breakfast cereal.
It was a bag of plastic face parts that you could stick into really any fruit or vegetable, but particularly a potato. The guy who invented it showed it to Hasbro and they said, “We want this.” It was a good move, because George Lerner, who invented the product, would have made five thousand dollars had he sold it to the breakfast cereal company, instead he became a millionaire.In addition, Mr. Potato Head was the first toy to be advertised on television. |
Whatever it is that you collect and get out of storage from the attic or the basement every year is undoubtedly something that means a lot to you and to your family. It is such a great feeling to see my Santa collection every year-it is like seeing old friends again. Of course putting the ornaments on the tree every year is also such a highlight-remembering where each one came from and reliving the memories. Christmas is such a magical time-enjoy it!
PS thanks to friends for many of the pictures!
The red cedar roof (we looked at both red cedar and Alaskan yellow cedar but decided the red cedar was better with the colors we have picked for the house)is going on so we are good to work inside all winter…. but most interesting has been watching the 200 year old barn from Pennsylvania start going up.The Colonial Barn Restoration company worked for weeks piecing the bents together and then last Sunday they started putting them up.
The bent is the unit of barn timbers running from front to back. If a barn has four bents, it has three bays. Barns were easily enlarged by adding more bents on either end to lengthen the barn.
What a fantastic event-despite the heavy rains, the houses were absolutely spectacular-the bar has been raised again. Here are some of the things I thought were particularly creative(although obviously I loved everything in the tour!)
These pictures(above) are taken at a house that was done by Hilary Bovey of Bovey Steers Design Group, Copper Penny Flowers and Comina. Some great ideas-I especially loved the “package” made of little mums. I also noticed that a lot of the houses were decorating with roping not on the rail but instead along the stairs-very nice effect!
The second house I just loved was done by Kathy Morris and Margaret DeJesus of Morris Interiors of Concord. They spent hours making every single floral arrangement in the house, and created several vignettes that were just incredible. Most of all though, I absolutely loved their “cookbook tree”-so clever!
I had one very busy day in Richmond a few weeks ago, but I learned and saw a lot. Most interesting to me were the statues of soldiers on horses all the way down Monument Avenue. There are several statues but the one of General Robert E. Lee is the largest and was the first installed along Monument Avenue. If a statue is facing north, the soldier died in the Civil War; if the statue faces south, the soldier lived, as in the case of Robert E. Lee. No other city in the world has statues commemorating a war that it actually lost,which is an interesting fact!
Richmond was the Capital of the Confederacy, a commercial center for the slave trade, and the site of several major battles – in fact, the entire downtown was burned to the ground, days before Abraham Lincoln walked the streets. Richmond, Virginia was “ground zero” during the Civil War. This makes it a rich and powerful region to tour, and the ideal place to begin a multi-state Civil War and Emancipation immersion.
The Jefferson Hotel was supposed to open on November 1, 1895, but at the last minute it was realized that November 1 was a Friday, and it was considered bad luck to start anything on a Friday. So the hotel was opened on Halloween, 1895 instead. The staircase in the center of the hotel is the one said to have been copied for the “Gone With the Wind” scene later in the movie, where Rhett Butler carries Scarlett up the grand,beautiful staircase.
In his autobiography, The Moon’s A Balloon (1972), Academy Award-winning actor David Niven described a trip from New York to Florida in the late 1930s, when he decided to spend the night at the Jefferson Hotel. Niven said that, as he was signing the guest registry in the lobby, his eyes snapped open with amazement when he noticed a full-sized alligator swimming in a small pool located six feet from the reception desk.The alligators at the Jefferson became world famous. Old Pompey, the last alligator living in the marble pools of the Jefferson’s Palm Court, survived until 1948. Bronze statues of the alligators now decorate the hotel. Its restaurant, Lemaire, has a theme of alligator motifs.
Lauren Huyett Interiors 