Home again...

What a great holiday! Short but chockablock full of minis and good company!

Joanne, Tina and I left here EARLY Wednesday morning and arrived in Phoenix where we were met just before 11 a.m. by Sunni. Picked up the rental car and headed to Tucson. Joanne called Dottie when we got settled in our hotel and she joined us for dinner. I knew Dottie through online groups but had never met her and Joanne and Sunni had met her last year. Dottie brought along her recently finished roombox based on Miss Tinkham, one of three old ladies who lived in a California junk yard in a series of books by Mary Lasswell, the first of which was "Suds in Your Eye".

Thursday morning, we headed to the Mini Time Machine Museum. (I did take a lot of pictures but they did not turn out well.) 

Words fail me. I got to see the most incredible pieces that I had seen pictures/writeups on in magazines and, believe me, pictures, no matter how good, do not do them justice.

Brooke Tucker's "Yellow Rose of Texas"; several beautiful pieces by Ron and April Gill; Pat and Noel Thomas's Gamble House and the airplane diner; and, of course, the guest display of Connie Sauve's work.

Here are detailed pictures of the Connie's projects currently on display at the museum.
http://home-and-garden.webshots.com/album/580106109ToQeFV
http://home-and-garden.webshots.com/album/579958214DHsmnH
http://home-and-garden.webshots.com/album/578372216OwBYlb
http://home-and-garden.webshots.com/album/564105437wOMYfX
http://www.thechinadoll.com/daddyslittleworkshop.htm

That is such a small portion of what is on display.

The problem with visiting for only a day is that you really become overloaded with the beautiful work and the detail. Ideally, I'd love to spend a day there every week for a couple years so I could concentrate on one or two pieces at a time and fully appreciate each one.

A side note here: I purchased a regular membership to the museum for $35.00. You can get an e-mail membership for only $15 which is very good if you don't think you'll have a chance to visit but if you think there is any chance at all of being there in person, the regular membership entitles you to free admission, four free admissions for friends, AND 10% off in the gift shop!

And speaking of the gift shop, they sell some wonderful items - from 59 cent soft plastic animals to beautiful artisan pieces!

I did pick up some really inexpensive fun pieces. The dragon key chain will eventually go in my Oriental piece as will the red plastic dragon (some day LOL). I can see some of the other pieces as lamp bases and I think that one of the polar bears might work as an 'ivory' Inuit carving to go with my Inuit prints in the Bombay house.

Now here are my treasures from the museum shop:

The first is a sterling silver coffee pot with a turquoise on top. It's signed and hallmarked but I'll have to check with Joanne for the actual name of the maker. The blown glass pieces (really reasonably priced) are by Emilio Santini. I bought the pink piece to go with my cranberry glass pieces and Joanne bought me the small squat piece as a birthday gift.

We left the museum in time to meet with some members of the Tucson Club at Miniature Memories store. More on that tomorrow....