Oven mitts for Leanne

Leanne is such a HUGE Mickey Mouse/Disney fan.Accordingly, over the years, my family has found bits and pieces of Disney for her.

The most recent piece is a great pair of oven mitts that DS Carol found for her in Arizona!

What a great gift! Definitely oven mitts - but also could be works of art on the kitchen wall!

Just a quick update...

Monday, the movers came by on their way to Leanne's new place to pick up the dining room furniture, the china and crystal, and a few other odds and ends.

On Tuesday, I went over and spent the day at Leanne's. While she did a few on-site visits, I unpacked the china and crystal and got her dining room done and dealt with the Shaw hookup. When she returned with take-out, we unpacked the kitchen items. Her real estate agent has 100 large Rubbermaid totes that you can borrow so they had to be unpacked so they can be returned for the next client to borrow. Great idea!

Our building handyman came over in the afternoon and rekeyed her locks and her friend Marly came over and they did a lot of work in the basement organizing the family room.

This morning (Wednesday), my sister Carol and BIL Fred stopped by Mom's on their way home from Arizona. Shirley and I joined them for a good visit.

Then I set about getting my house back in order.

Sorted and priced items from Lorry's estate

Some of the roomboxes, etc., plus all the wallpaper.

The front opening dollhouse, the storage cabinet, and in the red box, an incredible collections of Renwal and other early dollhouse furniture.

Eight more boxes of fabric, ribbon and trims to be sorted, bagged and priced. This is something I can do while I watch TV.

I have some condo business to take care of tomorrow then I'm spending a long weekend rabbit-sitting for Leanne while she gets away for a couple days.

I'll be home Monday but probably won't post till sometime near the end of next week.

Nothing much going on...

After ten days on antibiotics, the worst of things seem to be over although I have absolutely no energy for anything. Have only been over to see Mom very briefly twice as I certainly don't want her to catch anything from me.

Shirley and I went with Leanne yesterday to pick up the keys to her new place. It's every bit as nice as I remember it from our first walk-through. The movers come on Monday afternoon so things are coming together. They'll pick up her things from her apartment then stop here for the dining room suite, china and crystal, and some other odds and ends of things I'm giving her.

I wasn't up to going to our MEE meeting on Tuesday night but Joanne delivered the last of the orders from Grandpa's Dollhouse for me and picked up both Barb R.'s and my club birthday gifts.

made by Barb S. Pot is about 1/2" in diameter.

Isn't it gorgeous!

Will be spending Tuesday at Leanne's new place waiting for deliveries then will spend the weekend there rabbit-sitting while Leanne and a friend take a quick trip to Montana.

I'm hoping that after all that I'll get some energy back and be able to, first of all, finish sorting and pricing Lorry's fabric and trims for the estate sale the first weekend in June, then hopefully actually do some work on my own minis.

Camp Mini Ha Ha, Cornwallis, Nova Scotia

Registration forms are now available for Camp Mini Ha Ha in Corwallis, Nova Scotia, from September 20 to 25, 2017.

This year’s project is a 1:24 scale enchanted storybook cottage or fairy house. Campers can create a natural and beautiful fairy house or if you prefer a hidden storybook cottage. There will also be some wonderful classes to enhance your projects. As always campers are free to make the project whatever their imaginations can come up with. So go on some special nature walks and find some natural items to share at camp and use on your project.

Check out the website for more information.

Lorry's Estate Sale

On Friday, my throat began to feel VERY scratchy! By Saturday, I was unable to help the crew move Lorry's estate things to my place.

But several of the ladies moved the remaining things to my place.

This front opening dollhouse is  beautiful! If I were to do a dollhouse again, this would be it!

Beautiful small dollhouse!

 All the boxes of supplies and accessories that will be on sale.

The supply cabinet on the lower right is wonderful! Still have to put the drawers back  in it.

The antibiotics kicked in this afternoon so I'm 'starting' to feel a bit better.

TOTALLY OFF TOPIC Garth Brooks...and where it all lead

DD Leanne is a  BIG TIME Garth Brooks fan and, as such, was interviewed by the Edmonton Journal

THEN This happened:

"Got a phone call at work from a wonderful lady who recognized my last name in the journal article....she grew up with my cousins, Bea Findlay, and her parents were friends with my grandparents. She was telling me stories about visiting my family's farm, the time that my dad stayed with her family while he finished high school, and teaching my brother Sunday school. She apologized for taking up my time and I had to reassure her that the phone call was an amazing gift as I was hearing stores I never knew. The article didn't lead to me meeting Garth, but this phone call was so much more precious than anything I could have ever imagined."

The last four days, I've been on  Read-a-thon. Great for me but not so great for minis or anything else. "Madame Tussaud", "Books of Rachel" and two Iris Johannsen books.

(Blush, blush) Barbara W. gifted me with the wonderful Nutcracker by Judy Mitchell at our last Show and Sale.I FINALLY placed it on the counter in the Christmas Shop between the gift box and the glass tree.

I took the computer desk down to KnitWit last night and gave it two coats of gloss varnish. And they didn't work at all. So I will try another coat or two and see if I can get the high gloss I want.

In the meantime, I found the computer and keyboard I meant for it and have put them in to show you.

The keyboard shelf still needs the silver strip to represent the sliding mechanism. I'll have to do some filing to get that right. And I need to put in wires to connect the PC and keyboard....and add a mouse and mousepad.

If the rest of the week is like today: (12 phone calls and 10 'need to answer today' emails), it's going to be very interesting!

Every day: go over and spend time with Mom
Finish packing up the china and crystal for Leanne.
Saturday: pick up the rest of Lorry's Estate and move to my place. HUGE!
Sunday: hope to meet with Leanne
Tuesday: concert at the Arden Theatre
Wednesday: Board meeting
Thursday: Mayfield theatre

Suddenly there is SO much going on in my life that minis are just going to have to take a backseat for awhile. But I will try to keep things going and let you know what's going on.

Computer desk

On Tuesday night, I joined the Knit Wit (changed from Stitch and Bitch) ladies in the building for an hour to work on whatever we were doing. Took a quick look through my kits and found a computer desk that I could work on.

The only thing I got done that night was 'painting' the pieces with black marker. And didn't get back to it again until today.

The (scant) instructions called for adding the desk top and the shelf below, adding the top piece, then adding the back. I have an idea to 'bash' this kit so want to leave out the lower shelf for now.

It became a bit tough to make because the desk shelf has an overhang on each side so I couldn't use my gluing jig to square things up.

Finally I got all the pieces (except for the lower shelf)  together with the aid of my clamps.

I think I'll go over everything again with my black marker then give it a coat of  gloss varnish.

I'm hoping to sand down the bottom shelf so I can make it movable along the grooves. And narrow enough that I can add a silver tape strip along the sides of the shelf so it looks like the silver hardware to enable that.

Personal Odds and Ends

Temperature dropped from +12 C yesterday afternoon to -15 C this morning.....and SNOW! Lots of blowing snow! So Maureen M. and I didn't go over to Joanne's to finish the last couple hours of the initial sorting and pricing.

DD Leanne's town house purchase has gone through!!!!  And she has agreed to take my (formerly my parents') dining room suite (including all the china and most of the crystal) so I've been packing all of that up....and a friend in the condo has taken most of the rest of the crystal.

And her adoption plans have gone to the home study stage! So excited for her!!

Called Pearle Vision on Friday to see if my new glasses were in and was told there had been a problem with the regular glasses so they had to be re-done but my sunglasses were in. Picked them up and, WOW, I am SO impressed with them. The other glasses will be available on Monday or Tuesday. It will be such a joy to have glasses where the bifocal section actually works for me. I'm so looking forward to being able to read with my glasses then look up at the TV and see it.

Much better than reading/mini-making without my glasses then putting glasses on to see the TV/
Hope it goes as well as I expect.

Lorry's Estate Sale

It has been a looong two days of sorting through and pricing the first batch of Lorry's minis. And a lot of fun too. A lot of "Oh, my, look at this!" and "Isn't this incredible!"

Yesterday, Tina (seen below), Barb S., Maureen M., Joanne and I spent the day sorting and pricing mostly furniture and larger pieces.

Joanne, bless her heart, fine sorted the work from yesterday after we left.

There were only three or four boxes left today but they contained most of the drawers from Lorry's large storage cabinet of accessories so Barb S., Anne Fontana (one of Lorry's best friends), Joanne and I spent another long day together. Anne's help was invaluable in pricing many of the pieces that were purchased in Britain.

Anne F. and Barb S.

There are SO many incredible bargains! Most things are 50% or less of the original purchase price and many smaller items are in grab bags for $1, $2 and $5. (Just FYI, none of us who take part in this process get to buy anything early. We take our chances along with all the other customers.)

We hope to pick up the rest (about 65% of her stash) in the next couple weeks and get it sorted and priced soon after that.

It's a huge process that's hard on our eyes and backs but it's worthwhile to see all the wonderful minis. I've seen some wonderful pieces by artisans I've only ever heard of.

HUGE THING: Even if you're not an artisan, please sign and date  your work. We saw some great work today that we were totally unable to identify.

I'm one of the worst in this regard. I try to remember to sign pieces if they're gifts but other than that, I rarely do. They're for my own use so why bother? Handling an estate will certainly teach you otherwise.