North to Alaska!

We've had our tickets since January and are looking forward greatly to the trip. Two weeks in Anchorage and Ron's never been there! Our hostess, my dear friend Michele has a beautiful home and luxury accomodations for us. She's a fabulous cook as well. While we're there, I will be helping her with the celebration of life get-together for her husband, our very missed friend James W. Teegarden, who passed this last Thanksgiving. People are coming from all over the states for the event, he was an amazing man, wonderful husband and father and lived an incredible life. Michele's second house, in Nevada was being robbed at the very same time Jim was dying, a brutal rape of personal possessions, three generations of belongings, memories, collections. One of the crooks brought a pile of things to our antique store to sell not too long after the break-in. I immediately recognized things from her home, some of which I had either sold, gifted or made her, and called the police, after I had purchased the items from the meth-head.

About a week later, meth-head called to sell more items, and I knew I just couldn't keep buying back my friends things, so I arranged to meet him in the parking lot of a grocery store the next day. This was 3 days before Christmas. I called the police and told them what I was going to do, and at first they said that the detective assigned to the case didn't work on the weekends. I told them that since the crooks apparently did, and I really wanted the perps caught, they should consider a little overtime. The next day, I met with the detective for about 10 minutes and he told me what he wanted me to do, signals, etc, and off I went. My crook showed up on time with a truck full of my friends stolen belongings, I made the purchase, put on my sunglasses, and within seconds, he was surrounded. This is a very long and complicated story, so I am skipping over quite a bit, but just let me finish with the fact that three of the six that committed this crime are in prison now, the others on probation, over 2000 items were recovered, and my friend can finally begin to mourn the loss of her beloved husband. I am honored to have been of help, and would do it all again. And that's the end of the story for today.

Twilight Inspired Teens

I am fascinated with the work that MyMagicMe.artfire.com does, and so I had her morph my daughter Abby (on the right) and her best friend Hanna. When I told the girls that was my intent, they imploded the bathroom with cosmetics and hair paraphenalia... I followed them around town about 300 pictures worth, and Jen used the very first one I took in our backyard. I can't begin to express how delighted I am with Jen's work, and how captivated with themselves the girls are.

Inside and About Town

I took this of Angie and Asa, he's responsible for the other pics. He's an amazing photographer, cinematographer, a great future ahead. Angie is an interior designer and does absolutely fabulous work. They're getting married at the Opera House this September.

Backstage, it's one of two stacked stages (slightly slanted) in the US. I performed here years ago, it's a wonderful venue.

These blow my mind. Asa's pictures are better than any interior shots of the Opera House that I've seen anywhere.

Fun place huh? The town is very proud of the place, and rightly so.

Back to the house....I had this visual of the layout and progression of this blog, and it's nothing even close to what I wanted. Someday I will figure this out and re-do it the way it should be.

Ours is the first room we re-did. I will have to add a picture at some point of the ceiling. The original wallpaper is still up there. Not perfect anymore, but we love it. 14 foot ceilings throughout the house make that work a dizzying challenge. I used to cook sometimes on the little stove in the corner, mostly when we'd go out in the winter and the rest of the house was too cold to mess with. There's alot more to the room, but I didn't get as many pictures as I had hoped. We stayed pretty busy.

We worked alot on the kitchen this time, and the ceiling mouldings in the front parlor and dining room. Ron had Asa mucking something on the roof, Angie was carving some of the detail back into the ceiling repairs and peeling wallpaper, we all painted and I cooked. Fabulous afternoon thunderstorms almost every day. It was really nice to have Ang and Asa for company and helping us. We figure 2 more years of our part-time work spurts and then the interior will be pretty well done.

This Old House

About 15 years ago, Ron bought this tumbledown Victorian house in Eureka, Nevada. I have been working on it with him for about the last 12 years. Until recently, the rest of the family didn't have much time to devote to the project which is good, because it's just starting to get to the point where someone could walk in and say, "This is restorable." It's also been a wonderful hideaway and retreat for us. We're busy folk. We tore out plumbing, repaired roofs, doors, windows, floors, and right now there are two beautifully redone bedrooms, and a very interesting little bathroom. Now we can sleep in nice clean beds and shower when we're working. And playing. The kitchen is getting closer to being a room, which is especially exciting for me, it's got a cold storage cave dug into the mountain, and a gorgeous rock wall behind the sink, and a darling little garden room attached. The house sits against the side of a hill above the center of town, behind the Eureka Opera House. The picture was taken by future son-in-law Asa Gilmore http://ruckusarts.com/, two years ago. He and Angie joined us for the July 4 shindig, and as apprentice desert rats, I think they are appreciative of the place, in fact they're going back to wed at the Opera House in September. We're all going back to work and play over the holiday, quite the caravan, Mac the Dog, LaBou the Parrot, Ron, moi, Angie and Asa, friends from Utah are driving in on motorcycles to camp....I intend to take lots of pictures this trip, I know you're dying to see the inside.....

I started the Eureka blog before we left, because I'm slow at this. We went and had a wonderful time, but at the last, our beloved pet LaBou, did not return with us. Sorry, I need to do this, before I talk about the rest. Bless you, our dear sweet friend, we miss you so much, so very, very much.