A Happy Valentine’s Day

I received two of the very best Valentine’s Day cards… or should I say, I received one and Connor received one… from one of my dear readers who happens to be Connor’s BIGGEST fan. They are so lovely and personal, that I wanted to share them with you. Of course, you’ll be able to spot whose is whose pretty quickly – I hope!
Here’s the one:
And here’s the other: Aren’t they wonderful!!!  Thanks so much from both of us!

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

And in other great show of Valentine’s Day generosity… I talked about asking for ties and scarves for the boys and girls at Woodbourne the other day, here. Today, I did a tally of ties and scarves and we have received more than 700 in total!  (The pile was much bigger than this at the end of the day!)Wonderful readers of Pigtown*Design from as far as Toronto and Tennessee sent ties and scarves for the kids. We gave some scarves to the girls and they were beyond excited!  I printed up a little booklet on different ways to tie scarves, courtesy of Talbots, and they had a great time trying each of the styles. The boys will be showing of their tie-tying skills at an assembly on Valentine’s Day.

All of the boxes and bags are filled with scarves and ties!

More boxes filled with scarves and ties

Most of these children come to us with only the clothes on their backs, so to receive something special like a beautiful scarf really makes their day.

From Connor and me, and from the boys and girls at Woodbourne, Happy Valentine’s Day!

Home Plates

I’ve been somewhat inadvertently collecting transfer-ware plates with scenes from the British Isles on them, and now that I have about 10 of them in black, red, blue and purple, I’ve been thinking of what to do with them.

Since my main room is just one large room, sort of divided into a living area and a dining area, I thought it would be fun to use the plates over a serpentine-front dresser I have. I had two pictures above it, but moved them to the other side of the room to have a gallery-style arrangement of pictures.
Here’s what it looked like just after I moved the pictures from the other side of the room. The picture above the lamp is a sketch of Venice on the back of an old magazine that my parents got form a gondolier in Venice. The engraving above the house picture (read about it here) is of Chepstow Castle on the Welsh borders. I used to go to Chepstow Race Course when I lived in Wales, so this brings back memories. When I was at my mother’s for dinner, I remembered that she had a stash of pictures that hung on our old house, but that she didn’t have hanging in the new one. So I asked to rifle through them to see of anything appealed to me. I found a watercolour from 1971 of an alley in Vienna that my father had picked up on a trip. Once I hung it, I realized it went brilliantly with the other painting I’d gotten last year. The colours and the subjects are very similar and they work perfectly together.
The other picture was a tiny photograph of some boats at a mooring in Chester, England from 1908. It is from my father’s family, and it encompasses my love of sailing and my background in the UK. It was too difficult to capture the photograph, but you can see it right under the lamp. I still have one more picture to hang, but I need to work out where it will go in the arrangement.

So, I need to hang the other side of the room, but I thought I’d leave that until I get back from the UK in a few weeks, since I am hoping to pick up another plate or two that will be souvenirs of my trip. However, I played around with some arrangements for the plates.

Thank god for Photoshop, so I can work out the arrangement before I hang all of the plates. I have mostly blue and red plates, but I have one each in purple and white. I can’t decide whether to hang the plates in a symmetrical arrangement, or just randomly.

Any suggestions?

Long Hall

On the second floor, I have a long hallway, about 20 feet from end to end. This is an image from last year, right about this time, when I first looked at the house. This is looking from my bedroom, with the work room on the right, to the upstairs bath at the end. I want to do a long row of identically-framed pictures, but can’t think of what I want to do.In my last house, I had a row of images that I’d taken when I lived in the UK. Each was special to me and had some meaning, starting with the one on the left, which was of the historic Caerphilly Castle in Wales.

Since I no longer have those images, I need something else. Probably about 10 or 12 pictures… I went through a lot of my images, trying to find some sort of theme, but nothing jumped out at me.

Suggestions?