Well, the pictures of the kitchen and the living room are so tiny nobody can possibly make them out, so I’ll repost just those two.
Here is Annie’s kitchen. The desk holds her teapot and cup, plus her glasses, and a pad of paper for a menu and shopping list.
The living room was all selected by my grandson. The Reutter lamp was not electrified originally, but The Squire attached a grain of wheat bulb under the lampshade for me.
Over the years, I’ve had my dollhouse photos on various websites. For a while I posted them on Seattle Filmworks, and then on PictureTrail. Each of them folded their tents and silently crept away. I tried to join Shutterfly, but that didn’t work out. I’m fairly sure it was my fault, as lots of other people use it and enjoy it. Anyway, when PictureTrail folded, The Squire downloaded all of my photos and put them on a flash drive, which went walkabout.
I found it last week and decided to see if I could show my loyal followers what I do with my spare time. This is not the first house I made, but it came up first on the thumb drive, so here we are.
This is The Mansard House. A friend asked me if I’d “do up” a house for her, but she didn’t have a one and wasn’t sure what she wanted. I took pictures of a couple of unfinished houses my favorite store had in stock, and she chose this one. After I paid for it and delivered it to her home, she decided she really didn’t want it, so I was stuck with it.
Not a really big problem, so I got my grandson involved and we had at it. Matthew has always had a really good eye for decorating and was happy to lend a hand on this project. We’ve done some other houses together in the past. I’ll get to those eventually.
This is the home of Howard and Annie Granger, and their son Martin.
From the left side of the house, this is the study. I found this boxed furniture set in a shop in Frederick, Maryland. A bookcase, desk, two armchairs, a side table, and a small chest, just the right size to fit into this rather marrow space. The walls are papered in a light green moire paper. A silver tray with a bottle of wine, two glasses and a tiny “winged” bottle opener sits on top of the chest, ready for visitors. The bottle opener is a charm from one of my bracelets.
Howard’s desk holds his computer, a cup of pencils, and a photo of his wife, Annie. Her parents were great fans of Edgar Allen Poe and named her Annabelle Lee. After years of being called “Annie Belly” she revolted and now goes by Annie, and woe unto anybody who calls her anything else.
The wing chair is a resin copy of one found in the Biltmore Castle in Ashville, NC. It’s not very comfy, but it looks nice.
The living room continues the moire paper around the bottom, and the top is a small rose design. The globes for the sconces are the tops from vials that held allergy serum. They even have a red line around the “Belly” of the globe. I snagged them when I was working for Hopkins. There is a candy dish next to the lamp on the table.
Annie is in her element in the kitchen, as she loves to cook. If only she didn’t have to clean up when she is done! There’s a desk with a pad and pencil and space for her cookbooks – and a pot of tea. The bread machine is a lip gloss container; I painted the top silver to resemble glass. The blue drinking glasses on the table are covers for preloaded needles for cortisone injections, one of our doctors saves them for me, and I cut them down to size.
Later, I’ll do the upstairs, but I want to see how this works out.
After not a single hummingbird at the fifty years we lived at The Rice Paddy, we have quite a few here at the condo – and we’re on the second floor. There are at least three – sometimes four – flitting around the feeder most of the day, but getting a picture is just about impossible.
We are both amazed at how much these tiny creatures drink. I make up two cups of syrup every third day and they manage to guzzle down most of it. You can see at least one other feeder on the third-floor balcony across the street, and the lady who lives on the other side of this building has two feeders. They are tanking up for their trip south. They will fly from here – just north of Baltimore – to southern Mexico and the Yucatan Peninsula, a distance of about 1,500 miles. They take about two weeks to make that journey!
Amazing, incredible, and mind blowing.
One of the blogs I follow is a delightful Jewish lady who combines kosher recipes with history lessons. She always has some delightful new dairy dish that this vegetarian is eager to try. The other day I stumbled upon a Shavous recipe for Cheese and Scallion Pie. The Shavous table is laden with dairy dishes, from blintzes to cheesecakes, and anything milky delicious you can think of. The recipe sounded fiddly, but not difficult, and the ingredients were easy enough to come by. Farmers cheese, scallions, fresh dill, an egg, and filo dough.
I gathered all of the stuff I needed and decided to make this for our Sunday dinner.
That’s when the fun started. I could not find the fresh dill, which I clearly remember purchasing, but I substituted a smaller amount of dried dill. I grabbed a package of filo from the fridge and discovered it was a box of pie crust. I had been in our local store, and they didn’t have it, but they did have pie crust, so I grabbed a box. I had to go to another, more upscale, store for the farmers cheese, so I figured I’d get the filo there.
I didn’t. I guess my brain was locked on the fact that I had picked up something at the local store and erased it from my memory banks. That’s my story and I’m sticking with it.
I knew I had to make do with what I had, so I unrolled the pie crust.
I swear, I felt as if I was unrolling the Dead Sea Scrolls rather than a pie crust. I soldiered on, patching the crust as best I could and gluing it together with damp fingers and a rolling pin. It turned out quite well, if I say so myself. The Shavous colors are green and white, so I served baby Brussels sprouts in light butter sauce and a huge salad.
https://koolkosherkitchen.wordpress.com/2025/06/01/say-cheese-for-shavuos-5/
The Squire saw Mother Nature stalking across the church lot, obviously shouting at all of us. She seems to be most unhappy!
When we moved into this condo, we did not bother to have the carpet cleaned. There were dark spots where the sofa and chairs had been, but we had a household carpet cleaner – a sort of wet mop version of a vacuum cleaner – and I figured we’d get it taken care of ourselves.
Nope.
The Squire went out and rented a Big Machine the other morning and we started in on the job. Moving furniture this way and that, turning the sofa on its back so we could scrub under it, picking things up off the floor – I was afraid I’d never see my bed again! The carpets in here are all beige – who thought THAT was a good idea? – and Boris is coal black. We simply did not realize how much hair that cat has shed over the months we have been here. Every once in a while, the front of the scrubber would kick out a HUGE wad of the stuff – we had almost enough to make another cat!
I had over 8,000 steps on my smart watch by the end of the day, and The Squire had nearly the same. No wonder we were tired!
I was chatting on-line with another over-aged “preacher’s kid” about how difficult it is for men of the cloth to find time for themselves. Even on vacation, they had to be reachable; most will leave contact info with their Senior Warden, of the President of Board of Elders, or whomever, but if it’s a situation that person can’t handle, it’s up to the Boss.
In my dad’s case, some of this may have been his own fault.
My dad had to go into the hospital for gall bladder surgery, and the doctor was explaining the procedure to both him and Mum. The doctor said Daddy would have to be at the hospital at some outrageous hour, they would prep him and take him up to ER at 9:00 and he should be back in his room by noon.
My dad turned to Mum and said, “that’ll be good. Then I can do my hospital rounds in the afternoon.”
The doctor smiled and replied, “Fr. Parker, I’m afraid that’s not how it works”.
I could just picture my dad traipsing through the hall of St. Agnes Hospital, IV pole in one hand, and sick call kit in the other.
thisendoftheswamp 