coconutannies

Buried Treasure

 Seth over at The Altered Page has invited/challenged art bloggers to go into the depths of their blogs and dig for buried treasure. Each participant was asked to repost one (or more) of their favorite posts from their blog.

 The post I've selected  is from Sept. 17th, 2007 and very aptly named:

Tiny Treasures

I love miniatures - I really admire handcrafted pieces filled with detail. I've tried my hand at making a few tiny treasures over the years. I want to show you one I made for my sister Beth - she has recently lent it back to me so that I could take a few pics.

  I gave her a necklace consisting of a chinese lantern and a few glass beads on a leather cord. Tucked inside the lantern are the  details of a wonderful story I found in the magazine Awake! It's a story of a girl, raised in China, who was given away at 3 yrs. of age because her family was too poor to feed her. The family who took her in put her to work in their rice paddies and she never went to school. When she was of age she was given, in an arranged marriage, to a man who owned a Chinese Restaurant   in the U.S. where she was expected to be a "charming and gracious" hostess. She bore 7 children in a little over 9 years and soon after, suffering from exhaustion and seeing no way out, she had a "breakdown" and tryed to take her life. She was rushed to the hospital though and recovered. From here the story takes an amazing upward turn as a kind, white-haired lady comes into her restaurant, The Red Dragon . . .

     Inside this nutshell version I included a book containing her life story (complete with pockets containing pictures and letters from her life), a menu from The Red Dragon (as I imagine it to have been), a small folded paper fan, 2 tiny Fortune Cookies (with "fortunes" giving clues to the outcome of the story) and a little doll I made from wood beads. 

I love miniatures - I really admire handcrafted pieces filled with detail. I've tried my hand at making a few tiny treasures over the years. I want to show you one I made for my sister Beth - she has recently lent it back to me so that I could take a few pics.

  I gave her a necklace consisting of a chinese lantern and a few glass beads on a leather cord. Tucked inside the lantern are the  details of a wonderful story I found in the magazine Awake! It's a story of a girl, raised in China, who was given away at 3 yrs. of age because her family was too poor to feed her. The family who took her in put her to work in their rice paddies and she never went to school. When she was of age she was given, in an arranged marriage, to a man who owned a Chinese Restaurant   in the U.S. where she was expected to be a "charming and gracious" hostess. She bore 7 children in a little over 9 years and soon after, suffering from exhaustion and seeing no way out, she had a "breakdown" and tryed to take her life. She was rushed to the hospital though and recovered. From here the story takes an amazing upward turn as a kind, white-haired lady comes into her restaurant, The Red Dragon . . .

     Inside this nutshell version I included a book containing her life story (complete with pockets containing pictures and letters from her life), a menu from The Red Dragon (as I imagine it to have been), a small folded paper fan, 2 tiny Fortune Cookies (with "fortunes" giving clues to the outcome of the story) and a little doll I made from wood beads. 

Giggles

 How fun it is to laugh and be silly! I love to giggle with my girls and it seems that once we get started then everything is funny. Last night Camille and I stayed up late making hysterical videos of ourselves with weird voices - her new laptop has a webcam program that lets you record yourself with all different voices. Our favorite was the Ducky voice - we talked and quacked at each other and when we played it back we laughed until it hurt!

Love is in the air. . .

Everything is tingly and exciting around here. My sweet Lolly-girl has a little Lolly-boy that she's been talking to and seeing (as a friend) lately. It's amazing the feelings that are stirred in me by my daughter's romantic adventures! It has caused me to think about when Joe and I first started seeing each other.

My sister Lois created this artwork for us - it includes oodles of meaningful words and phrases that we used with each other.

Road Trip

Joe and I just returned from a 4 day motorcycle trip up the coast to St. Augustine. The weather was gorgeous and we fell in love with the little historic city with it's brick-paved streets and multitude of garden eateries. Our favorite spot was A1A Ale Works where we enjoyed their delicious hand-crafted Red Brick Ale - YUM!

On a lighter note . . .

I got very heavy in my last post . . . I don't know what happened . . . it was a perfectly good haiku prompt . . . most of the other participants wrote about beach stones or majestic mountains or some other beauty found in nature . . . somehow I went ugly . . .

I'm writing today about something much lighter . . . with the colder water temps the Manatees are coming into the smaller - warmer waterways here in FL. My 2 sisters live on a small finger off the Indian River. When I was there last week about 15 of these gentle giants were floating just off their dock - soaking up the afternoon sun!

Beth turned on a hose and a few of them made their way over to drink the fresh water - even rolling over and wanting their bellies rubbed!

  Aren't they cute?! It's amazing to see animals in the wild so open to interaction with humans. But this actually is their undoing . . . their friendly nature together with the fact that they move very slowly has caused them to be injured and killed by boats . . .

I really enjoyed my little visit with them.

Mt. Dora

This past weekend was just wonderful!

I went to the Antique Extravaganza in Mt. Dora, FL with Loey, Beth and Chloe' - we stayed over 2 nights and shopped and laughed and shopped some more!

As usual, the Extravaganza (don't you love that word?!) did not disappoint!

Antiques as far as the eye can see - all spread over the hills and under huge Oak trees draped with Spanish moss.

The weather was dazzling - clear blue skies, crisp, cool mornings followed by sun-warmed afternoons.

The 4 of us were there mostly to look and have fun but we all came back with a few trinkets in our bags!

We had fun at the Fisher Price Little People tables - lots of good memories there!

 

Each year we seem to be drawn to Vintage Toys - especially the ones we remember from growing up!

Here's some of the goodies I came home with :

a little white drawer,  a handmade rag doll (circa 1940s),  black leather cowboy boots, 3 Hagen-Renaker figurines - white seal, fawn and Chihuahua (+ a Mama cat and her 4 kittens we all chipped in for and brought back for our Mama), a telescoping mechanical pencil tie clip (too cool for journaling!), a phone book key-ring, a 1959 Golden book with great graphics for Collage, a pink Mohair bear and a really well-made white Barbie jacket (with tiny snaps and buttons)

Here's what I brought back for Camille (who spent the weekend with a friend back home) :

a bag o' babies and furniture, a neat 70s Owl necklace and shiny metal letters that spell out her name (we'll put those on her bedroom door!)

The Extravaganzas are held 3x each year - the 3rd weekend in Nov., Jan. and Feb. !

Mt. Dora is a sweet little antique town to visit anytime but on these special weekends it's pure vintage heaven!

Tiny Treasures

I love miniatures - I really admire handcrafted pieces filled with detail. I've tried my hand at making a few tiny treasures over the years. I want to show you one I made for my sister Beth - she has recently lent it back to me so that I could take a few pics.

  I gave her a necklace consisting of a chinese lantern and a few glass beads on a leather cord. Tucked inside the lantern are the  details of a wonderful story I found in the magazine Awake! It's a story of a girl, raised in China, who was given away at 3 yrs. of age because her family was too poor to feed her. The family who took her in put her to work in their rice paddies and she never went to school. When she was of age she was given, in an arranged marriage, to a man who owned a Chinese Restaurant   in the U.S. where she was expected to be a "charming and gracious" hostess. She bore 7 children in a little over 9 years and soon after, suffering from exhaustion and seeing no way out, she had a "breakdown" and tryed to take her life. She was rushed to the hospital though and recovered. From here the story takes an amazing upward turn as a kind, white-haired lady comes into her restaurant, The Red Dragon . . .

     Inside this nutshell version I included a book containing her life story (complete with pockets containing pictures and letters from her life), a menu from The Red Dragon (as I imagine it to have been), a small folded paper fan, 2 tiny Fortune Cookies (with "fortunes" giving clues to the outcome of the story) and a little doll I made from wood beads. 

Mushy Love

I love mushrooms - especially polka dottie ones!