As Soon as the Snow is Gone!

This is a really fun project to make! I did this several years ago with my grandson and we both enjoyed it. This is what you do...
When the snow is gone and the ground is no longer frozen, pick up a few handfuls of small rocks.
Put the little rocks in a colander and wash them. Tip them out onto a towel to dry and begin to sort them and pick out your favorites. Transfer the dry stones to a flat box where you can easily see them.
The fun part (especially if you're doing this project with a child) is giving them names! Our choices for names were things like "Holes", "Beauty" and "Strange". Children think of the best ones!
Print by hand or use the computer and a printer, the entire set of names with space in between each of them for cutting.
Find a cute little frame that will house all of the little rocks. Cover a piece of foamcore or card board with white paper to match the paper on which you wrote or printed the names.
Glue on the stones as evenly as possible. I used Tacky and it worked just fine, but if your rocks are heavy you might want to use something like E-6000. Add the names under each rock as though you are creating an actual rock specimen. It's the most fun when the names get mixed up and you rename!

A Blast from the Past

This is going to be a new feature on my blog. I'm photographing some of my older miniature pieces and am trying to date them as well. I hope it will be amusing. Some of you might own some of these early pieces and could shed some light on my fading memory. This memory thing is why it's so important to sign and date your work!

Easter Dress Shelf

This is one mini that I can date. I started making miniature dresses and dress shelves in the very early 80's. This is part of a holiday line that continued through 1994. This photo shows the 1" scale Easter dress shelf, but I also made some of these in 1/4". In fact, Emma's Dress Shelf from the Lydia Pickett Cottage Collection was inspired from this earlier piece.
Some of you may remember the NAME convention in Orlando, Florida in the 80's, I can't come up with the year. (A friend just emailed me that the date was 1993, YEA!) The theme was something about a closet and I was one of the souvenir artists. I made 1,200 of this style dress in three different fabrics.

I have a little shelf where I gather my little goodies. Some of the things pictured here are from other miniature artisans like Mustard Seed and some things are just the junk I like to collect. I know the push pins are tacky, but they do help illustrate the size of the dress.

That's it this time for "The Blast from the Past".

"Sometimes things just happen."

Happy Spring!
Sorry, it's been awhile. I've been caught up in getting projects done. So, while that's a good thing, sometimes other areas of life get forgotten. Like my blog. I'll try to do better this spring and summer!

This past Christmas the last of our little pet friends said goodbye to this world. Kashi, a big black cat, was the sixth addition to a young group of animals which included two cat brothers - Ming and Zane, an oriental shorthair - Tokyo, a deaf rescue dalmatian-Pepper and a big black mutt-Dusty. This family of pets were with us for most of our daughters growing up years, moved to Maine with us in 1995 and gave us years of love and fellowship. All of them lived to a very ripe old age and had happy lives. With a deep breath, we fought forward into January and made plans to search for a puppy in the spring.

Some of you readers are familiar with our Miss Lydia Pickett's Cottage Collection kits. Each kit comes with a story which circles around Miss Lydia Pickett, a lovable little doggie. While there is a real Miss Lydia Pickett - the darling dog belonging to our cousin, our Lydia Pickett stories are all fiction, but stitched with bits of truth gleaned from our entire family's dogs and cats.

The first two sentences in the Miss Lydia Pickett story read as follows;
"Sometimes things just happen. The day begins simply enough and the next thing you know a tiny bundle of puppy love has found it's way into your heart and into your home."
In February we took a spontaneous trip to Florida for warmth (there wasn't any), and sun (nope) and to take our grandchildren to Disney, where we had fun anyway. We picked them up in Daytona, Florida, on the same weekend as the "Big Race". They, and their mom were visiting friends. While in Daytona, we went to a farmer's market/flea market where we bought some strawberries, playing cards, and a sweatshirt. It was cold! The grandchildren ran a bit ahead of us and quickly circled back.
"You need to come see the puppies." Oh no! Alright, we'll just look. After all, we could not buy a puppy in Florida and bring her home to Maine. We were heading to Walt Disney World. We would just quickly look at the puppies.......
"Sometimes things just happen. The day begins simply enough and the next thing you know a tiny bundle of puppy love has found it's way into your heart and into your home."

Just so you won't think too badly of us for buying a puppy at a farmer's market, I'd like to tell the rest of the story.
The puppies that were being offered came from responsible breeders and from an in home environment.
They could not be touched by the public unless there was serious commitment involved.
They had nice, clean and warm kennels behind a glass window.
The breeder helped us arrange a safe flight home in a small doggie kennel that fit under the seat.
She also kept her until the night before we were leaving Florida and met with us to make the exchange.
We are the proud new parents of "Daytona" a 3 pound 11 ounce, dappled miniature dachshund. This is the first time we have ever raised a puppy from this young age. We are so in love with her!
Happy Easter!

We do not usually dress our animal friends. Really we don't. But, Daytona actually likes it!

A New Christmas Cabinet

Just wanted to let you all know about a new 1" scale Christmas cabinet that we offered at the Philly show. I will not usually use the blog site for our miniature kits, but I'm making an exception because we will not have this on our website and many people have asked to see photos of it.
The cabinet kit and most of the accessory kits that are shown are still available. They are all limited kits due to the availability of some of the parts. The Snowman Cake Stand is sold out.

This Christmas Cabinet will not be on our website due to the limited nature, but we may offer it in our December newsletter. If you are interested in getting our email newsletter, let us know.
The Christmas Cabinet is $38.00
Christmas Tags & Altered Pot $8.00
Christmas Trees (12) & Candy Cane Sign $8.00
Christmas Coffee Set (2 plates, 2 saucers, 2 cups & a tray) $8.00
Christmas Post Card Display and Santa Frames $8.00
Framed Mittens Print and Vintage Stockings (3) $8.00

If you are interested in any of these kits or in receiving our newsletter, email Shawn at shawn@robinbetterley.com for shipping costs and availability.

I talked Shawn into putting up Christmas lights on our porch early this year. It's so pretty and it's dark here in Maine at 3:30 in the afternoon. I'm serious!

Time To Wrap It Up and Stick A Bow On It!

Well, we're home. It's bittersweet. While it's nice to have the creature comforts of home...heat, big bed, comfy chair, separate studios...I miss our little travel trailer, or maybe I'm missing what it represents.
The call of the road is haunting. The days and evenings are about immediacy and timing, freedom and choices, comfort carved from basics. Now that we're home we have to face It. It being commitments, orders, cleaning, cooking, yard work, Holidays with a capital H, the stuff we've pushed off until after The Big Trip. It's taken me 2 weeks to admit we're home. I've raked and cleaned out gardens, I've done the laundry, I've cooked big pots of comfort food (must seriously face dieting this winter, as we literally ate our way across the country and back), we've made it through the mail and the email, and we've found our daily momentum again. The only thing left is to admit that we're home and to write the final blog of the journey.
Today is Friday. All week long I've been "going to write the blog today". I have been finding other things to do. That's not hard, there's always something to do. I finally figured out, this morning, that the reason I haven't written the final journey blog is that in writing it, the journey is over.
I know, you've all figured that out already, sometimes we don't see the things that are right under our noses. Now, I need some closure.
To put a positive spin on this kind of sad sounding blog, let me just say that it was the trip of a lifetime. The Bad Lands, Wyoming antelope, the deserts, the cities, the Grand Canyon, Route 66, the museums, the galleries, the shopping, the food, the shows, the friends. It was all....WOW! We were excited to see the country and there is so much to see and experience, but we found that the unexpected moments, the lengthy quiet times, the little scares, the shared tiredness at the end of the day, the new favorite restaurant, the Wal Marts, the afternoon coffees, and the laughing over our inexperience at hauling a little trailer through lands we had never seen, this is really what what it was all about. food. It was all.............
Do something you've never done before. It's so good for your soul.

I Love the Smell of Duct Tape in the Morning

Actually, I should say I love the sound of duct tape in the morning. You know the sound I’m talking about as you rip a long piece from the roll. The thin walls of our little vintage travel trailer, did nothing to shield me from the tch...tch....tch of strips of tape being ripped from the fat, sticky roll. My first thought was, oh no, what’s he doing. My second thought being, the storage door in the back, already having been repaired once in Salt Lake City, when it fell off in Shawn’s hands, has fallen off again.

But no, it seems that the wear of the roads, constantly under construction, had shaken loose the entire lower panel on right side of the trailer. This particular panel is a piece that is in the plan for replacement, as we restore our little Shasta, but we didn’t plan for it to fall off before we get back home.

Consider the diverse imagery of one man and his RV, a pretty new one at that, full of bells and whistles, this fellow whistling and spit shining the front of his toy, while the other man, mine, muttering under his breath, rips shiny new pieces from his roll of duct tape in an attempt to “keep it all together until we get home”. It’s all about these small moments.

When You’re Happy to See a Broken Egg on the Carpet

While I’ve had great fun writing about Shawn’s antics, and he does give me so much with which to work, I have had my moments as well. I know, you’re thinking, “Surely it isn’t possible” but it’s true, it’s just so much more fun to tell tales on Shawn. Well, this one is on me...

My job, in the setting up camp and tearing down camp, is to stow all of the inside stuff, close all the windows so they won’t be ripped off riding down the highway, close the roof vents, and lock the refrigerator door. I’m also in charge of double checking the hitch, and checking the light signals on the back of the trailer as we leave camp. Shawn does all the outside stuff - electricity, dump hose, water hose, cable (when we have that luxury), and jacks. We talk about making a check list. All of the books tell you to make a check list. It really wouldn’t take too long to make a check list. We haven’t made a check list. Instead, we spend the first hour on the road asking and re-asking each other, “Did you shut off the gas?”, “Did you close the sink window?” and so on.

The morning we left Santa Fe, I was a little distracted. I found myself really drawn to the area, and wishing we could spend a little more time there. It would be fun to come for a couple of weeks and have time to set up and paint. I was daydreamy, I’ll admit it. We did our jobs, checked the light signals and got on the road, the really curvy, bumpy road that let us out of the canyon camp site. About an hour into the early morning drive, I remembered that I hadn’t locked the refrigerator. Surprisingly, Shawn was pretty calm and said, “No point in worrying now, I’ll pull over as soon as there’s a good spot”. I didn’t point out to him that, in that refrigerator, we had three-quarters of a Marie Callender’s Chocolate Cream Pie perched on the top shelf and a quivering slab of Spam sitting precariously in a snap-top plastic container and it was not Tupperware, so the seal on the cover could be broken by the slightest jiggle and...Speaking of Spam, I was informed by my husband, who dearly loves that gelatinous mass of meat, that we must eat Spam on our trip as it is the definitive trailer food. It is also NOT, a food that he gets to eat, very often, at home. What seemed like hours later, we pulled the car and trailer into a rest area. I practically ran to unlock and open the door, wanting to get there first and maybe soften the blow of what would most certainly be a chocolatety, greasy mess. I had pictured the walls covered in soda-can-spray, with bits of soft chocolate brown, accentuated with rosy, meat flavored bits. If you know me, you know I have an active imagination.

When we stepped in, Shawn noticed the refrigerator door was closed. I noticed that the walls were clean. On the carpet, there was an egg box, upside down, with only one broken egg. There were several soda cans rolling around, one with a tiny pin hole puncture that was just starting to spurt, and an unopened, plastic, squeeze-jelly container laying beside the eggs. We looked at each other and laughed at how lucky we were. I didn’t even mind cleaning up the egg on the carpet, and just to be safe, we threw the pie away.

We still haven’t made a check list.