Please REMEMBER our fallen soldiers this Memorial Day

As so many have been, and are currently being laid to rest, having made the ultimate sacrifice for their Country, please make pause this weekend, to remember them, known and unknown, and give humble thanks for their service & sacrifice to help make & keep our country safe & free.   

Precious 'Gnome Hilde & her Enchanted Mushroom'....

   Little enchantments can be found pretty much anyplace on earth, if one know where and how to look.....sometimes, all it takes is walking at a slower pace, to focus not so much on where you are walking to....but instead, on the path you are taking to get there

   And one must always remember, you never know just who is watching you

  Wee little Gnome Hilde is a sprite little Gnome Ladye, a special one of a kind hand sculpted mache art doll, and she is of coarse accompanied with her enchanted Mushroom! She is currently available as a special in my  ETSY  store~ just click the link to the right to go check her out!

I just couldnt be any prouder of my wee ones!!!

  I had to postpone my dolly post for a day to just oooze pride in my children for one moment :)  Our oldest daughter was welcomed into National Honor Society last week, and this week, among their other academic awards, all 3 of my wee ones got the Artist of the Year award for each of their entire grades!!! I am SO PROUD of them~ (I guess they are my children after all~ heheh).    Art does so much to open the mind to so many ways of thinking and problem solving~ not to mention honing motor skills and coordinating the mind to work physically with different parts of the body. I encourage anyone, no matter HOW old, so sit down and make something...anything! Draw something...color or paint...on what it doesnt matter, just express one's self!

I was so surprised, and SO proud of them this morning~ Congratulations to my Kinnison Peeps~ I hope we have the greatest summer ever!

Now this ..... is my kinda mushroom .........

     Preserved mosses and lichens...together with wire of different sorts I found around here and there....

with some sisal and boxwood and this and that....perhaps some magic pixie dust too...

sprouted the most wonderful fungus! It's no ordinary mushroom, I'm not sure if it even has a proper name, but something feels safe beneath its large protective canopy....

Perhaps the something isnt a thing at all, but a who~body.....

Hmm.....I wonder who could be there?????? 

fun*gus.....

the modern dictionary defines a fungus as.....
  "any of a diverse group of eukaryotic single-celled or multinucleate organisms that live by decomposing and absorbing the organic material in which they grow, comprising the mushrooms, molds, mildews, smuts, rusts, and yeasts, and classified in the kingdom Fungi or, in some classification systems, in the division Fungi (Thallophyta) of the kingdom Plantae. "


  Hmmmm...... I suppose thats it, if one prefers the scientific approach. I, on the other hand, think, of all the pleasurable moments I had as a child, out hunting for mushrooms with my parents. I would make quite a bit of money in the summers, out picking morels to sell to the vendors parked along the highway.  My mother was always discovering new 'leads'...like where a huge giant puffball the size of a basketball was found....and just how to cook it up....or those really neat coral mushrooms we were always looking for!  One of my favorites was 'Witche's Butter'...don't know if it was the pretty orange color, or that it looked wet and waxy, like butter on the logs.  I loved looking for mushrooms, and still do, tho now I live now where its so dry there aren't very many.

  Mushrooms always held a bit of magic for me as well~ especially morels....we always said they looked like faiery houses.  My Auntie Becky knows all about faieries, but my Mom & I, well, we were fond of a little different mythical, magical creature...one who inhabits many a forest and mountain, with little chubby fingers and blunt little noses..................

a Mid 1840's Boy's Brown pin stripe Skeleton suit...

  What a treat it is to share this early skeleton~ boy's wear is so scarce, and this one is an absolute gem.  Aside from a few scattered rust marks, it is exactly as it was when carefully packed away in the mid 19th c and left forgotten in the family's attic.  Its entirely hand stitched in a wonderful toffee brown & natural woven stripe cotton.

  Skeleton suits were the bridge from child to man~ worn after dresses, but before a full on suit, they were first seen in the last decade of the 18thc, with the waist so high, the breeches buttoned on nearly up under the armpits.  The amount of time it took getting in and out lent to them being called skeleton suits....as in, you'd be an olde man before you could get yourself out of it

  They were usually made in 2 separate pieces, a bodice and pants that buttoned together at the waist, but I do have some early ones that are constructed as a single suit and only button partially at the waist, these are all back opening. As you can see this one is front opening, with a 1" standing collar and wonderful long sleeves.  Note how full the back seat of the pants are~ the cut is the same as 18th breeches~ very full to allow plenty of room to sit without anything being pinched.

One must take many things into consideration when dating these early suits~ some are very fashionable and easily dated by trims and the going styles of the times...other more utilitarian or middle class garments that are more plain are harder. I date this one to the early 1840s going by the placement of the waist(lower than Empire) and the armcyes (up very high under the armpits in this era)...also the shape of the sleeves and the standing collar.  None of the other clothes, nearly 120 different garments,  packed away with it in its trunk, date later than the late 1830s....it could be late 1820, but the waist should be higher for that, most definitely not anyplace in the 1830's, as the sleeves have absolutely no fullness to them at all....so I am sticking with my early 1840s date....

And I l-o-v-e the little wee hole incorporated into the front crotch seam. Can you just imagine a little boy hopping up and down, trying to get all those buttons undone to go potty????   Not even!  Thank goodness for the wee holes!

Something Fun~ WHAT is it?????

Ohhhh why oh why must blogger keep changing the foremat???!  IT SO hard to find my way around, now that they inform me they no longer support my browser  :( SO maddening!!!!  Anyways, I wanted to play a fun little game, and ask you all what do you think this is a picture of????  To give a little hint, the opening is just under 2".