Saturday, May 23, 2015

It's That Time of the Year Once Again...!


Dearest Friends of The Tearoom,
The day we wait for each year about this time has arrived!  Our invitation to The Mad Tea Party Blog Party at A Fanciful Twist!  Each year, Our Dearest Dear Friend Miss Vanessa throws the most wonderful blog hop parties in honor of one of our favorite topics, The Mad Tea Party!  Can we ever really get enough of them?  I don't think so!

Ideas had been whirling around in my head and so now, the serious work must start in order to be ready!  This year, as you can see from the poster above and the button on the right, the party will be held on July 11th.  You can participate by letting Vanessa know you will be part of the fun and then creating a Mad Tea Party post for viewing on that day (further instructions on her blog post here).  Or, you can also have fun by simply visiting all the participants on that day and leaving them comments!  Either way, it is always a day of fun (actually, so many people participate, it always turns into a whole weekend of fun for most of us!).

The scrambling through the attic of treasures of The Tearoom will now begin as we start to work on our adventure for this year!  Please don't mind the dust and the noise!

Wednesday, May 20, 2015

How Long We Have Waited . . .

Welcome, Dearest Friends of The Tearoom!
It was such a long and cold winter, here in The Land of The Tearoom, but the weather has finally warmed and once again, we find ourselves on our porch, our own small portion of paradise.  I spent so many gloomy and snowy days this winter, dreaming and planning.  My work there is not finished yet, but I think you will find a good start has been made.  We look forward to having tea with friends, lunches with each other, here in the company of our dear friends, The Pansies!

(Please ignore the state of the porch in need of painting!)

As always, please click the images in order to see them larger.

All of the shades of purple just make me happy!

I used some pots I had had for a while, but the yellow & grey pots
and the chartreuse ones are new.

I love the mixed designs they came in!

In one pot, I planted an ornamental thyme and pansies to make
a Pansy Jungle, like the one that Victorienne was peddling
through on her tricycle here!  I plan to create a few different
tableaux on The Thyme Lawn this summer, including other
possible visits from Victorienne!

But today, two new friends who have come to live with us 
here at The Tearoom are enjoying the The Thyme Lawn!
This is Wuzzy and Tiddley, the Jackabunnies and they are 
the creations of my new Twitter friend Kit Lane!  I had 
admired her dear little needle-felted creatures for such a 
long time and decided that now was the time to adopt a
couple of them!  When they aren't enjoying some time
outside, they live on top of the small bookcase in our
room.  If you find yourself in need of some happiness in 
your life, I must highly recommend to you a visit to Kit's Etsy
shop. She is always working so hard to make them, but you 
may find the shop empty.  Please don't let this discourage
you, but instead, take a peek at her "Sold"section and then 
contact her to make a special friend for you too!

As you can see, our small patch of lawn is covered in
dandelions, violets and clover.  We like it that way, in spite of
the disapproving looks of others.  After reading a recent
article on how many birds, butterflies and bees benefit from
not chopping it all down, we are even more devoted to the idea
of our technicolor lawn!!

More of the lovely pansies, including that lovely bright yellow
trailing variety that smells like some intense version of honey!
The hummingbirds and furry, fat bees love them and so do I!

This planter has seen its better days, but it was here in the time
of my Great-Aunt Edith living here, before my parents did.
My mother loved planting pansies and petunias here and I think
I can get a few more seasons of doing the same from it, the
lovely, shabby old thing!

I usually plant morning glories in this planter and let them trail up
the lilac branch in the corner and then up the corner post of the
porch.  But I bought a few too many pansies and needed to
plant them here instead...

...but in spite of the fact that I didn't plant morning glories here 
last year and turned over the soil in the pot, adding new potting
soil and fertilizer, these are little morning glory shoots, peeking 
up between the pansies!!  And, they are growing up right next
to the old lilac branch, so when they get bigger, I can train them
to go up the branch and the hummingbirds will have morning
glories on the favorite perch in the garden after all!!!  Mr. V says
that nature is an amazing thing and I would have to agree!


These are the rest of the pots, filled with soil and fertilizer and 
waiting to be planted.  I am growing seedlings of heirloom
tomato varieties and herbs in the sunny East and South windows
of the diningroom and soon, they will be ready for planting.
After some careful research, the herbs will be planted together in 
the smaller pots and the tomatoes will be planted in the larger
pots.  We actually had quite good success with tomatoes
in this spot two years ago, and I'm so looking forward to
dinners of fried green tomatoes!  Yum! 

The East end of the porch.
In the corner, I keep my gardening equipment (vintage small 
hand-rake,  trowel and well-loved Queen Bess serving spoon), 
old tin watering can, dead branches from the white lilacs in the 
back for staking tomatoes and training morning glories, bits of 
broken pots to put in the bottom of other pots to provide irrigation.  
I like to find new uses for old and discarded things I find around 
the house and the yard.  Admittedly, many of the things left
here by Aunt Edith and Mommy still come in handy to me!


But once in a while, one deserves to indulge and have some 
new things too!  These new periwinkle Adirondack chairs
have been in my sights for a while and so, this year, they
join our household!

If you look carefully, you can see two of our three hummingbird
feeders!  It's a non-stop job making nectar and cleaning and filling 
feeders to feed those brightly-colored little cuties!  

My work here is not quite finished, but I'm happy with the
progress to make it lighter and brighter so far.  I will blog about
the porch again later in the summer.

Thursday, May 14, 2015

A Dabble With Fan Art . . .

Greetings, Dear Friends of The Tearoom!
As many of you may already know, music is an important part of our lives!  Mr. V and I met in a record store in 1984 and ended up working together there.  We love listening to all kinds of music!

Today, I'm making a collage just for fun, inspired by one of my favorite albums so far this year "The Velvet Trail" by Marc Almond.  There are so many great songs on this album!  One of the ones I loved the most is "Pleasure's Wherever You Are".  I really love the visual imagery of it and it inspired me to create a piece of fan art for it!  I do hope Marc does not mind being portrayed as The Dragon Boy!




(Please click on any of the images to see them larger.)

Images used in my collages today are from the following sources:

Image one: Background revised from an image from the extensive public domain collection at The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

Image two: Background from itKuPiLLi Imagenarium on Mischief Circus
Image of Marc Almond from his Twitter site
Dragon image composed of several vintage images from The Rijksmuseum collection
Geisha adapted from a vintage image from Pinterest

Image three: Background made of decayed vintage daguerreotypes from The Public Domain Review.