Welcome to Christmas at Rose Water Cottage

I cannot believe all that has taken place since my last post.
Where do I even begin?

Okay...so let's see....

I finished the bookmarks for sister-in-law, and her ladies' retreat was a huge success...

My book, Eliza Visits Martha's Vineyard, is off to the publisher, Vineyard Stories, on Martha's Vineyard (we should have a wonderful little hardcover book by next Spring)..

We celebrated Halloween by trick or treating with a little ballerina...

...who has a passion for playing the piano...in a hat...

My son Matthew married his Jenny under the Hunter's moon...

in October...
and words cannot describe what an incredibly beautiful event this was...

and my dear husband saw to it that I acquire the most exquisite confection for the occasion...
(a 1900's edwardian 3 piece ensemble of silk, with hand-embroidered detailing....words fail me...)

We were fortunate to have a long-time friend of our family drive our newlyweds off into the moonlit night. We love you, dear Beverly!

....and then Matthew turned 30 in November. Where did the time go?

Mom and Dad arrived home safely from Africa, after a 4 month stay, just in time for his 82nd birthday.

We adopted the sweetest little kitty girl (my birthday present) and named her Lucy Maud (of course, because we LOVE Anne of Green Gables with a passion!)

Here are a few sweet photos...(Susan's Girl Kitty is her hero:)

She has mastered every adorable pose ...We LOVE her...

This was the ride home, snuggled in my arms, after adopting her from our local Animal Shelter...

It didn't take any time at all for her to know this is HOME.
It was so wonderful to have Susan Branch and some very supportive SB girlfriends (Karen, Patricia, Debs, Rosinda, Laura, Belinda, Jane, Cathy, Georgie, Erin, and even a new GF, Jane Hissey ...author/illustrator of the Old Bear books, which Sophia ADORES) along for the journey.
I wore my "Girlfriends" bracelets with SB and Martha's Vineyard charms...

We tweeted, wildly, back and forth, until we were home with our sweetheart, safe and sound...and even into the next few days...checking in on her progress and how she and little Scout were getting on...

And here they are today...continuing to "warm up" to each other, just a bit more each day...

Whew!  Now that you're all caught up...

...fetch your cup of hot tea, hot cider, or hot coffee (assuming it is chilly/cold/raining/snowing where you live:)...

....come up the flagstone path...

Welcome...
to Christmas at Rose Water Cottage....

It's beginning to look like Christmas.  With fresh pine and cedar garland hanging along the gingerbread trim, I feel as if we live in our very own storybook cottage, nestled somewhere in a storybook wood...

Speaking of storybook cottages...and storybook woods...I read a blog post at Natalie Jo's "Piccalilli Days."  She had visited the real Grandmother's House in New Hampshire, the house that served as the illustrator's inspiration of the 1948 edition of Little Red Riding Hood. In a photo she had taken in the cottage, there was the sweetest shelf holding a display of storybooks. (I imagine they were all versions and editions of the famous story.)

I showed husband the photo, he searched the internet, and it wasn't long until we had our very own, 100 year old storybook shelf for our storybook cottage...

It serves as a perfectly perfect spot for those wonderful old books and some sweet little characters...and a Merry message, by way of old alphabet blocks.

Here is our Little Red, a 1940's Nancy Ann doll, her storybook wood (unpainted trees found at Hobby Lobby, painted by yours truly) alongside the sweet old book.  Eliza has loaned her sweet picnic basket she received as a housewarming gift from cousin city mouse...

Sophia, so intrigued by the story, dressed as Little Red Riding hood (using the Tasha Tudor scarf that had recently arrived by post) and acted out the entire story, over and over and over...
Oh, my dear, what big blue eyes you have!

This book, entitled Prayer for a Child (the same author/illustrator as Little Red Riding Hood), is filled with images of Wendt and Kuhn figurines. I loved this page "Bless the lamplight, bless the fire"...

...as it reminded me of how thankful I am for the blessing of a warm fire and candlelight....

I fell in love with those little figurines...  their faces are so sweet.

Also, on Natalie Jo's blog, she mentioned Woodettes... the cutest set of toys from the 1940's...hard to find... I mean..INCREDIBLY hard to find! So when I found this set on ebay, I snagged it...

...but they were in rough shape.  Someone had their share of fun, though, painting away with the watercolors provided in the set. This is Alice in Wonderland (before the makeover:)

and this is Mary with her Little Lamb (who had apparently lost his head somewhere through the years)...

So I had my work cut out for me...but I was so excited to have a few more characters for my shelf.

And because I love the sweet faces of the Wendt and Kuhn figurines, I decided to apply the same sweet features to these two little girls. This was the result ....

I found a tea set for Alice and a little lamb for Mary. Everyone is happy.

(Thank you sweet kindred, Patty, for the teeny tiny silver candlesticks and the hand made teeny tiny beeswax candles)

Next, came Little Jack Horner...who was also quite a mess...but with a bit of paint and a lot of love, he has turned out to be such a darling boy, sitting on his tiny red stool with his yummy Christmas pie (and a big purple plum on his thumb) ....

I had so much fun painting Mary's straw hat...(I suppose you might have noticed I chose not to paint the characters as shown on the box...we sure love our Peter Rabbit colors;)

Side note....Sophia has watched the painting of these characters and has been so curious. It has been a wonderful way to teach the nursery rhymes and songs, while she falls in love with each "story come to life"... She inspects the plum and the pie and their shoes and their faces... it is all so precious!

She loves our new shelf, with all her friends, and all her favorite books...

She loves that Little Bo Peep has found her sheep...

She reaches up to the book stand to gently touch this tiny bit of forget-me-not sweetness...

The British Garden Flowers book was acquired through Natalie Jo's Etsy shop. This illustration is my most favorite....with that wisp of a blossom to the right of the roses.  The little girl reminds me of Phia, always toting a baby doll.

So, here, in our storybook cottage, nestled in an imaginary storybook wood, I hang fresh pine and cedar garland and inhale the fragrance...

and set a table with pink lustreware atop a turkey red tablecloth as Tasha Tudor, did.

The mantel...which is new to our home but formerly resided in a 1920's home in the area...has a length of crocheted lace woven throughout the garland and twinkle lights, mingling with pink lustreware teacups and a gold open-weave ribbon ... and through the antiqued mirror, you see a glimpse of the storybook shelf...

The bird's nest amongst the garland and lights, sits above Take Joy, on the old piano.  The beeswax candles, crackling as they drip, light the room as they lit Tasha's cottage, with such a soft glow....

They're lit atop the table, as well...

...alongside my most favorite Christmastide storybook, Tasha Tudor's Snow Before Christmas.

Now, Bella with Rose Stockings (handmade by Christine LaFever) would argue that The Doll's Christmas is my favorite...as it has been quite the inspiration for the doll's house extreme makeover and festivities...(more on that subject, at a later date)...

I have been the busy little elf in Santa's workshop, these days, so I am unable to show many of the projects in progress...but this is one I am happy to share...

This evening I completed a precious little felt ornament for our precious little Phia...I couldn't get over how much it looked like her...and my hope is that she'll remember this Christmas, always, as the celebration of the year she found that this is HER Home ... and Tim and I are HER Family ...and that THIS is where Love lives....

...where visions of sugar plums can dance in her head...

****************

When I look through the lace curtains of the front window,  I see a lovely log home....

...and when I look out through the screen door, with its gingerbread trim....I see pine and cedar draped around my little porch...

...and I think...
.. this is the next best thing to a storybook cottage in a storybook wood,
 and I am one happy, thankful, loved Grammy.

Blessings, friends....
...Rabbit Rabbit,  SB girlfriends...
..and may you all have a warm and peaceful Christmastide season.

A Susan Branch book signing on Martha's Vineyard

Travel with Eliza and me to Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, where we vacationed August 12th through August 16th....

We will be attending Susan Branch's 1st book signing of her new book 'A Fine Romance' at Bunch of Grapes Bookstore in Vineyard Haven on Martha's Vineyard on August 15th, Julia Child's Birthday:) It also happens to be the same place she had her very first book signing for her very first book...years ago.

Eliza is ready...she has a new hydrangea ribbon Grammy attached to her Tasha Tudor cottage shawl, after the old one was just beyond repair..

{We had received our pre-ordered copy of Susan Branch's 'A Fine Romance' several days before our vacation, and Eliza and I had fallen in love with this most charmingly adorable book.}

Here is Eliza...ready for the book signing ... She even has her girlfriend's name tag pinned on her shawl...

..and now she is gently tucked away in Grammy's new little Nantucket purse...

The little stamped envelopes contain miniature books for Susan to sign...one for Eliza and one for Cousin City Mouse...

The gift basket is seat belted into the window seat on the airplane...The flight attendants were insistent,  and they even advised me, that in case of an emergency ...apply my oxygen mask...before tending to the basket. Yes, they could tell how important it was to me...it was going to the Queen of the Girlfriends.

 I included a bit of Lamb's Ear from my garden...

And a little lamb...

After a long ride from the airport in Boston, we arrive at Wood's Hole and board the freight boat...we just missed the ferry, but we don't care...we're heading to Martha's Vineyard for a dream of a vacation...

And we see our very first lighthouse... I pinch myself...

We had no more taken the photo of the lighthouse before everyone started buzzing about the speck on the horizon...which, soon, became this.... 

I had never seen anything like this...ever...incredibly surreal.

We arrived at Oak Bluffs and hailed a taxi to drive us into Historic Edgartown, to the Victorian Inn ...

Eliza loved the front bed filled with ivy..

And she was wishing she could take home the fox door knocker to the fox family of Franklin...

She loves tick tock clocks, like the black mantel clock at Grammy's House, but this was a giant tick tock clock...and she loved it!!

We met the most hospitable innkeepers and staff...who greeted us and led us up the stairs...

to our beautiful room...

With a covered porch...where we enjoyed reading, knitting, painting, napping....

....and there sits the gift basket...just a bit disheveled from the plane, car, ferry, taxi rides....  What a story it could tell! People along the way were assuming we were on our honeymoon! We finally gave in and said we'd just go with that story....so we played along;)

We freshened up a bit, and headed out to find a restaurant. We were famished!

After dinner, we walked around town, up and down the charming streets of shops and beautiful homes ...and came upon Edgartown Books... where I would be meeting with Jan Pogue of Vineyard Stories..Susan Branch's publisher... (actually, we'd be meeting in the coffee shop behind the bookstore)

We found the comfy rockers on the front porch, where I sat and waited as Tim ventured to the corner ice cream shop.

We learned that New Englanders enjoy and consume more ice-cream than anywhere else in the land....  I decided I liked this... a lot!  I would enjoy a waffle cone of deliciousness, every night, thereafter...


The next morning, we descended the stairs, out the front door, petted the gorgeous hydrangeas....

and made our way around back to the terrace, where breakfast would be served.  We chose the table next to this adorable wall hanging...

It portrays Simple Simon meeting the pie man at the fair.  I was enchanted....

The innkeeper gave us the history on this piece...it had been a part of the restaurant in Boston that would later became Howard Johnson's.

We set out, once again, to walk around town until the afternoon rains drove us back to the Inn.

We found the path leading back to the "Behind the Bookstore Coffee Shop" ...yes, that really is its name....

We found a darling Needleworks shop.  Any shop with Beatrix Potter ANYTHING in the window, catches this girl's attention.  I would find a tiny Christmas stocking to needlepoint for Phia...

The rains came, and we went back to our covered porch at the Inn for rest and knitting and reading.

Hungry, we were ready for a late lunch. We decided to venture out in the drizzling rain and walk down Water Street to the Harborview Inn and restaurant for some Clam Chowder.  Best I'd ever tasted.

This was the storybook view out the window, over the aqua painted rockers on the front porch...

alongside a family playing a riveting game of Monopoly...

How wonderful to linger in the lobby with the fire crackling in the oversized fireplace, as the rains came hard...finally easing enough for us to wobble under one umbrella, the distance back to the Inn. 

Note: Don't ever miss an opportunity to snuggle in the rain...dancing around puddles ...with your sweetheart.

We passed a hydrangea bush full of these aqua blue hydrangeas...

and I had to paint them into my diary when we got home...

This was such a cozy entrance to a restaurant we passed on our way back to the inn...

Later...a pretty pedicure...

And on to a late dinner for Lobster...I had not indulged in this delicacy in too many years to remember...about 30, I was guessing...

Wow...delicious!

Next morning ... Had to capture this amazing...incredibly famous Pagoda Tree.  It was huge...GINORMOUS! ...and across the street from our Inn...
These photos hardly capture the size.

Here is it's story, contained on a plaque at the base of the tree...

I plucked just a bit of the ivy for my travel diary/journal...

Tim and I went on to our meeting with Jan, the publisher ...and three hours later, left the coffee shop floating amongst the clouds. (More on this later:)

We walked past the Vineyard Gazette, and I couldn't imagine a more inviting office to go to work in everyday...

I just couldn't get enough of these hydrangeas...they were every..where! Every color imaginable...

I fell into a deep sleep, that afternoon...which is what eventually happens when a being has not been able to sleep for days on end due to incredible excitement...

Our plans for the evening became an event we will never ever forget.  Grand Illumination.  How to even describe...I would fail miserably.  Go to www.susanbranch.com and find her description on her blog under the link "Martha's Vineyard".

...In the meantime, I will show you the pictures of the highlights...

We travel by car service to Oak Bluffs, which is where we had arrived on the island, by ferry.

On the campground, there are 300 of the sweetest, most adorable little gingerbread cottages you have ever seen.  It is a community of dollhouses... and being the lover of all things tiny and adorable, I made friends right away with one of the couples who own a sweet little cottage.. Paula and Mike.  They invited us in...

We giggled and talked and found such a kinship... this was just sending me right over the moon!

Walking around the town, in search of dinner...we came upon the Good Ship Lollipop Candy store...

Sophia loves watching Shirley Temple sing this song ....she tap dances when we sing it to her;)

We finally came upon the Tabernacle ...where there would be a community sing at 8:00 p.m....so we found a good bench and camped out where we could witness the festivities....

The band was warming up....

Oh my!! There were couples dressed in period clothing...  This is the very couple that Susan Branch has included on her link, I would find out when we returned home...

This was the sweetest cottage, decorated with its delightful chinese lanterns..."Lavender & Lace" was the cottage's name, and the ladies sitting there on the front porch, with their tea table dotted with tea lights were as precious as they could be. They insisted on taking a photo of me on their steps...I was tickled to pieces....

Is it not adorable!!  I told Tim...we are acquiring lanterns and decorating our front porch next August in honor of Grand Illumination week...I think it just might catch on...of course, I'm always the optimist;)

At exactly 9:00 p.m., after singing and singing...and watching children play around the grounds with their light sticks...watching little families picnic on their quilts...  It is time...

The lanterns and luminaries are lit...simultaneously...all around the campground...and it is the most magical sight!

Back to Edgartown...to our Inn...and sweet illuminated dreams.

Walking around town, the next morning, we turned the corner and beheld this view...it was just so peaceful....

The afternoon could not come soon enough... The entire vacation had been planned around the first book signing to launch Susan's tour across country for the next few months.  The event would be in Vineyard Haven, where she lives.... our car service drove us there, to Bunch of Grapes Bookstore.
We arrived in time for me to get a front row seat. Tim hung around, out of the way...while I basked in the glory of meeting fellow girlfriends who were wearing their name tags, too.
Look at the sweet table Dawn prepared for us...she even invited some of our precious Beatrix Potter people to join us...see them hovering behind the cookie basket:)

Here's D'Anne and her momma, Bonnie....

...and then....She's here...She's really here, in person, looking absolutely adorable...and I'm speechless...completely speechless!  What has happened to my talker...I have no words...I am just in total awe...
And then she catches my eye...we mouth words, silently back and forth..."You're Christie Ray..." "Yes...from Franklin, TN"  smiles.. and then she comes in for a hug...such a dear sweet soul! She is petite and gentle and soft spoken and everything we have known she would be....and more....
...and she knows who I am... she knows all of us girls...the ones who come to the blog of friendship, kindredship... a community of the most wonderful group of women who share their joys and sorrows and grand baby stories and cancer treatments and recoveries and deaths... and they grieve together, pray together, rejoice together... and she responds, and prays, and encourages, and sheds tears, and shares laughter... Such a gift to all of us....

Our Susan...

...and her Petey...such a little rascal....sitting alongside the mug I have, as well, and am drinking from as I type this...filled with the bookmarks made from her test paint strips...

Here, she begins her story, showing us the original journal/diary from their trip to England in 2004...the inspiration for this book...

We are all snapping pictures as fast as we can...and oohing and ahhhing....

This is why I had to make my travel journal/diary of this vacation, in the same manner...full of little photos and ephemera and leaves and tiny rose petals and painted aqua hydrangeas...it is sheer inspiration....

So as Joe is digging in one of the bags, I call to him, "Joe, you know I'll have to have a picture of you, too!" He replies, "Then I'm taking a picture of you!"  He raises up with camera in hand, and I say, "Then I'm taking a picture of you taking a picture of me!"  He is as much a character as dear Sue has described, and as fine a man as you'd ever meet. Tim and I enjoyed a conversation with him after she signed my book...

And then I realized...I hadn't gotten my picture taken with her!!  Oh, dear, nooo....  but there was a wonderful woman from the bookstore...ready and willing to take a quick pic, with the strictest instruction..."NO talking...just the photo..."  Okay...okay... and as I knelt down, I whispered, "no talking, no talking..."  She leaned in close to my face..."okay, no talking..."  and then "sisters" .... My heart just melted...for she has felt like such a kindred spirit, to me... such an inspiration on my journey as a budding author/illustrator...she's been in my corner all the way, with her encouraging words...sometimes in the wee hours of the morning when I couldn't sleep, and I was nervous about meetings with publisher people who can pick apart your dreams... she had been there...she knew....

Yes..."sisters"....

We finally pulled ourselves away...after presenting the gift basket...the teeny tiny books, which she squealed over and signed...and then squealed again when she received her very own little Eliza mouse and teeny tiny book...

And we walked down the street, and around the corner to the ice cream shoppe...You thought I was kidding about the ice cream thing....Ha! I was hooked!

There, we ran into more girlfriends...and talked and laughed and ate our ice-cream and exchanged names and promises to be Facebook friends...

Again...I realized I missed a photo op...I hadn't taken a picture of the bookstore, so back we went, also hoping they might have a restroom...

...and that's when my eyes saw the photo from her blog come to life...It was the Van... the Storybook Happy Van (as I call it:)

Completely forgot about the photo of the bookstore....found the little girl's room....more goodbyes and hugs and, "Oh I forgot to show you my charm bracelets, and here's the ones we got that say Martha's Vineyard..."  Yes my talker was up and running...but I remembered the wise words of advice from my dear friend, Mary (Gentility) "....Calm, Christie, just stay calm...."
This was just about impossible...But, Mary, I gave it my very best effort...

We found our car service waiting for us, and hopped in just swooning over the afternoon, and the gal driving offered, "I can show you where she lives..."  Oh JUST be still my HEART...

And here is her home...on a lovely street, in Vineyard Haven, where life is quiet and birds sing...and skies are blue...

Martha's Vineyard should be on everyone's "Bucket List" ....

We came home to our Rose Water Cottage...with its freshly painted pink door...

and I created a little spot for my Martha's Vineyard mementos....
The birdhouse from Bunch of Grapes bookstore and the sea glass gifted to us by our hilarious and generous car service fella, Jon...

(Belinda...I think the coke bottle is surely from Florida;)

Blessings, girlfriends...Blessings Sue and Joe and the Kitties as you make your way across this beautiful country of ours, meeting the faces that go with the names and making them feel as special as you made me,

Christie Ray from Franklin, Tennessee