Arlene,love your Hollyhocks & orange Tiger lilies, sure miss mine that I brought from So. Dak. I guess they died of "old age" always knew summer would soon be here when that bright orange flower with the brown freckles bloomed! Your barnwood outhouse is so lovely & the matching birdhouse. Ours was white with green trim to match the house, dad had put in birdhouse at the top by the peak of roof. Opening was on back side tho so you didn't step out & get pooped on!LOL Love the bedpan planter! Everything looks so healthy, I started using mulch this year since everyone on here has such green stuff & lots of blooms going to see if I can get things looking like they used to. I'm kind of tempted to ask if the pan hanging on the outhouse has a use or is just decoration? Perhaps there is a faucet nearby & you water with it! Jan

Those mini teacups are darling that 'luvs' puts in her fairy gardens! I haven't done any ...no none to share, crete...but I know you will have some beauties to share soon! Jeanne s.

I've not posted here before, but was reading because I will ask a question about something else... About the craft shows- I LOVE to go to them. I too, only buy useful items- maybe because I dislike 'clutter'- and I hate to do dusting of 'stuff'! The more bare the room is, the better- not quite a 'minimalist', but close!! Anyway- may I say something- about sellers at the shows. Several times there will be booths at shows that have the same items. It's still fun to look, because different people do their crafts with a different flair. A big turn-off is when, for example a person who is selling the neck-coolers/collars, and tells me that 'all the other people here use regular moisture crystals- but mine are specially treated- nobody around here knows about these specially treated crystals. Mine will stay cooler twice as long as theirs do.' What a bunch of garbage- only this seller happens to know about the 'secret crystals'- hers are better than everybody else's! Nothing makes me turn and run as fast as I can from people like this- I can't stand liars/people who put other people down trying desperately to sell something. How stupid/gullible do they think people are?? I love to look and chat and possibly buy something from people who know their craft/skills! JMOHO!

luvs2click, now *that* is a brilliantly-displayed collection! I love it because it's in the room that the pieces normally would have been in as functional elements, but made into design elements instead, with their functional significance still resonating. Great work, DH :) I'm finding myself collecting NW Studio art pottery and Blenko/studio glass, and a bit of vintage NW fiber art and other craft...the last is the most challenging to display, since it takes up so much room! We're planning to create some dedicated, fishing-line-protected shelves in the living room for the glass, so it can be up where we can see the sculptural lines. I like collections of originally non-decorative items displayed where they would normally have been used. I could see tiny lamps being displayed somehow near their larger cousins, in a few places throughout the house, rather than isolated from function in a display shelf somewhere. I have a vision of maybe two other little lamps put on a little riser near a larger functioning lamp, and repeat that maybe two other places in the house. Rotate the collection. That way, the lamps are in dynamic conversation with their environment and you get a sum that is more than its parts, iykwim. Decorative items? Somehow in significant groupings or in such a way that each one can be appreciated, rather than the whole seen as one big obsessive mass LOL (I'm not excluding myself from this -- a bit afraid of the day my Blenko/glass collection tips this point).