Well, What Do You Know....?

Gossip.......

I Hope you will not mind me reminding you, Dear Readers, how short a time has passed since Gabrielle, Renee's former Nanny, was fired. It might seem like more time has passed, but I assure you it has been barely two weeks! Raymond had found Gabrielle a new position as Au Pair to his sister Fleur's daughter, Juliet, and she had gone to live with them in "The States". And you might recall that the other day when Daphne had insisted on mailing a letter from Renee to Gabrielle, she had commented that she thought she was acquainted with Fleur! Raymond had been very surprised to learn that, and it had bothered him ever since. He knew next to nothing about Daphne, and now that she was the "Nanny" he felt obligated to learn more about her. Perhaps, he thought, it was time to give his sister Fleur a call. He could check up on Gabrielle, make sure she was settling in well to her new job, and perhaps learn something about Daphne as well.

Perhaps Fleur would not have much to say... 

but he felt he should give it a try.

Fleur had just arrived at her favorite place to have lunch with friends.

It was an intimate little garden patio behind one of the local Hotels

 and they served delicious sandwiches and fresh salads.

Fleur was always happy to hear from her brother.... 

she answered right away...

 

"Hey, you!" she said cheerfully.

 "How is the Nanny search going...?'

Raymond was in the habit of asking Fleur's advice 

about most things having to do with raising children 

as she was experienced and he trusted her good sense. 

He had often called her with questions about Renee's care 

and kept Fleur informed about Renee's development.

"Madame has hired the new Nanny...." he replied, 

with less enthusiasm than Fleur would have expected to hear.

"What is the matter...?" asked Fleur, 

hearing the diffidence in his voice. 

"Did she not make a good choice?"

 

"I am not so sure...." he replied.

"The woman is Renee's Natural Mother...." he added.

"Madame hired her to keep an eye on her... 

she was afraid she had come to try to take Renee away."

"Heavens" exclaimed Fleur! 

"Why would she think that...." she asked?

 "Well, the Woman showed up about the same time as there was 

a man asking questions about adoptions...." replied Raymond. 

"And Monsieur seems to think Renee needs her 'Mother'.... " he added.

"So now she is the 'Nanny'..." he said wearily.

"And you are having to make sure she is not taking Renee...."

 said Fleur, knowing her brother well.

Raymond sighed. "I do not trust her at all" he said.

"And the strangest thing is, she says she is acquainted with you" he added.

"Really.... ? What is her name..." asked Fleur?

"Her name is 'Daphne'".....he replied. "'Daphne O'Malley'".

 "No!" cried Fleur.... 

"Our Daphne is Renee's Mother...?"

"How could that be...?"

"So you do know her..." asked Raymond?

"But, of course...." exclaimed Fleur! 

"She is Pollyanna's best friend... 

was her maid of honor for the wedding....." she added. 

"She's been seeing Will...." she declared. 

"But it seems she broke up with him and went back to France....." 

"Oh, My God.... she went back to FRANCE" cried Fleur!

"I never would have connected it.... 

but she does have red curly hair like Renee....!"

"Are you sure she has broken up with the man" asked Raymond?

"Yes. Will is heartbroken...." she added.

"Listen, You," she said,

  "My friend is here now... we can catch up later... Ciao!"

Fleur turned to Pollyanna. 

She had been so caught up in her conversation 

she'd given no thought to who might hear what she said...

"You heard all that ... didn't you" she said apologetically.

"I am shocked!" she added. 

"Um... I take it that your brother thinks Daphne is the Mother 

to the little girl he takes care of..." said Pollyanna uncertainly.

"Apparently she is the new "Nanny" to Renee" explained Fleur.

"She told Raymond that she knew me...!"

"There is no way it is not our Daphne" she declared!

"Gosh" said Pollyanna...

"I can't really imagine Daphne is a Mother.... 

But it does explain why she has been so... 

different... since she came home from France."

"But why did she never tell any of us..." wondered Pollyanna?

"Well..." said Fleur.... 

"I happen to know the other side of the story...

 it is really very tragic." 

She hesitated... but then continued. 

"The father died before they could marry.

And the family only wanted the child...."

"Madame can be very determined when she wants something" she added. 

"Apparently she convinced the mother to give up the child...

 and Raymond has been looking out for her ever since...!"

"I cannot believe that Daphne was... is.... the Mother!"

 Raymond sat for quite a while after his sister said good-bye.

He didn't want to believe that the Woman he had disliked for so long

 was actually a friend of his sister!

And he didn't like to acknowledge that 

he was glad to hear she had broken up with her boyfriend.

It seemed as though he had learned more than

 he wanted to about Renee's Mother!

And I hope you will understand Dear Readers,

that once again I must leave you here....

only a little wiser...

Having heard all the gossip!

Well, what do you know?

 

Spring Cleaning.....

So Little Got Done....

I am Sure you will understand, Dear Readers, that every once in a while... Especially at the beginning of Spring, the urge to Clean the House becomes too strong to resist, and overtakes all other plans and projects! So it happened this weekend in my corner of the World, that almost Nothing was accomplished in my mini projects. I say Almost, because I did do one very small thing that makes a Huge difference in the long run! Remember the Willowcrest, my Witchy house? Well, when I was last working on it, all my focus was on getting the front entry hall completed so I could Finally attach the side wall in place, and thus continue on with the construction of the shell of the house. I had painted the walls , attached the doors and window in the stairwell, added the electrical lights, even constructed the hall portieres, and I thought I was ready to glue that side wall in place. But then I had a look at the bathroom area on the second floor, above the kitchen, and realized that there was no window in that room! This lovely house is full of windows, but there is none in the bathroom, and I really don't like rooms that have no windows at all! I was going to have to cut a window in the side wall before I glued the wall in place. Of course, months have gone by and I had not decided exactly what was needed to make that window, until Saturday while I was cleaning house!

All of a sudden I knew exactly what the window 

should look like and where it should go!

So I removed the wall from the house and placed the 

blank window piece on the wall to mark where I needed to cut.

I used my exacto knife to cut 

around the window opening.

Then I put the wall back in place to see how it would look.....

That's much more like it! 

This little room really needed a window!

Here you can see the room with the ceiling also temporarily in place...

and with the door open into the front hall 

you can see the Moon Maidens windows!

So that is what I got done this weekend, Dear Readers....

that and a whole lot of cleaning!

And it seems as though Pollyanna had a similar weekend 

in the Lovely Old Dollhouse!

Believe me, after this winter, there was

 a lot of cleaning that needed to be done!

In fact, this is only the very beginning!

 

I hope you'll understand, Dear Readers,

that even with the Spring Cleaning,

So Little got done!

Curtains

This One Is For My Mom


I have a love/hate relationship with curtains. To begin with, I love to look out windows and see the view. I love to watch the sunlight move across the floor of a room as the daylight changes. I love light streaming into a room, in the daytime, and I love the way the windows become mirrors at night, reflecting back the cheerful images of the warmly lit room. I love the very architecture of the window frames and hate to cover them up with anything at all! And on the other hand, I love the fabrics and laces that are used for curtains. I love the elegant drapes and swags and tassels that go with the truly well dressed window. I love the gauzy billowing mystery that is a lace covered window, coyly revealing only a hint of the view!

Perhaps I could blame it on my mother. When I was growing up we had minimally dressed windows, even though we lived in suburbia and had neighbors who could see into our windows. My mother has never been overly concerned with the "look" of her rooms and windows. Comfort and functionality were the important things. She was into the casual, even bohemian way of living, and curtains were so, well.... like her PARENTS' home! Besides, fancy curtains were expensive! I remember my grandparents GIVING my Mother the curtains for our house because they thought the naked windows were just not okay! So we had curtains, nice simple cotton ones for the most part, but we almost never closed them. The sunlight and the street lights and the moonlight were all free to come in at any time!

My Mother was more inclined to make use of curtains in imaginative ways than conventional ones. I remember one Halloween when I was six and my sister was five, Mom sewed us matching Princess costumes. She made our dresses from beautiful old marroon brocade curtains that she found in the attic. They were much too Victorian for her to EVER use them on her windows, so she blythely cut them up and made them into our princess gowns with lace doilies for collars! We never had such beautiful costumes before or since! I am afraid it set a dangerous precedent, and many times in my teen years I happily cut up old brocade curtains to make my clothes.

And when it came time for me to have my own home, I wrestled with the curtain issue constantly. The practical need for something to cover the window and block the extremes of light and dark, battled with the desire for the open unobstructed view. I usually ended up with a compromise.... minimal coverings in the city apartments as modesty required, and mostly naked windows when living in the rural countryside.

So, you can see that when it comes to deciding on curtains for my Lovely Old Dollhouse, I have had to wrestle with this very old dilemma. Because, even in the dollhouse, I love the way the sunlight pours into a room through an unclothed window! And having worked so hard at MAKING all those window frames, I hardly want to cover them up at all!

Below, you can see the way the front hall looks with the sunlight pouring in.

I am NOT going to put curtains on these windows!

But, recognizing that I would need to have curtains on SOME of the windows, I decided to put in the curtain rods for all the windows, and decide on the curtains later. I used small eye screws and cut "rods" from old metal coat hangers. Here you can see the bathroom window with a rod at middle height in case I decide on cafe curtains here, as well as one at the top.

And I gave the window at the top af the stairs the same double rod treatment in case I decided they needed to be matching windows......... there is something about the stark, bare window that I find very beautiful.

As for the kitchen window, I was going for a striped effect, probably because I remember the curtains in our kitchen when I was growing up were a beautiful yellow, gold, brown and white striped fabric. I could not find anything to match that, but found some woven linen cocktail napkins that make lovely curtains! I hardly had to cut them up at all! And while they mute the sunlight more than I would like, I am going to keep them for now.

The curtains for the Chinoiserie Bedroom were the simplest of all! I had been saving these two small panels of lace for longer than I can remember! The first time I saw them, I said THOSE are going to be curtains in my Dollhouse! I didn't even have to cut them AT ALL! they were EXACTLY the right size for this window! I just LOVE the way the sunlight comes through them!

Here below is a close-up that shows the lovely pattern of the lace. I tell myself that it is perhaps a Tree of Life lace pattern! Perfect for the Tree of Life painted bedroom! I am VERY happy with the way it turned out!

But when it comes to curtains for the Parlor, I am not so sure. This is partly because I actually made a set of lovely green velvet curtains trimmed in gold satin and underlaid with lace gauze curtains when I was working on the dollhouse in my teen years. And I packed them up and have carefully kept them all these years! Here below you can see them, only slightly worse for wear. I think at the time I had in mind the beautiful green velvet curtains made so famous by Scarlett O'Hara.... the same ones she cut up and made into a dress! These looked really elegant against the cream walls of the Parlor back then.

But when I put them into the newly painted GREEN parlor, they didn't look nearly so nice! And they were too short! Hmmmmm.........

Helen isn't sure they will do at all... they are MUCH too faded for her liking!

Oh, did I forget to introduce you to Helen?

It seems that Helen's Great-Uncle passed away recently and left her the old family house. He was one hundred and three years old and never married. He traveled a lot in his younger years, but was pretty much a hermit for the last twenty years or so. NOTHING has been done with the place since HIS mother decorated it AGES ago........

Helen has NO idea what to do with the old place!

She brought her grandaughter Pollyanna to look at it with her. Pollyanna is studying Design and might be able to DO something with the old place! Helen's husband Charles is all in favor of letting Pollyanna take charge. Pollyanna LOVES the idea!

So does her boyfriend, Arthur. He's looking over the fixtures to see how much of a challenge they will be!

The kitchen is a bit primitive..... but Pollyanna is really excited by the old fashioned feeling to the place..... it is SO unspoiled!

Arthur agrees that it could be a great project for her to "practice" on!

But Helen is not sure.... Is it too much of a responsibility?


Charles says everyone needs to make a start somewhere!

And besides, they can't take it on themselves, they live too far away.... they wouldn't want to have to keep coming here just to check on the contractors all the time!

Pollyanna is looking the place over top to bottom.......

Oh MY! LOOK what she found in the attic! That must have belonged to her Great-Great-Great-Grandmother! And it fits her so well!

It's a SIGN! says Helen. This place was just WAITING for you!

(And isn't the dress just Stunning? Sewn by me in my teens and kept all these years.... she'll have to wear it to a costume ball.... !)












I think you're right Charles! We will let her have it!

But I do think SOMETHING is going to have to be done about these curtains. They just look terrible in here!

As I was searching through all my boxes and drawers full of fabric, looking for the perfect cloth to use to make new curtains for the Parlor, I came across a lovely silk scarf given to me by my Mother. She had been shopping at a local thrift store and saw the scarf and thought I could use it. Now, sometimes one receives gifts from loved ones and at the time of the gift, the reason for it seems less than clear, but one gladly takes the gift because it comes from a loved one. When my Mother gave me the scarf, I was in the process of packing up my house where I had lived for twenty years, accumulating waaaayyy too much stuff! I was holding yard sales, carting things to the dump and GIVING away tons of stuff. I had bureaus and bins and boxes full of cloth scraps, (and still do:)) what could I possibly need MORE cloth for? But she was right. It was very pretty with the irridescent silk and gold thread embroidery. So I added it to my boxes and forgot about it. Until I was searching for the perfect cloth for the new curtains.



Here below, you can see this scarf, in all its wrinkled glory, laid against the floor of the parlor. The irridescent redish brown and green is really very striking!

And when I bunched it all up as if it were cut into curtains and tried it for size on the window of the Parlor, I thought the colors tied together beautifully with the green and the red in this room!

Perhaps I HAVE found the perfect cloth for the new curtains!

My only question is how DID my Mother know?











But I AM going to have to do something about that bunched up effect! I don't care for that look at all! Sigh. I think I am going to have to cut up some CLOTHING to make some CURTAINS!

So thank you Mom! Thank you for knowing the cloth I would need before I did. Thank you for teaching me to sew and to fearlessly cut up curtains if they were the material at hand. And thank you for letting the light stream into all our windows! I love you!

P.S. All characters are fictional... and any resemblance to known characters is only SLIGHTLY accidental!

Curtains