Webster Holiday House Tour

Christmas Stocking

My friend and I went on the Webster Holiday House Tour today. It is the major fundraiser of the middle school here and is always a wonderful event. I actually co-chaired the tour the two years that Katie was at the school. What a huge job! I have a lot of respect for the (mostly) ladies who organize house tours. There are always at least six houses on the tour, and they have a boutique with refreshments at a different location during the tour hours. At each of the houses 7th and 8th grade students play musical instruments.

The weather, of course, was perfect today. I was expecting it to be way more crowded than it actually ended up to be. We were able to walk to a number of the houses, and it was great to be in a short sleeved shirt. Two of the houses even had their air conditioners on! Who could have imagined 70+ degree weather in December! We toured four houses before heading to Eden Seminary for some cookies and punch. Our timing was great and we got to hear the male and female a capella groups from the high school perform. That is always entertaining. Then we hit the last two houses and headed home.

Seeing all the pretty decorations made me feel like I am way behind schedule. I need to start dragging my Christmas stuff out of the basement and get cracking. Ho, ho, ho...

Tour de Webster

The Webster Groves House & Garden Tour to benefit the people of Haiti was on Sunday. When my friend Carol, who was the mastermind of the event, asked us to have our house on the tour a year and a half ago, it seemed like a good idea. As the date grew closer, we grew more




frantic. With me in New York for a week, followed days later by my brother and his girls staying with us for 8 days, we only had 5 free days before the event. I cleaned the inside of the house during the week, but we left the outside stuff for Saturday morning. Jim applied new mulch and tidied up the gardens while I washed windows, removed cobwebs and cleaned up the outdoor furniture. Then we headed out to pick up a couple of small indoor plants and the dining room table decorations, and returned to a monsoon! There went the mulch all over the sidewalks, and the windows and furniture looked like I had never touched them. Crap!

But we pulled it all together Sunday morning, cookies began arriving, and Carol came early with 2 girl scouts to help set up the lemonade, water and cookies we would be serving. I have to say I was very impressed with the woman who brought 4 trays of cookies, filled with homemade houses and flowers to tie in with the house/garden theme. (I need that house cookie cutter for my book signings!) Carol also set out some nuts and mints. Jim and I set up the 5 display boards we had created. We had placed photographs of the original owners along with pictures of the house through the years as changes we made to it.

A few minutes before 1:00 the first tour-goers arrived and it was steady until the end at 5:00. The people on the tour were super-friendly and very appreciative that we had opened up our house. They seemed to particularly enjoy looking at the photo boards. And I have to admit that after all the work we have done on the house over the past 23 years it was gratifying to hear all the compliments. We saw friends that we hadn't touched base with for awhile, and fellow author Anne Collins Milford of "How Not to Marry the Wrong Guy" acclaim showed up with her friends. I had set my books up for sale, with 20% going to the Haiti fund, and one woman said she came on the tour specifically to get my book :) I ended up selling 4, with a couple people saying they would come back to get a book as they were not carrying cash. (A woman called today and she is coming Thursday morning to buy one.)

In the end about 350 people purchased tickets for the tour, and they made (after expenses) over $5,500. Not bad for a first time effort! Jim and I really enjoyed talking to all the people, so we're glad we did it. We just don't ever want to do it again! For a thank you gift from the committee, we were presented with a basket hand woven by a Haitian artist containing coffee from Haiti, and a statue of a woman holding a baby while balancing a basket on her head (multi-tasking Haitian woman!) which was sculpted from soap stone also by a Haitian artist. What a way to bring the whole project full circle!

Review of Chef Jake

Man, did Jake make an outstanding entree for Katie's birthday last night! I don't know what it is called, but since I bought the ingredients I know it contained penne pasta, prosciutto ham, Romano cheese, egg yolks, creme, onion and garlic. He served it with french bread and a Caesar salad, and I had purchased the large chocolate chip cookie Katie requested as her cake. The pasta was amazing! Definitely restaurant quality, but after watching him make it I decided no matter how good it tastes, I would probably never try it. It was a lot of work. There were seven kids here for dinner, and then a couple more came later after they got off work. I have to admit, it was fun having all the kids in the house again. (I just wish it hadn't been when I had cleaned the house in preparation for the house tour!) It is so quiet when Katie is off at school.

I don't think I mentioned that Katie has picked up an internship for the summer. She is working for a social media marketing company, and she goes to Clayton Monday thru Thursday from 9-5. She has only worked two days so far, but I think it is right up her alley. Several of her classes Freshman year dealt with social media and search engine optimization, so she definitely can put her knowledge to good use. She has two of her four summer classes completed already, so I don't think she'll have a problem keeping up with her classes and working that many hours. I'm very excited for her, and hoping that she can use some of her new skills on my website.

Jim and I sweated off a few pounds today getting ready for the house tour. Jim planted a few day lilies and put down some fresh leaf mulch, and I cleaned windows, swept cobwebs from the porches and washed off the patio furniture. In the afternoon we headed out to find something to put on the plates in the dining room, picked up a plant for a bare spot in the conservatory, and an additional plant to go on the table where tickets will be collected on the front porch. And then the storms came! The rain washed away most of the mulching Jim had done, and made a mess out of my newly cleaned windows and doors. Dammit! It's bad enough doing it once, without having to deal with it all again tomorrow morning. I'm afraid to look at the forecast since they were predicting rain all weekend. Hopefully the rain will hold off for the four hours of the tour. I told Jim once this event is over we need to have a series of parties here since everything will be looking so nice.

Going to a Garden Party...

...hope everyone will be there... Sunday is the Holy Redeemer House and Garden Tour raising money to support the medical and educational needs of our sister parish in Haiti. When my friend Carol planned this a year and a half ago, there was no major disaster in Haiti. Just the struggle to survive that Haitians face every day. With the earthquake that struck early in 2010, a lot of attention has been focused on this poor country, and the thinking is that more people will attend the tour due to the fact that proceeds are going to Haiti.

Jim and I committed early on to have our house on the tour, as long as it was understood that we would only open up the first floor of the house. Our upstairs is nothing to show off, plus I worry about people going up and down the steps. (You can take the girl out of the insurance industry but you can't take the fear of lawsuits out of the girl.) Since we put on a major addition two years ago and have begun to build some beautiful planting beds, I think we have enough to offer the tour-goers. Carol, being the over-achiever that she is, has six homes and gardens on the tour PLUS an additional five gardens. It will be a challenge for people to get to all the locations in a four hour time period.

Our garden closest to the street is still in recovery mode from having the street department tear it up while repairing the storm water lines. On Tuesday we had a bunch of shrubs delivered, and on Wednesday Jose and his crew came and installed all of them. I've been watering, and hopefully the plants will perk up a little more before Sunday. And don't even get me started on the damage the rabbits have caused.

I have a bit of cleaning left to do inside, but we will really have to focus on the outside tomorrow. Cobwebs need to be swept down and windows need to be cleaned. I also need to purchase the fresh flowers I want inside the house, and I am looking for a little something to put on each plate in the dining room. I am thinking about small ceramic pots with a marigold in each? Or maybe a flower shaped decorative candle? I have some cute clear glass dishes with matching cups that my mother-in-law gave me, which I will put at each place. That way I don't need to put out silverware and worry about it walking off. I'll come up with something.

In the meantime, I sent a bunch of photographs over to Jim's office, and he is placing them on two or three display boards. We will set them on easels out on the deck by the drinks and cookies, so people can study them as they eat. I am including the history of the Alexander Russell subdivision as well as the history of Lot 16, where our house is located. In addition there are photos of the original owners, and pictures of changes made to the house over the last 108 years. I will be selling copies of my book (hopefully!), with a 20% donation to the Haiti fund. Katie's friend Mary will be playing the keyboard and singing on the deck as well, so the ambiance should be good. Now - no rain!!!

Today is Katie's 19th birthday, and she is having a small group of friends here for dinner. Jake (a high school and college classmate) is cooking, so I picked up all the ingredients he needed this morning. He is so funny - he sent Katie a list of menus to choose from. She selected a pasta dish, and it sounds yummy. I'm hoping there will be enough for Jim and me to enjoy as well. Bon appetite!

You Know What They Say About Company!

Old expressions usually have a kernel of truth to them. "Fish and company stink after 3 days" is one that is oft repeated. My brother arrived last Monday with his two girls ages 14 and 11. I haven't seen so much drama since I was involved in the theater department in high school! If the older one is listed as being in a relationship on Facebook, life is good. If she states that she is single, the whole household suffers. Her relationship status changed so many times in the past 7 days that I lost track of the count. Right now she is single, so it kinda sucks to be around her. I am so glad my kids didn't get into this kind of stuff in junior or senior high. I never realized how nice we had it in our house.

I tried to keep them busy during the week, and I had my niece's 14 year old over several days and a couple of nights as well. I am exhausted! Between trying to figure out what to feed everyone and coping with a family that doesn't ever go to bed before 1:00 a.m., it was quite the challenge for me. My niece came over this afternoon with her two girls, and she took everyone to the airport at 4:00. I found myself repeating the words of Martin Luther King, "Free at last, free at last...!" Now to clean and do all the sheets and towels - yippee...

I was already a week behind on my ORMI work due to being in New York, and with the guests here I am up to two weeks. I was trying to do a little each morning before the kids got up, but Thursday my computer decided it was not going to connect with the network at ORMI. I called the computer guy on Friday and he was booked until Monday. That meant no catching up over the weekend. Then this morning the internet was down. I spent an hour on the phone with AT&T tech support before fixing that issue. Part of that time was on hold waiting for my Indian techie. I love how they tell you that they are experiencing unusually high call volume today, so if I don't want to wait I can access help at att.com. Helloooooooo....if I had access to the internet I wouldn't need to be calling you, would I???

Two weeks of backed up work and four days until we are on the house/garden tour. Anyone have some Prozac they'd like to share?

Tour de Webster

My friend Carol and I went on the Webster Holiday House Tour yesterday. This is an annual event which is the biggest fundraiser of Hixson Middle School. As co-chair of this intense event for two years when Katie was at the school, I understand how much work and effort goes in to making sure that the event is safe and enjoyable for the attendees, appreciative of the home-owners and hopefully a money record-breaker. We were asked to be on the tour this year, especially with our new addition to show off. Because the tour date was the weekend after Thanksgiving, I just didn't think I could get all the decorating done in time. At the time of the request, I didn't realize the SWT party was coming to our house that same weekend. So I had to have it all decorated by the 6th anyway. As it turns out, we have more decorations up than most of the houses on the tour this year. Most years you have someone on the tour that is over the top, decorations-wise. Not this year. I have always contended that people go on the tour more to see the houses than the decorations anyway. And did the committee chair Nancy have some great houses - wow! It kind of makes it hard to come home to your 1950's era bathroom after you have been in a master bathroom large enough to throw a party in. A unique thing about this tour each year is the fact that every house has some 7th and 8th graders playing music during the tour. There is also a hospitality area where you can stop in to a boutique for shopping, and enjoy free refreshments while listening to various musical groups. While yesterday was cold, the sun was out and if I'm right, a new record has been set with ticket sales. Way to go Nancy!