ALOHA DARREN MATHEWS

Here is wonderful Darren Mathews. Darren has been a very faithful worker and chinked this WHOLE HOUSE....and outside and inside painted.....a marvelous painter. Then he got "roped" into getting on his knees and doing this lovely floor you see under his feet. He and Sterling Peterson did the floor. I think I put up some pictures of us doing floors. I was the "chop saw queen" for Darren. He'd mark it and I'd go cut it.....Sterling had the chop saw set at a certain angle and that worked for this floor. Then just before Darren left, he put on 3 coats of floor varathane. He had done the cherry wood floors with what we had and it's more dull finish. I have grown to love the shinny floor. wayyyyyyyy easy to clean. Darren named this post right behind him........"Jessica". The darker post behind him Dave named on the day we brought him in.....It was snowing and the river was frozen and so his name is "Man from Snowy River". I'm so very grateful to Darren for his working in a cheery way. He most often had Country Music on. Darren is now working in Idaho and uppper Utah painting big cabins and chinking them. We all miss Darren around with his happy personality. He left at the end of March.

finishing up projects.

Tomasi up at the landing of the stairs, Before Dave put the last logs up.
Dave is awesome in his LOG ART WORK....the steps and landing are solid red cedar wood. Local logs that he had milled for this project.
this shows the finished project of these stairs. We may have a railing later on. but now it's safe to go up and down and that is very good.
Here is Vicki putting FOSSEL CRETE in the shower. this is great stuff. then she put some wild colors on it and the blended it in making it look like a ROCK SHOWER. yep, Tomasi loves the rock shower. He's been bathing in my bathtub and that "okay" but ahhhhhhh, hot water on the back...and nope, no water gets on the cherry wood floors. A wonderful shower. Thank you Vicki. She now has another big full time job and travels all over Illinois....as the company gave her a lap top and car and all that jazz. She's also got a house on Auction and has been making it into a SUPER DARLING house and painting it yellow and Sterling Peterson is working for her now. I'll post more pictures of her doings later when I take 'em.
This is Reed Gifford and his wife. He and I just finished doing all the woodwork on this desk for Tomasi and I. My desk is in front of this stained glass window. I'm very grateful to Reed as he's paticular with his work. He'll be doing more this coming week when I get the boards for putting up my kitchen shelves. I've since stained this wood and we've got our computers up and running....yeahsville.

first meal..........etc.

Tomasi had brought up some of my Aunt Myrtle's other precious dishes. and I thought I'd show this also to you all. I used to eat on these dishes as a little girl too. My fav. is the Apple wear dishes, but I'm not unpacking these until I have my shelves built in the kitchen. yep, gonna show them off in my yellow, cheery kitchen.
This is just one of the many glorious sunsets that we see out our windows. We've not put a shelf on the window sills yet. next week.
This is a laugh. Tomasi and I were cleaning upstairs so we could paint and put stuffs up there and here was this spool table that Dave and others used to do construction work all during building this house. This $1.00 spool table has been a great help all along. I laughed that Tomasi would lower it by these makeshift rope. Okay, soooooo this is how our place looked when a girlfriend said she was "bringing a few friends from Quincy, Illinois to see our house". I looked out the windows and see this Medium size yellow bus that read, "Quincy Baptist Church". Oh wow....soooooooooo as these darling older folks used their walkers and each other to get up our little hill, Tomasi and I put our benches and few chairs and one love seat around and it was a blast to be with these folks. They toured our place and asked questions about all sorts of things....and we sang their age of songs....the best. They sang along with us and we had a wonderful time. Okay, so one lady said that she was friends with the man that works for PUBLIC T.V. and his program is "ILLINOIS STORIES". She said, "Can I tell him about your house and your stories and could he come out here and interview you?" I said "sure"...not thinking it would happen. WELL IT DID happen last Thursday and they also interviewed Dave Hardle and all his maravelous cabins. What fun that was and I'll let you know when it airs and after that I think??? you can see it on public T.V. on line? I'll see if any of you ask about this and if your reading and looking at this blog. ha.

Charles Woodworth comes to visit

I wrote about this on my email where Charles Woodworth came to our house. He was the one who Baptized Tomasi in Tonga when Tomasi was 19 years old. He came to our house 50 years and one day after Tomasi was baptized. This was a precious day.........an appointment with destiny.
Sister Marsha Woodworth was so cute with Tomasi, putting her arm around him as if he was a son. Tomasi went there many times when Tomasi was a student at Liahona High school then.

Here is Nancy Campbell that is my friend that brought up the Woodworths.

here is Tomasi painting the floor green. We were going to carpet the whole floor upstairs, but as you know, ran out of money. I like the green. It was dull, so I painted another coat of floor shinny varnish on it.....that was really fun. You can see Aunt Myrtle's rugs up on the portable book case...It's all down now and we have the queen bed up there all ready for our guests when they come and kids will bring their sleeping bags and take 'em when they go with their parents. Tomasi is going to varnish all the Aspen logs that Dave did and it will bring out the color and match the other woods in the house. I love Dave's log work.

glass balls and memories

20 years ago I started making tables. After I felt comfy with making harps, I felt I could make a dinning table for our house up in the mountains of Hawaii. Did it. and have been making tables ever since. This is one of the tables that I made when we first came to Nauvoo in 2006 in the summer. I left the last one at the house we lived in on Mulholland Street. Here are the glass balls that Tomasi brought home and it filled my heart with memories. the small ones we found when we were dateing in Laie, Oahu, Hawaii.....in 1964. We married in the Hawaii Temple 30 July 1964. The big one I got when we lived in Tonga and I bought it at the open marketplace in Nukualofa. I loved Stain glass anything. Here is one of two lamps that I found 1/2 price at Menards last summer. I'm going to put this one up high so we can see over a larger area on the dinning table. I'm going to (easy cheesy) take the shade off of the floor lamp and put it on a swag lamp and hide the cord going to it behind the barnwood. Oh, I sooooooooo love looking out these windows. what a marvelous view. Ever changing drama outside.

Lois Crouse farewell party 14 May 2010

This is wonderful Lois Crouse. She has lived in Nauvoo for maybe 30 years and her husband build a DOME home. wayyyyyyyyy cool, but he is gone now and she will be moving to be near her son. We had this party for her and she is known in our Nauvoo Women's Guild as "The Dancing Queen". also Queenie. We just love her. We had a little party for her and pictures taken. Yep, this was the first REAL PARTY but SURELY NOT THE LAST...at our home. She is sitting on the rocker that I rocked all my children on.
We had fun taking these pictures.....
Facing us all laughing as our friend put on gloves on Lois. but you can't see the glorious view out the windows.
We will all miss you Lois.