Friday July 24, 2015

Today Andrew and I went to see the movie, “Mr. Holmes” at one of our local cinemas (the one with recliners where you have to reserve ahead). We made a last minute reservation and were in the second row, and our seats didn’t recline (broken?), but in spite of that we still enjoyed the movie. It’s a bit odd because it’s a story about a fictitious character (Sherlock Holmes) who is writing a story himself, even though he, himself has been somewhat fictionalized by Mr. Watson in his books about the infamous Sherlock Holmes. It’s kind of a story within a story and none of it is real, which kind of does your head in, at least in Andrew’s opinion.

Sir Ian McKellan is excellent as the elderly Mr. Holmes and Laura Linney, as always, is fantastic as his housekeeper, Mrs. Munro. Milo Parker, as Mrs. Munro’s son and Mr. Holmes’ young protégé is fantastic as well and I predict we’ll be seeing a lot more of him as he grows up.

If for no other reason, I recommend the movie because it offers a glimpse of the very beautiful Kent/East Sussex countryside where the movie was filmed, and the white cliffs of Dover make an appearance several times.

Although it does look like the movie could end tragically, without wishing to give anything away, it does end happily for all concerned.

Saturday July 25, 2015

Today I went to a couple garage sales this morning. Amongst other things I acquired a new round card table. To call it new is an exaggeration. It’s only new to me, but is definitely quite vintage. Not sure they even make them round anymore. We were in the market for a new card table anyway since our other one has seen better days after having been used (and abused!) for many family gatherings with children. I also bought a set of wall sconces that I’m not quite sure where we will hang them. Andrew groaned imagining the difficulty of what I naively thought would be an easy job to install. At any rate, they have been set aside for the moment as other projects take priority.

Speaking of projects, I managed to finally finish a couple that I had started earlier and not gotten around to finishing. One was the drawer of an antique trunk I bought at a neighbor’s moving sale last summer. It smelled of mothballs, so I doused it with baking powder and let it sit for about a year. It no longer smells, so over the Fourth of July I glued antique-looking wrapping paper all over it. However, since I used so much rubber cement, parts of it are still sticky, so I decided to cover those parts with clear drawer lining paper, which seems to have done the trick. Either way, it will sit in a trunk, so it’s good enough.

The other project involved sewing under the rough edges of a piece of brown chenille(?) material I bought last fall at Garden Ridge. Though I’m not in need of any more blankets, I thought it would be a good test of my sewing skills to try and sew seams around all four sides of the blanket. It took almost the entire weekend (two afternoons anyway) to do it, but I am satisfied that fraying shouldn’t occur. I may or may not sew anything else (like scraps of old t-shirts) on top of it later, but for now, it will get stored with my other blankets.

Sunday July 26, 2015

Today we went to the Kraft House No.5 in Powell for brunch. Andrew saw that they did a Sunday morning “waffle flight.” I was curious, so that’s what I ordered. When delivered it was tasty, and filling enough I suppose, but I definitely could have eaten more. One triangle of the waffle was served with a strawberry cut up on top and plain syrup. The other three quarters were:  A) Bacon & Banana with Rosemary Maple Syrup (the bacon kind of took over; couldn’t really distinguish the other flavors; B) Dried Cherries, Bourbon Cherry Maple Syrup – not sure I could really distinguish the different flavors here either, though it wasn’t bad; C) Fresh Blueberries, Spiced Vodka Maple Syrup. Yes, you could definitely tell it was spiced vodka maple syrup. I would definitely order this one again, and perhaps the one with dried cherries.

We lucked out that it just happened to be the weekend for the quarterly street fair. Since we arrived downtown quite early (around 9:45am), we found parking in the nearby municipal parking lot. As I was still quite sleepy (perhaps from donating like a pint of blood to the mosquitoes the night before), and only had $5 in my wallet, I was a little bummed and not really in the mood to spend much money (as I am still decluttering at home). Andrew seemed up for maybe coming back in September, when I will definitely remember to bring more cash. We did, however, sample a tiny spoonful of a couple very delicious cakes. We noticed a lot of jam for sale, but as we probably have half a dozen jars in our pantry, we’re set for awhile. Besides food and arts and crafts, the rest was antiques and brick-a-brack. It’s definitely a bigger deal than Hilliard’s little street art festival that we have in September. Downtown Powell, though not huge, definitely has its charms and is much more interesting than Hilliard. Definitely worth checking out further…

Have a good week everyone!

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