Booksigning at Best Friends in Kanab, Utah for Pawprints of Katrina

Well, we (Bob, our dog, Frankie and I) went to Utah for my sister, Cathy's booksigning. What a whirlwind weekend! There was something planned from the time we got there to the time we left. We arrived Friday and went to Zion National Park with my brother and his wife who had come from Idaho. It's always fun going places like that with Mike because he's an ornithologist and works for U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife, he points so many things out to us about birds, plants, animals, it's educational. Zion was beautiful but pretty warm. That evening we went to dinner in Kanab at the nicest restaurant in town. Mind you, this is a really small town but Rocking V Cafe was great, really nice people who own it. First thing Saturday morning we all went to Best Friends Sanctuary which is breathtakingly beautiful, and had a 3 hour VIP tour with one of the original founders of the sanctuary, Faith Maloney. What a place! It sits on over 30,000 acres and the way the Best Friends' animals live is like nothing you've ever seen. It's all about the quality of life for these animals who have been abandoned, tossed aside, abused, whatever, there are countless stories of how and why they came to be at Best Friends. After the tour we had a special lunch, all vegetarian, in their green cafeteria. Ali MacGraw and her son, Josh Evans and daughter-in=law Charis were there, Cathy's editor, Pam, from Wiley Publishers in Chicago Cathy's agent, Susan from New York, and many friends, rescuers and volunteers who all had started arriving Friday. The lunch was great and Pam from Wiley presented Best Friends with a $5,000 donation check and designated it to be spent on the pot-bellied pigs' facility. After lunch there was the booksigning. My gosh, they sold a couple hundred books and many people brought their own books which they had purchased before coming so they could read it before the booksigning. While I was there the line was over 2 hours long! The line-up at the booksigning table was my sister Cathy, the author,Cliff Deutsch, the rescuer who is on the cover of the book, Clay Myers the photographer of the photos in the book and on the cover, and Ali MacGraw who wrote the forward and is an animal lover and activist. So the four of them were at that signing table from 2:00 pm 'til 5:00 pm without a break. The positive energy was amazing. Then there was a dinner on a grassy area overlooking Angel Canyon which is breathtakingly spectacular. There were those who came with pets who had been rescued from Katrina, Marina, Lois Lane, Mia, Ginger. They came from all over the country. They came because they have this bond with eachother after working together for weeks and months rescuing the animals from evacuated homes and abandoned streets, treating them and caring for them every day. Working day and night, endlessly, sleeping in tents.

It was a magical day and I'm so glad Cathy was able to tell the wonderful stories and document their accomplishments and the lessons learned in New Orleans after the storms.

I have my autographed copy of the book and I am almost finished reading it. I read it aloud to Bob while we were on the road home. It's touching, inspiring, happy, sad - all of that. And now it's back to reality and work.
I think it's the first time ever I've been on a trip and not done any antiquing along the way. Well, we did stop in one shop that was closing right when we came up but she let us come in anyway and have a quick look around. We ended the weekend with a hike in Angel Canyon on Sunday morning. It's so beautiful and serene, we thoroughly enjoyed it and needed the exercise before we got on the road again.
Just a footnote, I loved meeting Ali MacGraw who is so beautiful just as she has always been through the decades and is a very gracious, down-to-earth human being.
It was a pleasure. A side note, our dog, Frankie, is a Best Friends' dog. He was rescued by the great folks at Best Friends about five years ago from a breeder/hoarder in Los Angeles. We love to travel with him and stay in hotels and inns that allow dogs as guests.




Angel Canyon




Tylertown, Mississippi

My sister's book Pawprints of Katrina

I'm very excited about my identical twin sister's just-launched book: Pawprints of Katrina I'm going to her booksigning at BestFriends Sanctuary in Kanab, Utah this coming Saturday, July 26th. I have not read the book yet, just the inside flaps and lots of reviews. I wasn't going to buy the book until I go to the booksigning so I could have it autographed by Cathy and Ali MacGraw, who wrote the forward and will also be at the signing Saturday. I need to be up to snuff, so to speak, so I now want to read the book on the way to Kanab so that's what I'm going to do. I will be going to Barnes & Noble tomorrow to pickup my copy.

Immediately after the flooding in New Orleans, Cathy was hired by Best Friends to document their animal rescue efforts. She dropped everything, including her classes she was teaching at UNLV, to go. As is with disasters, human kind rises to the occasion and not in a small way. Cathy's experiences in and around New Orleans were life changing and she was compelled to write about what she learned and saw. It had to be shared. So here it is. I'm proud of her so I will join her Saturday with my husband Bob, my brother, Mike Scott and his wife Sharon from Idaho. I only wish our Mom and Dad were here, too, they would be so proud but I have a feeling they'll be surrounding us wth their love. It will be a pleasure to be at Best Friends and be in the company of people who cared enough to put their lives on hold, stay in tents for weeks with little if any sleep, put themselves in harm's way in order to help where they could, touching lives and saving helpless, beloved pets who were left behind.

Here is the official information on the book launch:

A book launch event will be held on Saturday, July 26, marking the national release of author Cathy Scott's book, PAWPRINTS OF KATRINA: Pets Saved and Lessons Learned (to be released this summer by John Wiley & Sons).

The event will be held from 1:45 p.m. - 5 p.m. at Best Friends Animal Sanctuary's Welcome Center (5001 Angel Canyon Road, Kanab, Utah 84741, a 3-1/2-hour drive from Las Vegas). Refreshments will be served.

Attending and signing books will be actress and animal activist Ali MacGraw, who wrote the book's foreword, and photographer Clay Myers, who has more than 70 compelling photos in the book. Also signing will be police K-9 handler Cliff Deutsch, who is featured on the cover rescuing a dog.

On display at the Welcome Center patio deck during the event will be Ark, a full-sized replica of a flat-bottomed boat used to save animals from floodwaters. It was created by Cyrus Mejia, in-house artist and a co-founder of Best Friends . The 4-by-10-foot boat is covered in a unique collage of animal admissions forms (with rescued pets' pictures), photos from volunteers, satellite images of Katrina, maps of New Orleans and strips from pet product bags used during the rescue effort.

Volunteers from Katrina will be at the event, and many Best Friends staffers who worked in the region will be attending too, so it will very much be a reunion. While book signings are scheduled for other parts of the country (including New Orleans on the third anniversary of Katrina), this is the kick-off event and a great opportunity to visit the sanctuary.

To find out where to stay in Kanab, go to: http://www.bestfriends.org/atthesanctuary/angelcanyon/visitorfaq.cfm.

A new Holiday Inn Express has opened in Kanab (435-644-3100), so if the sanctuary cabins and cottages or other hotels are full, the new one will probably have openings. Summer is a busy time in the area, because of nearby Zion, Bryce and the Grand Canyon, and booking early is highly recommended.

If you'd like to take a free tour of the sanctuary, which sits on 33,000 acres in Angel Canyon with about 1,800 animals on any given day, you'll need to book a reservation by calling 435-644-2001, ext. 4537. Or, for more info, go to: http://www.bestfriends.org/atthesanctuary/angelcanyon/visitorfaq.cfm

Depression Glass Knobs & Drawer Pulls

Cabinet hardware is an important detail to complete the beauty of a piece of furniture and in turn, the beauty of your home. It's the details that make the difference in decorating.

We have a nice collection of the real thing to offer in depression glass drawer pulls and knobs. From the hard-to-find milk glass, ice blue, opaque green, dark green, and black to various sizes and shapes of clear glass. We also have the reproduction, made from original molds and with the same materials they made the old ones. Some people prefer to have the authentic antique knobs.

Our home is 1930s and I'm very lucky to have the original black glass knobs and pulls on our hallway and living room cabinets, one of our bathrooms and also all of the door knobs are intact. Replacing them when restoring an older home can get costly, not to mention challenging and time consuming.


This one below is a beautiful example of sandwich glass knobs. We have several in our store that I was lucky enough to find this week.

New Items in our store

It's always exciting changing the store around when we get new merchandise, gives us an excuse to re-decorate. Here's a sampling of what we have in our shop right now. A lot of furniture has sold and we're always replacing with things we've hunted down. We're quite proud of this beautiful Louis XV Walnut armoire with it's handsome details.

Here are some 1920s French postcards, a sampling of what we have - they're great for displaying on a dresser or vanity, and are wonderful framed as a miniature piece of art.





Matching the armoire is a gorgeous Louis XV French walnut bed with carved roses and garland.




This dresser has the most beautiful handpainted floral design on the front in the middle of the drawers. I love pieces like this, they're so cottage-y and perfect for our store.
This rare, Early Colonial corner cupboard is a gem. It has a beautiful patina and dates to the early part of the 17th Century.

I have a thing for these early metal medical and dental cabinets. They are so appealing and make wonderful display cabinets. Someone took the time to gild this one with 24kt goldleaf. It's exquisite and perfect for our Parisian and Victorian ladies' accessories.



These ducks are made from bamboo and the curve of the bodies bollow the natural curve of the bamboo, then the legs and head are made from resalvaged teak. They're made to be outdoors. I just can't resist them. Each one has a wood nametag hanging around their neck.

Fourth of July

The Fourth of July is just around the corner and we couldn't wait to put our red white and blue touch in our windows. We gathered a few things together and voila! It's an Americana window. I love the red potting bench on the left and the American flag on the wall.
In this window we gatherd some blue & white Staffordshire and Flow Blue china, an American flag and a few other accessories and that's all we needed.

We put this tea-died American flag bunting on our front door and it's just what we needed to finish off our 4th of July decorating.
Here's a vintage metal garden chair just waiting to be put out on the lawn for the summer. I have a thing for these old lawnchairs, they're so appealing, rust and all. They're reminiscent of another era, a time gone by. My grandparents would have sat in chairs like these. About 10 years ago my great aunt, born in the early 1900s, asked me to sell her patio set, and it was the deco metal lawnchairs like the one I have here. Hers was in mint condition and had a matching table. I regret selling it and wish I would have bought it for myself. Hindsight . . .

Better Homes & Gardens

Our home was on a home & garden tour a couple of years ago and a magazine scout was through. She contacted us about being in one of their magazines, including Better Homes & Gardens. We had just finished our kitchen remodel. The article is featured in the Special Interests Publications by BHG, Kitchen Makeovers Summer 2008.
It has been 23 months since they photographed our kitchen. I never knew that when you see things in magazines, they were taken up to three years before. We are excited, though. Seeing our hard work in print is very satisfying and we're happy to share it with readers. Buying this house was a challenge and we have thoroughly enjoyed restoring it project by project.





















Click on the magazine cover to see the article.







We're lucky to have so much light in our kitchen and I wanted to enhance it even more. We have a corner window and a wonderful deep garden window above the sink. The window feature is original to the home.




A few years ago, my husband Bob and I were traveling to a show in Fresno and Bob found this 1880s wicker set in an out-of-the-way shop. I love it and it is absolutely perfect for our kitchen!

I wanted soapstone on the countertops and subway tiles on the walls and in the stove cubby, and I had to have a farmhouse sink with an apron, number one on my list. I love the soapstone counters, absolutely, and they only get better as time goes on. I wanted a warm, honed look as if the counter had been around for a century, like you see in old homes in New England. Soapstone is nonporous and inert, that's why it's used in laboratories, they also cannot stain. Didn't mean to do a sales pitch here, but I am totally sold on the soapstone.
This tiled rooster is above the stove. I think it's one of the best features of our kitchen so I just had to share.

Summerize Your Home!

Now that summer's almost here, feels like it's here but it's not official until the 21st of June. So. . . . . . How to lighten it up and make it feel fresh. It feels so good to be able to open the windows and doors and let the outdoors in so here are some tips to help summerize your home. Change out dark accessories like velvet or dark colored pillows, wool or dark throws. Then when fall comes and you bring them back out, they'll seem fresh and new again. There are so many reasonably priced throws and pillows at the discount stores and bed and bath shops, so changing pillows and a throw or two is pretty simple and affordable. Pillows that are made from vintage fabrics and linens work beautifully for a fresh summery look.
Putting a crisp, white linen table cloth on a dark wood side table for the summer can also lighten a room and give it a great new look even if it's just a large square card table-size table cloth on a round table, it will work.



Add fresh flowers on top of the table cloth and wow! It makes a huge difference. Clean the fireplace and replace logs with silk greenery. This will make a huge difference in how the room feels. Put fresh paint on drab walls. Outside, remove brown leaves or plants that are struggling with fresh planted flowers. Get fresh seat pads or covers or slipcovers for your outdoor patio furniture.
Cover an old iron chair with a light French toile and you'll have an instant facelift. And don't forget to clean your windows! Have sparkling windows for those summer days.

Slipcovers make a home cozy and cottage-y

Book, Carolyn Westbrook HOME

Using her own beautiful house as an example, popular designer Carolyn Westbrook is a home designer who specializes in slipcovers.

Slipcovers offer a simple yet creative way to alter the look of any room within the home.

I've gotten into slipcovering lamp shades and our customers love them. Vintage linens are perfect for making the slipcovered lamp shades. A slipcover over a tired shade can change entirely the way a lamp looks. You can have the shades be sassy and floppy or tighter for a more formal look. Eyelet looks great in a child's room.

Whether it's a shade, a overstuffed or side chair, or a sofa, a slipcover can change a room.

Matelasse fabric used for a slipcover is extremently appealing and creates a nice texture for a monochromatic palette. White or cream quilts also work. I love the thick textures. They work in a bedroom, family or living room. For upholstery, a nice cotton linen works really well for a more sophisticated look. It's all the rage now and I think it's because it's so crisp and clean looking and works well for our lifestyles. Casual yet not too casual.

This is a pillow slipcovered in white crisp linen and done in a double box ruffle. Isn't it a great look?

This antique chair got a complete facelift and looks fabulous with a simple cotton linen fabric in a natural color and we added a double welt - makes all the difference.












You can also mix vintage fabrics, the pillow one below is actually made from a vintage damask tablecloth, to add charm and some color to a chair, sofa or bed.

Happy slipcovering!

Vernacular thatched cottages in Woburn Street, Ampthill, Bedfordshire, were constructed in 1812-1816.

Wikipedia defines cottage garden as "The Cottage garden is a distinct style of garden that uses an informal design, traditional materials, dense colorful plantings, and a mixture of ornamental and edible plants on a smaller scale than gardens typically associated with estates and public settings. Cottage gardens go back many centuries, but their popularity grew in 1870s England in response to the more structured English estate gardens that used formal designs and massed colours of brilliant annuals raised in greenhouses. They are more casual by design, depending on grace and charm rather than grandeur and formal structure."
The earliest cottage gardens arose out of the Black Death of the 1340s, when the death of so many laborers made plots of land available for personal gardens. Alexander Pope was an early proponent of less formal gardens, calling in a 1713 article in The Guardian for gardens with the "amiable simplicity of unadorned nature". Other writers in the 18th century who encouraged less formal, and more natural, gardens included Joseph Addison and Lord Shaftesbury. According to the late nineteenth-century legend of origin,[1] these gardens were originally created by the workers that lived in the cottages of the villages, to provide them with food and herbs, with flowers planted in for decoration."

Plants common in the traditional cottage garden included climbing plants, especially rose and honeysuckle, and hedging plants that included hawthorn, holly, and privet. Flowers with a long cottage garden history include hollyhocks, carnations, sweet williams, marguerites, marigolds, lilies, peonies, tulips, crocus, daisies, foxglove, violets, pansies, monkshood, lavender, campanulas, mignonette, Solomon's seal, evening primrose, stocks, lily-of-the-valley, primrose, cowslips, and many varieties of roses. [3] The method of planting closely packed plants was supposed to reduce the amount of weeding and watering required, but planted stone pathways or turf paths, and clipped hedges overgrown with wayward vines, are "cottage garden" features requiring well-timed maintenance."

In the cottage style . . .

Cottage Style Decorating Guide states this about cottage style decorating;

O"ne of the more popular decorating styles today is cottage style decorating, and it's no wonder since it's light and breezy style is well-suited to today's informal lifestyles. Cottage decorating is a mixture of light colors, comfortable fabrics and furniture and accessories that is easy on the eyes with a vintage appeal.

Contrary to what the name may imply, you can use cottage style for decorating any type of home not just a cottage. Even your three-bedroom ranch in the suburbs can have the ambience of a cute cottage if you decorate it properly."


Iron beds are perfect for achieving the cottage look in a bedroom. You can also use them as day beds by putting them against a wall and loading them up with cushy pillows.

I love a cottage decor and it's so easy to decorate in this informal, casual style. I'll be writing about this in the next week and adding tips on the cottage look and the best way I think to achieve the style and feel. The great thing is that you can mix a variety of textures with vintage quilts or linens to bring in the cottage colors, which are generally soft or faded hues. As far as furniture and accessories, select things that are easy on the eyes. There's a lot of leeway in creating this style but remember for a bedroom use an antique iron bed or old painted wood bed with quilts, some floppy pillows, add a slipcovered lampshade on a vintage table, some old board framed prints or paintings on the pale painted walls and, voila! you've created a cozy cottage bedroom.
Regarding iron and wicker chairs or settees, cheer them up by covering them with floral cushions which add comfort and style. Furniture surfaces are best that show natural wear and age but not too rustic. Keep window coverings light and breezy.

Tomorrow, slipcovers.

Getting ready for summer

Summer is almost here and we're getting ready. Cottage Antiques has birdhouses, painted garden and summer signs ready for your home. Our painted bamboo garden ducks, each with a name tag, are just waiting for the perfect garden to be placed. We've been gathering all sorts of things for the summer months. Here's a sampling:

Our beach signs are a hit year round -

and they make wonderful gifts if you want to give something really unique
How about a 1930s metal lawn chair made into a water feature, spigot and all

and, perfect for summer in your garden, is a charming potting bench

This antique ceiling tin mirror gives an architectural feel to a room, perfect for a summer re-do.

. . . and we have the greatest signs, perfect for outdoors or indoors and lots with summer themes.

and birdhouses. We have a large assortment of birdhouses from simple to extravagant.