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.