THE COOPER COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY AFTERNOON TEA

Just a few photos from an Afternoon Tea we

 attended today in Boonville at Turner Hall.

  This was presented by the Cooper County 

Historical Society and was called

 "The History of Fashion" presented 

by Carolyn Miller from Sedalia, Missouri:

Two friends went with my Husband and I - 

 Gina Broadus and also Mary Sandy.

My husband was one of the few

men but he didn't care!

Carolyn shared a wealth of information

on fashion from 1880 -  1970!

Can you imagine wearing 

this under your

garments?

THE COUNTRY DIARY for "Tea In The Garden"

Today's post isn't in the garden -

 after 10" of rain we had sunshine

yesterday but the ground was very

soft and wet and today - well, more rain coming!

So here we are - inside and dry!
I am sharing some projects I have been
working on - the old fashioned decoupaging
of tins, clipboards, etc.

I love Edith Holden's books and her illustrations for May are wonderful.  Welcome to May by the way!

I am also sharing this chintz Arthur Woods
teapot I found at an antique mall in St. Louis a while back.  I really had a lot of violet items but was surprised how few pansy things I owned.
Don't you think these are violas?

PLAYING WITH AUTO COLLAGE

Last night I stayed up way too late.

  I never do that! I was playing.

As usual I had a hard time doing this

but I am persistent so I got the Microsoft

Research Auto Collage feature put

on my computer:

This is a pretty cool feature.  I wish

it would let me pick the 7-8 pictures I

want to use like the old auto collage

that came with Windows 8.  It

does not let you pick the specific
ones out - just the whole folder and then
it decides but

today I figured out a way to

get around that: just create a new

folder with only the photos you want

to use (minimum 7) and choose that folder!

Also I had trouble with some of the

pictures turning sideways but I read

a comment that 

someone on the "help" thing said that

if you crop the picture it will quit turning

sideways and

that worked for me!

If any of you are interested - it is just $19.95 in

the Microsoft Shop on line!  This last one

is our Grand Daughter and Grand Son

 that I refer to as "The Grands":

RASPBERRY CREAM SCONES for "Tea In The Garden"

Yesterday was a lovely day to spend in the
garden planting my seedlings and also seeds
directly in the ground.
But first I set up a little tea for us to
 enjoy one of my Raspberry Scones
 I had baked.  Enjoy more than one if you like!

We all seem to be on different spring weather

 schedules.  Not that I  even had that many 

tulips, but mine are almost done  blooming

 and I know many of you have your's just getting started.

This is the one year anniversary for my
 Missouri garden so I have been inspecting
 "what made it" and what didn't after the winter.  

I saw a lovely pair of bright yellow finch out
earlier but after I got my camera - they were
no where to be found! 
 There was a sweet robin though:

The Raspberry Cream Scones are real easy to make:  First preheat your oven to 425 degrees

Ingredients: 2 1/4 cup flour, 1 Tb baking powder, 1/4 cup granulated sugar.  Mix those together and then cut in 6 Tb cold butter using a scone kneader, then stir in 1 cup heavy cream and lastly 2/3 cup chopped fresh raspberries.

Once you form a nice dough I like to roll mine out on a floured pastry cloth and use a scone cutter.  I sprinkled granulated sugar on top of them after I put them on the baking sheet.  Bake around 10 minutes.
I got 12 little ones and 5 larger using 2 size cutters.

SEWING COTTAGE STYLE TOPPERS

Since I have so many old vintage linens,

last Saturday I decided to make some table

 toppers by embellishing vintage toppers.

The base on this one was a 40 x 45" 

pink topper which I put a smaller

topper and 2 runners over. 

 Everything

is pinned and then sewn down using the

sewing machine:

A little closer up:

Here was the second one and by

the way - these make up fast because

each piece is already done by other

sweet ladies of the past!  That's where

the real work was done!

This one below has

 a bluebird

theme:

I used a variety of bird pieces on the sides

but I am just showing you one of them:

#3 has a tea kettle on the

corners of a small topper over

 a larger

one and of course other

runners sewn on it:

A little closeup here of the Crinoline Ladies

and Sunbonnet Ladies:

And this last one shows you how I use a large

table to just pin it up - this one is not sewn yet:

If you are a perfectionist - try to control yourself as

many of these pieces are already not totally even!

This is a great way to stretch the life of a topper that

has started  getting little holes in it - don't throw it away - just embellish it!  As you can see above there are little pieces of a round crochet doily tucked under the runners - it was a round cut into 4 pieces.  I see

a small doily in the middle too!