We had a wonderful day at the Huntsville (Ala.) "Tanical" Gardens, as 3 1/2-year-old grandson Capt. Adorable says. The Butterfly House is his favorite, and his mom has trained him well in the delicate art of putting sugar-water on your finger and being patient. Of course, he still runs around yelling, "Hey, butterflies! Come get some food!" And he forgets all about the concept of a light touch by the time he gets to the box turtles. But still.
Yes, the rumors are true: There will be a "Cars 3," and hopefuls already are lining up for auditions. (Photo taken on U.S. 72 West between Barton and Cherokee, Ala.)
Picking the right spot for lunch is important. It can set the tone for the rest of your day, so you want to make sure you get it right. For example, if you’re in Huntsville, Alabama, and you want someplace quiet and sleek and soothing in a grownup sort of way, then go to Sun Cafe on Old Monrovia Road. This gem of a restaurant offers Asian dishes and an innovative sushi bar along with attentive service that is so good you’ll be in & out within your alloted lunch time without ever once feeling rushed — or abandoned. The food is flavorful and fresh, and you’ll return to your desk feeling reinvigorated. Unless, of course, you’re there at the same time as we were: a trio of grandmother, 7-months-pregnant Older Daughter and incumbent grandson 3-year-old Capt. Adorable. Older Daughter and I, for the most part, behaved ourselves. and the Captain did not misbehave, exactly. He just, in his usual “I-love-everybody-and-I’m-quite-sure-everybody-loves-me-too” 3-year-old way, talked to everybody he could see when standing up in our booth. And then, when socializing got too much and he needed a break, he flopped down on the cushion to take a quick nap before popping back up to continue his conversations. Luckily, everybody there smiled patiently and thought to themselves, “I would never allow MY children to behave like that out in public,” seemed equally as delighted to share their lunch hour with the Captain, so it all turned out okay. And I have to apologize for the lack of photos here. I’ve got a new camera — a Nikon P90S or something — that I’m still figuring out how to use. My centuries-old Kodak EasyShare was a clunker in comparison, and I’m unlearning all the quirky bad habits I had to develop to work around the Kodak’s limitations. It’s as if my new camera can actually read my thoughts and KNOW what I want to do before I actually do it. This means I have to think nice thoughts such as “Oh, the light is lovely there so I need to press the shutter NOW” instead of “Why won’t this #$%^& shutter press when I want it to?” It’s a challenge.
Answer: Five — one to be the decorator, one to be the chef, 
one to lose her car keys, one to obsess about the eggs getting cold and one to be the calm and peaceful center of it all — and she was the one whose house we had invaded. Five of us gathered together this weekend to host a brunch/shower for the bride-to-be daughter of another dear friend, and it was a great success. There were a few chaotic moments, naturally. Such as when we first were faced with an empty table and no real traffic-flow plan. Or when each of us at different times couldn’t find our A) phones, B) car keys or C) shoes. Or when one of our daughters — who shall remain nameless — asked the hostessing moms in honest curiosity, “Uh … what was y’all’s color scheme, again?” (This was the event for which we exuberantly made lots of tissue-paper flowers. Lots of them. In whatever colors of tissue paper we could score on sale find to match the lovely Gail Pittman dishes one of us bravely offered up.) But it all came together and our enthusiastic abundance of various colors saved us tons of money simply underscored the joyous celebration. And the idea from our chief chef to serve scrambled eggs in martini glasses and let guests add toppings was genius. Genius! So much fun, and of course the scrambled eggs stayed toasty warm in the chafing dish as promised. Add to that fresh fruit, cheese, and a variety of breads along with the local must-have of delicate almond-flavored petit fours and we had a delicious and pretty menu. It was as much fun for us, the hostesses, as it was for everybody else — and that’s the best kind of party to have. The mimosas helped, too.
I literally cannot draw a straight line. Even with a ruler. A box of crayons makes me nervous, and my art skills haven’t progressed much past kindergarten’s stick people (and kindergarten was a very long time ago). But, luckily, I had the good sense to have family members with an unbelievable amount of talent. Such as my son-in-law, an artist and a high-school art teacher. He and my daughter make these amazing cards for special people’s special days, and I scored big time with my birthday this year. Grandson 3-year-old Capt. Adorable said he wanted “hearts” for my card, so when my daughter left her two guys at the kitchen table to go to work, she thought they’d cut out a few hearts and glue them on and that would be that. She called them two hours later. The Captain had gone on to other projects (making a pirate ship out of pillows, rebuilding his train track, investigating the top bookshelf — you know, important 3-year-old things) but my son-in-law was still at the table, working. “I had a different idea about the card,” he told my daughter. This truly is a work of art, and he did it with scraps of paper, glue and an X-Acto knife. I shudder to think of the mayhem & chaos (not to mention emergency-room visits) I’d create with those simple tools. But in the skilled hands of a talented artist, we get something wonderful. And a cookie. And the Captain’s hearts were on the inside of the card, so everybody was happy.
My house was blooming the other night when friends who are co-hosting a bridal shower for the daughter of another BFF came over to make tissue-paper flowers for the decor. These colorful blossoms have been popping up everywhere recently — I see them in store windows and displays. They’re even Martha-Stewart-approved, and she has a video tutorial on how to make them. But we tapped in to our many-decades-ago high-school memories of decorating homecoming floats and transforming gyms into dance floors and didn’t even need Martha’s help. You just layer sheets of tissue paper, pleat as if you’re making a fan, fold in half and scrunch up the center and secure with a pipe cleaner. Then, it’s on the fun part of separating the layers and shaking them out into a flower. We got better with each attempt and soon were experimenting with different colors and sizes. We’re not exactly sure what we’re going to do with them now, but they sure are impressive! This is easy
enough for even awkward, uncoordinated and clumsy non-crafty folks like me to attempt and yet creative enough for talented crafters, like my friend on the left in the photo above, to be inspired. You see, after our flower-making marathon, she went home and stayed up until 2 a.m. making corsages out of fabric and netting, using the same tissue-paper principle. I, on the other hand, drank more wine and went to bed.
P.S. I warned Jana & Claire, the mother of the bride-to-be and the bride-to-be herself, not to look at this post, but they probably did and now are hoping that my flowers somehow don’t make it to the shower in favor of the gorgeous ones everybody else created. But I’m redeeming myself by bringing coffee and herb-cheese biscuits, so maybe that will help.
Oh my cookies! I am so glad that I have such talented friends. Can you believe that someone just sat down and whipped up this precious work of art? I’ve tried to knit before — Older Daughter patiently attempts to re-teach me every couple of years or so — and even my incredibly-simple-and-anybody-can-do-it scarves end up wonky. This baby hat is so cute I just want to play with it — I adjust the size and tie the ribbon and imagine this on a sweet little infant head. My friend Sherry Campbell, whose current work exile in Louisiana has significantly reduced the fun factor here in northwest Alabama, made this for our Grandbaby No. 2, expected to arrive in mid-November. I love how the colors and patterns and ribbon all work together in perfect adorability. I remember when Sherry first discovered knitting and took to it with dedication and passion, as
she does everything. Then there was the famous road trip where she stopped at every Tuesday Morning for hundreds of miles so she could collect enough of the same type of yarn she needed for a special project. But who can argue with talent such as this? And seeing this hat makes Grandbaby No. 2’s arrival seem all the more real. Well, that, and Older Daughter’s growing tummy. Bless her heart, she says she is sort of getting tired of 3-year-old Capt. Adorable always giving her the role of the whale when they play Jonah.
Isn’t this the prettiest and most relaxing bedroom ever? I stayed over at
a friend’s recently after a particularly energetic book-club meeting (we kept toasting the fact that the hostess’s husband had not set himself on fire when the gas tank ruptured as he grilled our dinner). My friend graciously put me up for the night, and I promise it was like staying in the coziest bed-and-breakfast inn ever. I did not want to leave. I love her color scheme of white with blues, pinks and oranges — it was cool and summery and so clean and fresh. And can you get a close-up of the bedside tables? How cute is that? My friend — oh, let’s call her “Susan,” for no reason whatsoever — loves color and design and knows how to make it all come together. Plus, she’s an excellent shopper and always finds the bargains everybody else passes up. I’m definitely going to have to come up with another excuse to stay here again soon. When’s the next book-club gathering?
This is one of 3-year-old grandson Capt. Adorable’s first attempt at actual photography. Genius! Brilliant!! Oh-so-talented!!! He’s sitting on his grandad’s tractor at his grandparents’ place in Tuscumbia, Ala. — which is about his top No. 1 thing to do, although we suspect that one day he’ll figure out how to turn it on and go plow the lower 40. On this afternoon, he’d gathered an admiring posse of girl cousins and their friends — another favorite activity — and then decided to round out this duo of red tractors and adoring females with another of his obsessions: Examining anything that clicks, moves and has tiny little parts — in this instance, my camera. So he leaned over from the tractor, grabbed it out of my hands and was snapping photos before I could say, “If you turn off the flash and use the ‘normal,’ setting, you’ll get a better shot.” He needs to work on lining things up and getting everybody in the frame, but maybe he was making an artistic statement here … you know, about postmodernism in an irony-less world and the interaction of our natural environment with human productivity combined with personal questions about the the supposed mutual exclusiveness of reality and representation. (I don’t know what any of that means, either, but thank you, Mr. Google, for teaching me how to talk like an art reviewer.) Of course, almost anything the Captain does is perfect to me, so I believe this is the start of a successful photographic career as well as the origins of a new style of photography that will come to be called the Hawk Pride Mountain Style and I’ll end up on the Today Show in 30 years saying, “Yes, I knew my grandson was a genius as soon as he grabbed the Canon PowerShot out of my hands.”
This is our backyard. Oh, okay, that’s a downright lie. You know that
our backyard actually is about the size of this patio table. And even if it were bigger, I still wouldn’t have the talent and skill to make our outdoor space look this cute and inviting. I mean, don’t you want to just pull up a chair and pour a nice cool drink? Love the bright red and green tablescape with lemon-yellow accents. So summery! This was only one of the dozens of inspiring “rooms” on this past weekend’s Corinth (Mississippi) Home & Garden Tour. Sponsored by Verandah House Friends, the annual tour raises money to restore Corinth’s 1857 Verandah House, a Greek Revival beauty where Confederate officers planned their Shiloh campaign. The tour included a flower show, a silent auction of amazing local art, a bake sale and a plant sale. But the stars, of course, were the homes and gardens. Three houses in one of Corinth’s historic districts were open to visitors, and it was a constant stream of admiring “ooh’s and ahh’s” as we peeked into interior rooms and wandered through outdoor spaces. I especially was impressed with the way the owners combined respect for their homes’ authenticity with modern individual touches — beloved family heirlooms were cozily comfortable sharing with cheerful 21st-century details. But, you know, that’s how we do it* in the South.
* I was going to say “that’s how we roll in the South,” but since that invariably would lead to “Roll, Tide!” references I went instead with a less inflammatory phrase. After all, this is a free and open space where we tolerate all opinions and where differences are welcome. On the other hand: “War Eagle!”
Coffee with Cathy 