Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Vintage style Birdhouse revisited

Well, I must apologize for my lack of postings. I get so busy on this little magic box, that I tend
to neglect things. And for that I am sorry.
I don't know if you remember my posting on the vintage birdhouse we put together last year, here is the link to it.
I was so excited to see we did get a tenant, and the activity is so rewarding. I know they are happy campers in there, my only problem is we won't be able to clean out the house when they move out. Any ideas?
We lost a good piece of this Magnolia tree this past October in a freak snowstorm. The snow was so wet, heavy and a lot of it, that the tree couldn't withstand the weight. It had not had a chance to harden itself for winter.
Then this spring we had a early warm up and she started to bud way to early, and then we got a frost, again she took a beaten and her blossoms got frost bite and turned brown. I was hoping for a re bloom, it has yet to happen, but I am still very hopeful. The other Magnolia I have is a later bloomer and she is strutting her flowers. I will need to see if I can get some close up pics of the blossoms.
Look at this tree of dessert for the birds. They just love devouring the blossoms. This is a crab apple tree that my husband pulled a small sapling from his parents yard. He brought it home in a Styrofoam coffee cup and nursed it down in the woods until it was a plantable size in the yard. It was great to see this grow from infancy.

Beaded ornaments

My 50th Birthday banner my sister made for my surprise party


Hedda Hopper


Birth:

May 2, 1890
Death:

Feb. 1, 1966
Actress, Journalist. Despite a 23 year career that encompassed over 120 motion picture appearances and chorus girl roles on Broadway to motion pictures, she is best remembered for her newspaper column and radio show that focused exclusively on Hollywood gossip, a subject she was able to tell more about to her audience due to her Hollywood insider status. Born Elda Furry in Holidaysburg, Pennsylvania, she left school to act on Broadway. In 1913 she married marquee star William DeWolfe, a man who was 32 years her senior. They had one son, and divorced in 1922, but she kept his name for the rest of her life (and changed her name to Hedda on the advice of a numerologist). In 1931 she began “The Hedda Hopper Show”, which initially ran as a 15 minute gossip show mostly devoted to Hollywood marriages and divorces. Enormously popular, it ran until 1951, and on the strength of its popularity she started the “Hedda Hopper’s Hollywood” column in the Los Angeles Times in 1938. She steadily gained a reputation for exposing tidbits about the lives of Hollywood figures, and created a character of herself in her own right, especially in regard to her vast collection of sometimes outrageous hats, and a long standing feud with rival gossip columnist Louella Parsons. With the advent of television’s popularity in the late 1940s and early 1950s, he radio show waned, but she herself became a staple of television programs and game shows, being a frequent panelist on “What’s My Line?’, and appear on shows like “I Love Lucy”, “The Colgate Variety Hour” and “The Beverly Hillbillies”. In 1960 she received the Journalistic Merit award, and published her autobiography “The Whole Truth and Nothing But!”, which recapped her over 20 years or being an Hollywood insider. She died in Los Angeles of double pneumonia in 1966, working right up until her passing. As a Hollywood icon, she created a number of friends and enemies; she gave harsh advice to actress Ida Lupino, which helped her gain recognizable part, but was despised by actress Joan Bennett, who once sent her a skunk. In 1985 a movie about the feud between her and Parsons was released as “Malice in Wonderland”, which Jane Alexander as Hedda Hopper and Elizabeth Taylor as Louella Parsons