Gracie insists on doing her bit for Haiti.............

Hiya Everyone
I am afraid I just HAD to write today because Grace is so keen to let you all know what she is doing herself to help raise funds for the Haiti appeal...................and guess what it is....................making and selling Gracie cakes of course!

I caught her a while ago (as you can see below - a result of me putting her back in the church after taking her out of the tearooms......a complete but beautiful accident which helped spawn this storyline idea!)  sitting quietly on a pew in church looking as if she was in a complete reverie.........clearly something was on her mind...................

I didn't have to wait long though.  You see most village churches have pubs next to them.........but NOT St. Hils.........oh no..................................St. Hils has a lovely teashop called "Aunt Sal's Teas". 

Gracie LOVES to make her "Gracie Cakes" of course but not just to give away to her new Sunday School friends but also to sell in aid of any favoured charities that she has a heart for.  Naturally she and her mother were completely devasted to hear about the earthquake in Haiti so her mother asked the person who owns "Aunt Sal's Teas" if they would mind selling "Gracie Cakes" in aid of the Haiti appeal.....................needless to say they gave her a really big YES!

Alice recently was offered a little Saturday job as a waitress in "Aunt Sal's Teas" so she made sure that she was in the shop when Grace arrived as you can see........................................  Whilst Gracie is putting her cakes out on the cake stand that Alice has found for her, Alice is staring at the very very old photo above the fireplace..............................it is actually the photo (in reaility a miniaturised photo of my great grandfather - ie my father's paternal grandfather who was a choir conductor in Wales) that Ambrose brought along during one Heritage Weekend.  His father allowed the proprietor of the teashop to have it in the tearooms which was really lovely of them................

Whoops....................another stray into fantasy land................however I have to confess that the idea that Gracie would want to sell her special secret recipe "Gracie Cakes" came to me suddenly yesterday afternoon and it just "felt right" to include this.  I had thought of putting this on the home page of St. Hils......................but instead I felt a blog more appropriate because we want to highlight the appeal.

For those who want to contribute Gracie has found you all a link...........ie http://www.dec.org.uk/ this takes you to a site which also includes other appeals too so you can choose to support which ever project or appeal touches your heart.........................

I expect you are all wondering WHY I decided to call my tearooms "Aunt Sal's Teas"?   I was named after a great aunt on my father's side and she was called......................"Sal" - hence "Aunt Sal's Teas". 

This teashop is actually the downstairs shop in an Anglesey Dollshouse we bought in a dollshouse shop in Stratford upon Avon some years ago now.

Andrew, my long suffering husband, decorated the house for me and we used some pink paint (we used those sample pots in Homebase!) and we mixed  with tetrion which gave a nice textured result........a bit like pebbledash which was the idea.  I had decided on pink for my house because some of the very typical Essex cottages are often rendered in pink outside and, as Andrew was an Essex boy and we initially lived in Essex when first married,  it seemed the obvious thing to do.  I have got a piccie of Andrew in the process of painting it too somewhere but it is is "pre-digital" so it would have to be scanned in for you all to see it.  
The name is actually taken from the person I was named after - a great aunt on my father's side.  Of course she was known as "Sal" so our tea rooms became....."Aunt Sal's Teas".

You can see the frontage of this, my original dollshouse, here and yes..........the name has been painted on by none other but myself!  It has NO proper windows so I guess, for the time being, it will have to be a fairweather tearooms and only open on a lovely warm Summer's day.................................  However you all may remember that I did mention this dollshouse on an earlier blog...................so to complete the picture so that you can see how the tearooms now look inside I am including a couple or so photos below....................

As you can see have an aga under the stairs but no old fashion copper kettle's to heat up on it as yet...............so that will be a "must" before our dear Miss Enid can bring any of the children along for a visit to show them some old fashioned table manners.................  You can also see some blu tack too which had dried to a hard mass which fell off in one hard lump when I removed it.......

I hadn't realised how faded hour wallpaper had become..............as you can see hear "Aunt Sal's Teas" is in need of quite a lot of refurbishment..........but money is tight at the moment............

Whoops - another fanstasy land trip........sorry about that one!  I could tell you more.........about my 1/12 scale silver cutlery and more because each of my Stokesay Ware cups and saucers sports a Mike Sparrow silver teaspoon too..........................but perhaps I will leave that till later.................

Till the next time.......

PS All these photos were taken using my Canon Ixus 980 - automatic setting with macro and automatic flash - hand held with image stabliser set - not bad ay?  Well I am pretty chuffed with them..................cos if you saw how hard it was to negotiate the clothes horse, ironing board etc in the bedroom where the dollshouse currently resides...........