Remembering Nana

When I was a little girl growing up, my siblings and I got to visit my Nana’s once a week.  She and Bop (my grandfather) also took me frequently to dance lessons and I absolutely adored my time with my grandmother.  She had this really pretty skin and a funny laugh and I was proud to be her namesake (along with my cousin Peggy).  Nana had that even-kind of personality and had all the time in the world for her many grandchildren. It’s funny what you remember the best about them.

They also had the most fascinating spoons that were faceted which we would use when we had pudding (which was frequently) out of their Fiesta tableware that my aunt stupidly pitched in the 1970’s (holy cow the value of that Fiesta Ware alone could put a kid through medical school).  My sisters and I would fight over the turquoise bowls and to this date they are still my favorite color to collect.  They always had coke bottles for us when we visited and this really scarey (copy) Picasso.  Don Draper would be proud how their home on Howard was decorated and we shared many good times at their home – from St. Patrick Day parties to times hanging the original 1950’s bubble lights on their Christmas Tree.

Well today, 4th of July, marks the death of Nana, who decided NOT to go out quietly like a good Irishman, and although my brother will know year certain, I believe it was in 1979.  At the time I was in college finishing my senior year, in the Rockies and I remember that night, walking outside the place where I was tending bar, watching the fireworks when I heard the news.  It was a sad night for me being a thousand miles from home but being in Colorado, the night was clear and the stars numbered in the millions.  I secretly said to myself that I could never see fireworks again without thinking of her and being here just minutes from Disney where fireworks are an every day event, that promise has not gone unfulfilled.

Last night, my husband and I saw the fireworks at Magic Kingdom – as they have a fantastic double display to celebrate the 4th and recorded the following video.  Tonight we go to Epcot to see the display there – which are filled with wonderful music celebration and both nights at least a 25 minute show.  Nana, you have some incredible grandchildren and great grand children and quite a few double greats. For those of us who were privileged to truly know her, likely from cousin Teddy and up, you made all of our lives special.  Your children, our parents, were so much fun as they all inherited the twinkle of mischievousness that you owned so well.  From you, they taught us kindness and compassion, love of country and of family.  I am so grateful that I was blessed to know you through my college days, though your last few years, like many, you were plagued with dementia.  Thank you for giving me my dad, your unwavering love and devotion to family.  Have a good time up there – and I will be thinking about you because every time I see fireworks I think, that is God celebration your residence.

Fireworks at Disney World

How I kept my kids happy in the summer….without sacrificing my work schedule

School’s out. Those dreaded words?

How was it possible to run a business, and not go completely insane with children? Don’t get me wrong, I love my kids to death but when they were small, it was difficult to run my company, Pegeen, without going crazy. Somehow, and I am not really sure, it evolved into this wonderful program we called “Mon-Fries” – mostly because my youngest, Ted, loved french fries so much we had to have that spelling. What it involved was theme weeks and planning. And books. Lots and lots of books.

In the beginning of the summer, we would set theme weeks together. There was lots of discussions and ideas – “I want a beach” “Skyscrapers” “Bugs” “Weather” or even something simple like “Fruit”. Once we set our 11 weeks of summer themes I would get black and white marble notebooks that we would draw, scribble and mark up with our ideas. When we would draw in our books to illustrate the ideas we planned, I got an insight into the thinking of my kids minds. We would start our planning sometime in early May since my kids finished school in late June. This helped make those last few weeks of school seem more interesting.

indian summer 1998jpgFINALLY! School was out and for me, it meant being able to have lots of fun with my kids and longer week day hours (8am until midnight instead of 7 or 8). Our “MONS” were filled with trips to the libraries, often different ones, that I would take the kids to or on those rare occasions, I would have their sitters take them. It was easy for both of my kids to get lost in the library so each week there was a theme…. like a week about fish. But these days were filled with “mommy what’s that word? (Jonah)” or “Look at this, look at this” (drawings). Not that I only worked 5 days a week (I worked 7) but starting on Mondays, based on their ages, and through out the summer, it would be a week of One-Fish-Two-Fish or as they were older, making lures, or books on how machines were made and Richard Scarey and yes even Harry Potter themed weeks which we all loved.

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Throughout the week, we would find projects for them to do, or rent a movie based on the theme, read their books and make artwork. Most of these projects they were able to do on their own. I had a sitter who came to my home as we lived over our business, and she would help out as a momma’s helper. I’d feature their best or favorites on the office landing so they could admire them each time they ran in and out (and in and out) of the basement door, until it was the FRIES in Friday…. where the week would top off at their reward trip. So, for fish week, we went to the Camden (NJ) Aquarium, and the beach week we took them to Sandy Point (one year to the nude beach by accident, duh), and for machine week we went to this awesome museum in Bethlehem, PA called the National Museum of Industrial History. Fruit week was always fun and messy, because there is so much you can do with fruit (make jam, freezies, pick berries) but our favorite was “Help Daddy Build a Deck and Install an Above Ground Pool” – which was hard work but we all grew into professionals that week.

Now that the kids are college and beyond, it’s about coordinating the car to get them to work although we live so close to Disney they get to their summer jobs pretty quickly. I miss those summers and live through my friends telling me, “Urgh, Summer vacation started” and I am so envious of the time where we lived for our “Mon-Fries.”

 

I give up, US Postal Service

Today is a day where I say “Citizens Unite” don’t EVER use the post office.

They lose everything. I mean everything…. and when they do, they make it incredibly difficult for you to get a refund. Flower Girl Dresses, completely AWOL…packages miss-sorted, apathetic operators, delayed packages, a terrible website and need a refund? …. forget that. AND YOUR RATES ARE GOING UP MAY 31st?

When I was a kid, you got mail twice a day and on Saturdays, once. Post men were nice and the only joke was whether your friend was fathered by the post man. I once got a letter delivered, around 1970, addressed to “Marg Hyland, New Jersey”. Mind you my father was in state politics but did they throw it away? Nope, they cared then. Now, the post office is a joke. They just don’t give a damn…. its the same apathetic attitude you get from anyone who has a tenured job for life with benefits that you are paying for. We all complain about the post office and I am normally supportive of anyone doing their job albeit one they really don’t have to compete for. What I am against is the gross negligence they perform as a reliable delivery service.

USPS – you are doomed.

 

A little update  June 18th, 2015

Just try to get your refund. The website says – go to your local office… then they treat you garbage there. So you call the 800 number – they tell you that you can, then you can’t, then you can, get your money back at the local office.  They then make you call an 800 number again…. then more waiting, holds, misinformation.  Mind you for a friggin $70.   In total, I spent 4 hours and 22 minutes with the post office.  I just cancelled my account.  No more express mail.  Sorry folks.  They won’t deliver it on time anyhow, they will instead lose it, or better yet  – steal it like they did last November when they CLAIMED they left it at the right address.  i just got a call from a bozo named Jose who was supposed to take my complaint about the jerk at the Windermere Post Office who mistreated and abused my $14k a year account.  Instead, he informed me you can’t get the refund at the local place after being told again I could. he actually conferenced a call to the same 800 number I waited on line for yesterday in my 4 1/2 hour conversation.  SO, more to the point of the story – he can stick it where the sun doesn’t shine.  I told him to take his wife out to dinner with my $70 bucks.  No WONDER they lose money every day – I hope they go out of business because trust me – they are no competition for UPS or FedEx.  BUT they get my money for their million dollar pensions.  WHAT AN EXAMPLE OF THE LOUSY WAY THE GOVERNMENT RUNS BUSINESS.  Oh wait – they can’t.

 

 

 

 

Our New Cinderella Style Dress Made This First Communicant Very Happy!

Our customer is using our Glass Slipper Fairy from the Fairytale Collection by Pegeen.com for her communion dress, Cinderella look Flower Girl Dress, Pegeen Style 914. She was SO excited to open and see her dress that here is her happy princess look right out of the box.

“Dear Pegeen, thank you for the heavenly dress you sent for my daughter. When she opened the box, her eyes got as big as saucers. I hope I can get her out of it before she goes to sleep. She is wearing this for her First Communion Dress and her Cinderella Birthday party next week! I will send good photographs but you had to see the look on her face which I captured on my phone.”

White Cinderella Flower Girl Dress white-cinderella-dress-03 white-cinderella-dress-04

Cinderella Dresses Are Here!

We suppose it is very fitting to announce the addition two new flower girl dresses to the Pegeen Fairytale Collection on our Fairytales and Weddings blog!  We are really excited to see the new Disney Cinderella movie releasing in March 2015.

The first of the two styles is fashioned after traditional blue Cinderella colors – we call it the Blue Quartz Fairy, made of silk, and it’s available in any of the 200 colors of silk.  In fact, we already have an order pending for a First Communion Dress!

Pegeen Style 910 - the Blue Quartz Fairy Dress

The second dress has some beautiful iridescent organza and multiple layers of tulle. This combination is turquoise though it can be customized to be in any color way. The style is Pegeen Style 912 called The Aura Fairy after the gorgeous rainbow quartz of the same name, and of course, Cinderella. It too includes butterflies in the shawl collar as well as a Cinderella Bow.912  Aura Fairy Dress form the Pegeen Fairy Tale Collection

Be careful what you say about others, you Troll

I wrote this earlier on our Facebook Page… a day later and I am still seething!!

I got REALLY angry yesterday…..I mean over the top.  Truly.

Apparently, there is, I think it’s called trolling, a tendency for people, very caustic people, who think it amusing to say whatever they feel about someone, and someone who was in this case, a young girl who through no fault of her own was given an affliction by God himself.

We all have been touched by these fabulous kids…me back in 1981 when I began working with special needs kids as a student teacher while working on my Master’s (though I quit teaching).  The kids at this school were physically or emotionally challenged, and it was there I learned about spina bifida, cerebral palsy, autism, and so many more afflictions and how sweet and loving and relentlessly brave these children were.  Each was so very special to me and made such an impact on my life.  As i grew to love them and their parents, I realized that these kids are gifts from God and their parents were, in my opinion, absolute heroes. What I learned the most was not to be afraid of interacting with special needs kids.  

Well, a comment on Pinterest to one of my photos of a sweet little girl made me wild!  HOW DARE SOMEONE CRITICIZE A CHILD! Do you actually think you were funny?  is your poor pathetic life that miserable that in order to feel better about yourself, you need to make a comment on their looks, or size, or handicap.  I watch all kinds of special programming mostly on Discovery because I want to see them succeed in their trials.  Gosh, seeing kids go through hell on a commercial, or live in another country that they somehow catch a break and get special medical attention, or a savant who plays classical piano, or the child in a pew at church who is ……well, the decent people in life know what I am talking about. Instead I want to offer their mom or dad a big hug and to the child who made me think how lucky I am to know them, if just for a moment, I want to say thank you for coming into my world.

Well, this self-absorbed little squat bug in a cow’s feces decided to make a troll-like comment on my Pinterest board and let me tell you, who ever you are: I am going to hunt you down, you moron with your selfie pose and make you wish you never crossed my path, however anonymously, you mean jerk you! Then I will wish you nightmares and night sweats the rest of your moronic life.  Oh and yep – ha ha ha – Pinterest agreed with me and took your lousy self absorbed account down.

Ok. Slightly done ranting here. How could anyone, particularly a woman, make a judgment on a child, a loving child whom is God’s blessed angel on earth?

Homage to Ombre – starting with an Ombre Tulle Flower Girl Dress

A few posts ago, Ie highlighted a new flower girl dress with Ombre Tulle layers – the girls at the studio had fun, making these layers of tulle for that dress that had had miles and miles of tulle – so to continue this theme, I became obsessed and searched as I kept coming across some magnificent items to use for your Ombre Wedding. I admit, I got totally distracted finding these pretty things!

First, I looked for bridesmaids dresses to compliment our flower girl dress and the next thing I knew, there was a wedding gown by Lazaro I found that was so beautiful… and of course in my favorite color, Tiffany blue.  There were all kinds of turquoise ombre cakes (my favorite below) and a Herve Leger which would be perfect for my niece’s wedding.Going along with that aqua theme, before I knew it, I found a really neat distressed dresser, of course the stairs I still plan to do, even a stair railing! I GOT TO STOP!!!  Worse that anything, a new distraction, from ChicaAndJo.com – directions on how to make an ombre aqua keyboard.  TRUE heaven.  I’m in so much trouble.

Pegeen.com Ombre Flower Girl Dress

Turquoise Ombre Things!

 

Fitting Some of My Parents Into My Home – A Sad Goodbye

I don’t know what I like best, putting up Christmas decorations or taking them down. I suppose what I do love is the lights – though my neighborhood was not so into it – one was a renter and the other neighbor had twins a day or so after Christmas so they were busy on their own accord. What I DO love about taking the decorations down is that it makes things be back to ORDER. Christmas decorations, though I love them and the memories they hold are another layer on what you already have so it gets a bit messy for me. This time, taking them down I was able to some rearranging, and finally completing some of the things I hadn’t gotten done before. I also acquired some things from my parents winter home in South Florida now that they passed away. I stored some things for my son from their possessions for his first apartment post college, but some really pretty accents blended fairly nicely into our home. So I suppose these things will help me to remind me of my mom and dad and the wonderful memories of their home in Naples FL.

I had the sad task of closing up my parents winter home though they had passed away, mom 5 years ago, dad almost two years and I found myself saying final goodbyes. My sister had actually bought the home from my folks before they passed and had just sold it but I guess it was hard to think of it as her home since it was still filled with my parents things as if they had gone north for the spring. The one nice thing about it was that I was able to keep some of their possessions and incorporate them into our home in Orlando.  Walking around today after getting the Christmas decorations away, I was able to use some of their pieces into our home and took some pictures.
tiffany-blue-porch

My folks had a passion for collecting unusual art in their Naples home.  Here two wood carvings blended well on the exterior of our turquoise “Pegeen Blue” home.

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Tiffany blue house – turquoise and lime green look great together here in this sitting area on the brick porch accented with this metal wall hanging. reading-room-2

Reading room – finally a lamp that worked perfectly – the little decorative ceramic pot was covered with glass and sat on a wooden stand. I kept the wooden board that we tested all of our paint colors on – sort of a art piece – that hid the wiring for the computersreading-room

Every one should have a turquoise bed for their dog!! (above)proch-windpws

porch-3porch-2 Their display cabinet and plant stand found a new home in our sun porch.porchOur sinour fountainfireplace

Even mom had a sense of beach style for their home on the coastal shore – and peach, lemon and turquoise was pretty predominate in her home.  Dramatically different than their classic northern home, I felt some of her pieces would be happy at our home. I was so excited to add four leather aqua chairs from her kitchen – they fit great into the desk area and we added them to the interior desks as well as some in our offices.

It was very sad saying good bye to my parents and going into their house last week in Naples.  Knowing I would never go back was very overwhelming and I cried for what seemed like hours.  Finally, I was able to get to work on breaking down their home.  I suppose many who lose parents such as I do finally get to that big grieve… you know the one where you just have the air escape from your lungs, knowing that parts of them will be gone forever.  This past weekend was that time where you walked around their home, expecting to see them, remembering the time you would visit a furniture store with them or some of the art galleries picking out the perfect piece for a corner or a room.  I miss my parents sometimes so much – wanting more of their time, their wisdom, their company.

At least I now have some pretty things in each of our rooms to remind me of them. I will get to the upstairs next week.  For now, I am resting my bones.

 

 

Porches

In the summer and spring, and sometimes the fall, here in Florida it is always warm – even hot. Porches in Florida are a decorative thing with shade.

pegeen-sunporch

 

It’s not often you get to sit on them, its usually buggy and hot. Like New Orleans hot. But around October through February, even March you begin to understand why you moved here in the first place.  The weather is beautiful and as Florida likes to brag, truly a sunshine state.  It is pretty rare that there is overcast like we got up north…. and the skies are so blue.  Of course, Florida is also the land of lakes, lots of lots of them.  Yes, you sometimes curse them as you have to wind around then, roads stopping, starting again…. and Orlando is notorious for crazy roads that go part of a way around lakes that stop suddenly.  But this story is about porches.

Sitting outside on the porch or even the sun porch is just lovely. You read the books you couldn’t outside. You sometimes get a “Florida Room” which was really a screened in porch with glass…. urgh that ugly glass. You know, those small 4″ panes in a louver glass window pattern and then you kind of roll them up to let in the sun and air. NEVER the heat though. Well, we decided to use the glass from an old renno, rather our old house, and put them into the screen windows. They were really the cut glass inserts from doors around our old house that we carted from storage to storage until we found a place where we could use them.  So it was time to get them out of storage and get cracking on this new project.  We really did it last Christmas vacation when my boys were home from college and they could lift those 400 pound doors into place.

 

We were able to get sliders from Johnson Hardware that allowed them to pass each other. Although we did this last year, we are happy with it now that we are in that time of “Florida Porch” weather.  This year we were able to finally enjoy the porch and we are in the middle of Christmas Decorations, finally bringing out those Thomas the Tank Engine trains that the kids loved when small and those ceramic Department 56 houses we collected long before the bills got crazy…. you know “AK” “after kids” when you no longer had any money. Enjoy the Christmas Holidays!

What is your favorite family time?

A YouTube video featuring a man trying not to laugh while gently scolding his two sons for covering themselves in paint reminded me of this happy day many years ago when my boys were young.  Their imaginations would take them to magical places, and that day they were on a voyage to the land of Pocahontas. The night before we had a family movie night and watched the Disney VHS tape and it fired their creative instincts.  My wife and I are so thankful for those times which we cherished then and, now that they are adults, even more so.

Although the movie nights are not as frequent as I would like, we all enjoy the time together.  As sentimental parents, we need this now as much as we needed it then. When I hear the boys laugh during “The Internship” with Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson, it warms my heart.  I can close my eyes and still hear that same laugh that I heard years ago watching “The Lion King” or “Pinocchio”.  That same laugh I heard when they looked at my face upon seeing all that paint on my little warriors that memorable day.  I wasn’t angry, in fact I live for those kind of moments that last a lifetime. I don’t know if they had more fun painting themselves, or washing each other off with supersquirters.
Indian Brothers

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