7.30.2007

Potions and the birthday girl


(You can get a little sense of the lights above Sarah in the background.)

The potion ingredients are: 1) bubotuber pus--green lemon-lime koolaid, 2) wolfsbane--orange koolaid, 3) veritaserum--Sprite (nice and bubbly . . . thanks carbonation!), 4) felix felicis--lemonade, 5) essence of murtlap--grape koolaid, and 6) Re'em's blood--cherry koolaid.

More images from the Marauder's Map



The clue hidden under the rug reads, Answer the following question before you begin the next phase of the search--"What clothing does a house wear?" [address, and YES one of the kids figured it out without help]. Once they get that, they cross the house, following the lines shown on the original map. Led into the office, they have to find the second portion of the map which is hidden in the office.
The note accompanying the second half of the map says Follow the staircase up to the second floor and look for another clue in a place where you might find Moaning Myrtle.
Once again, the kids figured it out without my help and quickly went upstairs to the bathroom. Once there, they found . . .
. . . the final set of questions that they had to answer. [The answers are B and C, if you are interested.] By flipping the card over, they find . . .
. . . the last bit of instructions. In the Guest Room across the hall, Sarah had one last present and all the kids had treat bags filled with Harry Potter candy--Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans, Jelly Slugs, and even Chocolate Frog with movable wizard cards.

(click here to go back to the original WWYG?! post)

Marauders Map for Sarah's 7th birthday party

This is the first fold in the map, evoking the magical words that must be said before the map will operate.











Once you are able to "open" the map, you see the nicknames of the four "Marauders"--Peter Pettigrew, Remus Lupin, Sirius Black, and James Potter.









Another fold opens and . . .











. . . the map displays itself.




Partygoers begin at the front door and advance down the hall to receive their first clue.
Once found, they read the clue--Turn right and walk another twenty steps towards the fireplace. Look underneath something on the floor to find the next clue.


7.02.2007

the cakes























We made two cakes because we wanted to be sure that the kids and the adults would be able to have some. (Marble cake--yellow and chocolate batter baked together) covered with chocolate icing. The decorative icing is piped from regular icing tubes and we embellished with old Dora the Explorer figurines that we've had since Sarah was little.

Grace's 4th birthday party



6.10.2007

6.09.2007

ABC book



6.03.2007

5.31.2007

5.14.2007

Clothes



4.03.2007

2.14.2007

1.31.2007

1.09.2007

11.06.2006

Springfield, OH photos



The Westcott House visit

This is the first photo that I took of the house, standing on the corner of Main Street and Greenmount Avenue. Main Street features several large, impressive homes that Lynda and I enjoyed while driving to the Westcott House.

We drove past the house on our first attempt to find it because I was expecting a larger house. The house is still an obvious Wright Prairie Style home, but it is not as rectangularly wide on this face as the other Prairie Style home I have visited. The property lot is deep going back, but not wide on the side facing Main Street.

The large planter urn that is featured in the middle of this picture is notable for being the largest such urn that Wright ever used in a private residence of his design. He did use similar large urns in his Imperial Hotel design in Japan made around this time. More on this topic later.

Here is another view of the "front" of the house--the side facing Main Street. You can see the two large urns that I mentioned before. And you can get a good sense of the Prairie Style home--long, rectangular, flat-roofed, sort of stacked.

I wish this picture gave you a better sense of the red awning that comes out of the front wall of the house. The red awning that you can see above the windows is connected to the house with rods that run back into the wall. On these rods, other red swags are draped. These drapes are mechanized to be remotely opened when people are out on the patio sitting area. The drapes form several soft, u-shaped folds that provide a nice shaded effect. The patio can be reached from two doors, one on the right side that leads from the reception room. The door on the left leads into the dining room. The windows on the second floor are the bedrooms for Mr. and Mrs. Westcott.

This is the long colonnade wall the runs from the back of the house, along Greenmount Avenue. It connects the kitchen area of the house to the old carriage house/car garage. Now that outbuilding is the gift shop. On the other side of the wall is the back yard and small garden.

You can see the smaller planter urns on this wall that are more typical of Wright's designs. You can also get a hint of the growing influence of Japanese architectural designs on Wright's style. The Westcott house was built in 1904.

The house was in extremely bad shape when it was bought by the Frank Lloyd Wright Conservancy and the Westcott House Organization. (You can see a very short video that shows some of the house's decrepitude here.) The building had been cut up into apartments for several decades. One of the tour docents now used to live in one of the apartments. It took five years and almost $6 million to restore the house to its current state.

I would have taken more pictures, but they don't let you photograph inside. But you should make the short drive and see it for yourself.