Beautiful Flowers!

Yesterday, I spent an afternoon visiting the Como Conservatory as I do many times during the year. While always beautiful and ever changing with a variety of flowers, this year I became fascinated with the ferns that attach to a wall and needing no nutrients from the soil, but only from the surrounding air. Equally beautiful were the many orchids that were in bloom along with other flowers, particularly mums.

"Hope Chest Barbie"

Fran an Joe, my wonderful salespeople







Just this week, I bought a number of furniture items, lamps and floral displays from Hope Chest here in the Twin Cities.

Hope Chest takes donated items and sells them in their two Twin City Stores. The proceeds help women to undergo breast cancer treatment and who are in financial straits due to chemo and radiation, have children to support, bills to pay and mortgages and rents.

Earlier this month, Hope Chest had a breast cancer awareness evening benefit called 'Barbie B Friends All Star Evening'. At this function, Hope Chest had more than 1000 Barbie dolls collected by a single collector, from the 1980's through the 2000's for sale. The Barbie dolls were in their original packaging and in mint collection. That's right, never removed from their boxes. Photos of some of these Barbies are shown below, plus other items found at Hope Chest.

The Hope Chest Cancer store was founded by Barbara Hensley in 2001. After watching her mother and both of her sisters die of breast cancer, she felt that she needed to do something. She herself had a bilateral prophylactic mastectomy, and underwent genetic testing to see if she had the breast cancer gene. To her relief, she didn't and won't pass it down in her family. During her family ordeals and her own, Hensley's eyes were opened to the hardships many women undergo in addition to the physical assault fighting cancer wages on their bodies.

So with the 'Barbies' and other items in the store, every $100 raised will help  a family, from paying a bill to serving wholesome meals.

Hope Chest stores are located in the Twin Cities 3850 Shoreline in Navarre, Minnesota (952-471-8700) and on 571 Snelling in St. Paul Minnesota (651-642-2850)

"Halloween with the Grandkids-2012"

 

 

 

What a wonderful evening for trick and treating this past Wednesday evening. My grandkids, Piano Man, Desert Princess, Princess Iris, and Baby Petra were all decked out with wonderful customs. How excited they were, and by the end of the evening, many treats of candy were collected, and guess what, this Grandpa received all packages of "Dots."