"Girls trip" Flip Flop Cottage Tybee Island Georgia July 2008

The Flip Flop cottage on Tybee Island was the perfect place for us sisters, sister in law, daughters, nieces and one little granddaughter to share a fun getaway for our second annual "girls trip" July 2008.

The girls consisted of three moms (2 sisters and 1 sister in law) with their three grown daughters and one little granddaughter who met up at Tybee from three states, Georgia, Alabama and Arkansas.

Last year we all met in downtown Savannah for our first annual “girls trip” where we ate our way through the Paula Deen tour with stops at....

Lady and Sons restaurant, Polk food market, the cookie factory and Uncle Bubba’s restaurant.

This year we stayed on Tybee and sampled some great seafood there along with lots of island fun.

We were delighted to read in the Flip Flop cottage guest book, that Mary Kay Andrews, aka Kathy Hogan Trocheck, a favorite author of ours had stayed in the same cottage on Tybee.

We had so much fun on our stay...

...we'll be back!

BIG NEWS in "Small but Special" RUTLEDGE GEORGIA!!

BIG NEWS IN RUTLEDGE GEORGIA!!
BIG NEWS IN RUTLEDGE! BIG happenings in "Small but Special" Rutledge! AOL has added not one but TWO Rutledge attractions to the travel page of their website!! During National Tourism Week May 10 - 18, 2008 AOL launched a national campaign to find the most unique places to visit in the US. TWO Rutledge businesses were chosen and featured in picture and story on AOL travel's website out of the many that were nominated from across the nation. Rutledge Hardware was chosen as one of 11 unique museums to see in the nation and Yesterday's Cafe was picked as one of 19 restaurants. The page will stay up indefinately on AOL travel and can be viewed here: Enter the web address below for AOL's UNIQUE MUSEUMS to find RUTLEDGE HARDWARE look for number 9 out of the 11 unique museums featured there. http://information.travel.aol.com/tourism-week/museums This link will remain up indefinately and if you click on the picture catagory of Specialty Food below the story on the hardware store, you will find Yesterday's Cafe as number 17 out of 19 restaurants featured there at this web address: http://information.travel.aol.com/tourism-week/food
America is knocking on our door. This AOL promotion comes on the tail of our visit last November by none other than GOOD MORNING AMERICA. On Monday November 19th, 2007 Good Morning America came a'calling. I had nominated our own Yesterdays Cafe in GMA Weekend's Best Bite Challenge national contest looking for the best small town restaurant in America. We were filmed on location and the segment aired on Saturday morning November 24th where we were in the final four in the nation. Yesterday's did not win but came in a very close second to 12 Bones Rib House in the much larger town of Asheville, NC. ABC said the online voting went on until midnight with our two restaurants neck and neck right up until the very end. This was quite a feat for a little restaurant in a tiny town of 702 folks! Here is the address of the online video from that event: http://abcnews.go.com/search?searchtext=best%20bites%20challenge&type=

Little girl dreams can still come true........

There once was a lovely little Victorian wood frame playhouse on the side of the road.... I wanted it so bad I could taste it.......

I was just a little girl and to me it looked just like a miniature version of the old houses around where I grew up. It had a shingle roof with a little dormer, a front porch and a wood burning fireplace with a brick chimney on the side. It was even wired for electricity!

I grew up in the mid 1950s (so now you know how OLD I am, LOL!) Well, anyway, I wanted that little playhouse sitting on the side of the road in a neighboring town here in Georgia for as long as I can remember. I wanted it so bad I begged for one like it every time we went by until finally my dear daddy bought me a little metal playhouse with window flower boxes that I loved.

When I was 12, we moved to the town where the play house was and I always kept my eye on it. Over the years I watched as the land sold on that now busy highway and the little play house disappeared with a business going up in its place. I just assumed the little house was torn down to make way for the business and thought at the time what a shame that was....

Many years later, after I was grown and married with a little girl of my own, the little house would come back into my life. I was doing some decorating for a professional hockey player who was traded from the Chicago Blackhawk's to Atlanta and had moved to Rutledge to get away from the big city. He fell in love with Rutledge, began shopping with us in the old barn that housed our furniture and crafts business and became our family friend.

When he first saw our house he asked would I help him decorate his cabin in a similar manner and I said sure. He had my husband build lots of furniture and cabinets for him and I went out and about to antique shows and the like to shop for country items to fill his cabin.

Several years later, he married and he and his new wife wanted something more than this rustic cabin so they moved to the town where my parents still live. This was the same town where I had once longed for that little playhouse.

To make a long story short he called one day and said I know you'll like to move things (we had at the time he met us and over the next few years moved our house and barn along with a little outbuilding we were using as a guest house). He said I've got something for you'll if you want to come and take a look and see if it is worth moving. He said I'm not going to tell you what it is until you get here but I think your daughter might like it.

As we turned into his drive, curved around the beautiful lake out front and pulled up to his gorgeous new home, there in the woods behind his house and in very sad shape, sat the little Victorian playhouse of my dreams!

Imagine that, the former owner is the one who had bought the land in town and put his business there where the little playhouse was. He had moved the playhouse when he built his home and put it behind his house for his children or grandchildren to enjoy.

Now, after all these years, our Canadian friend moves there, discovers the same little playhouse and thought of us, wanting to give it to us to move again for my daughter!

He thought it an eyesore behind his home but did see the potential it had for my husband and me to move after having seen our relocated home and outbuildings. He had no idea until I told him this story with tears streaming down my face how much I had always wanted and loved that little Victorian playhouse.

My husband moved it on a flatbed trailer to our back yard with the help of a friend. My daughter and the two children my husband and I were soon to have (a girl and a boy) all grew up playing in and loving that little playhouse. It was a favorite spot over the years for them and their little playmates.

This little playhouse or one just like it must have been mine in another lifetime, its pull on me was that strong. That pull and/or fate somehow brought us together with the help of our Canadian friend, many years after I first saw the little playhouse sitting on the side of the road......

A little girls dream come true!

Accents, dialect and the like..........

As an eBay powerseller who ships items worldwide from my little shop right here in the Southern United States, I have "met" many new friends online.

Recently, I got a surprise phone call from a new friend in the UK, one whom I had just "met" on eBay when she purchased an adorable little primitive wood bucket from me.

My new friend Karen and I have found through easy conversation that we have so much in common, even though we live a world apart. Like sisters almost it seems.

We both own and operate Primitive shops, hers in the UK and mine here in the US. She loves everything American and I love everything British!

As we got to know each other over the phone, we shared compliments over each others accents, hers a lovely British one and my own slow Southern drawl. Soon I began to realize how much accents can affect language and the understanding of it .

My new friend and I were sharing website addresses, she gave me the one for her UNIT (shop) there in the UK and then some others for companies that produce merchandise like we both sell in our shops. As she was spelling out the website address, I couldn't get the letters right. She had to say A as in Apple and E as in Eve for me to finally "get it".

I had never realized how differently we say even the simplest things such as letters with our accents. When she was spelling out the website and would say A I would put down E for the sound I was hearing (eh). Then when I spelled it back to her she would correct me and say again (eh) as in A (eh) for apple. In my slow Southern drawl I say A-A-A-A-A pronounced (AY) as in WAY over yonder, I could go on but I'm sure you see our dilemma!

How fun it has been to chat with my lovely new found British friend on the phone, trading accents and the like. Learning different words for the same things such as "trunk sale" in the UK rather than "yard sale" here in the US.

In our most recent conversation, she was delighted to hear I sit on the "sofa", the same as her and not on the "couch" the word she thought all of us Americans (or Yanks) used for sofa and many do. (Now being from the deep South I just can't begin to call myself a "Yank" as many Brits do I hear, LOL!)

I am teaching my new friend to speak Southern with words like 'lite, 'nite, and 'rite and of course Ya'll. Hopefully she will teach me to speak more proper English and soon we will be able to understand each other perfectly.

On a more serious note, I would like to say the world wide web has certainly shrunk our world in my opinion and made it much easier for like minded folks like Karen and I to meet in cyber space.

My hope is that someday this easy access brought on by the www will help folks across the globe to "meet" and get to know each other "one on one" like Karen and I have, no matter how many miles or how many differences may separate them.

I feel that if we could all learn more about each others lives, finding out the many things we all have in common and exploring the differences, that someday we could all learn to live in peace..........