Yes, I’m addicted to photos. Thank God smart phones now have such a nice built in camera which makes it easier to use verses the days when I used get my dear, Canon SLR out of my back pack to photograph something. Now days, I just whip out my phone and can record my life story as it unfolds before me.

If I could have chosen a career path, 35 years ago, it would have been photo journalism. Not that I was trained as a journalist, far from it since I can barely string together a proper sentence, but I loved imagery and I loved the words that described images. My constant phrase is: “if you don’t have a photo, it didn’t happen.”  I kind of mean that, but I worry about all the things that would not have happened if I had not photos so there goes that sentiment down the drain.

This blog is mostly about the Farm here at Seven Oaks, (capitalization makes important words stand out, eh?) but I may have to interject some other photos from my day/s to make it what I want it to be…more of a log of all aspects of my life. (Just wait for the knitting photos that will flood this area in the coming winter months!)

Photography on an iPhone doesn’t come close to an ideal, but here are some of my pics from my other day time occupation.

I was picking up some plated hardware at Theiss Plating in good ole STL today and I saw this gorgeous item! It caught my breath!

My dear friend, Lockwood, (an employee who I regularly deal with there) told me the history of it. It is in the possession of a man who owns a restaurant in O’Fallon (not sure if this is O’F ,MO or O’F, IL). This service urn is was a feature on display at their restaurant but had somehow fallen and was damaged. So Theiss Plating was repairing it and brought it back to its original luster. It is a magnificent piece in every way! The interior is porcelain lined and the exterior is obviously copper and brass with wooden handles that act as insulation for ones hands when serving. It was a joy to be able to see it and touch it!

One of the best parts of this story is that a local family business produced this item back in the day. Kismet…the family that owns this business, Ford Restaurant Supply, (at one time perhaps Ford Hotel supply?) http://www.fordstl.com/ , is still in operation here in STL. I know this because the family lives two doors down from me! See the tag on the piece?

Wow, I just love bumping into these types of items as I go about my day.

Another photo of the day is one of the “grouchy” painters. My day is made up of running from job site to job site and making sure things are as I designed them to be. By the time things get to the painting stage, I’m often not critical to the picture, but my clients often want me to crack the whip on all stages of the project so I try to keep the painters in line even if they resent it. So, with all good intentions of winning over the cranky painters on one of my jobs, today I plied them with donuts and it seemed to cheer them up a bit. Here they are, gladly posing with a box of goodies!

I don’t know why I have some satisfaction from these pics, but they are things that I have bumped along to see today and if I don’t share them, they are perhaps lost.