Welcome to Spring City

One of my friends called me up and wanted to go somewhere this weekend and as a result I looked on http://www.utah.com/ under events and found out that there were several events taking place in central Utah. Spring City was having Heritage Day on the 24th. In Ephraim that same day there was the Scandinavian Festival. And let's not leave out the Heaven on Earth Festival at the Wind Walker Ranch. For those of you who don't know Spring City and Ephraim are 10 minutes away from each other so we planned on going to both. Seeing as the Heaven on Earth Festival was a hippie gathering we opted to skip out on that one this year. But you can check out the details at http://www.heavenonearthfestival.com/.

I'm not going to make this too wordy...but I do want to say that I have always LOVED Spring City. It's a historic pioneer town that is on the national register as a historic landmark. The whole town is pretty much as it was in the pioneer days, it's like stepping back in time when you go there. I used to drive through it when I lived in Ephraim, it was out of the way but the town was so beautiful I would make the detour. So the Heritage Day is the one day a year that the community opens their door and allows the public to tour their homes. If you know me well you know that I LOVE old homes and so this opportunity was super exciting for me.

This is the Allred Hotel built in 1867.




















The people that owned this place had just bought it recently and were in the process of restoring it. It beautiful building with a lot of ole antiques, a really cool old kitchen, lots of little rooms upstairs with a wash stand in the hall. Most of the homes in Spring City are made with oolitic limestone. The outdoor lighting fixture on the porch was awesome, it's an oil lamp.

There were 6 bed rooms on the 2nd level. This is the bathroom up stairs. Every house we saw had claw foot tubs. This one was made of metal trimmed with wood.

The LDS Church 1902.

Built out of limestone, this church was beautiful. Leslie made the comment that would move here just to go to church. The chapel inside had tons of hand carved wood and a really cool organ. The side addition was add in 1970 made with the same material and windows.

Neils H. Borresen House 1864
Most the settlers in this region were immigrants from Scandinavia. Thus the architecture reflected those styles. This is a Danish style house with three doors. We were told that it had a second story door so that they could lift furniture to the top level.

A polygamist family lived here. There were three wives total. The first wife however lived in Fairview, 15 miles to the north. (I guess she didn't get along with the other wives) There were pictures inside of the families, including a picture of the father in prison in Salt Lake City, along with a framed letter that he had written to his family. He went to prison three times for Polygamy.

Endowment/School house 1876.

This house is thought to be an old "endowment" building that the saints used before the Manti temple was completed. It is also believed to have been an office for Apostle Orson Hyde. Later it was used as a school house for 20 years. There is a family living here now in this 2 room house. The top floor is where they sleep(shown below), and the bottom floor has a kitchen area(shown) in the front a dinning table in the middle and a living room area in the back. They had just installed a bathroom this year in a small closet under the stairs which included electricity and running water a first for them as the structure has remained without it since it's completion. They did this because apparently their outhouse had been stolen.

This kitchen is not a setup, this is how they do it, wash tubs and all.


















I loved the door knobs in this house.











Granary/Cabin 1865








Originally a granary, it was purchased by artist Susan Gallacher who moved it and turned into a cabin. It had one large room with a loft and wood burning stove, and two very small rooms to the back side. A bathroom and a kitchen. It was one of my favorite structures because it was tiny and so co cute! Note the art work in on the walls. Every single house that we toured had original art work in it. This is a huge artist community, many artist live in town and there were 4 art museums in town.





Judge Jacob Johnsons House 1892.

Judge Jacobs house is easily the biggest and most expensive house in town. He must have been very well off. It included the Victorian style house, a guest house, a granary and huge stone barn.


There were lots of things to love about this house. It was beautifully restored, antique furniture, stained glass windows. 5 huge bedrooms each with a balcony etc. The grounds were very beautiful and well kept. It reminded me of the house in Pollyanna.























I loved the light fixtures in this house. Notice the art, all original, and this was my favorite bathroom!
























There you have it, were toured lots of home, those were just some of my favorites. There were 22 homes on display this year. We were told that half the town does it one year and the other half does it next year. So we'll have to go back next year I suppose.

We did make it to the Scandinavian Festival as well, which was fun. Fun to see Ephriam more than anything. We accidentally happened upon the "Heaven on Earth Festival" while driving around, don't worry we just drove by. We also drove to Manti to see the Temple. All in all it was a really fun day!

Abram the Magnificent!!

It's May and while that means many things to me, usually the most pressing is that I have to get my car registered...again. Since I have a car that is getting older and there always seems to be something wrong with it this is not a joyous time for me. This year in particular I already knew that there were problems that I would have to fix: My faulty headlight, my missing turn signal, and the brakes (or so I thought). In the beginning I thought that the brakes were the big deal, since the last time that I got my car registered in Kaysville they told me that my brakes "barely passed." So I had planned on going to get them fixed.

It all started when Abram asked me in passing how my car was doing. I, of course. mentioned that i needed to go get it tested and registered so that meant that I need to probably get my brakes fixed. For those of you who know Abram you know that he is far too nice for his own good and he is ALWAYS offering help to any and everyone that could possibly need it. He's truly wonderful like that. I try to avoid taking advantage of him as often as i can, but when it comes to cars it's a little hard since he's such a genius at fixing them.

So Abram came over and helped me to install my left turn signal, it was a little tricky because the place where the bolt to hold it in would go was broken off, but no worries we used Christmas ornament hooks to wire them into place. I then went to get my car inspected to see if the brakes really needed to be fixed which they didn't. I still failed though because my headlight only worked when it was on bright, and the new turn signal only worked when the other lights weren't on. Awesome. I called Abram after I left and discovered that he was already at the junk yard! He said that he would pick up a connector for my head light, and come back over to install it and see about the turn signal.

So he came back, rewired and thus fixed my headlight, something the Honda dealership wanted to charge me $150 to fix. We then tried to figure out the turn signal. After trying a few things, Abram concluded that the connector could be bad, so we switched it out with one of my old ones and it worked!! Yeah!!! So I now everything on my car works, and it feels so good! It's been at least a year or more since I haven't had problems with the lights. So thank you Abram for being wonderful and helpful and MAGNIFICENT!!

Maki: A Work in Progress

As pretty much everyone knows we acquired a cat while on a road trip in Idaho last July. On our way home we visited a family in Pocatello, the Otto's. In the back of their house was field, and while we were there one of their daughters, Rachelle, found a kitten out in the field, but couldn't catch it. I, of course can't stay away from cats so I went outside with Rachelle to see if I could help her. The rest is history of course, and we came home with a cat.

Maki's name means "true record" or "tree of truth" or "fire wood", or "black pine", it's also a type of sushi. We just chose it cause we liked it and it fit her. Incidentally she also answers to monkey and minky.

She's got a LOT of personality, mostly she thinks she's a person. She tries to eat with her paws, loves to watch TV, lays on her back most of the time and insists on drinking out of glasses instead of her bowl. She also loves water, and eats everything, including canned spinach. She's pretty affectionate and likes just about everyone. Maki is also very playful which can be a lot of fun. Our favorite game is Red Light Green Light, she never gets tired of it.

All in all we're super happy that we have Maki and we were able to give her a good home.

Mom asked me to send some pictures, so I decided to post some...

Maki Mei

Wormy Nerd

It's true I've joined a book club. I know this sounds pretty nerdy, and probably is, but the truth is that I like to read. I'm really really slow at it, but I like to read. The "book club" is a development from my ward and we had our first meeting this week. It was a very meager turn out of four people. Roll call consisted of the two people that lived at the house we met at and my roommate and I.

This saddens me because I think more and more people are growing up without an interest in reading. I feel like most people my age and younger are more interested in movies and video games. It's sad to say but very rarely can I hold a conversation with someone I meet about what books they've read. I could be wrong but I think that probably has a huge affect on society. Yes we've been launched into a new age where things are hugely media driven...people are more interested in reality TV and American Idol type shows than they are in politics or classic literature.

The truth is that there are a lot things that you can learn from books that you can't learn from TV. Visual things are very influencing and it is hard to portray things without a bias, it also takes away the creativity of your own imagination. By reading things you can imagine for yourself what things look like, and can emphasize and pick out words that are important to you. Thus being able to analyze and think about what the words are really saying. It teaches a different mode of thinking and promotes creativity. So yes I'm pro-reading books for sure.

I guess I'm lucky in that most of my friends read, I guess that that's what really got me into reading as an adult. I love hearing about good books and thank goodness for goodreads.com so that I can keep in touch with all that.

This month in Book Club we are reading "The Alchemist" which was my pick. I highly recommend it. It's an excellent, motivating book, and an easy read.