Dolls, tea, falcons, tulips, and curry

What do dolls, tea, falcons, tulips, and curry have in common? They all played a large role in my Saturday.

For weeks now I've been looking forward to the Spring Doll Show in Salt Lake City Utah. The Doll show comes to the fair grounds twice a year, once in spring, and again in fall. (Here and here are the posts about last year's shows.) A building on the fair grounds fills with dolls, doll accessories, and doll clothes of all kinds. Antique dolls mix with the new craze- ball jointed dolls. Tonner and Effanbee dolls mingle with antique china and bisque dolls. But, the reason we love the doll show most of all, is the American Girl booth where you can pick up black market (or "gray market" as the collectors call it) goods for a fraction of the cost!

This year Chelsea and Connie were at my house at 8:30, so we could make it to the show at 9:00, right when the doors open. As soon as we were there we high-tailed it over to the AG booth and picked up some great finds! I spent $40 on $100 worth of AG goods. Sweet!

The rest of the doll show was quite fun too. It is wonderful to spend a few hours looking at all things doll, and chatting with other doll lovers from all over the west. I even found out Tonner is planning on coming out with a ball jointed Betsy McCall doll later this year, which is beyond awesome!

After the show we met E at the Beehive Tearoom. This tradition is so fun, we enjoy lunch and tea in the middle of downtown Salt Lake. Each year we enjoy our time at the tearoom more than before. The building just has a quiet and relaxed feel to it, very enjoyable.

Once lunch and tea time was through, E and I decided to head to Temple Square and enjoy the sunny weather (still not warm though), and the gardens. Temple Square was stunning. All the tulips were in bloom, and the gardens were gorgeous. As we walked towards the temple, we looked up at Hotel Utah hoping to see the famous peregrine falcon that calls the building home, and right there, on the South East corner was the falcon cleaning his wings.

This was really awesome to see, because peregrines are E's favorite animal, he has loved them since he was a kid, and has never seen one in the wild. Now, downtown Salt Lake City might not seem like the wild, but it is. Paregrines have learned to adapt to cities quite well, nesting on high rises and eating birds, mice and insects right in the heart of large cities. It was really fun to see.

After enjoying the gardens and watching the falcon for quite awhile, we headed into Hotel Utah. Once, Hotel Utah was the grandest and most beautiful hotel in all of Utah, but started to loose business to competition with larger rooms and more updated facilities, so they closed their doors in 1987. Since then it has been converted into a LDS church-owned building. E and I had never been into the building because of this, and we were so glad we finally did!

The lobby was unreal! Huge green marble columns reach two stories up to a huge stain glass ceiling. The gold leaf ceilings around the mezzanine and the opulent banisters were a sight to see. We even took a mini tour and learned all about the various rooms in the building. E and I love historic buildings, so we were in heaven.


After our busy morning on the town, we headed home to a quick nap and cleaning the house. Mike called and asked if we had dinner plans, and if we'd like to come over because he was going to make Thai red curry. Of course we said yes, and arrived around 8:00. Mike is a fantastic cook, and when we arrived he was sauteing salmon and toasting pine nuts. Soon he mixed all the ingredients into a huge post of red spicy curry and we sat down to a fantastic meal.

Afterwards we played games, made really horrible dirty jokes and stayed up way too late. On the way home I mentioned to E that I had never had better curry, even a restaurant can't compete with Mike.

What an awesome day.