Merry Christmas greetings from December 22, 2007. Here you have Purq (the purple and turquoise papier-mâché cat), Cow-Dog (the brown papier-mâché dog whose creator could never remember if he was making a cow or a dog), and Flat Stanley. Or was he Flat Chris? I cannot remember, and it's too late at night to be looking at my blog from back then to find out for sure.
What it boils down to is that the two lovely papier-mâché critters were created by patients at the Mississippi State Hospital and were sold at a stupendous yearly silent auction known as Serendipity. Rest assured, I hovered until I had the winning bid for these two and lots more art that I hold dear.
The little guy wearing the green and black polka dot tie with his dress shirt and slacks came to me from a teacher friend of mine back in Mississippi who had her second grade class--I think it was second grade--mail drawings of themselves to friends/relatives who lived in another place so that they could vicariously experience elsewhere through photos and text that said friends/relatives would create and mail back to the students. One little guy said, "I ain't got nobody to send my Flat Stanley." So, she asked me to help out. Naturally, I jumped at the chance, totally thrilled. Mama and I had lots of fun "taking" him all over Portland and the metropolitan area. Oh, the reindeer antlers are mine. I sewed and/or glued all of those colorful items--including the medallion with my Christmas wish for you on it--to the antlers in order to spiff them up a bit. The night I took this photo, I was bound and determined to get a photo where I looked like Cow-Dog was wearing the antlers. I love it when a plan comes together.