A good friend of mine, Kathy Chessbro (aka Shire-Lore) has been collecting original Lord of the Rings fan art since the movies first came out. She has ventured into the Topps Masterpiece art cards, too.

She has an amazing collection, and has been kind enough to permit me to post this link to share it with other fans.

Most of these are original drawing, watercolours, and paintings. The 'guest password' is legolas2050.

Doug and I have been Ebay members since April of 1997, and have nearly 11,000 buying and selling transactions under our belt. We've sold everything from (blush!) Beanie Babies, to Olympic pins, to Lord of the Rings movie memorabilia, with a few oddities in between.

I am confident that we pretty much know the ins and outs of Ebaying, although sometimes it seems I learn something new every day, by following the Ebay Discussion Boards.  Those people are the real heart and soul of Ebay, not the corporate umbrella.

When we first started on Ebay, it was a wonderful place, full of friendly users, who sent their items, and paid for their winnings, usually with a nice email to boot, happy to find what they were looking for.

I just have to say, I flipped the page on my mega poster sized "Heroes" calendar a bit ago.

My March pin-up is Bernard Hill as King Theoden.

Hubba hubba! I want  that costume. And what a great picture of it this month!!!!!

Superb casting. Superb costumes. I could stare at this picture for an hour......

Vóila!!!!

Renovations complete.

The Shrine is now negotiable, without tripping on floor hazards, balletic leaps over piles of junk,  or fear of getting beaned by toppling Damoclesean towers of carp.

Wow!!!!!

I spent all weekend working on The Shrine.

First Katie and I made a trip to IKEA, where a very nice man was extremely helpful and spent a lot of time with us, even though he had throngs of hopeful people following him, hoping to snag him when we got done.  BTW, I bet that darn IKEA needs two  Brinks trucks every  night. I've never seen anything like it.

12 Jan 2008

For Christmas I had four glorious days in a row off. I haven't had that many days off in months and months and months. 

I thought it would be a great opportunity to organize my albums, something I've been meaning to do for ages.  When Lord of the Rings stuff arrives in my house, it goes through a "checking in" process that would be the despair of any professional librarian. (Showing my age here. Librarians have gone the way of the record player. I think they call them Media Specialists these days. *sigh*)

BTW, my daughter asked me for a vinyl disk reader for Christmas. What the hell is that, I wondered. You know, she said, one of those devices that spins the black vinyl disks and reads them to play music. Wracking my brain, it finally dawned on me. You mean a record player?!!!!!

There's your generation gap, in a nutshell, lol!

I just got in about twenty new Eaglemoss Collector's Models for my own collection, including the Fell Beast "special figure".

I just have to say, "WOW!!!!"

This is my all time favorite figure, bar none, from any series, from Toybiz to Britains. Everything about it is top-notch, from the modelling, to the painting.

Sorry, no spares of this one, but if you can beg, borrow, or steal one somewhere else, I promise you, you will not be disappointed!

I am sitting here this afternoon, frantically photographing and scanning new items, so I can log them into my collection, and onto my personal photo catalogue  (more to the point, off the floor, out of the way of our new dog, Felix, who seems to be everywhere, all at once). 

Do I already have this one? Where the heck did that one come from? Darn!  This one's too big for the scanner.

It just idly occurs to me, by way of the Danbury Mint Plate Calendar, what a huge undertaking this whole thing was.

Twelve plates, one interchangeable plate for each month. A couple of month have only one character on them, but most have three, four, half a dozen. No character appears on a plate twice.  And all were integral to the story.

Have mercy!!!!  I don't know why this particular thing brought it home to me, but it did!

I'll post photos of it later on. You know, for a company that normally does shockingly hideous schlock, I have to confess, I rather like some of their LOTR releases, especially this calendar plate set. 

This is a completely unsolicited recommendation, done in my usual rambling fashion. Deal with it. It's my website!

Late last year, Doug and I began playing the "what're we gonnado?" game. 

This is the one where your kids will be gone fairly soon, and you wonder, what will we do with the empty nest? Him being a forecaster by profession, and me being likewise a risk manager, we sat down and talked it out. The upshot was, we went on a preliminary househunting expedition, just to scope things out. Townhouses and condos are springing up like mushrooms in our area.

Well, as a good friend of mine would put it, we "got our little nerves wrecked". And how! Half a day of visiting new construction in our area showed us that we would be crazy to sell our home. At two to three times the price, we would get half the house, and little or no land. (We are fortunate enough to sit on nearly an acre of dog/squirrel playground.)  Apparently sleepy little Mableton had turned from redneck haven to "desirable close-in location" while we were napping.

I told  my husband, good grief!!!! We can stay just where we are, renovate, pay lawn care service for life, and still come out ahead. He agreed, and the Great Kitchen Remodel began.

You know, I just recently found and joined one of those Yahoo Groups for my high school.

I immediately got two emails announcing that two of our alumni had passed away, and it got me to thinking.

You know how you get those jokey email lists "You Know You Grew Up in the 70's If..."

Well, here's my attempt "You Know You Grew Up in 70's South DeKalb If..."

This has truly been a strange week. One for the books. So strange in fact, I thought I'd jot it down diary style, so that next year, when I re-read it, maybe it'll be funny by then. Besides, nobody reads these pages. Right?.......

So here is my tip of the day, which I hope will save some poor collector a few bucks.

I love the Stern pinball machine. Love it, lust for it, can't afford it, don't have the room, even if I could. Having played (ha! loose description!) it, I fell in love with the artwork and the little figures inside.

One of the best things about collecting Lord of the Rings is the opportunity to meet up with other collectors.