First Trip to Pittsburgh… Loved It!

A few months ago, I was asked to present at a conference in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and I was delighted to accept for several reasons. Primarily, it was an honour to be selected at this conference which attracts physicians from all over the world, and secondly, I’d never been to Pittsburgh. One of my closest friends is from there, so she offered to join me for the several day trip, and show me her town. It’s about a four-hour drive from Baltimore, and we knew we’d need a car, so we drove out there on Sunday afternoon.

The meeting was held at the University of Pittsburgh, so that was our first stop. One of the first buildings I spotted was the massive (40 story) Cathedral of Learning, which is still used as classroom space and has a massive half-acre, four story Gothic study hall. Of course, we made plans to visit.

We parked next to the Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Hall, just around the corner from the Cathedral. Buildings like these never fail to leave me in complete awe of those who built them! The detail and craftsmanship is incredible, and you just don’t find this anymore.

As we walked to dinner, I had a chance to look at some of the city’s more contemporary buildings, like the PPG Glass Palace, Gateway Health and others.

We took a spin across the river after dinner to look at the city from the heights on the other side. You can see where the three rivers come together in the first picture, and we stayed right by the brightly-lit building.

After my presentation the next morning, we headed over to the Cathedral of Learning and their International Rooms, a series of rooms donated by various nations and completely outfitted in national architecture and design. Each room was designed to reflect the nation before 1800 which is when the University of Pittsburgh was founded, and all are strictly non-political.

It’s magical! Although all of the Tudor-style doors are marked with the name of the room, you’re given a master key to all of the rooms, and when you open the doors, you are delighted by what’s behind them! The ceilings, doors, windows, fireplaces, and other details all reflect the room’s home country. Let’s take a look.

Ceilings, which range from almost plain to incredibly elaborate!

Doors, which all were about three inches thick, and Tudor-style on the outside.

Windows in so many various styles!

Other details

These images will give you an idea of the scale of the building!

Look where the finger is pointing to see the scale of a man against a massive door!

After we left Pittsburgh, we took a road which ran vaguely parallel to the Pennsylvania Turnpike. I had heard about the Flight 93 Memorial and was curious to see it. I really had no idea of the terrain where the plane went down on 9/11, and thought it would be nice to pay my respects. It was absolutely gut-wrenching.

The crash site is at the top of a “mountain” which had been strip-mined, and so is pretty desolate. You can see for miles from the top, and the wind is constantly blowing. The memorial itself is very stark, with 20-foot high concrete walls, impressed with tree-bark and it’s more than two miles off the road.

A local stone path follows the progression of both the day and the plane, with incriptions when each plane hit, and leading visitors to the overlook where the crash site is located.

At the end, an inscribed glass panel tells of the difference a day made: A common field one day. A field of honor forever. 

Inside the visitors center, media from the morning of 9/11 played, with clips from the late Peter Jennings and from Katie Couric. There were also the voicemails from people on the plane to their loved ones, but, in all honesty, I couldn’t bear to listen to them.

One of the artifacts that really made an impact on me was the mangled and twisted cutlery from the plane, which had hit the ground at more than 500 miles per hour.

Although it was a quick trip, I really liked Pittsburth a lot and hope to go back before too long!

A Dinner for Bunny!

This year was the 10th annual Ladew Garden Festival at the amazing Ladew Topiary Gardens! To celebrate, Ladew hosted a dinner for the delightful Bunny Williams and her husband, John Rosselli. It was Bunny’s Trade Secrets show and sale that was the inspiration for the Garden Festival a decade ago. The plotting and planning for the dinner party started in January over a quiet dinner in front of a cozy fire, and over the next few months, all of the parts began to come together.

The theme for the dinner was pretty simple – a play on the extensive gardens and topiary collections at Ladew Gardens. Even after looking at numerous topiary-themed patterns for table cloths, we decided we could come up with something we loved on our own. So, using some old wall-paper segments, and playing with my mad Photoshop skills, I combined a topiary pattern and a knot garden pattern. I cleaned up the background and sharpened the images a little. I also brightened the colours to make them a bit more lively. Then I started working on the border which came from an old fabric, no longer in production.

We ordered 20 yards of the topiary pattern and 16 yards of the border, which was printed at six across, all from my go-to resource, Spoonflower. I have been using them for printing my tea towels for a few years now, and they are amazing. They knew I’d used their services a lot, but had never ordered this print in this quantity, so they sent samples for our approval. Great customer service!

Instead of round tables, we opted for two long tables with 25 people at each table. We got a variety of lavender topiaries from one of the vendors at the Garden Festival and randomly placed them along the tables.

The next job was creating a placecard for the table. We decided to just use the border for the card and find a beautiful front for the writing (Bickham Script Pro). To save on space at the table, we combined the placecard and the menu card, and put one at each place.

Because the dinner was held to both celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the Garden Festival, and to raise funds to support the gardens, we wanted to give each donor a little gift at the end of the evening. So, using the first two designs, I added the logo designed for the 10th year and came up with tea towels to give to everyone. As with the tablecloths, we used a 50/50 linen and cotton blend.

The dinner was quite simple – a light garden salad, a chicken potpie and dessert. What we hadn’t anticipated was that it would be 90* that day and still pretty warm in the evening. But that actually didn’t matter.

Finally, it was party time, and the guests began to fill the room, lit by dozens of votive candles and one overhead fixture. The dinner was held in a barn which had been converted into a painting studio by Harvey Ladew, who owned the property for decades.

Speeches were made, congratulations were doled out and then it was time for dessert. When the wait staff entered the room carrying these gorgeous pots of flowers, everyone gasped!

The dessert was a chocolate mousse in a parchment-lined terra cotta pot, with shaved chocolate on top, and crumbled Oreo cookies on the plate. We used pastillage sugar lilies of the valley, with actual lily leaves (yes, we know they are poisonous!) wrapped in florists’ tape. On the side was a cookie in the shape of a shovel, dipped in chocolate to indicate the dirt! Here’s the picture Bunny took after the event, on a different plate.

As ever, Bunny was absolutely gracious and charming, and gave a lovely thank you to the guests, referencing how she had first come to the gardens with a niece of Harvey Ladew’s and how much she loved the gardens… and Baltimore!

One of the fun aspects of the party was to have an artist live-painting the dinner from a perch in the gallery! I am just out of view in the bottom left corner.Patricia Bennett, a Baltimore artist does this at a lot of parties, and it is always fascinating to see how she views what you’re a part of. You can just see her in the top right of the picture, painting the scene.

I was so honoured to be a part of this very special evening and appreciated the opportunity to help create the look of the event! Thanks to Stiles, Jonathan, Bunny and John for making this an event to remember!