Phat Phives

Our Five Favorite Places That We Visited Last Week

Monday: Free Soup And Games Night At Hope And Olive Restaurant, Greenfield, MA: Every first Monday at the start of each month, Hope and Olive, in conjunction with Gill's Wagon Wheel Restaurant, provides free soup, dessert, and bread to its customers in return for a donation to a local non-profit organization, such as the Survival Center in Turners Falls, that the Hope and Olive and Wagon Wheel collaborative has chosen to benefit. Not normally open on Monday nights, Hope and Olive hosts this monthly gathering, and it is a treat indeed. As you enter the building, the warm and cozy atmosphere greets you, with comfortable booths, warm, rich colors, and the sounds of laughter and community spilling from all corners of the restaurant. The bar stays open for specialty drinks, but water is provided for free, along with soup, bread and dessert. The soup is always luscious and blends interesting and exotic flavors, such as root vegetable with ham, spicy sweet potato, and corned beef and potato. On each Soup and Games Night, they provide two different kinds of self-serve, all-you-can-eat soup. The bread is also very good; I suspect that it's home-made. Hope and Olive also provides a tray of free dessert, such as brownies, cookies, and pastries, to accompany your meal. To top it all off, you can enjoy games with your family and friends while you eat. Hope and Olive provides some games, but you are welcome to bring your own from home. The best part of the evening is the various sounds of games and fun filling the space. It's great that the kindly folks at Hope and Olive and the Wagon Wheel bring the community together for some much needed fun in a way that benefits the entire community.

Free Soup and Games Night starts at about 5 pm and ends around 9.

Hope and Olive is only usually open on Mondays, only for Free Soup and Games Night on the first Monday of each month. Otherwise, they are open Tuesday through Sunday for lunch and dinner. I suggest you come by another time, too, and not just for the free Soup and Games Night, but to enjoy their full menu, full of amazing food!

--LGP

Hope to see you there!

Valley Muse

The Craft Fair Moon

The days are shorter, the lights are dimmer. Now it is time to get ready for the big day.

Ideas have been floating about our heads for months; now we must put them together and make our lists: what we'll need to gather, what we'll need to do.

Over the summer, while we walked the beaches at Campobello Island, we stuffed our pockets and bags with all sorts of rocks. We packed them up and drove them home, where we washed and sorted them, setting aside the most beautiful ones. These, we turn into rock magnets to sell at the craft fair, or give as gifts at Christmastime.

The Campobello beaches provide me with sea glass as well as rocks, which I fashion into necklaces by wrapping wire around and around until it looks just right.

In the woods, I collect acorn tops to use as caps for the flower fairies and tree sprites I make. At home, I gather together silk flowers for dresses and clothes, pipe cleaners for bodies and arms, beads for heads, and yarn for hair. I start to piece together all the elements into colorful flower fairies and tree sprites, and finally, when they are done, I hang them on branches of a pine bough that I've put in a clay pot filled with more Campobello rocks.

We bake granola, chocolate chip bars, and make chocolate peppermint bark. We package everything in bags with labels we've made. We turn our favorite art into art cards and package them in sets of three. We write up bits about our art and ourselves so that when people buy something of ours, they know who made it and where it came from. My brother puts the finishing touches on his sculpey creature magnets and his Santa cards. We've worked hard. --DRP

The Kid's Craft Fair takes place this coming Friday, December 7, from 4:30-8 pm in the River Garden on Main Street in Brattleboro, VT. Over 60 kids of all ages--mostly homeschoolers--are registered to take part. The Fair takes place during the first Friday Gallery Walk and the kick off to Brattleboro's Holly Days celebrations, that last all weekend long. Hope to see you there!