Birthdays and Reunions

As I have written before, visiting The Craftsman B&B for your birthday is a great way to celebrate.  We even have a wine package for a birthday, we call it Taliesin, you can read about it here.  We had a notable birthday here on Sunday.  One of our guests celebrated her 92nd.  Her family rented a house a block away and treated her to a stay here at the B&B.  A daughter and son-in-law traveling from the East stayed with us as well.  This is the first time I know of that a guest has been older than the house.  It was a great honor having them here. 

So as you may know, I am not allowed in the dining room during breakfast.  I will usually take a nap in my secret passageway or the Pantry, where I can watch Mike prepare breakfast and attend to the guests during breakfast.  Anyway, I don't always hear the conversations that go on at the breakfast table, but I did hear a few remarkable things about our guest of honor.

She has a degree in Library Science from Columbia University and worked in the National Archives.  This is in a time when most women did not have a chance to get a higher education.  A great accomplishment!  She is still very sharp and witty.  She doesn't like dogs, so I stayed on the low down when she was roaming around the house.

During her stay, she recalled a lot of details about the furnishings she grew up with and pieces she still has.  Painting a dining room set, later stripping it and having it refinished and modifying a cabinet to fit into a bathroom by cutting off a corner of the top were a few of the stories.  The whole family paid us a visit and she led them on a tour the house.  Mike just stood back and let her show off the house.  He made a coffee for the daughter staying in the house up the street while they all walked around.  She pointed out the details of the house and made sure everyone saw the pieces and paintings she took note of.

So if your family is about to celebrate a birthday or just a reunion, we would love to host it for you.  If you book the whole house you can bring the under 18 kids too.  We have had a lot of guests who's family rents a house in Pacific City and they choose to stay with us.  It's a good break knowing you have a nice relaxing retreat to escape to at the end of the day.  Mike will prepare an amazing breakfast and recommend sites to see during your stay.  And yes, you can invite the family to tour our historic house and sip on the best coffee they have ever had.

Because I was in the back of the house when the candle was blown out, Happy Birthday Helen!

Taliesin, A Great Birthday Package

The last of the sparkling wine packages is: Taliesin, A Great Birthday Package.  We provide a bottle of our Bin #03 Freixenet Cordon Negro Brut, 2 Keepsake Craftsman B&B flutes and a box of Harry & David Truffles for just $25.00.  That's cheap, I mean inexpensive.  Freixenet is a Spanish bubble so do you remember what that is called?  Cava, baby!  It comes in a bottle that is Mike's favorite color, matte black.  Here is a picture of Mike on his matte black Ducati Monster.

So what or where is Taliesin?  Taliesin was the summer home and studio of Frank Lloyd Wright in Spring Green, Wisconsin and is a National Historical Monument.  He moved there after leaving Oak Park and his first wife for the wife of a client.  A great architect, not a great husband.  The area was originally settled by his mothers family, Welsh immigrants and Taliesin, a name of a Welsh bard, means "shining brow" and he positioned the home on a favorite brow of his childhood.  Wright experimented with Organic architecture by using local stone to mimic sandbars in a river.  Wright and his mistress moved into the house in 1911.

This is where the story of Taliesin gets a little dark.  While Wright was away in Chicago working on the Midway Gardens, one of his staff set fire to the living quarters and murdered seven people with an axe.  The dead included Wright's mistress and her two children.  The murderer died in jail weeks later.

Wright rebuilt the living quarters and renamed it Taliesin II.  Again, another fire.  This one caused by a telephone line that may have been struck by lightning during a storm.  It was rebuilt as Taliesin III.  Wright continued living at the house and acquiring land to grow the estate to nearly 600 acres.  He was always making changes to the house and used his students/ apprentices in his fellowship and other invited artists to do the work.

Taliesin West was the winter home and school for Frank Lloyd Wright and another National Historic Monument.  It was built entirely by students of The Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture, which still hold classes here.  Mike visited the site a long time ago while in Arizona visiting his grandparents.  Located in what used to be in the middle of nowhere, Scottsdale AZ.  The building is made entirely of stone found on the site.  The canvas roofs provide natural light to the building.  Low linear roof lines provide the buildings to blend in to the natural landscape.  Wright designs morphed from linear prairie school style to more futuristic in the Gammage Auditorium at ASU Tempe, one of Wright's last public commissions.  Wright lost the plans originally for a opera house in Baghdad, Iraq to Grady Gammage, president of ASU in a card game.  Another out of this world design is the Marin County Civic Center.

In 1940, Wright along with his third wife formed the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation.  After his death in 1959, the Foundation took over Taliesin and Taliesin West.

OK, that was a lot of history to describe a wine package, but you can see how much thought we at The Craftsman B&B put into a name.  Just think how much thought we have put in to making your stay relaxing and enjoyable.  I am here to make your visit to Pacific City a historic one, oh and the innkeeper does his share too.