Monthly Newsletter: June 2022 (No. 5)
Thank you for joining us here at Our Technicolor Life!
This is the fifth newsletter and monthly feature highlighting events, happenings, and general news of all channels of Our Technicolor Life.
We have a lot of new subscribers and we wanted to welcome everyone and thank you for following us! For those new to Our Technicolor Life, we are a husband-and-wife team that lives a vintage lifestyle and has a passion for the arts. We entertain, sing, travel, create, and host tea parties out of our historic home. Follow along each channel - tea, travel, entertainment, art, lifestyle, and more that make up Our Technicolor Life.
TEA
In May we hosted several fun themed tea parties, both private parties and public tea events. We hosted bride to be, Rachel and a few returning guests who had previously had bridal showers tea parties with us here at The Old Capitol Tea Room.
We host private parties for groups of 10 or more weekday or weekends based on schedule availability. Our private parties are a great way to have the full tea room experience with your family and friends. We frequently host bridal showers, baby showers, birthdays, book clubs, church meetings, appreciation celebrations, or just an excuse to play tea party with your own group.
To schedule a private party, please fill out our private party form and we will check the schedule for availability.
The tea room is closed the month of September. Our private party availability October - December is very limited on weekends with the public tea events on schedule, but we are happy to look into weekday or weeknight private party dates during October, November, & December months.
This past month we also hosted a themed private party! Did you know you can theme your private party? We have add-on packages if you would like to add a theme to your special occasion. We offer character add-ons, decoration add-ons, as well as music and entertainment add-ons for your tea party experience. Our most popular add-ons being having your tea party hosted by Lucy & Desi, Professor Dumbledore and Professor Trelawney, or Alice and Hatter. We hosted a Harry Potter themed private party birthday party. Hosted by Professors Dumbledore and Trelawney, the parents of the birthday girl even got in on the fun dressing as Professor McGonagall and Hagrid! We played pin the nose on Dumbledore, Would You Rather Harry Potter style, and had a hat sorting.
See our full list of character add-ons under our private party FAQ page.
You can also add live music by the Tin Pan Alley Cats to your tea party. The Tin Pan Alley Cats are the perfect touch to your tea party celebration featuring live music of the 1920-1940s while you enjoy your tea.
It was also a very Jolly Holiday with our Mary Poppins Sing Along Tea Party! Mary Poppins and Bert couldn't help themselves but sing with so many smiles at The Old Capitol Tea Room! We are always looking at new ways to add singing elements to our tea party events so we are thrilled to announce we will be adding Musical Monday's to our tea party schedule which will include such musicals as Sound of Music, Wizard of Oz, and Chicago, just to name a few we plan to add.
In May, we also brought back fan favorite, The Mad Hatter's Tea Party hosted by Alice and Hatter. This tea event always makes for such a whimsically fun afternoon. We celebrated real birthday's and a bunch of very merry un-birthday's at this tea party.
June events have sold out but we recently added a few more Tuesday Tea & Trivia nights as well as a few other weekend tea events in July and August. Tickets tend to sell quickly so if you see one you would like to attend, don't delay, grab a table when the events go live.
Upcoming Tea Parties:
Under the Sea Sing Along Tea Party
Sunday July 10th at 3 pm
Villains Tea & Trivia Tuesday
Tuesday July 12th at 8pm
The Office Tea & Trivia Tuesday
Tuesday August 2nd at 8pm
I Love Lucy with Tribute Show
Sunday August 7th at 7pm
Breakfast at Tea-ffany's Tea Party
Sunday August 14th at 2pm
TRAVEL
After 2 years, Jeff's work conference was finally rescheduled. Jeff is the general manager for Kasgro Rail Corporation. Kasgro provides shippers with one of the most modern fleets of heavy-duty flatcars in the world. Jeff is part of a five-member team in fleet management for Kasgro. This five-member team is responsible for the daily management of more than 500 heavy-duty cars with capacities ranging from 190,000 to 1,000,000 lbs. The car management team works with all major and short-line railroads to facilitate the movement of all KRL cars and works with various shippers, ports, and logistics companies to fulfill car orders on a daily basis.
Check out more about Kasgro Rail Corporation here!
The Railway Industrial Clearance Association (RICA) was founded in 1969 and is dedicated to serving the heavy and dimensional transportation industry. There are over 400 members and the annual conference hosts representatives to explore opportunities and seek solutions to the challenges that arise in transportation regarding railways. Having been postponed since 2020, the RICA conference was rescheduled for May of 2022 and we finally made it to New Orleans for the return of the annual conference.
We love New Orleans so this two year hiatus just made the return even more special. Jeff and I have visited the Big Easy several times before and we headed down a few days before the start of the conference to visit some tried and true favorite spots and check out some new places! We found a wonderful Air BnB on Algiers Point called the Little Green House! Check them out on Instagram! Our stay in this gorgeous 1883 home was such a treat! We were just a short walk away from the ferry and had some lovely views of the New Orleans skyline from the River Walk, plus Algiers Point really is the New Orleans best kept secret! Just charming and great local coffee shops, parks, and eateries, not to mention plenty of stunning houses to admire on your neighborhood walk.
As you should in New Orleans, we ate out a lot! After putting this trip on hold for 2 years, we figured that we could indulge a bit. We brunched, walked, shopped, and then hit some favorites in the French Quarter, Garden District, Bywater, and made our way down to River Road to see some of the historic homes. We also took an insane amount of pictures! Check out our day by day blog posts for where we went, shopped, and ate while in New Orleans. Here's a little taste of our time in the Big Easy!
The conference is usually held towards the end of June but with all the postponements, we found ourselves in New Orleans Derby week! It was a whirlwind trip heading out of New Orleans Oaks day and 11.5 hours later we arrived back home to make it to the track for Derby Day!
I wish we could say we had that 80-1 long shot. We didn't have Rich Strike but we had a really fun day seeing that historic race! Then we headed home and crashed big time.
May is also a special month for us because that's when we got married! Two weeks post Derby Day to be exact. This past anniversary marked our 9th anniversary and we celebrated with dinner at 211 Clover in Louisville. I remember visiting 211 Clover for special occasions with my Grandmother for Easter and Mother's Day but it had been quite some time since I had been for dinner. Jeff and I both agreed we need to get there more often. It's such a charming space and the menu is spectacular. We had a table down a little wing of the restaurant all to ourselves and had a lovely anniversary dinner.
ENTERTAINMENT
It was Lucy week May 16th-20th for the Trilogy Health Services in our area so we packed up and performed our Lucy & Desi Tribute Show for the residences at as many of the locations as we could fit in that week. It was truly very special to perform for the lady that first introduced me to Lucille Ball and I Love Lucy, my step-grandmother, Mary Jane Bridgewater!
As a little girl, we would visit with Mary Jane at her house and she had a collection of I Love Lucy VHS tapes that I soon discovered and would play over and over and over again. I became “Lucy obsessed”! So, I have always given her credit for my love of Lucy.
And while we were up town, we stopped by my very favorite, El Mundo in Louisville for a takeout margarita! I have to admit, they’re even better than Vitameatavegamin! And far more tasty, too.
We head to Vincennes, Indiana for the Red Skelton Festival June 11th where we will be performing Saturday at 1pm, followed by a parade and then appearing with Mr. Brian Hoffman during his show Saturday night at 7:30. The festival is a two-day event with all Saturday events downtown at Patrick Henry Square on Main Street between 1st and 2nd street, including our show, kids games, food trucks, and art vendors. Find more event details about the Red Skelton Festival and Parade below.
The Tin Pan Alley Cats headed back to the Limbo for our Chicago themed night. We played live tunes at The Limbo Tiki Bar featuring Amos, Billy Flynn, Roxie, & Velma! We'll be back again Wednesday June 29th 8-10pm for our outer space theme. We've got some great swinging space tunes planned for this gig!
ART
A day spent with these ladies & gents is a day well spent indeed! This year I started teaching painting classes at the Masonic Homes in Louisville and I love teaching them and learning from them too! They have some of the best stories and I’m always excited to see what creations they will paint each month.
With the warmer spring temperatures rising, we've been working in the garden and laying plans to resume our tea garden project. This is the best of both worlds when my regular job of painting meets my weekend job of the tea room. I decided to create some new yard art and decoration for the front garden also the entrance to The Old Capitol Tea Room. Formal garden plans are still underway and we have some exciting updates coming soon about The Old Capitol Tea Room garden project.
I also painted these rain barrels. These were some big ol' barrels compared to the previous rain barrels I’ve painted but I finally got them all ready to go for the Arts Alliance of Southern Indiana’s Monarch Festival! Held at Mount St. Francis Saturday June 4th, the Monarch Festival has fine arts, crafts, live entertainment, music, food trucks, kids zone activities, and an amazing butterfly experience.
LIFESTYLE
Back in 2019, Jeff and I decided it was time to start plans for our outdoor tea garden. With our 5th anniversary of the tea room coming up, we thought that was a good celebration moment and time to get expand what we call “the little tea room that could.”
Well…we all know how 2020 went…and then 2021. Phase 1 of our tea garden includes the removal of our delapidated deck (If you have been to the house in the past, you remember it. Yikes!) and building a new floor space. It also includes a gazebo, pergola, fountain, potters bench, and stone grill. We originally intended to host tea events using the front porch of the house but unfortunately Capitol Avenue is much too loud for a tea party atmosphere. So we decided an outdoor tea garden in the back yard would be much more suitable for private party showers, bringing back paint classes, and even some garden themed tea parties.
We were able to get the deck torn out and added the gazebo but with the high cost of supplies and/or lack of supplies, we decided to turn our attention to Phase 2, our side yard. This area was not one that was used very much and working from home for most of 2020, we decided that it would be cheaper labor and supplies for the two of us to transform the space and repurpose the deck, use some creative decorating, and save some money for the formal tea garden Phase 1 project.
Here’s a not so short video of Phase 2. Goodness you don’t realize how much work it was until you put all the pieces together, but boy was it worth it!
Phase 1 is starting to get back on track and fingers crossed 🤞🏻🤞🏻 I submitted a few grant applications that will help us realize this outdoor formal tea garden area for The Old Capitol Tea Room.
We received a small business grant from the town of Corydon in 2020 and are trying to make the best use of that to continue with our plans for Phase 1. Between lumber, concrete, and labor, we are trying to be as savvy as possible and put in the work ourselves. The gazebo is in place and we picked up the beginnings of our new floor space last night. Phase 1 is back underway!
Thus concludes our May and we move into June in Our Technicolor Life! Please explore the website and share with friends & family! We try to make this website a one stop shop for all of our events. Don‘t forget to subscribe so you stay in the loop and check out our upcoming events section right on the home page!
Yours truly, Carrie & Jeff
AT A GLANCE - JUNE EVENTS
Friday June 3rd 7-9pm Rosie & the Rockabillies First Friday Summer Concert
Corydon, IN.
Sunday June 5th Private Party Booking at The Old Capitol Tea Room
Saturday June 11th and Sunday June 12th Red Skelton Festival & Parade
Lucy & Desi Tribute Show 1 pm
Brian Hoffman Red Skelton Tribute Show 7:30 with I Love Lucy Features
Vincennes, IN.
Tuesday June 14th 8pm Downton Tea and Trivia at The Old Capitol Tea Room
*SOLD OUT
Wednesday June 15th 7 pm Rosie & the Rockabillies Summer Kick Off at Masonic Homes
Louisville, KY
Friday June 17th 8pm Murder at the Capitol Club Murder Mystery Tea Party at The Old Capitol Tea Room
*SOLD OUT
Saturday June 18th 6:30-8:30 Rosie & the Rockabillies at West Boggs Park
Loogootee, IN.
Tuesday June 21st 6:30 Private Booking Tin Pan Alley Cats Performance
Prospect, KY
Friday June 24th 6pm & 8pm Lucy & Desi Tribute Show
Madison, IN.
Saturday June 25th 3pm Fairy Princess Tea at The Old Capitol Tea Room
*SOLD OUT
Sunday June 26th 6-8pm Private Booking Tin Pan Alley Cats Performance
Wednesday June 29th 8-10pm Tin Pan Alley Cats Do the Limbo
Louisville, KY