Events and Activities : CP FRIENDS OF LIBRARY START HOLIDAYS WITH JARS AND A JAUNT

Center Point Friends of the Library had its second annual holiday craft workshop Nov. 19 making “Christmas in a Jar” dry soup and cookie mixes with festive trimmings. More than a dozen adults and kids came for the fun and Friends also made about $75 in funds for the Library.

Center Point Floral donated a fresh” Holiday Bouquet in a Jar” for a door prize. It was won by Melinda Coberly.

Hostess Friends for the workshop were Dorothea Wood, Roberta Gilchrist, Christina Lahr and Sharon Hannen. Marj Pepin donated and prepared craft materials.

Earlier (Nov. 5) Friends and relations were invited to visit Sade’s House, the restored farmhouse of the Lewis family, pioneers in Lewis Bottoms, south of the Center Point Cedar River bridge. Hostess was Eloise Beatty Dennis, a Lewis granddaughter who has had a book published about Lewis Bottoms and donated copies to Friends for fund raising.

The afternoon began with tea and gooseberry cobbler with cream on the good china in the dining room. A tour of the house, built in 1892, followed. Unusual for an Iowa farmhouse of that era, there are three actual closets upstairs. Also unusual, and lucky for Eloise and her husband Robert who restored the house, the woodwork had never been painted over. Most of the furniture and artifacts in the house belonged to the Lewis family. There are also desks from the old Lewis Bottoms “double decker” school house which closed in 1947 and burned down in the 1970s before Pleasant Creek Lake could drown it.

Friends will continue its holiday season with a fund raising Barnes & Noble Bookfair Saturday Dec. 10. Online sales will also benefit Friends from Dec. 10 through 15 if the Friends code 10583466 is used with the order. On Friday Dec. 16 Friends will be doing gift wrapping all day at Barnes & Noble for donations.