What can I say?  I have  let almost the whole moth of June go by without visiting here.  I’d say I’ve been busy and I have,  but not that busy.   Too much time looking at animals and beautiful redos of houses on Facebook.  I can’t resist looking at cute animals doing cute things. And I love seeing how people take an old house and make it beautiful and up to date.  Makes me want to remodel our house sometimes.  Our old house has been remodeled so many times in the forty some years we have lived here, but there are still things about it I would like to change.

Any of you have a walk-in closet with lots of space?  I really would love to have one central place for clothes and other things that are stuffed in our closets.  We actually have two closets you can step inside with hanging rods on both sides.  Both are full of clothes, old toys, puzzles and quilts.Then we have four other closets stuffed with more clothes, towels, sheets and memorabilia. no room for much else.  We have done a cleaning out of my clothes, but I still have too much.  We also have what we call the coat closet, stuffed with coats, hats, scarves and shoes.  Believe me when I say, stuffed.

But this is not what I want to talk about.  Since next year,2026,the United States will be celebrating its 250th anniversary as a country, I have decided I want to make some patriotic quilts and potholders.  I’ve already got a good start and have been amassing a lot of red, white and blue fabric.  Every week, it seems, I receive another parcel of fabric.  I keep telling David after each one that this is the last I’ll need and then I see some gorgeous fabric online and I just have to have it.

Here is one little quilt I made in the last few weeks.  There is a potholder there also.

I liked the pattern so much, I made another one in reproduction material.

I will post quilts as I make them except for some that will be gifts.  It’s going to be a patriotic year!

This year was the first time we had our own strawberries.  David started a little patch last year and this year it provided us a couple of quarts of berries and they were so good.  I ate mine in bowls of Corn Chex and yum!  The milk turned pink and tasted just like strawberries.  Next year we really should get an abundance of strawberries as the patch has grown and expanded and he started another patch.  These, with all the rhubarb we should get, will have us eating well next Spring.  It is nice raising your own food.  I use to keep a big garden years ago, but it is too much for me now.  I have started cherry tomatoes and some herbs in my greenhouse and in a few days,I will be eating tomatoes from my own vine.  My greenhouse smells like basil,too!

We had a pool party Sunday and our  daughter and her family spent the afternoon in the pool.  It was in the nineties all day and we all got a little burned.  It is supposed to be hot all week.  I don’t  do hot well anymore.  When I was  young I use to lay out in the sun for hours and I always had a good tan.  Now I would  rather be in the shade where it is cool.  And talking about the pool and dogs.  Oh, I wasn’t?  Well, we have a black Lab called Sugar and she sneaks into the pool when no one is around.  David said this morning as soon as he opened the door here she came running dripping wet from being in the pool.  She refuses to get into the pool with us, but when we go outdoors we can see where she has gotten out of the pool before we can catch her.  We are thinking about putting a camera up.  Little sneak!  Our chocolate Lab, Lucy, won’t go near the water which is odd for a Lab.

David has some days off coming up.  We don’t have any big plans, but we probably will go somewhere for a day or two.  We don’t do long vacations any longer.  Neither of us like sitting in a car for hundreds of miles anymore and we won’t fly so there you are!  Maybe that will change one day.  I do get wanderlust sometimes and wish I could just drop everything  and go far, far away.  That may happen sooner than I think!

It looks to be a very busy rest of Summer. A wedding is coming up so there will be a shower for the bride to be and I want to  visit some friends and relatives I don’t see enough.  I really can’t wait to see all my grandchildren.  Now that most are grown or nearly so, and  their lives are busy, too and we live miles apart, it is hard to get together.  I just realized this week my baby grandchild will be a junior in high school this Fall. A junior!  He was just a baby yesterday.

And I just realized I will need to buy a new dress and shoes for the wedding.  More things to put in already stuffed closets!

Hope your Summer is going well whether you will be traveling or staying at home.  Bye.

March, April and May are my favorite months, but since March and April galloped by like a herd of wild horses, I will try to give a shortened version of all three months even though we do have  couple weeks of May left.  March was my birthday month and David took the week off and we ate out a lot and took a ride and I did just what I wanted to do which is sew and play with the dogs.   In April we celebrated Easter.  First we went to church where our choir sang a cantata.  The we drove over to Brown Country to eat Easter dinner with family and friends.

Our grandson had two boys from Japan staying with him.  I guess a whole planeload of Japanese students came over and stayed with various families to learn our culture.  Well, those two boys jumped right into the culture.  The attended school with our grandson, went fishing with their Dad, ate out at various restaurants. They said our bacon was way too salty.   And sushi was not the same.  They took part in our annual Easter egg hunt.  We brought 300 eggs and for each egg found the hunters would get a dollar, plus there were eight golden eggs worth five dollars.  The boys thought they were hunting for eggs with candy in them, but, oh, no. When we gave them money they were so surprised.  It was fun to watch them take part in our family tradition.  That afternoon our older grandson and one of the Japanese boys took part in an ice water challenge for some charity.

Waiting for the water to be poured.

And getting drowned. He was such a good sport.  The boys also got a shopping trip to the Ralph Lauren store where David works and they bought some clothes.  Ralph Lauren clothing is much more expensive in their country.

Not sure what the boys are looking at?  It must be something amazing!  They stayed two weeks and our daughter’s family were sad to see them go.  I hope they can come back one day.

Spring sprang almost overnight it seems, but now that we are in May everything is so lush and beautiful.  I am loving the meadow we are creating in our backyard. David spread a bunch more wildflower seeds and If just half of them come up it will be a show.  Here are a few pictures of the blossoms that have appeared in our yard the past few weeks.  Some are already gone and some are still around and I didn’t even get pictures of the peonies which are at their peak right now.

The lilacs were gorgeous as usual and smelled so good.

An azalea in my kitchen garden.

Only one Iris out of several different varieties I have growing.

This is a Weigela shrub we just started last year and this year it was full of blossoms.

It has a cage around it because of dogs.  The pups love to dig.  In a year or two they will be use to it being there and we will take the cage away.

Sprirea. We have this shrub all along the north side of our house.  They were here when we moved in over forty years ago.

The Snowball bushes never disappoint.  They were loaded with flowers and the limbs bent under their weight.

This is a miniature lilac bush.  It was so loaded with blooms and smelled so good.    This is about as big as it will get.

Closeup of the Azalea.

There are lots more plants blooming and we planted Three more new shrubs this year.  Two have white leaves and one is bright yellow.

David and I have been planting and planting. David is becoming a gardener. He is cultivating a rhubarb patch and a strawberry patch, plus he planted a couple of pumpkins I started in the greenhouse.  I made something delicious with the rhubarb.

I don’t usually brag, but this was the best pie I have ever made.  It was so good and David and I enjoyed it for several days.  My next pie might not be as good, but this one, oh my!

We took a drive Sunday.  We had a destination picked, but we take back roads and never made it.  We decided our next drive we would pack a suitcase, just in case, and drive directly to our destination and then drive slowly home on back roads. If we don’t make it home, we will be prepared.   Here are some of the things we saw on our drive.

Roads not taken are our favorite roads.

There was a burnt down house behind these trees.

We got into the Hoosier national forest which goes on forever and drove and drove down this one road and this is what we met.  A bar across the road and we had to turn around. On the way back, we passed several motorcyclists driving the same road and I wanted to warn them the road dead ended, but we drove on.

We came upon this.

A fire tower.  You could climb it if you chose to. David and I chose not.  I can remember the day I could have climbed that with no problem.  Now if I made it to the first level, I would be completely out of breath if not dead.

Someone up in the tower was flying a drone.

Not sure if he was taking our picture, but we took its picture.

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There are a lot of old abandoned homes in southern Indiana.  This looks like a little cabin. I wonder who lived here, why they left and why they didn’t sell the house.

We had a tornado go through last week. In fact, our house was right in the line of the storm that was coming.  We got some wind and a deluge of rain which I was happy for as we had just planted several flowers. But southern Indiana got hit hard and we passed places like this.

Trees down everywhere.

These people were cleaning up their lot from the damage the storm had caused.

People in southern Indiana seem to have a lot of horses.  We saw these and stopped to look.

This one came right up to us and I wished so hard I had a carrot or apple, but I apologized to it for not having anything.  I hate disappointing animals.  I have always loved horses. I was quite horse mad when I was a girl and I did have a horse of my own, and I miss not having one.

It was a nice trip and we stopped for ice cream.  I always said if I reach eighty years old I will eat ice cream every day.  I am getting might close and I am practicing now.

I, of course, am sewing quilts.  I have a plan to sew several patriotic quilts to celebrate our country’s 250th birthday next year.  Here is one I started.

I actually have it all pieced and will be showing it to you.  I call it “Patriotic Chicks.”

I ordered fabric.

And then I ordered more.

Hey, I don’t smoke, drink, get my nails done and haven’t been to the beauty parlor since Covid so I have to spend my money somewhere!  Yes, I have too much fabric if that is possible which I really don’t think people who sew can ever have enough.

I bought one of those elliptical machines where you sit and pedal. It counts each round as a step and I have been doing 10,000 steps or more every day.  I hope it starts to show soon.  I love doing it.  I also have one of those machines that vibrates and shakes you and I use that too and it has helped with the swelling in my legs.  I really wish I could get out and walk like I use to, but ever since I got my pacemaker I get dizzy and weak.  I cannot walk very far which perturbs me to no end. I have had my heart checked every which way, even an MRI and I am going in for a sonogram which I have had before and they found nothing.  I just have a slow heartbeat.  I can’t complain, though. I still can get out and do things and play with the pups and work in my greenhouse and go places to I am blessed.  There are people my age in nursing homes so I am thankful I am still able to stay in my home.

I know this month will breeze by, too and Summer will come and go as fast as it did last year, so I plan to enjoy every day and count my blessings.  I hope you are enjoying your days and feeling blessed.   Will be back again soon, I hope. Bye.

Here I am, again.  Finishing the blog I started yesterday.  I am using a new computer and still getting use to it so if this blog suddenly goes away, I will throw up my hands and say, “I give.”

More pictures of the moon.

Like a big, red rubber bouncing ball.  It was beautiful.  David stayed outside for the whole duration of the eclipse.  Next time I will dress warmer and stay out with him.

Spring has sprung finally.  Old Man Winter keeps hitting us with cold weather, snow, tornadoes and cold, wet rains.  It seems it has rained every single weekend for the last month.  I really hope it will be nice this Sunday for Easter and our Easter egg hunt.  David and I have prepared 300 eggs to hide for our grandchildren to hunt. They are all teen-agers or older so no candy for them.  They get money.  My grandson is hosting two boys from Japan and I am wondering if they have ever hunted Easter eggs.  They will be here for two weeks and I am looking forward to meeting them.

With Spring comes beautiful flowers, bushes and trees.

This flowering Quince is one of the earliest bloomers.  This bush has bloomed every year we have lived here which is over forty years and it probably bloomed many years before that.  Someone planted it long ago and I thank them because it has provided us much pleasure in seeing it bloom every year.

Redbuds are so pretty. They bloom wild in Indiana, but I planted this one. We have a couple more in our back yard.   You can see this tree from a mile away when we are coming home.

Our poor magnolia got burned by the frost.  We had some warm weather and it bloomed and then a cold snap that burned the flowers.  This has happens too often in the Spring which is why I am not that happy when warm days come in February or March.

This picture does not do the Weeping Cherry justice. It has beautiful pink blossoms all over it.  Our whole front yard is a vision of pink.  We also have an Azalea that I didn’t get a picture of, but it is so pretty, too. Reminds me when we drove through the south one time and it seemed every house had an azalea blooming.  We also went to the Azalea Festival in Wilmington, North Carolina. The whole town was blooming and they had antebellum houses we could go through.  One year we went to Natchez, Mississippi and I did a tour of antebellum houses.  I love the south and at one time we thought about retiring in the south, but life got in the way.  We got too many dogs, then chickens, then health issues and we decided we were better off where we are and I do like the changing seasons.

Got some more pretty fabric.  That is another reason we cannot move. I have too much stuff!   And a lot of that stuff has to do with quilting. And I do have quite a hoard of fabric.  I could make a quilt every day until the day I die and there will still be so much fabric that my poor children will have to dispose of.  Sorry, kids.  And I will probably buy more before it’s all over.   Right now I am working on a major project that is going to take some time to finish and I cannot show it as it will be given to someone at some point.

Fruit bar cookies.  Only fruit in it are raisins. My husband’s very favorite cookie. My mother use to make these when I was a girl and they have stood the test of time.  I still like them, too.

Here is the recipe:

Be sure to use a large pan and follow this recipe above, cool a bit and then add 4 cups of flour, 2 teaspoons of baking powder, and two teaspoons of baking soda. It will be thick.   Spread this in a 9 by 13 greased and floured jelly roll pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 8 to 12 minutes.  Before completely cool ice with a mixture of confectioner’s sugar. 1 teaspoon of vanilla(I use imitation vanilla which is probably a sacrilege to some of you)  and milk.  I don’t have measurements for the icing.  I just mix the sugar and milk together until is spreads nicely.  I hope if you make these they come out alright for you and that you will like them as much as we do.

So Easter is this Sunday.  It comes late this year.  We will attend church and celebrate the resurrection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus with our church family and then we will go to our daughter’s house for dinner and the Easter egg hunt.  I hope the weather will be nice.  It is supposed to be 80 degrees tomorrow!  Yikes!

A blessed Easter to all of you.  He is risen!  Bye.

 

 

What past am I writing about?  Just a few days or weeks really, but they seem so long ago now.  I look up and the year is already three months old with nine more to go and if they go as fast  as these three did, I will be writing about Christmas again!  I don’t know if it’s my age or if time is really traveling faster, but it seems to be a blur at times.  Back in the fifties there was a movie “The Time Machine.” It starred the man who was in the tv show “Mr. Ed,” a show about a talking horse. You have to be old to remember that!  Anyway, in the movie, the man was in a time machine where he could watch out a window and see the seasons changing rapidly.  That is how fast it feels time is going for me.  I didn’t mean for this to be about time traveling, but that is where my mind has wandered.

Last blog I said I would tell you about an author I really like.  Her name is Jenny Colgan and she writes about a little island off the northern coast of Scotland.  A made  up island called Mure  between the North Sea and Norway.  An island where seals live and puffins and where whales come to mate.  Where everyone knows everyone else.  She picks one main character on the island to write about in each book, but they all are connected and you feel like you know them and their families.  There is the book mobile lady who is also a caretaker of the children of a man whose wife has died.  You can imagine how that will end.  Another book tells of a girl who has a tiny bake shop who becomes the head of a group of employees in a grand hotel.  There is a chef who does things his way, but is so good at what he does, he gets away with being obnoxious.  Another book is about the island librarian.  These are just a few of the characters she writes about.  Ms. colgan has written about another island  off the Cornish coast and about other things.  She is just so good at describing the characters and the landscape and the beauty in all of it.  Her books are a delight to read and I usually hate to finish one I am so engrossed in the lives of the people in them. To me that is what makes a great author.  I am reading a book now by a different author and I really don’t think she has anyone editing them because she writes about something and a few pages later she changes where it was taking place or what they are looking at. For instance, the heroine in this book was looking out a window,presumably during the day as she was describing the flowers and lawn of a particular house and then proceeds to say how dark it was and how  many stars were in the sky.  If it was so dark, how did she see the lawn and flowers out a window?  Maybe I am  nitpicking.  I love to read. Rather do that than watch television in many cases.  David and I have discovered a show on Britbox called Shetland about a detective solving murders on the island with his comical,at times, sidekick called Tosh.  I have become engrossed in that.

Remember when I told you we went outside in March and watched the partial eclipse of the moon and I was in my nightgown and got too cold to I went inside?  David took some pictures of the moon and it was beautiful.

I just lost half my post and it is late so I will end for now and finish this blog another day. So, bye, for now.  See you later!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Did we really have a month of February?  I know it’s a short month, but, really?  It simply flew by.  I managed to get a Christmas gift completed, David did most of our Christmas shopping because the store where he works had a great sales plus he got his discount.  I know we sound kind of crazy, but the more we get done before next December, the more we can enjoy the  holidays.

February had some brutally cold days.  It seems we spent the time letting dogs in and out of my shop because we had below zero temps.  We are going to put heat in what once was the chicken coop and insulate it well so next Winter they will have a warm place to sleep where David doesn’t have to get up early to let them out.  It’s been hard on him, I know, even though he doesn’t complain.

I have made a couple of quilts for the quilt group I joined on Facebook.

This is the one for February.

This is March’s quilt already pieced.  I am also working on April’s quilt.  I want to get ahead because when it gets warm out,I want  to be outdoors.  I am quilting them all on my sewing machine which only takes an hour or two to do these small quilts.

We took a short trip to Martinsville to visit their candy shop there.

I was like, well, a kid in a candy shop!

On the left are all kinds of wonderful candies you can buy.  On the right is their ice cream bar and seating.  We both got two dips of ice cream on waffle cones.  I chose Oreo and caramel pecan.  David chose orange pineapple and black cherry.  They were good.  Only candy we bought was a small bag of lemon drops.  I have  had way too many sweets lately and my birthday is this week and although I am not going to have a cake, David will get me donuts for my birthday.  Then it is back to fruits and vegetables for me.

Another place we drove to was to the Ice Tree.  The only Ice Tree in Indiana, I believe.  It is truly a work of love for this one family who has been building this tree for decades and they allow people to drive onto their property to see it for free.  We took a couple of our friends to see it a few years ago, but we wanted to see it again.

It is a lot bigger than it looks in this picture.  Pretty colors all through it.

Here I am  in front of it.

This looks like a person got frozen by it!

it was fun to see it.  Some tv channel got permission for someone to climb up it, but it is off limits to everyone, otherwise.  We have had warm temperatures the last week so I imagine the tree has melted a lot.

David is off work this week and we plan a little job for us.  Guess what it is.

it involves this…..

and this…..

Doing this……

And this.  Our front hallway.  We were going to hire painters, but decided we could do this small area ourselves.  I have  picked a blue color I am not sure about, but we will paint a coat to see how it looks and if I don’t  like it, David saved some paint chips from the wall now so we can match it again if we have to   The walls have several cracks because this old house has settled some through the years so they needed repairs.  I have future plans of painting our hallway upstairs and our bedroom plus maybe the kitchen cabinets and walls next Autumn.  We will have the professionals do that.

I have been planting a few things in my green house.  Some herbs and leaf lettuce.  This week I will plant some tomatoes.  It really won’t be long until we will be planting flowers outdoors again.

That  has been our life this short Winter we are having. Seems we are rushed through the seasons by the retailers, but I plan to take it slow.

Hope you are keeping warm where it is cold and cool where it is hot.  If it is perfect weather where you are, congratulations!  Bye.

Ever write a complete blog and it just disappeared on you?  It just happened to me.  I have been having trouble with my blog for a while and finally thought it was all sorted out and then, poof, I lost one again. Tried saving it to draft, but it didn’t work.  So here I am again pounding down on the keys hoping what I write  won’t disappear into the netherland again..

I will write a shortened version right now and fill in the dots later.  I had a recipe for you that I will now share later, but here is what I baked yesterday.  One of David’s favorites.

It is called Fruit bar cookies, but no fruit in it, just golden raisins.

We had three inches of snow and it is very cold outside so church was called off this morning.  I was all dressed and ready to go when we got the message.  Going to be cold in the single digits all week.

bad picture, but my Valentine’s Day tree I decorated with felt hearts and quilted cats that I made a couple of years ago.

 

This is one of the cats.  I got the pattern online, but I can’t remember where at the moment.

And Ibought more fabric.  Told myself I was not going to buy anymore for a while, but I lied. Saw some Tilda fabric I could not resist.

Honestly, I don’t know how they keep designing prettier and prettier fabrics, but they do.

I will write more next time, I promise.  Just a little leery about losing this blog so Bye.

I have been having trouble with my blog for a couple of months now and still don’t know if this post will go through, but I am going to try.

Since I wrote my last post David has had some health issues to take care of. He has had this red spot on his neck for over a year and finally went to the doctor to have it checked out. Had to see a dermatologist that he saw today and he has basal cell carcinoma, a slow growing cancerous growth that he will have to have removed. In April he has an appointment to have it done. They will remove the growth, look at it under a microscope to see if they got all the cancer cells and if they didn’t, they would cut out the rest. All under local anesthesia. Please keep him in your prayers because that isn’t all he may have done. He has had a pain in his neck, and it’s not me, for a while and had it checked and will see a neurologist this week to see if he will need surgery. I really hope he won’t need surgery, but we shall see Friday.

Other  than that,it has been a very calm year at our house. After the rush and business of the holidays,I really enjoy January to just chill and do things I want to do, which, of course, involves quilting. I have been working on a Christmas present, yes, I’m crazy, but I think of Christmas all year and if I can make some of the presents, all the better. I really wish I could show you what I am making but I can’t

What I can show you are a couple of little quilts I have made. I joined a group on Facebook where we are challenged to make a small quilt from this particular quilt designer, Kathleen Tracy.

Here is my January quilt. I used reds for Valentine’s Day. The pattern is called Friendship Star. I made a bunch of pot holders before Christmas and I sent two to my best friend who lives in Oregon. I sent her one with the Friendship Star on it. She sent back a really nice letter and pictures of her grandchildren. I .ove getting letters, but it is becoming a lost art.

This is the one I finished for December. And the book I got the pattern from. I have several of Kathleen’s quilt books.

now I am working on my February quilt and will show you when it’s done.

I got on a Facebook group called Find your Doppleganger.( Lookalike.) I put David’s picture up. Guess who they thought he looked like?

If you said Santa Claus, you are right! To a person that’s who they said he looked like. One lady even wrote it was the sweetest face she had ever seen! What a compliment! And he is sweet to my sour. I won’t even show you the picture I put on and not one person could name anyone I looked like. At least they didn’t say the Grinch!

we finally had a good snow in January. Indiana hasn’t had a good snow for years. I keep wishing for a blizzard like we had in 1978 when I was a young mother with two small boys and a baby. It was an adventure. David went out with the Guard and we were snug as bugs with plenty of food because I have always kept our cupboards and freezers well stocked. David did have some Guardsmen bring me some milk although I didn’t really need it. He was gone three days. He told me the snow was so deep on the roads he was driving above fence posts!

Today we have rain which we need to fill our reservoirs and wells. Speaking of reservoirs, wasn’t it terrible that reservoirs were empty in California when they had those fires? I cannot imagine losing everything like many did. And of course, there are those people in North Carolina who are still living in tents or campers. I really pray they get their circumstances worked out.

Hope you all are keeping warm and well this Winter. The groundhog told us only six more weeks!

 

I wanted to write several blogs in the past few days but I could not get on my site. Someone had hacked it! I didn’t know this until my computer savvy son did some checking and discovered it. He thinks it is fixed now so I will be able to play catch up. I have several pictures to upload so I will get that done and write a longer blog next time.
We had a wonderful Christmas and had a couple of big snows in the past few weeks. I just love to see the snow piled up especially since I don’t have to drive in it! We haven’t had much snow the last few winters so it’s been nice to see it. The year had a sad start as my cousin lost his wife quite suddenly. She got food poisoning and had surgery and passed away. My cousin and I are the same age. I was born a month before him. Another cousin was born three months before me. Three sisters all pregnant at the same time! We planned to go to the funeral, but it snowed all day and the night before and we weren’t sure about the roads

David got a pain in his shoulder and his fingers in his right hand were not working properly so the doctor sent him for a cat scan and he found out he has something called Saturday night palsy! Never heard of it and looked it up and it’s where someone sleeps too hard on their side after a night of carousing! We laughed about that because David doesn’t carous. Anyway he may have to have surgery. He was told to call the surgeon’s office to make an appointment. He did and was told they would call back. They never did so today he went to their office to make an appointment and was told they couldn’t make the appointment. He had to call the number they gave him and then another person would call him to give him another number to call for his appointment. Sounds very odd to me. He may or he may not one day get a number to call for his appointment. Sounds like a spy ring to me, not a doctor’s office.
He also had a biopsy on a sore he has had on his neck for about a year. I hope this is not what we will doing all 2025, going to doctors. Oh, yes, and I had an appointment with my eye doctor to check my eye for histoplasmosis. I haven’t had any shots in it for several months now.
And every doctor you go to see wants you to come back in three or six months whether you are sick or not.
I made over forty potholders to give away at Christmas. I had it in my mind to give every lady in our church a potholder. I still have some ladies I haven’t got to, but I have the potholders ready. I also sent a couple to my friend who lives in Oregon. She and I were best friends in elementary school. We kind of lost touch in Later years, but started writing letters to each other after we were married and I got to visit her several years ago. We hadn’t seen each other since school, but it was like we had never been parted, we had such a nice visit and I met her husband and children. He has since passed a way and she is now a grandma. We share the same birthday. Our mothers were even in the same hospital room when they had us. I can’t remember which one of us is the older.
I’m going to finish now, but I hope to be back with pictures. I’ve been making things as usual.

Happy New Year. Hope it started better than mine has. Bye

Autumn is my very favorite season. As I grow older, the hot Summer weather is just not for me. When I was young, I would lay out in the sun for hours on end baking. I always had the nicest tan, but not sure I was doing any good to my skin, but then I didn’t think about those things. So when the cooler weather of Autumn comes I am always so grateful. October is the epitome of the Autumn with the glorious foliage on the trees, the brightest blue skies and a little nip in the air. So far we haven’t had too many of those days yet, but this week it is supposed to get cooler.

David has taken the month off from work and he has been busy finishing up some of the chores outside. He cleaned out the chicken house and since we no longer have any chickens, our last one dying a few weeks ago, he spread cedar chips in it for Molly to lay in. She now has two dog houses. I will show you her brand new, insulated one later on. I am getting my flowers that I want to save into my greenhouse and cleaning up the flower beds. We put back up the shutters the painters took off this Summer. Our house is dressed outside for Halloween and inside, too.

Here is our fireplace mantle all dressed up.

I have gathered these fenceposts toppers at the Country Neighbors sale we go to every year. A group of ladies open their homes and shops four times a year and sell seasonal things.

These lights flicker and look like a fire on the hearth. I have had that jack-o-lantern for years. I still have some of the masks our fifty year old kids use to wear on Halloween!

And the pumpkin garland, years and years old, too.

I really need to make my little lady some clothes. Here she is almost bare in front of Jack Pumpkinhead. And his little brother!

As the nights are getting cooler I wanted Mollie to have a warmer place to sleep at night. She has two old doghouses she can choose from, but we are giving the pups them so she needed a new house. David spent a couple of days building her one. He insulated all over to include the floors.

Here is Molly proudly sitting by her brand new house. It’s up off the ground and will protect her from the elements. I still will bring her in my shop when the temperatures get too hot or too cold. Molly is ten years old this year. Seems like only yesterday we went to get her and she was a tyrant of a pup. She has turned into a sweet dog except with Lucy and Sugar which is why she has separate accommodations. She tries to beat up the pups. I don’t know what brought it on, but we have to keep them separated.

I believe she likes it although David did see her coming out of the chicken house today.

We have taken a couple of road trips while David is off. Driving the back roads of Indiana has become our favorite thing to do. You see so many different and sometimes odd things, too.

Doesn’t everyone have a teepee in their back yard? In Indiana some people do.

These one room schoolhouses are scattered all around our state. Back in the 1800’s and early 1900’s children in the country went to these little schools. Many walked to them although there were horsedrawn “schoolbuses” that would pick some up. Some people use them for storage now and some have even made homes out of them. In fact, when David and I were in our house hunting days, we looked at a renovated schoolhouse. We liked it, but it smelled like cat which turned us off so we didn’t buy it. We pass it now and then and people are living in it still.

When I took this picture yesterday, I thought this was a turkey, but looking at it now I believe it is a turkey buzzard that eats carrion off our roads. We have both in our state. We see wild turkeys all the time and vultures fly in our skies every day.

One day we drove over to Nashville to visit our daughter’s family. Our youngest grandsons are not so little any longer.

Our youngest grandchild. He had a mop of curly hair, but his mother told me today he buzzed it all off in her bathroom and left hair all over the floor! He did clean it up later after his parents discovered it.

His older brother has a mop of curly hair. None of us know where the curly hair comes from. We all have stick straight hair. But he is a handsome lad.

Here is one of our granddogs. They have two goldren retrievers. I wrote a story about the third one who has since died, about the time he was caught in a trap in the woods and they never found him for weeks and he got loose and walked to a road where he was found. It’s in one of my older blogs.

My daughter also gave me two big bins of fabric she didn’t need. Like I needed more fabric like a hole in the head but I took it and have found some nice fabric I can use and I will give the rest to a local charity where some other sewer can find it. I have already used some of the fabric in a quilt I am making.

We went to look at a house that is for sale just a couple of lots past ours.

Someone had carved this man in a tree. Hoosiers are so talented.

Someone was very talented. Anyway, we saw the house and I wasn’t impressed.

No, there were not ducks floating in water before us. That’s our Jeep ducks David has collected. People put them on our Jeep’s doorhandle. The house is what I think is called Industrial Farmhouse style. I have seen several houses like this all white with black trim and the siding is metal or aluminum. The garage looks larger than the house. They want $650,000 for the house and a few acres that go straight downhill behind the house. Knowing what our daughter and son-in-law paid for their house and what we paid for our property right beside it, they are trying to make a lot of money to pay for another house they built nearby, plus this one and have money left over. I can’t imagine anyone paying that much, but if they do, our property is worth a whole lot more than we thought!

We have some houses ready for occupancy. David put these up the other day and I have enjoyed watching birds checking them out. It may be too late in the season to start a new family, but maybe they are looking for next year. We have one birdhouse the birds had about four families in it. I got these birdhouses at some of the Country Neighbors sale.

This birdhouse has been used over and over.

This is a guest cabin by our property. I peeked inside it one day and it is really cute and cozy inside. If you want to stay in a cabin in Brown County this would be a nice one, up a hill where it is very quiet and peaceful. It’s not my cabin so I am not trying to advertise it.

Now this is a house. We saw it on our drive yesterday. I love everything about it. I like the dogtrot between the house and garage. The house of my dreams is divided into two sections with a dogtrot between. The livingroom, kitchen and a bath in one section and a master bedroom with a bathroom and laundry room in the second. That is what I want my retirement home to be like. All on one floor, too. Not much to clean, but just right for two.

One of the backroads we took this weekend. The trees are just starting to turn. By next weekend they ought to be at their peak.

You can see how the trees are turning. It’s both sad and glorious at the same time. But isn’t it always sad to lose one thing to gain another?

We have the Hoosier National Forest in southern Indiana where thousands of acres are set aside for woods and animals. We drove through miles of it and even took a short off the main road up a hill trip that ended in a dead end and we had to turn around, but it was a nice drive. I love the peace and quiet in a forest.

We forded and little stream where there was no bridge. Lots of little streams and rivers in southern Indiana. We followed a river for a time, but I don’t know what one it was.

Suffice it to say Indiana has some beautiful views. You don’t have to go to Nashville and the Brown County State Park to see beautiful views. Just drive off the main roads. We could drive for miles and not see a car. Maybe I shouldn’t advertise it too much or it will get crowded on the back roads.

We are a state full of people of faith also. Little churches dot the countrysides and always there are churches in the small towns. Most of the churches are well kept and I hope are full on Sunday morning. We all need to pray for our nation. We are in big trouble and we cannot allow the next four years to be like the last four. That is as political as I will get on here right now.

Bye the way. This is one of our ducks! Don’t you just love him!

Made this quilt in the last couple of weeks. I joined a group on Facebook where we try to make one of Kathleen Tracy’s small quilts each month. She has designed a lot of quilts and written several quilt books and I have made probably dozens of her quilts. They are so much fun to make. I am working on two more right now. If you want to join, it is not too late. Just type in Kathleen Tracy and it will take you to her blog or Facebook page or the page for the quilt challenge. If you want a quick and fun project you will find it there.

Something else I have finished this week is a painting of my sister and brother-in-law. You can send a picture to Masterpiece Paint by numbers and you can get a paint by number set with that picture and all the colors you will need to paint it. I usually order extra paints because I always get really low on some of them.

This looks funny close up, but the farther away you stand to look at it, the more lifelike it gets. I can’t show that to you here, but trust me. Up close it looks like a bunch of splotches of paint, but looks just like them when you step back. I can’t explain it, but it has happened with every paint by number I have done of family members. I painted all my grandchildren last year. This year I want to do couples.

I think I have told about everything I need to tell so I will leave you with my dying garden. We are supposed to get our first frost next week so David and I have been moving the flowers I want to keep into my greenhouse and cleaning out pots and getting ready for the cold. My flower beds won’t last much longer so here are a few pictures of what is left for the season.

Saying good-bye to my garden is both sad and relieving. I have spent hours watering it all and now it will be put to rest. I have gotten a lot of seeds from all these flowers to plant next year and I am already planning my garden and David is making it bigger for me.

Have a wonderful October. I will try to get back to you before election day. Bye.