January Good Times

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January has always been the month I just wish would go away. Other than having David’s birthday in it, it’s always been such a cold, miserable month, but this January?  It’s been fairly decent weatherwise.  Not much sleet, snow or ice to speak of.  Today we were outside playing with the dogs and I did not feel cold at all which is strange for me as I am always cold in the Winter.  I wish you could watch Lucy playing fetch. She is so engrossed in the process, you cannot pet her or anything because she is so centered on getting that ball!   Maybe I’ll try to make a video of her sometime and show you because it really is hilarious.  I call her our athletic child because she really is good at catching the ball in midair.  She just has not learned how to give it up easily once she has it.   I really believe she could compete in those dog shows where the dogs run and leap off  into the air above water and catch the ball in midair. Lucy could do that!   Sugar likes to catch the ball, too, but she’s not near as excited about it as Lucy is and Molly holds her own even though she’s a few years older than the pups.

I got David two puzzles for Christmas  called  The Country Diary of and Edwardian Lady. One is of Winter flora and fauna and one is of Autumn.  They are so beautiful and David has already put them both together so I told him I would order him the Spring and Summer ones for his birthday. I looked up Edith Holden, who is the artist for the water colors for these puzzles,  and she was  quite the artist in her time. I can’t imagine sitting down and drawing such beautiful pictures of animals, bird and vegetation.  It reminds me of Beatrix Potter who did the same in her time, but she wrote children’s books and put her water colors  in them.  I guess during the time these ladies were growing up there was not a whole lot women were expected to do but keep house and raise children or paint or sew.  But they took their talents and made something wonderful from them for which millions of us are very glad they did.  I will try to have pictures of the puzzles on my next blog or you can see them and order them, if you wish, on Amazon.

One of my presents for Christmas this year were tickets to go see the Van Gogh immersion show that is being shown at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. I actually cried when I saw the tickets because I had seen it was coming, but didn’t think I’d be able to go.  There will be a lot of walking, so we are borrowing our daughter’s old wheelchair and David will wheel me through it.   I still cannot walk long distances although I am getting a little better, but there will be a lot of walking at this show.  You walk through Van Gogh’s pictures that surround you from every side. I cannot wait.  I bought a new tunic that is of Van Gogh’s Irises painting and I will wear it and I will be immersed into the picture! HA!

I have been busily sewing in my shop. I’ve made six more pillows and a small quilt and have several more cut out.  I have so many ideas of things I would like to sell at my craft show next Fall.  I plan to finish a few quilts and lots of little things such as potholders and Christmas stockings and pillowcases, etc.   I ordered some new fabric from the line called She Who Sews and I have so many ideas for it.  I love this line and plan to order more if it’s available. It’s been very popular, I’ve noticed.  I had the She Who Sews wall calendar in my shop last year and got a new 2022 calendar for Christmas.

We got the nicest thank you note from one of our youngest grandsons thanking us for his Christmas presents.  We thought it was so nice and what was so cute was he addressed the envelope to Grandpa and Grandma. No names, just the address and we got it.  I’m sure the postman smiled about that.

I really do hope we get one good snow before Winter is through.  One that covers everything in white marshmallow heaps, but doesn’t stay on too many days.  We haven’t had much snow the last few Winters so we are due one.

Hope your January is going well wherever you are. Bye.

My Granddaughter’s quilt and a Happy New Year 2022

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I said I would show you the quilt I gave our granddaughter for Christmas, but first a few more pictures of the holiday at our house.

I loved our tree. David wrapped every single present you see except for his own presents, which I wrapped, but not nearly as neatly.

This angel has stood atop our tree for many Christmases.

I actually did not remember I had this Santa holding Labrador dogs, so I was pleasantly surprised when I found him among other Christmas decorations.

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care.

A sailboat that we got in the Virgin Islands a few years ago nestles in the tree.

We always had Spritz cookies at Christmas when I was a girl. I got a new press from a Pampered Chef party a couple of years ago and I tried it this year or rather, David pressed the cookies out. He has more patience than I do.  My daughter mentioned remembering them when I use to make them years ago.  Don’t know why I stopped making them.  I think my old cookie press was not very efficient and I lost all patience with it.

Here is the quilt I gave our granddaughter.

Thirty blocks of Little Garden Girls. Each one different.  Each one holding a bouquet of flowers I embroidered or sewed on.  Almost every one has old lace or eyelet sticking out from under her dress.

Here are just a few of them.

This is the label I sewed on the back.  I already had another label on it telling when I started it and when I finished it. It took me two years to complete this quilt.  A labor of love, I tell you.

This the quilting on the front. All hand quilted.  I echo quilted around every little girl. When I first started, I told David I didn’t know why I was quilting so close, but I had to continue and now I am glad I did.  I love how it looks.  Once I got started quilting it, it was relaxing.

 

This is the backing.  Perfect for a quilt about garden girls.

Now it is New Year’s Eve. People keep saying how horrible 2021 was. Unless you got the Covid or had a death in the family, I hope you think it was a good year.  We had a very nice year actually even with some health issues and other things. It’s life. Not all is good, but hopefully not all is bad, either.  I pray for health and safety for my family and myself and that the year 2022 will bring less turmoil, more peace and happiness to everyone all around the world.   God bless everyone who reads my blog and may you find joy, peace, good health and love in 2022.  Bye.

 

 

 

What I Made and a wonderful Christmas

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I hope your Christmas was as wonderful as mine. It’s always good to have family around and eat good food and open presents.

I worked up to the day before finishing presents.  It was a work of love, for sure, and I enjoyed every moment of it.

First of all, the socks. These are a few of the socks I have knitted this year.  I hang some of them on the mantle and let people pick out the pair they want.  This year I knit over twenty pair of socks and had some left over.  I have already started next year’s batch.

I made this pillow for our daughter. My mother made the Dresden plate many years ago out of her old dresses and aprons and  one of my dresses.

The purple fabric is from a dress I wore when I was little. I remember that dress well. I loved it and hated when I outgrew it.

I made patchwork pillowcases for some.

Another pillow I made.

A small quilt with four barns on it with four different quilt patterns in the door.

I made several pillows from this pattern from a book I got from Country Threads.

I love this one with the moon where the star should be.  I have already got a request for another one.

I also did one in Christmas colors.  These were so much fun to make, I could not stop making them.

My daughter got a new kitty before Christmas. She lost one of her sweet dogs and the kitty helped her so I made her this quilt.  I had this quilt pieced for years and never finished it, but when I saw her new kitty, I knew that I would have to finish it for her. The fabric was in my mother’s stash that I received after she died.

This was the backing. You know how sometime you make something to give away and you hate to give it away?    This quilt was one of those.

This isn’t all the things I made, but I haven’t given away some things so I can’t show you.  It was fun making everything and I have ideas for next year, but first, I am going to work on things for a sale I want to have next October or November. I plan to make lots of pillows, small quilts, socks and other things to sell in my shop.  Kind of a one woman Christmas bazaar.  I will see what I can get done and whether I will make enough to have the sale.

David made picket fences and birdhouses for everyone and they were pleased to get them  I used the one he made for me as decoration on our front porch with garland and lights on it.

Went to the eye doctor and he said my eye was doing very well, but he wanted to see me again in six months.  I asked him if I was going to have to see him every six months forever and he asked me, “Don’t you like us!”  Ha.  I like them, but that doesn’t mean I want to go there every six months. It’s a forty-five minute drive and several hours wait for a five minute checkup so no, I don’t like seeing them!

We had a very nice Christmas with the grandchildren. We gave them these balls that fly and return to them, among other things, and they were a hit. Balls were flying everywhere!  I  gave our granddaughter a quilt I made several years ago and got a blue ribbon at the county fair.  I told her at the time that when I died she would get it, but I got to thinking maybe she may not get it after I died, so I gave it to her for Christmas. I took lots of pictures of it and I will show you my next post.  It’s a Little Garden Girls quilt.  Another gift it was hard to give away, but I’m glad I did.  I know she will cherish it and take care of it, maybe for her daughter one day.

Here’s to Christmases past and present and may we always have a reason to celebrate because we do.  Bye.

 

 

Making

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Shhhhh.  I’m busy making things for Christmas that I can’t show you now.  So, I will see you on the other side.  I will have lots to show you.

Merry Christmas everybody and may God bless you all. Bye.

Getting Lasered

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When I was in my twenties, back in the stone age, I got Ocular histoplasmosis which is bleeding in the center of your eye.  I noticed it right after our daughter was born when I started seeing double vision on the tv.  I went to an eye doctor who told me I could have cancer of the eye. He sent me to the IU medical center in Indianapolis.

When we got there, I met with the head of the vision department, Doctor Schlagel, and he put me through all kinds of tests, the results being I had Ocular histoplasmosis.  The treatment was a shot in the eye.  When he told me that, I almost fainted, but I knew it had to be done so I manned up and took the shot.  This I would have to do several times and each time I had to go through all the tests again.  One test something, which I learned later was sulpha, was shot into my veins so they could see more things in my eye.  After having this done a couple of times, I fainted every time they did this. I was allergic to sulpha!   So they could no longer use this test.

I went for quite a long time to the center and got my shots until Doctor Schlagel told me he had done all he could do, that the bleeding in my eye was stopped, but that I would always be blind in my central vision in that eye.  I could live with that as long as I still had a good eye.  Ocular Histoplamosis  is a disease that is in many people’s bodies, but never affects them in any way.  Histoplasmosis is prevalent in the midwest, Doctor Schlagel told me.  He said just about everyone in the midwest had Histo in their bodies.  My son found that out when he was in the military and they found a spot on his lungs. He was sure he had cancer. After being tested, the doctor asked him where he was from. When he told him Indiana, the doctor knew exactly what the spot was. Histo.   He said the same thing. It was prevalent in Indiana.  I guess we are lucky!

It traveled to my eye because my body was under duress.  I had just had a baby, we were planning on moving to a strange city and to top it off, we chaperoned a youth group from our church on a trip to Arkansas to see the Passion Play there and we were going to camp with them.  I was under a lot of stress at that time.  All at once.  My body just had to react some way.

Here I am many years later, and I very rarely even think about being blind in my left eye unless I’m getting my driver’s license or someone mentions it.

But things happen when you are making other plans.  A few weeks ago I was sitting out on the swing with David looking at the sky and I saw hundreds of gnats.  I realized they weren’t gnats, but floaters in the eye.  This continued for a few days until I decided I should have it checked.  The eye doctor told me that a piece of my retina had torn loose and was floating around which is why I was seeing floaters and a dark spot occasionally.  She wanted to send me to a retina specialist in Indianapolis.  I felt like history was repeating itself.

So David and I made the trip to Indy this week. My appointment was for 2:15.   We were early and the sign on the door told people not to check in sooner than fifteen minutes before their appointment and that no one could come in but the patient.  I told David he would go in with me.  We discovered very quickly that everyone had someone else with them.  So we checked in and waited. And waited. Finally, I was called and we went back and I had a few tests then we were told to take a seat and wait for the doctor.  Well, we sat there and saw patient after patient leave. People who had come in after us were called. Four hours later, we were the last people in the waiting room and finally they called my name.  I went to another room where the doctor talked to me and told me what he was going to do.  He was going to laser the piece back onto the retina.  Okay. That sounded interesting and a little frightening, but I knew it had to be done so I manned up and did it.

The doctor and I went into a special room where the laser machine was. He had me sit up and put my chin in a cup and hold onto the bars of the machine. And did I hold onto those bars!  Having your eye lasered is like having firecrackers go off in your eye(without the noise.)   One right after the other and I could not blink because the doctor had put something on my eye so I couldn’t.  I was holding onto those bars for dear life and praying to God to give me strength and courage. Then as quick as he began, the doctor said I was all done.  Phew!  Then he said I would probably see things in purple and I did!   “Purple Rain,” I told him.  It was over. I had survived.

It was dark out by the time we left and we were one of maybe four cars left in the parking lot.  As we drove home, the lights of the city looked like Christmas lights and the moon was hanging from a star in the sky.  I could still see and for that I was thankful.

I have to go back after Christmas to be checked again. I got an early appointment so we would get home before dark.   I am so thankful there are doctors who can repair eyes so people can still see.  Years ago, this treatment I had would not have been possible.  Never take your eyes for granted and take care of them because it really is a blessing to be able to see.

Now it’s back to preparing for Christmas.  Bye.

Views From an Autumn Day

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Didn’t it just seem like Summer and now it’s almost Winter?   I know I talk about how time is flying all the time, but now it’s on jet wings flying through space at the speed of sound.

Before it is Winter, I want to show you some of the scenes we have well, seen, in the past couple of weeks.

On a wonderful sunny Autumn Day, David and I took off on a little journey.  The skies as blue as a fresh Robin’s egg.

Past lush fields and valleys.

With beautiful Autumn foliage on all sides.

Past cornfields ready for harvest. I always wish the farmers a bumper crop and it looks like they might get it this year.

By trees changing from green to golds, reds and yellows.

One absolutely gorgeous tree standing alone.

Through patriotic little towns.

Towns that have remembered their vets on their lamp posts. I thought that was wonderful.

We must never forget them.

Such a wonderful memorial.

Over bridges.

Past Lake Monroe.

We have been on a pontoon boat on this lake. It is so beautiful.  My daughter and her family have camped by this lake also.   I would love to have a pontoon boat and take it out in the middle of the lake and stay there all night looking at the stars.  It could happen.

To little privately owned shops all around south central Indiana. I didn’t get many outside pictures this time as it began to rain, but we got to several shops and I did buy some things which I cannot show because it’s “tis the season.”  This shop in particular had several things I purchased.  It’s the second time this  Fall we have visited this shop. Last time I bought those cute fence toppers that were on my blog header.

Back home again and I have been working on several projects. One I can show you.

I made this quilt.

From this book.

This is my version. Autumn and Halloween prints throughout.  I love it. It’s a rather large quilt, but I hope to get it done this next year.

Almost one hundred pieces in each fifteen inch block.  Once I figured it out, it went together rather quickly.

Looks so pretty with the golden light shining in the window.  You can just barely see the chick quilt I made from Lori Holt’s book Farmgirl Sampler.

I’ve been working on some things from this book.  Mary Etherington and her friend, Connie Tesene published this book a while back. Mary writes on her blog about the quilts she makes and the animals she cares for.

I would love to make this, but not this year.

I’ve chosen to make these instead. Pillows. I’ve made a few of them already. They are like potato chips. Can’t stop at one.

Here’s one I was preparing to pin.

The big quilt I showed you. This is a smaller version I made a while back.

I really think this pattern would be pretty in Christmas colors.

Outside our back door sits three dogs waiting.  The three amigos.

” When are you coming out to play?” asks Molly.

The athlete in the family. Lucy loves to play fetch so much that she never wants to stop.  We play with them every day and every day when we stop and are just sitting in our lawn chairs, Luch keeps bringing different toys to us for us to throw. Over and over and over again. She would never stop fetching, I don’t believe.  We have never had a dog that loved to fetch as much as Lucy does.   She’s not the dog you can sit there and pet. Oh, no. There must always be some action. Her sister, Sugar, however, loves to be petted and have her tummy rubbed.  And Molly does too.

The next couple of days I will be in the kitchen preparing for Thanksgiving.  There will be eight or ten around our table depending on who shows up.   I’ve tried a new frozen cranberry salad that is so good because I tasted it when I was scraping the bowl.   I hope others will like it because it’s so easy and a pretty dish.  We don’t eat turkey in our family. Not because we want to save the turkeys, but because none of us like it. It’s chicken and noodles with mashed potatoes at this house.  And I will make scalloped oysters even though just me and my son-in-law likes it.

Hope your Thanksgiving is blessed if you are celebrating it at your house or others.  Remember to thank the One who created it all and blesses us every day with His goodness.  Bye.

 

 

 

 

 

Yikes, Time Flies!

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Here is it deep into November and I cannot get into my blogging mojo because I’ve been sooo busy making Christmas gifts which I can’t talk about. Tis the season not to be nosy, I tell my family when they ask what I’m making.  I always do this. Just before Christmas I get in the “must make gifts” mode and start sewing up a storm.

I’ve been going through all my boxes of fabric and I tell you, it’s like Christmas. I am finding fabric I had completely forgotten about and have gotten so many ideas for Christmas gifts.

I have found several quilt tops that need to be quilted. That is on my list for 2022. Finish some of those quilts.  And I’ve found some things my mother had started and not finished that I would like to complete, also.  I go to bed all excited about the next day when I can get out into my shop and sew!    And I won’t be able to show you anything  I’ve made until after Christmas!

David has been off this week getting some work done around the house.  He also has built some things I can’t show you because of, well, Christmas.  It’s Santa’s workshop here for sure.  I really love what he has made and after I add my touches I think there will be gifts well received.

We went on another Country Friends tour where all these ladies open their homes and shops and sell things they have made or had in stock.  We made it to about five of the places until it started pouring down rain. I was happy, though, because I got what I was looking for.  Can’t show that stuff, either. Sorry I cannot show pictures this time.  The real reason is that I have a new camera and have not learned how to get my pictures up to my blog, but I will learn soon and get it done.  I have tons of pictures I have been taking.  Just hope I remember what they are pictures of when I get them ready to show you.  Anyway the tour was fun and we got to drive the back roads of rural Indiana and see all the beautiful Autumn colors.  The colors were so vivid this morning like a light had been turned on the trees and bushes.   I love Indiana in the Autumn.  We have talked about living in a warmer climate, but I know I would really miss the seasons so we are where we are supposed to be.  I am even looking forward to snow. We haven’t had a really good snow for a few years.

A few weeks ago we were at Rural King and at the counter I saw Sugar Daddies for sale.  If you don’t know what Sugar Daddies are they are caramel on a stick essentially and I loved them as a kid. I remember when my baby brother was born. He’s now in his sixties.  When Mom and Daddy brought him home they placed him in the baby bed and all us other children surrounded the crib to look at him. Daddy had brought us all Sugar Daddies and we were all eating them as we stared at the new baby.  I was a little jealous because that had been my bed just a few days ago!   Fast forward to me at Rural King seeing Sugar Daddies for sell again and I had to have one. I hadn’t eaten one since I was a kid.  A few days later I decided to eat it and it was so good, but halfway through I felt a crunch in the caramel and I looked and saw what I thought was a broken tooth.  I cleaned the piece up and called the dentist.  It turned out I had pulled off a crown and thankfully I had saved it so the dentist just had to reapply it so it wasn’t anything major, but I’ve had to give up Sugar Daddies. And I had two more cavities.  Can you be too old to have cavities?  I thought that, but I was wrong.

I’ve rattled on long enough.  Next time I promise pictures.    Really.  Bye.

 

October is Going, Going…..

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I can’t get over how quickly the months have passed this year.  I don’t know if it’s because the stores rush us from season to season with things to buy that they want to sell, or if it’s just my age and the time passes much faster.  Remember when you were a child and it was the last couple of weeks before Christmas how long it seemed?  The time seemed to stand still then although it really didn’t and went no faster  or slower than it goes today. Still, I really wish the days were longer sometimes. Especially now that David is getting off work in the early afternoon and I still have things I want to do besides prepare dinner.

I have really grown to hate cooking the last few years. After all, I’ve cooked for various people every meal almost in the last fifty years and it’s getting old.  I never liked to cook in the first place and it gets worse for me the older I get.  Those pre-packaged, ready to cook meals I see on tv look more and more appealing to me, but I know David, with his finicky eating would not like most of them because there are VEGETABLES in most of them.  Not the kind of vegetables he likes such as corn and green beans. Well, those are the only vegetables he likes.  I eat just about every kind of vegetable there is because I was brought up on a farm and we raised all our vegetables and we ate what was put before us.

I don’t know how I got off on that tangent. Oh, yes, the shorter days and having to stop to cook, Ugh.   The days David doesn’t work he will sometimes prepare a meal and I love it. His meals tastes better than mine.  Are you that way?  The food you cook doesn’t taste good, but someone else could make the very same meal and it’s yummy.   I made roast pork loin, green bean bake and mashed potatoes with apple crunch for dessert today.  None of it tasted good to me, but David ate two helpings so it must not have been too bad.

Well, to change the subject.  I have been working on an Autumn quilt for the past month. It has twenty fifteen inch square blocks. Each block has about one hundred pieces in it. It’s been a fun one to make.

David came into my shop the other day and said, “I know you know what each pile of pieces are for, but to me it looks like a jumbled mess!”  I laughed and pointed out each pile and told him the size of the pieces in each one.  There is a method to my madness. I can work in chaos and come out with something in order.

This is just one of the blocks.  I now have the quilt top completed and will show you when I get a good picture of it.  As you can see, there are many different fabrics in this quilt.  I love the Fall colors so much.

Here is a stack of the blocks I had done that particular day.  There was a LOT of cutting of pieces for this quilt. I made a smaller version of it a couple of years ago.  It’s on a chair in my living room so I can look at it all season.  I will really try to remember to get pictures to show you my next blog. I notice I have promised to show things in the past and completely forgotten about showing them when I write new posts. I will try not to do that this time.

Now that I am done with that quilt it is on to making Christmas gifts. I  was going through my fabric boxes getting ideas for what to make and found material I had completely forgotten about but that would go very well into the projects I have planned.  They say the store shelves may be emptier this year for Christmas shopping so I am preparing to make a lot of my gifts.

We had a beautiful rainbow the other day.  We could see it from our front porch. We have been having some rainy days recently.  Yesterday and today have been rather dreary and cold.  But then there comes a rainbow.

We took a drive up to some property we have in the hills of Brown County.  We still don’t know what we will do with that property. We would love to build a log cabin and I have designed exactly what I want, two buildings, one for the living area and kitchen, bath and laundry and the other for the master bedroom and bathroom with an enclosed dog trot between them. And I want another building just for storage and my quilting.  One can dream.  Always.

This is part of our property. It runs down a hill to a little stream at the bottom.  David wants to go over there sometime and bush hog some of the land to make a path to walk.

One of our grandsons played in the championship game of his soccer travel league.

 

We took our lawn chairs and blankets and watched behind the fence.  It was a pretty good spot as his team spent most of their time at this end and we saw a lot of action.

Here he is with his medal.

It is a very nice medal and we are so proud of him.

As we were leaving the game we saw the Hunter’s Moon above us.

It was so beautiful with the clouds all around it.

I managed to get some pretty good pictures of it with my little camera. Looks like Halloween. Do you see the witch flying across its face?  When I was a child and there was a full moon, my mother would scare all us kids by saying she saw the witch flying across the moon.  I was so sure she was right that I saw her, too!

Hope your October has been happy and you have enjoyed the Autumn Days.  Hopefully our trees will be changing their colors in the next week.  Happy Halloween!  Bye.

 

 

 

Making an Old Pool Look Like New

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After almost twenty years, the liner on our pool needed to be replaced. The puppies helped its demise along when they fell in and clawed their ways out of the pool.  David gave the pool to himself when he retired. He never golfed, fished, hunted, drove fancy cars or did much but work and come home so it was a well deserved gift to himself and he has used it a lot over the years and we have shared it with others and had pool parties.  But now the pool needed some much needed up keep.

It didn’t help the pool liner that when we got Lucy and Sugar, they both at one time or other fell in and in their efforts to get out, scratched holes in the side of the liner.  David patched it and it has held up well all Summer, but we really could not wait to get the new liner installed.  The pool company has been so busy and has had to wait for our liner to come in, but finally they received it and said they would come and get the job done.

It was an exciting day.

Here is the old pool. It still looks pretty good, but you don’t see all the tears in it. It was really getting rather worn in several places.

A whole pool liner in one little box.

A pump was put in to pump the water out. It was attached to just a regular garden hose so it was going to take a while for all the water to be removed.

Put in the bottom of the deep end, it began to pump. It took three days to pump most of the water out!

The pool looked so sad.

The liner had become brittle and came out in pieces. It’s a wonder we could swim this Summer, but we did.  And the liner held up well until the water was taken out.

 

Out with the old, in with the new.

Two very tanned men put in the liner.  They work outdoors all the time. Thus the tans. See the young man in the hat?  

Well, Miss Molly, when she was let loose, ran right up to him, her little backside wagging so hard and she went up to him and laid on her back and just looked at him. I told David I think she was in love. I have never seen her be so friendly with anyone, including us.  David told me she followed that guy everywhere.  I’m sure he liked that!

The liner in. Those guys knew what they were doing.

Time to fill the pool. The men attached a big hose to a fire hydrant that is in the back street back of our house. It didn’t take nearly as long to fill,  Just a few hours.

Finally looking like our pool again.

This is now what the bottom of our pool looks like. It goes so well with our house and surroundings.  Much better than the tropical look the old pool had.

 

I love how the water looks now. It’s so beautiful in the sunlight.

The water was cold. Way too cold for me to get in, but……

David couldn’t wait. I told him I’d join him next Summer when the water is about 85 degrees,

He is very happy with his “new” pool.

And this is his Albert Einstein look after being in the pool!   We both had a good laugh.

In other news, David has been working on a project. We have a lot of old fencing that he took down and now he’s making new fencing, but of the decorative kind.

Picket fencing to be exact.  We are going to put these around some of the flower beds. He made six of them for me and is making more. I painted them a pine forest green.

My new favorite meal. An Arby’s roast beef sandwich and a Jamocha shake. Yum.  We have two Arby’s in town and one of them makes the shake a little stronger than the other so I always want to get it from that one.

It’s really a meal in itself.

Just wanted to show you the old gate I bought on that country tour we took a few weeks ago.  There is an antique store in town that had one similar to this one for sale and they wanted over a hundred dollars for it!!!!  Just saying, I got this much, much cheaper.  It pays to shop around.  Aren’t the zinnias lovely?  They are beginning to fade now, but I am already planning my garden for next year.

Here’s to an almost new pool and the fun that will go with it. Bye.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Trip to the Country

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Once again David and I got into our Jeep and headed out to the country. This time we had a purpose. A bunch of ladies who call themselves the Country Friends, who do live out in the country have a sale every Autumn, Winter and Spring at their various homes or little stores on their properties.    It’s in the middle southern part of our state which means we drive hills , past lots of farms and through woods to get to every store.  One of the ladies even has a whole pioneer village built in her back yard!

Much of the items for sale are made by these ladies and there is even an artist who has her paintings for sale.   The last time we did this I purchased a mustard seed necklace one of them had made and I wear it all the time.  I also found an old wooden table with red legs that we have out on our back porch now.

I got a few treasures along the way this time, also.

I collect egg scales and I found this simply wonderful one that lights up so you can see inside the egg.  I weighed one of my eggs on this and it flew past the extra large.  I know my hens lay really nice eggs so I was glad to see just how big and good their eggs are.

I found this cute little lighted tree.  When I  brought it up to purchase another lady cried, “I wish I had seen that!  I would have bought it!”  It pays to be quick and decisive at these sales because once something is gone, it’s gone.

The tree has tiny baskets on it that I will put tiny pumpkins in for Fall and birds on the limbs.

It’s just magical lit up.  I have a bunny tree kind of like this one I put out at Easter time.

I’m not even going to tell you what I paid for this lamp, but it was so cheap, I grabbed it immediately.   I think the lady thought maybe she priced it a little low.  Let’s just say, I would have probably paid her twice what she was asking.  But don’t anyone tell her!  One thing David and I learned when we had a business. Don’t under price your merchandise or people will think it’s not worth it.  Sometimes we’d price something so high, especially if we didn’t want to sell it, and by George, there was always that one customer who just had to have it and we’d sell it.  David sold an old treadle sewing machine right out from under me once and I told him he would have to  find me another one, and he did and it now sits proudly in our front hallway.

The lamp  has these wonderful deer at its base.

And once again I think this looks magical, too.   It’s just perfect for this time of year. And right on to Christmas.

One of the ladies’ husband made this barn.  He wanted to make it a birdhouse, but she told David she wouldn’t allow him to cut a hole in it. Well, guess what?  David is going to cut a hole in it to make it a birdhouse.  It will make a wonderful birdhouse. Speaking of birdhouses. We have a little blue wren house in my kitchen garden and yesterday David and I watched several fat sparrows trying to get into it, but they couldn’t.  They just wouldn’t give up!   Several years ago we had a wren house and a sparrow tried getting into it, got its head stuck and David and I had to work to get that sparrow out of that tiny hole in the birdhouse.  Finally we managed it and it flew away, probably to tell its family of the adventure he had had.

These darling little jack-o-lanterns on a spring were for sale at one shop.  I bought two and put them on a picket fence David had made. He’s been making picket fences out of some old dog ear fencing we’ve had laying around for a while. I told him he could sell them they are so nice.  I will have to show you what these look like on one of them.

These are so cute and a nifty idea.

We got a new liner in our pool the other day and David had to swim even though the water was only 72 degrees.  Brrrr, Not me. My next post will show how it all was done from emptying the pool to filling it back up again.

Here’s to country friends and shops and may they live forever! Bye.