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.