Trees and Such

I know I am not posting as much as I wish.  Life just gets in the way.  Not complaining...just apologizing I guess.  The weather here has been beautiful.  The daffodils are blooming and I am finding crocus and other green things peeking up and blooming.  I have a great deal to learn about the flora and fauna here.  I was in contact with one of my friends who sent me a picture of a black and white "block of the month" quilt finished by another friend and she guilted me into working on some of the blocks I had not sewn.  I did two of two patterns and have more to finish yet.  The quilt was completed by "Rose" and was beautiful...she always does wonderful quilts.  Don't know when I will get more squares finished but I will eventually.  I am currently working on getting the Farmer's Wife quilted.  I started it and didn't like the quilting so ripped it all out and started again.  I also spoke to my friend in Brighton CO and after complaining to her about the fir boughs and cones which fall on the parked cars which I was raking up, she asked why I didn't trim them.  These boughs fall from     50' to 70' in the air and who knows which tree from which they come.  I explained that we live in a heavily forested area and from the picture of the truck, the botton branches are 20-30 ft above the ground.

We have been working on a good deal of other small projects around here also.  The Mr. demolished the workbench in the garage and has built another larger one and I embarked on the kitchen project.  The white paint on the previously dark wood was applied improperly and they really needed to be sanded and primed and painted with a paint specifically for kitchen cupboards.  Having done this in a previous home, I did not really want to start that project.  The kitchen is small and I do like the mostly white cupboards.  I decided to distress the already distressed (paint which was chipping) cabinets and get a French decor style, otherwise known as "shabby chic".  People pay good money for this treatment and even buy new with this look.  I am happy with the few I have begun and will put a clear sealant over them when I am finished and will post more pictures.

After distressing, and this was the worst area around the knob.  

 This is in really good shape below, but it will continue to become chipped.  It will be in the next pictures with more of what I intend to do.  Just wait!

I spent Friday a.m. at a shop where I am beginning my next venture.  I found a neat spot to work on a "junk journal" and a gal who has helped me begin something I have wanted to try.  The shop is full of craft items and there are classes being held on various crafting and sewing and needleworks. The owner has a myriad of craft items which have been donated and sold at a large discount.  More to come on that.  My Quilt of Valor is getting the label this week and I will take it to the recipient soon as I am anxious to see his reaction.  He has teased me about getting a quilt as he knew I had given another neighbor  baby quilt.  

"If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it, doesn't it just lie there and rot? " ~

Chuck Palahniuk

Spring?

 It is still a few weeks until spring arrives, but it is so very sunny today that it appears encouraging.  The weather person has indicated rain again for the weekend and at nearly 11:00 this morning now, there is still frost on the shaded areas of my front lawn.  We have the most amazing looking mushroom species here.  This pretty little spotted one is in the backyard and is about 3 inches across. there have been so many other species, but this one is a fairyland type.  (probably poisonous)  I am not educated in Mushroomology.

I guess that we have a lot of critters here also, as we are in a wooded area, but there is an abundance of squirrels and these are grey, not brown like we had at home.  They are noisy and are constantly digging in our lawn.  The Mr. has always been around animals, mostly for hunting, but has relatives with some unusual pets also.  My dad had a pet prairie dog as a pet when he was a child which slept at the foot of his bed under the covers and later after we were grown, he had two in a fenced yard.  He had buried an old small refrigerator for them to use as bedding and fed them and called them "Pete and Repeat".  He also had a black bird as a child.  Someone had split it's tongue and it could talk a little.  Don't judge, and I only heard him tell the story.  My grandmother had some of the first hamsters introduced into the country and I remember that she had them in an enclosure of sorts in her dining room.  As children, we had every critter that my dad could feed, as pets and it taught us a lot of responsibility required to take care of things.  The Mr. had an uncle who had two pet skunks.  Call us rednecks if you wish, but this little guy above has become a frequent visitor on our back deck and is patiently waiting for peanuts. The Mr. puts 4 out in a tree for him to eat and he also buries them in holes in our backyard.  All of our lines are buried and we are aware that they can cause damage, but we haven't heard of any neighbors having had issues with then.  I think they are well fed with lots of pine cones and green veggies. (and peanuts)  There are so many trees and bushes that they don't have to fear much.

I am ready to quilt the Farmer's Wife quilt now and my Quilt of Valor is finished except for the label.
I have a lot of 2 1/2" squares with which I need to do something.  Scrap quilt coming?

"Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened." ~ Anatole France

Farmers wife

Bear with me today, I am still trying to get this blog back on track. It seems as if every time a new update is loaded, things change.  Being of the Older generation, change doesn't come easy.  I still remember when our television was in a great big box with only 1 or 2 channels and everything was in black and white.  When I stayed with my grandmother, she watched all of the soaps with a piece of colored plastic taped to her screen.  It had a rainbow of colors on it and was supposed to represent the black picture in color I suppose.  I also remember the crank telephone that my aunt and uncle had and ours, when we got one was on a party line.  We had that phone for as long as I can remember. Oh, the good ol' days when things were slower to change.

I spoke with one of my sisters this morning who lives in MO and she said they had snow and 7 degree weather.  She moved from Texas to that.  I mentioned that the Mr. had mowed the lawn 2 days ago.  We have a patch of dirt which was where the septic was disturbed before we moved in so I will be planting there soon.  But see the pretty GREEN lawn!  Hopefully these pictures will be in order in the future.  Below are the remaining 6 1/2" squares from the Farmer's daughter patterns and I have 40 in all which is where I am stopping.  They have been sewn in the above quilt top now which measures 48" square and I call "pink caramel".  I was trying to organize the UFO's that I have this morning and realized that I have 4 quilt tops now which need to be quilted.  UGH!  Not my favorite thing to do, but I am too cheap to send them off.  Happy Valentines Day!

Don't we love technology?

I know it has been a couple of weeks since I posted and we have been busy.  Had a couple of dentist appointments, bought and installed a new garage opener, have been painting and trying to get caught up on a couple of quilts....this one is getting bound now, but I have been having difficulty with my blog and the pictures that I have been air dropping from my phone don't want to load so with the Mr and his limited experience, we finally got this one on today.  Erica was here again this last Friday and she got more butterflies done and her lamp and frame came so it will be fun to get that finished.  She took the soldering iron home to work on that project.

I also have been fascinated with my ROKU tv's accessibility with so many u-tube and Netflix programs from which to choose, I can watch any quilting program anytime or so many other interesting programs...it is amazing.  We have had rain, but we don't have to shovel it and I have visited with some of my friends from Wy and CO and understand that they all have lots of snow.  We actually had sun today and the temperature was 51 degrees. My really great friend in CO has a new dog...a brown cocker who is a joy now for her since she is living alone.  I spoke with her today and I am so pleased for her and know that pup will have a wonderful home!

I will have to get some advice from my daughter in order to get those photos uploaded now and even though I have been doing these for so long, I am pretty tech challenged I will be the first to admit.

"We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works". ~unknown

Friday with Erica

 So last Friday, Erica was off and we embarked upon starting the butterflies for her lamp.  We still have more to cut and foil, but after starting to tin the edges, I realized that among some of the things I did not keep was the temperature control for the soldering iron.  So she ordered a rheostat and on her next day off we will cut and foil more.  We did cut a large one and several smaller ones, but she needs even more.  I was so pleased that she took to this so well and feel confident that after she masters the solder, she can do anything she chooses.  I am anxious to make some small projects again also.  I have also started a quilt of valor and intend to make at least 3 more.  This one has been basted with the washable school glue which eliminates all pinning and no wrinkles.  It takes no more time really after you get the hang of it and is so much easier to quilt as there is no shifting of fabric.  I am still working on those other UFO's though.

The Mr. and I went to our new dentist yesterday and really liked the staff there.  All of our records had arrived and even though I have a very small cavity, everything was just fine.  We are just about finished with all of the health issues and established all of those professionals.

Yesterday we had a TV to take to Goodwill and we also checked out the RESTORE here.  We like to haunt the thrift stores and there are some great ones here.  The Mr. picked up a light fixture which was marked at $25.00 and because it was "green tagged", it was half price.  He had a ceiling fan with some lighting which was pretty sad in the room he calls his "hidey hole"...the room in which he does his leather craft.  This will be a great improvement and because he is so handy, he can install it with just a small modification. Raining here this week, but the temp is so moderate and the sun is shining today.  I don't really feel like we have had winter.  The big box stores here are already getting the spring plantings in so that is encouraging.

Busy week

I spoke with one of my friends this past week.  I am still trying to recoup from my sciatica and finally, it is better until the next time.  We spoke about these things at our age now which impact our daily lives and we are realizing that it is just a fact of life.  We spoke of quilting and of some of the things I have done and I mentioned that my daughter, who is learning to do a few more things, has a stained glass project in mind.  Most everyone who follows my blog, knows that I have done some of this in the past, but I don't think I had any of it on display in the past 8 years except for one window in my sewing room.  This is a lamp that I made several years ago and wasn't able to hang it in my last home.  I had lots of specialty tools, saws for glass etc. which I donated to younger artists as I moved from one location to another, but I did keep some basics and hope that my artist daughter will continue to do this craft.  This hangs in my sewing room now above a machine.  Friday, we will do what she wants to do for a lamp.

I titled this blog "busy week" for a specific reason.  We are still adapting this home to our needs.  These windows below are on the west side of the "pool" room and although we have large of trees for shade and privacy isn't a problem, the sun can shine on the felt on the table and the carpet, not to mention the heat generated in the warmer months.  (31 degrees this am and snow)  We also have a glass door out to our deck in back.  Now we have these cordless, cellular shades on all four windows. The Mr. spent part of 2 days installing them and one day involved getting a new doorbell and installing that.  Another 2 days was spent trying to "fix" the new dishwasher.  Really it cleaned great, but the door was not shutting well enough and it finally just would not connect in order to run it.  What an adventure that was.  The front of the door came off (lots of screws), the electrical stuff (not sure what the technical term is) got disconnected and tested.  Then the door wouldn't go back on properly until the Mr. remodeled it(shhhhh), after finally getting it back together and no luck, we decided it would need to be replaced.  He spent the better part of two days on the floor trying to determine what was wrong. It became frustrating as he is really good at fixing just about anything.  Finally as he looked at the top of the dishwasher, trying to decide what to do, he discovered that the little u-shaped arm wan't connecting with the switch on the door and with a 15 second bit of pressure, the arm was adjusted down a small amount and "voila" the dishwasher took off!

These are the kinds of adventures that have kept us laughing and crying.  But the list of things we have wanted to get done is not getting any shorter, so we will keep on and are thankful that we are able still to do most ourselves, but as my friend last week and I realized....we are not getting any younger.

New Year projects

Oops! Should have flipped this picture...So I took a little break from this blog over the Christmas holiday, but not from the many projects in our list.  This entryway runs from the kitchen to the hallway toward the bedrooms and you enter from the front double doors.  It drops down a step to the carpeted room where the pool table resides although I think it was considered a sunken living room at the time the home was built.  We have worked on a myriad of small projects but this entryway was so dark that I didn't realize that the grout wasn't actually dark.  The bricks are of varied colors so being in a high traffic area, and since it was all dark..it wasn't a priority.  With a bucket of water and a scrub brush and some heavy duty cleaner, I have been on my hands and knees scrubbing a little bit every morning.  I am nearly finished and you can see how dirty it was and still is in this area. YUK!  

 The Mr. has been busy with small projects also.  He needed a cue holder and opted for a small one rather than a larger one as he has had in the past. A few years ago, a friend gifted me an old table and 4 chairs as I reuse and repurpose things.  The table was in really bad shape so it couldn't be used so the chairs without seats were reused as stools at the foot of the bed for the dogs to use.  We cut off the backs which I painted as garden angels and returned them to the gifter for her daughters.  The legs were shortened and new cushions fashioned for stools for the dogs.  We used them in 2 homes and when we moved in here, they were not needed.  The wood was old, but nice hardwood so the Mr. took them apart and the pieces were sanded, routed, and cut to size, then glued and painted. He installed them yesterday. This was just a small part of the chair wood.

So as promised, I am slowly finishing some UFO's. This is the quilt that I am assembling with the Farmer's Wife 6" squares.  These are the ones that I had finished, and I have begun to stitch some more. If I make 18 more, I can have a square quilt and I have completed a few this week. I call it "pink caramel" and we'll see how many I can finish.

One of the projects we completed this morning was the light over the dining table.  I don't have a picture, but it has 3 lights and was designed to hang from a chain.  However this kitchen/dining area has really low ceilings, so the chain was just looped up and tied with a wrap.  Removing some chain links seemed like a small project since we have done so much of this kind of remodeling but we neglected to take pictures and struggled to figure out how to reassemble it when it was shortened.  It literally took us all morning to finish this project, but it got cleaned and we finally figured it out, even though there were a few extra pieces left over?  It looks great and the main thing is that it works.

One of our neighbors stopped yesterday as we were taking down our lights and after she left, I thought about our conversation.  She is a master gardener and has been very helpful in informing us of the native plants and offered me some of hers earlier this year.  But reflecting on what I have tried..some successful and some not.  I can do many things...a jack of all trades and a master of none.

"When I was growing up I always wanted to be SOMEONE.  Now I realize I should have been more SPECIFIC."  ~ Lily Tomlin