Sunday, May 4, 2014

Signs of Spring

 Summer is my favorite time of year but spring comes in a close second.  Our hens are earning their keep and hopefully, Henley, our rooster, will earn his, too.  He is a handsome guy, isn't he?  I love to hear him crow.
 We have a lot of in-house projects going on.  This weekend my husband is focusing on the master bath.  He gutted it last weekend and this weekend he put in a new floor and shower stall.  In this picture, the toilet is sitting on the back deck.  It doesn't look too pretty there and I hope it gets back to its' original home real soon.  I see, too, that the sandbox is on the deck; not so sure I want sand put in it yet.  I don't know that the deck is a good place for it... we'll see...

A new clothes line to help with the overabundance of laundry.  I have another very large clothes-line out back that will be utilized as soon as I finish this post!  ;)
 
A pretty blossom in the front garden.

Some sweet daffodils in the front garden!  Spring's on its way...hurray!!!

Thursday, May 1, 2014

Happy May Day!

 May first, already?  Goodness, I've been gone from this little place for a long time.  Surely wasn't intentional but life has been busy and full!  Each May, my children have enjoyed delivering homemade goodies to our neighbors, no matter where we lived.  Some years it would be cookies, others handpicked flowers or weedy flowers in homemade paper baskets.  This year they made these adorable seed pot baskets filled with either Dove chocolates or a bird sitting on little eggs.  Our neighbors thought they were cute and enjoyed their homemade goodies.  Here's a link to the directions: Peat Pot Baskets
 Remember, I've been working on UFO's?  Well, here's a huge one that I finally finished!  This piece is called The Marriage of Minds by The Drawn Thread.  I started this project over ten years ago and hoped to complete it by our 20th wedding anniversary.  Well, we celebrated our 30th anniversary this past August.  It was a little overdue!  But I did finish it, so that's a plus, right?
 It's now on my living room wall and I couldn't be happier with it!  There are a lot of specialty stitches in it and it was a fun project.
 The wording is from Shakespeare.
 I picked up in the winter right where you see, "It is an ever..." and finished it up last month.  We were all sick for a good part of the winter this year so I spent a lot of time on the couch stitching.
On the original pattern, the wording at the end reads, Twenty tempestuous years.  I don't think our thirty years have really been tempestuous, even though we have had our share of ups and downs.  More fitting for us, I thought, was Thirty fruitful years!  With seven kiddoes I thought that fit us better!