Tolentreasures

My Mom gave this pattern to me yesterday so that I could try a few of these and I sort of went on a roll with them this morning.  The top is a snap top and you use a cut up carpenter's rule in the casing.  I decorated a few with some things laying around my sewing room . My mother-in-law needs a baby gift so I started this for her and put the I Spy quilt on the back burner for awhile.  I did get up early enough for an early morning run.  I have been running now for almost a month and have logged close to 40 miles this month.  Some mornings it is really hard to get up and go and some mornings..well I just don't.  Sometimes I think I am way too old to be doing this and there should be a top 5 list of why I shouldn't be doing this. 1. When your knees hurt too bad to get up the stairs to go to bed at night. maybe you shouldn't be running.  2.  When you realize that as you run, your arms are flapping like butterfly wings...maybe you are ...

It always happens like this, I take my camera, I take a picture and then people start to arrive and I forget to take any more pictures.  Thank goodness the girls remember and will give me some, hopefully.  It was a great party, the weather was perfect and everything tasted yummy.  A perfect summer evening.  This morning, bright and early, I painted this board for all the kids to have a "photo" moment.  They loved it and they all posed in it to get their picture taken.  Tomorrow is a completely FREE day!  Woohoo!  I can't wait!   I hope that you are all enjoying your holiday weekend! 

Kendall will be one year old tomorrow, how fast that year has gone.  Shelby is having a theme party...a big party.  I got the bright idea for these little guys. They started like this  and what a mess they, well actually I made. Little balls of Oreo's and cream cheese.  Easy enough. And then I had all of these.  Fun, sticky, and they don't taste bad. And on Thursday, Tyler graduated from preschool.  How adorable they all were. The graduating class. They sang, they did rhymes and I decided that our little Tyler really has the makings of a TV Evangelist.  What drama he portrays and how he liked that microphone AND the applause.  To our surprise, at the end, he grabbed the microphone and performed a solo, impromptu rendition of the ABC's.  I am sure that I was not the only one that started to sweat when he grabbed it.  You never know what is going to come out of his little mouth sometimes. What a great holiday weekend so ...

This week so far can be summed up in Yard Work on Overdrive.  Nothing much was accomplished last year and one year without mulching seems to make the next year even harder. These stones are scattered throughout my landscaping.  More than anything they are a reminder every year of how they appeared.  Shelby never had a decent vehicle when she was younger, she had lots of vehicle due to her driving record, but never a nice vehicle.  She had this old lady looking Buick, bought because it had a  little more room around her and given her tendency to hit things, it looked much safer than some of the tin cans that she had driven.  She pulled in one day with the entire trunk full of these stones.  Let me just say that the Buick was riding a little low in the back.  She had found a place that was going out of business and was giving these away.  She then proceeded to drive from house to house and give them away to anyone that would take them, emp...

Thank-you, thank-you, THANK-YOU to Laurie at Buttons and Lace for her generous donation of fabric for the I SPY quilt.  I so appreciated it all!  and every bit of it will go to good use!  This is in the new Quick and Easy Painting Magazine. And this just popped into my head for the canteen, sort of woodsy, don't you think? And this is one of the ten or so items that I antiqued today.  What a mess that makes of my hands and of course, I could not find any gloves. Fabrics I found the other day for the I Spy quilt!

This is on my sewing room floor. Finally managed to get Kendall's handprint, although her baby finger looks a little crooked. This morning's project, changed the colors from Quick and Easy. Finished this bowl yesterday Tea stained these runners. Sorry for the blur, these are finished other than varnish and antiquing. I am not really liking the new way to make posts, think that I'll go back to the old way.  Too much for my brain, I guess.

Still trying to use all that fabric up that it seems I was cutting half the winter. Not sure, but I think I want to coffee stain this, what do you think? And another top for the ladies at the church. I woke up too late to run this morning and am not happy with myself. I am going to have to start setting an alarm again. The horses hit the horse track at 6:30 so you have to be off of it by then and I won't run around here once traffic gets moving. I like to be off the streets by 6:30. Nothing attractive about it when I am at the end of the run. So off to paint or sew or something creative until it is time to go to work.

I managed to spend a few hours working in the yard yesterday. What therapy, what mind cleansing, and wow is there a lot more to be done. It was hard to find a stopping place, but the smell of the grilling chicken sucked me in and made me stop. Anyone know what this plant is? I have TONS of it. It is growing everywhere and I am yanking tons of it out to make room for some annuals. Pretty, but very invasive! A little patch of phlox left. Love this tree! Lots more yellow and purple than I realized I had. I know it's a weed, but still a pretty flower! Anyone else think that the iris are having a bad year? Mine are. Flower on the chives, aren't they pretty? And two years ago, I convince my husband to rip out the ugly shrubs that were in this space for at least a hundred years. Last year it looked sparse, but this year they are really filling in. Hubby's comment yesterday. "I kept telling you that we should rip out those shrubs!" The other side. I have some ...