Eventually I did get everything done this year that I wanted to. Now the tree is up the decorations are up, and I am having a break from work...I can say I have not gotten anything useful done since Christmas, and I probably won't for a few more days yet...

The tree has at least another week to go till I take it down. Since it is up it is blocking my doing any work, since there is no room in here to do anything with this tree up. It takes up almost a quarter of the living room. But I do love a big tree. If it starts dropping needles at a fast rate it will come down sooner, but as it is now it is still in good shape, and slurping a lot of water.

Ready For Christmas

I believe I have finally done it! gotten most everything done, and will have a couple days to just sit and enjoy my decorations. Only one batch of cookies to go, one present to buy and wrap. All the rest are done, the house is cleaned, the decorations all up, and the cards sent out....
Have the menu written down for Christmas dinner, and I believe I have all the ingredients that I need for everything.
Usually I am still baking and wrapping on Christmas Eve...
It is supposed to snow on Thursday, so I will pop a dish of popcorn, make a pot of tea, grab some DVDs and relax and watch DVDs all day.

Mess number 1 has now become a bigger mess than it was....

Today I tore my sewing/craft room apart...now it is a worse mess than it was before I started. The reason for this act was because I could not find something that I thought I needed. Well I found what I wanted eventually. BUT, while I was looking, I thought maybe it would be a good idea to just do a bit of a clean.....what I should have done, was sat down and had a cup of coffee and waited till that idea passed.

Now there is no going back, have to clean that room! And the living room! That is where the excess stuff that I was moving around is now sitting because there is no longer any room for it in the sewing/craft room.

So tomorrow instead of getting the stuff done, that really needs to get done, I will straightening up the mess I created while I was looking for something that was buried in the original mess...
You know some days, I just seem to get nothing done................................

I think Fall has begun..................

I think summer has finally left...it has been chilly the past couple weeks. I still have hopes that we will get an Indian Summer. I never want to see the hot days end.
  Now there is mostly rain, I am NOT motivated to do much of anything on rainy days...everything just seems so dreary.
  There are so many things that I should be getting done, but there they sit, and here I sit. Today I had an excuse sort of, to just sit...I really did not feel well, not sure what was all going on. I had a stomach ache since the wee hours of this morning...Probably something I ate that did not like me as well as I liked it.
Plus it was rainy, and that added to the blah feeling.
  Must get out of this blah feeling and get back to getting something done, before I really get behind.
Need to go back to making myself lists for the things I want to get done each day, and then sticking with the list.

Time passes

Time that interesting thing we never seem to have enough of...But that is not really true if you sit and think about it. We have just as much time as we have always had...it just depends on what we want to use those minutes and hours for.

  This year I seem to have finally caught up with those things on my "have to finish" list. Only a couple more items to go. Then I can start on the things I want to do.

Sometimes we spend a lot of time on things that we can not change no matter what we do about it, when that happens it is time to step back and see if it is really worth it to continue. Some things were never meant to be and no matter how hard we try to make them happen it is just a waste of time.

  So I have decided to just forget about the things that are not within my control, if they happen wonderful, if not so be it. There are far too many good things in life, to waste time on things that seem to be a dead end.

  Fall is my favorite season, so I am going to enjoy it. Love the vibrant colors, the rustle of the fallen leaves beneath my feet. Watching the squirrels scurry to fill their winter homes with food for the long winter. Even raking all the leaves that fall from the trees is fun.

It has been a while

Well the heat finally left, now it is cool out, I would have liked a more constant temp from day to day, am not interested in being really cool just yet, it is still August! August is supposed to be hot, not July.  But I also do not want fall to arrive too soon either, Do not want snow in November....A white Christmas is nice but not a white Thanksgiving. I have so many things that I want to do outside yet.

Projects

Projects around here have come to a screeching halt, it had just been too hot and humid to get anything done....sewing is impossible, I just stick to what ever I am trying to sew, and I am constantly sweating....BUT, even with all this inconvenience, I still can not see myself  getting an air conditioner. First of all I hate going into stores that feel like you are walking into a freezer, and then when you leave it is like walking into a blast furnace. If I am going to be hot, then so be it. But HOT to COLD, to HOT again is just too much.
So until the humidity and the heat break, I will be watching videos and reading books, and just sitting around.

Summer is Here!

Almost a month, since I last was here...seems like time is flying again and I am not getting all that much stuff done. I need to sit down and make myself a list of all the stuff I have gotten done. Because after it is finished, I feel like I have not gotten that much stuff done.

I have gotten a lot of yard work done, and the garden is planted, still have to mow the lawn but it had been a bit windy lately.
All that junk blowing in the air from the trees etc. is something I really do not need.
Still waiting for the sides for the screen house to arrive, the last screen house was almost 3 years old and after sitting in the sun had rotted to the point of just ripping out. So on to plan two. Have a couple E-Z UP shelters, and discovered I can order screen sides for them. So that will be our newer sturdier screen house, as soon as the sides get here
Today I want to finish the laundry, and sort the stuff in the garage, and straighten up this house it is getting to be such a mess!
The weather is not all that bad, it gets into the 100's durning the day, but I have been inside working most of the time. We do not have air conditioning, but fans work well too.
Today I seem to just be flittering from one thing to another, so does not seem like a lot is getting done, and it is not really. Put my morning coffee in the refridgerator, I think I would rather have ice coffee today, and that stuff was really hot!

Where has the time gone, seems like I just posted. I think spring is finally here, at least I hope it is here to stay..Seems like this year the weather is just like last year...one day it is really HOT, and then we get a storm, it then gets cool for a couple days, then warms up again, and then storms again.
I don't mind the rain, we need it for the lawns, but the storms I do not need, and I would like it to be warm more than just one or two days in a row.
 Tomorrow is cleaning day again, need to see my house out from under all this clutter. Where does the clutter all come from, seems like I just got rid of it all, and here is more of it!
The junk mail is no help, I can get the mail out of the mail box and just dump it in the wastebasket...all junk mail. Maybe I should just get rid of the mailbox and substitute a wastebasket. I would like to put a sign on my mail box that says "no junk mail please".

It does not seem like a year has gone by already. But it has, one year ago today my Mom died..

Spring Flowers

Even though the weather is yucky, cold and rainy...my little blue flowers are blooming. The whole side of our yard is covered in them. Even if the sun is not shining the lawn looks springy. Plus the occasional dandelion adds more color. I like color in the lawn I don't care what is blooming to provide it..even the dandelions. Of course we can not mow the lawn till the flowers are done blooming.

I am thinking that at the rate they are spreading, the whole lawn should be covered with these flowers by next year. Of course there are also blue violets blooming in parts of the lawn as well.

Lot's of nice color. My tulips are starting to shed their blooms, probably has been to cold for them. The phlox are in full bloom.....funny thing last year they were all purple, this year some of them have turned pink...have no idea why. Some of the pink ones are right next to the original purple ones. I hope they don't all turn pink. I liked them better as purple.

My new, well planted last fall, lilac bushes are having little clusters of flowers on them. It was fun to see what color they would be. Bought them at the end of the season, and some of them no longer had tags saying what color they would bloom.

The rock garden is in full bloom, so much so that it is getting hard to see the rocks. I need more rocks.

SPRING?????

I thought spring was here...but I guess it was only a passing idea. Have been waiting for a somewhat nice day. One where it is not windy, rainy, or so cold I need a winter jacket. I have a lot of things that I need to finish, but they need to be done outside, and in this weather it is almost impossible.
I can't wait for the HOT weather to get here, and then to stay here. I am tired of the yucky cold, windy, and rainy weather that has been hanging around.
My flowers don't know if they should keep blooming or just crawl back down into the ground. My ferns are all curled up.

A fun project

I love to stain and varnish furniture...it just seems to come alive when that first swipe of stain is put on. I love to see the grain appear. This table is solid oak. It is not as "red" as it appears in the picture, it is a soft walnut color in real life. But my camera insisted it should turn out with this red cast to it.

EASTER

HE IS RISEN!

The Crucifixion

JESUS DEATH - 60 SECONDS ~~~
For the next 60 seconds, set aside whatever you're doing and take this opportunity! Let's see if Satan can stop this...
THE (SCIENTIFIC) DEATH OF JESUS At the age of 33, Jesus was condemned to the death penalty. At the time crucifixion was the "worst" death. Only the worst criminals condemned to be crucified. Yet it was even more dreadful for Jesus, for unlike other criminals condemned to death by crucifixion Jesus was nailed to the cross by His hands and feet, rather than tied... Each nail was 6 to 8 inches long. The nails were driven into His wrist. Not into His palms as is commonly portrayed. There's a tendon in the wrist that extends to the shoulder.
The Roman guards knew that when the nails were being hammered into the Wrist, that tendon would tear and break, forcing Jesus to use His back muscles to support himself, so that He could breathe.
Both of His feet were nailed together. Thus He was forced to support Himself on the single nail that impaled His feet to the cross. Jesus could not support himself with His legs for long because of the pain, so He was forced to alternate between arching His back and using his legs just to continue to breath.
Imagine the struggle, the pain, the suffering, the courage. Jesus endured this reality for over 3 hours. Yes, over 3 hours! Can you imagine this kind of suffering? A few minutes before He died, Jesus stopped bleeding. He was simply pouring water from his wounds.
From common images we see wounds to His hands and feet and even the spear wound to His side...
But do we remember the many wounds made to his body. A hammer driving large nails through the wrists, the feet overlapped and a nail hammered through the arches, then a Roman guard piercing His side with a spear.
And... before the nails and the spear, Jesus was whipped and beaten. The whipping was so severe that it tore the flesh from His body. The beating so horrific that His face was torn and his beard ripped from His face.
The crown of thorns (two to three inch thorns) cut deeply into His scalp. Most men would not have survived this torture. " He had no more blood to bleed out, only water poured from His wounds.
The human adult body contains about 5 liters (just over a gallon) of blood. Jesus poured all 5 liters of his blood; He had three nails hammered into His body; a crown of thorns on His head and, beyond that, a Roman soldier who stabbed a spear into His chest..
All these without mentioning the humiliation He passed after carrying His own cross for almost 2 kilometers, while the crowd spat in his face and threw stones (the cross beam was almost 30 kg of weight, to which His hands were nailed).
Jesus had to endure this experience, so that you may have free access to God. So that your sins can be "washed" away. All of them, with no exception!
Don't ignore this.
JESUS CHRIST DIED...FOR YOU!

Handmade

I found this cute quote somewhere, have no idea who said it but I thought about it and it really sums it all up.


When I give to you what I make with my hands
I share with you my heart.

Embroidery machine

Since my embroidery machine and I have become friends, I have decided to try making some things that I used to make without using the embroidery machine.
The first thing on that list was mending my pants...looks so much better to have something pretty there instead of a regular patch.
The next thing on my list was making postcards.
I learned how to make them several years ago, but never embroidered on them before.
The trick is to find a design that will fit the 4 x 6 inch card.

Spring Forward...................

I love the weekend when daylight savings begins....first I get more daylight in the evenings, and I get more done it seems. Funny how darkness, and not the actual time makes me feel it is later than it actually is.

The other thing I like about daylight savings time is, Sunday morning church service....You can tell the people who forgot to set their clocks, they are arriving as the rest of us are leaving.

I don't mind getting up in the dark, as I do not get up that early, and when I do get up it is already light...But OH how I LOVE having that feeling that the days have gotten longer and I can work so much later than I used to. And the sunlight is out longer, I love the sunlight it is so energizing.

Well here it is the middle of winter and it is 52 degrees outside! If there were leaves on the trees, I would think it was the beginning of spring.
It is supposed to be mild all week...I just hate to think of when spring will actually get here, since it does not look as if winter has....Or wait!, maybe those 2 weeks of cold were winter! and now we are headed into spring!

This is one of my cherished possessions....I wonder what it could tell me if it could talk...I wonder what adventures it has been on.....I wonder if all it's journeys were happy occasions, or were some of them sad?
If it were a gift as opposed to a purchase, and if it was a gift who was the gift from?
All I really know about it was that it belonged to my Mom....
It's last purpose was to store my Mom's yarn in, now that she is gone and the suitcase has come to live with me........I use it to store my rug hooking supplies in..
Whenever I see it I think of her, and wonder what adventures they were on together................