Who's the daddy?

Can you tell which

is

which?

Isn't life interesting? ;-)

Garden Tuesday ~ Natures bling

This is the prettiest thing that has grown in my garden all season! Just look at the sparkling, gold collar on this delicately shaded jade green form. Amazing!

This will be my entry for Sidewalk Shoes Garden Tuesday.

Makes me giggle....

I love my fil!

Hello all!

So, I must say, I absolutely adore my FIL! That's Father-in-law, in case you didn't know. He has been so, so kind in making me things. First as you may recall was my lovely, one of a kind, spice rack.

It has been so wonderful to be able to have ALL my spices in one location! It's certainly made my cooking time faster now that I don't have to go searching for any particular item!

And so now, he has taken pitty on me and made me a beautiful oak book shelf that looks like it's a built in! He moved a light switch to the other side of the wall which is so wonderful. I'm not sure why it is that it wasn't like that to begin with. But it's done now and it makes sense!

;-)

Anyhow, as usual. In my excitement over having this wonderful new item made for me, I forgot to take a bunch of before pictures. I took a few of the book shelf when it was already installed and I was beginning to stain it. So here is that photo.

In the picture you can see how dark it is. I ended up going over it with another color stain to add a bit more red to it. I was trying to match it up to the stain that was already on the window and door frames.

It's still a little more brown than I wanted. But I was nervous about making it too red. The shelf actually matches the color of the baseboard more than the window and door frames. And the T.V. is something that get's moved from one room to another. So the cords are all showing. But, I'm okay with that. Normally the T.V. is in the sun room which is kind of our small family room.

So, I've got most of my cookbooks on the shelf. I've downsized quite a bit! Now I need to figure out how to use the bottom of half of the shelves as a pantry too. I don't want to nail or screw any holes into the shelf so that limits how I can use it as a pantry. But I'm not thrilled with the plastic containers sitting out there in the open either. I like my cracker tin that is on the bottom. I would love to have some other tins to maybe store my pasta's in. Or, maybe some pretty glass jars? OH! Maybe some larger WECK jars..... Hmmm, I might have to see if I can get my hands on some of the large jars.

And so this project continues. ;-)

Hope everyone had a great weekend! See you soon!

OMG! That Yarn Harlot....

Is anyone else as annoyed as I am over the Yarn Harlot and her never ending bevy of adorable baby knits? Perhaps, *annoyed* is not the correct word I want to use. Envious is definitely more appropriate! She is the reason why my grandbaby has so little in the way of Nana-knitted items. (I hope the Yarn Harlot doesn't mind me using her as my new excuse!) The Yarn Harlot has churned out four baby items in just that many days. As for me.... I've managed to complete 16 rows of my baby bonnet that I started 10 days ago!

Every morning I go on line and see that she has yet another item up for show and tell. And I sit here wondering how the heck does she do it!?! Okay, I know that she's been knitting for a long time and all. And I've only started three years ago. And yes, I have gone on-line and I have seen her actually knitting! And it doesn't seem human to be able to knit THAT fast!) But still! I'm depressed. I'm bummed. I can't seem to *get over it*!

AND to top it off.... I'm also working on a baby quilt for my niece who is about to have a little girl this month. And quilting and trying to knit using silk hankies does not equal easy or smart!

I have this problem where when I quilt, the middle finger on my left hand becomes all prickled. (I think that's a word. I'm too frustrated right now to look it up to make sure.) So then when I go to knit with the silk hanky, my fingers get all tangled up with silk fibers. It was already difficult even before I started quilting. No matter how well moisturized you think your hands are, the silk will tell you how rough your skin really is!

So, this is the quilt which is still needing quite a bit of stitching done to it.

And here is the baby bonnet.

This is a whole new technique of knitting for me. And this idea was taken from reading the Yarn Harlots blog. She made the cutest, most adorable baby bonnet out of silk hankies and I wanted to make the same exact bonnet. Unfortunately, I couldn't figure out what pattern she used, which probably wouldn't have made a bit of difference had she told me because I'm sure that pattern was WAY out of my league anyhow. But, the idea of using silk hankies was so overwhelmingly fascinating to me that I decided to see if there were some Youtube videos out there explaining how to knit straight from the hankies. And sure enough, there were! So, although I don't have the antique-y looking pattern that she used, I did find something that looks like a bonnet and I'm making it. We'll see how cute it turns out. As you can see, the fiber is all wonky. That is because I did not quaddrupple check my hankie strand before I began knitting with it. But, I believe I've gotten the hang of it and it's looking a bit more even now.

But, back to my title...

I think I'll just stop reading the Yarn Harlots blog until I can get a few more knitted baby items of my own completed. Or.... until Jen's baby is born! ;-)

Okay, back to the needles........

Year of the non-garden

This year we haven't really had an *official* garden at our house. It started off being more of a forced garden if you ask me. One day early this spring I saw a bunch of little mounds of various color greens sprouting up. It was all the volunteer lettuces coming up. I sort of let the garden we had the previous year get away from me and plants went to seed like crazy. And so this year, even though I hadn't planned on having a garden, well, I was forced to have one anyhow. After the lettuces showed up, I began to notice that there were tomatoes coming up as well. That's when I gave in and bought a few more tomato plants, cucumber plants and herbs. But, it was still not the *official* garden.

Well, I have not tended my garden at all well. I've let it get crazy when the weather got so hot that I couldn't stand outside without breaking into a major sweat! I watched my garden (through the window) grow among the weeds. Watched the many severe weather storms drag and pull our plants about. Some of our tomato plants were cut in half from the winds that came up! Some lost their cages and are now growing sprawled along the ground.

But even though they went through sever heat and were buffeted by strong winds and even through times of drought. It still produced. We had wonderful salads from all the volunteer lettuces that came up. We had succulent strawberries. And tart red rhubarb. We even had our first small serving of asparagus this year! And our black berries have been super yummy!

Our tomatoes have not fared as well. We've had some. But they have been struggling.

And initially the cucumbers did not do so well either. But, now that the weather has begun to cool off a bit... well, we've seen many more blooms on the plants. If I"m lucky I may be able to make a few jars of refrigerator pickles after all! Yum!

Here is an over all view of our sad & oh so neglected garden.....

Isn't it the saddest sight? I am embarrassed to show you how badly I've treated our little plot of ground. And I do feel badly because, as neglected as it's been, it still produced enough to feed myself and my honey! We've enjoyed this little non-garden this year. And I vow that I will show my appreciation by carefully over-wintering this little plot of ground and preparing it for a comfortable winter so that next year it will be well rested and truly loved and worked as it should be! Amen.

I will be linking this to Pams Garden Tuesday. And see how well others have minded their gardens!

More wedding....!

Hello all!

As usual it's been a busy week. Nothing spectacular to blog about. Just the regular stuff. Although, my in-laws and my favorite Aunt-in-law came over this weekend. And it was a very nice visit. Aunt Betty came over and saw our home for the first time! That was nice since we had stayed with her and Uncle Ernie MANY times over the years, it was nice to be able to share some loving hospitality in return!

But, I am not going to blog about this visit. Although, I may, the next time she comes for a visit!

This time it's going to be about Baby Girls wedding. We finally got the professional photo's done by, Matt Frye of One Tree Photography in Kansas City, and there were TONS of them! But I am just going to (try) and pick out a few of my favorites to share with you today. Enjoy!

Flowers from Manhattan, KS

(The ring bearer.)

Wedding party

Parsons/Ising

Level surface...

First dance.....

Mr. & Mrs. Ising

This is just a few (seriously, there were SO many more that I wanted to share) of my favorites. It was such a wonderful day full of family and fun! Thanks for visiting and letting me share our wonderful day with you all.