Ornament received!

This is the newest ornament in the ornament exchange. The one I sent hasn't been received yet so I'll save that picture for another day. I am enjoying this exchange. We are only mailing every other month so it hasn't been stressful - yet.
Worked out in the yard again this weekend but I think the fat lady (that would be me) is singing - this is the last bed I'm going to do this year. It is just getting too hot and staying out in the heat like that is just an invitation for a migraine. Anyway - this is the side yard. Ignore the fact that the yard needs to be mowed.


I should have taken a close-up of the morning glories at the bottom of the trellis. Those are the ones I started from seed a few weeks ago - I hope they get big enough to actually climb the trellis and bloom - I should have started them sooner but I'll know next year!
Hope you have a great week.

Stop and smell the roses

Hubby came home with roses yesterday


Aren't they pretty?
I can finally say I have finished something!



Necessities Sampler by Little House Needleworks.
Hope you are having a great weekend!

New stuffs!

No stitching here last night - migraine - so no progress pics to show, but I got some new stash in the mail yesterday from Jan @ Only One Ewe Needleworks.

I got the latest Loose Feathers chart from Blackbird Designs (Rites of Spring) along with a cut of fabric to stitch it on. I also got the fabric and wool for Wool Needlebook and Fob (Little House Needleworks) since I already have the chart for that one. I also got 'Housework Never Killed Anyone' but Lizzie Kate. As soon as I pulled it out of the package I knew that would be the one I take to stitch on when we go on the girlfriends weekend. I need to get it kitted up but I think I may change some of the colors so I'll have to think on it a bit.

Hope you are having a great week. (I'm missing those nice cool temps we had the last couple of weeks - we are back to Texas heat now - yuck)

Sun or no sun?

There is one bloom on my hydrangea - it will likely be the only one. I was careful to only put things in the front bed (house faces east) that said they would take the sun. The hydrangea said SUN, not sun to part shade, just SUN. I'm not sure what SUN they can take, but it ain't the Texas sun that hits my front yard. They both are 'droopy' buy noon and only look like they might survive by just before dark. The one that has this bloom has mostly brown leaves now (the other one is still pretty and green - just droopy most of the day) I'm hoping it survives until tomorrow afternoon when Mr. Wonderful can move them. If you have any ideas of what I can put in place of the hydrangeas, I would be grateful for any suggestions. I plan on taking the photos of the front with me to the plant farm and seeing what they can suggest this time. (rather than just guessing on my own which didn't work to well!)

I have only managed a couple of lengths of floss each of the past couple of nights. Not enough to show any progress but I am working in my Red Thread project. I need to decide on a good travel project - the first weekend of June I'm going on a 'girls weekend' which will include stitching and shopping. It will need to be something simple as we tend to get talking and not paying a whole lot of attention to what we are stitching! Hopefully I'll get some stitching time in tonight during American Idol. (and I don't know what we are having for dinner - only that I won't be cooking it!)

Have a great day!

one week

When we went to get the rocking chairs for the front porch they had some baskets of morning glories. Now, granted, they were already a couple of feet tall and had blooms on them, but they were still fairly small baskets and they were 24.99 each. I don't think so. So, last weekend when we were shopping for plants for the front flowerbeds, I picked up a package of morning glory seeds for 1.25. I figure if they do nothing I'm not out much. I planted them last Sunday in some of the small pots I had after planting the front beds. Here is what I have after a week.

I only had 7 pots so I just divided the package among them which put six seeds in each pot. Will see if any more pop up.
Hubby has been digging up another flower bed so I'll have a place to plant these. I have never grown morning glories before - in fact, I don't think I've planted any seeds of anything since the kids were in kindergarten!
Will see how these do. If they actually bloom, I'll know to start earlier next year!
While Mr. Wonderful has been outside moving grass, I've been inside cleaning. You can really tell that I have not spent any time on the house in the past few weeks. I'm about through (well - I could still clean all day, but I'm calling it quits after I mop the floors) I hope to have some sit n' stitch time before I have to start dinner. I've already made dessert (banana pudding). Baby boy and his bride are supposed to be here in time for dinner.
Hope you are having a fun - or productive - weekend!

I got nothin'

I have absolutely nothing to post about today. I have only managed to get two lengths of thread stitched in the last week so no progress pictures of any stitching. I dug around on my computer for a picture to use for this post and came across this picture of dh and baby boy.

It was taken 4 years ago on the way back from moving the oldest to Illinois. We stopped in St. Louis and they went to the top of the arch. I was more than happy to wait and just wander around while they went up.

In some ways it seems like only yesterday - in other ways it seems so long ago. Oldest kidlet got his Masters and has moved back home (I mean really back home - he took over baby boys room) Baby boy has not only graduated from high school but only has one year left of college - and he has been married for over a year. Time flies.

Speaking of time flying - I better get back to work!

How I spent my weekend

Remember how the front of the house looked here? Well, the plan for Saturday was to work on the flowerbed on the right side of the porch. It was supposed to rain Saturday afternoon and it was cloudy all morning so we planned to work out there until it started raining then go get the plants so we could set them out on Sunday and then I was going to spend the rest of the day stitching. Well, it never rained on Saturday but it was cloudy all day and never got too hot, so we kept working and this is what we had at the end of the day.

And here is what we had by dark-thirty last night.

To the right of the front steps (we are one plant short here but hubby will pick that up today and plant it)

To the left of the steps

And a full view.
Hubby used some more of that brick from the walkway out back to make a pad in front of the steps on Friday. (When it rained it splattered dirt all on the front of the steps). Then we recycled brick from what used to be a patio for the edging on the beds. Several years back we took that patio out but we saved all the rock - not really knowing what we would do with it at the them. But, after they used a jack-hammer to break it loose it was stacked out in the yard. Eventually it was moved to behind the garage. Hubby said he was tired of moving that rock! I still have lots, but there are a lot of them that are too large for edging (they are more like the one in front of the bench) so I may use them in a walkway. Anyway - all that rock was loaded and trucked (wheelbarrow) around front on Saturday.
The weather was wonderful yesterday. I think the high was like 75 and unless you were in the direct sun it wasn't hot at all (usually even at 75 the humidity makes feel so much hotter). It even got a little cool last night - it is 54 right now. Just my kind of weather - I'm trying to enjoy it because there are so few days like that here. (it is supposed to get up to 80 today and back in the 90s by the end of the week/first of next week)
I only managed to get in an hour of stitching last night but that is better than nothing! Maybe tonight will see more.
Hope you had a wonderful weekend and have a great day!

Happy Mother's Day

Thanks so much for the compliments on the house the porch and the rockers. I sometimes have to go back and look at those pictures to remind myself how far we have come. We still have so much to do!
Annemarie - no - I didn't have to go to Houston to get the rockers. We got them in Longview at Ellis Pottery. I didn't even know that the store was there until I saw the ad in the paper last Sunday. They said they have been there 4 or 5 years. Umm - no, we don't get to Longview much! Or - we didn't - that could be a dangerous store! LOL

This one little peony bloom was on a bush in my mother's backyard a couple of weeks ago. The plant is a cutting from a bush that was in my grandmother's front yard. Mother went out of town for a couple of weeks and this - the first and so far only - bloom opened the day after she left.

Hope everyone has a wonderful Mother's Day!

Broken record

I know, I sound like a broken record. I'm way far behind on blog reading and posting. I really didn't intend to have so much time between posts this time but life does have a way of not going according to planned. Anyway - here is a picture of my early Mother's Day gift. Hubby bought me two wicker rockers for the front porch.

I've been looking for some since last summer when we moved the wooden rockers to the back porch (they didn't weather well on the uncovered front porch). Anywho - I hadn't been able to find any but then there was an ad in the Sunday paper with these in it so he said we could go get them if I wanted them for Mother's Day. I should have bought cushions (to match) for the chairs on the other side of the porch but I really didn't think about it at the time. I might go back and get them, but it is an hour drive so I'll have to think about it - both time wise and with the price of gas these days!

Mr. Wonderful has taken a few days off so he is home all weekend - I'm hoping we can work on one of the flower beds in front of the porch. (just because he is home doesn't mean he isn't working - the cell phone, pager and computer are never far away!) We have to haul rocks from the back to the front to edge it with. It's not going to be a big bed but the rocks are big - ur, heavy!

In case I don't get back to post before Sunday - have a great weekend and Happy Mother's Day to the moms who are reading this.

Not a stitch

Thanks so much for the comments and emails on both the house and the migraines. Like I said, the house is a WIP - both inside and out. The migraines are an ongoing battle and most of the time I deal with it pretty well but every now and then (mostly when they are so bad I can't do anything and they interfere with my plans) they will just tick me off. I try not to bring them here to my blog, but sometimes it just is what it is.

No stitching has been going on here. :( I hate it when I get so busy I don't have time to stitch - or if I do get to sit and stitch I'm so tired I start doing the head bob. (which is what happened Friday night) Since I haven't downloaded pictures from the camera in days, I'm going to show the pinkeep I finished - last week? I really don't remember exactly when I finished it off. Anywho - here is the front



and here is the back!



I have an exchange piece I need to finish 'finishing' but I need to get down the box with trims in it. Maybe tonight.

We had a busy weekend. I've been helping my dad with a project so that was all day Friday. Instead of staying home and doing things I should have been doing on Saturday, we went to Canton. After the bad weather rolled through there on Friday (they actually had a tornado, fortunately there wasn't too much damage) the weather on Saturday was perfect. It was a little cool when we first got there and was just starting to get hot by the time we left.

I'll have to wait until I get pictures off the camera again to show you what we did yesterday - I got my Mother's Day prize (from dh) early.

Hope you all had a wonderful weekend.