Sing Along With Me and John Denver…

(Yes, I know that is incorrect grammar, but it just fits!)

All my bags are packed, I’m ready to go.

I’m standing here outside your door……

Well, technically, almost nothing is packed but I AM working on it, between checking the computer and doing a quick load of laundry.  Where am I going?  Well to the SIL Quilt Retreat, of course!  This is our 3rd one this year, and we are calling this the “retreat to get ready for retreat” because we will all be going to TX for a quilt retreat in July.

What do I plan to work on?  There are a couple of items I want to make for the blog give-away that I will be posting about when I return.  I also want to work on a quilt to go on my bed at the camp (I can’t let Debbie get ahead of me!).  And I plan on fabric shopping at Hemphill, TX tomorrow… looking for the perfect sashing fabric for 2 different quilts.

And we will relax on the deck, drink lots of flavored coffee (I don’t get this much at home because DH does NOT like flavored coffee.), sew, sew, sew, eat, eat, eat, laugh laugh laugh, … you get the picture… it is a typical quilt retreat but only 3 of us there because that is all the room we have.

No time to post pictures today… I’ve got to go PACK!!!!  Why do I need so much stuff for 2 1/2 days of fun????  But I do… just in case I “run out” of something to do.  HAHAHA!!  Fat chance of THAT happening!

Be blessed and be sure to check back around the 15th of June for the give-away posting.  I have collected quite a basket of “goodies” and will be making several other things to add to it… you will love it!!

Postponed…

Life is moving at the speed of a race car right now… I’m just pausing from my busy-ness long enough to let you know that there is just NO WAY I am going to get things together for my blog give-away this week!!  SORRY…

AND because I will be at the summer SIL Retreat most of next week, it’s not going to happen then, either.  Of course, I will publish pics of our retreat and the wonderful things we get done.  We are also planning an escape to a not-so-local quilt shop.

My new plans are… to post an entry for the give-away about June 15th and the drawing will be held July 5th…

Sorry for the delay… I have a house full of company coming and I am cleaning like a white tornado (that remark ages me… only folks that are 50-ish or so will recall the Mr. Clean commercial that has imbedded this phrase into my brain for all these years.)  I work so much better under pressure!

STAY TUNED!!

INVADED BY BUGS…

The “Bug Sisters”  (AKA Katie-Bug and Haley-Bug) are spending the weekend with us at the farm.  We have been super-busy!  We have….

Been on a search…

 

for huckleberries.  We only found a few, but it will be enough to go in our pancakes tomorrow morning.

 

SOME of us sat…

And some of us picked!

We also searched for blackberries.  Most of them we found looked like these red ones… not ready yet!  Thankfully, “Grumps” picked a bunch, and so we had THIS for dessert tonight.

 

It was 97 degrees today… how shall we cool off?  What can we make from these things?

How about some SNOW ICE CREAM!!  We saved some of the snow from the February snowstorm and this was a great time to pull it out.  The girls loved the snow ice cream!  It was a little icy, but that is ok… we have snow so rarely here, we will eat it and enjoy it anyway.

 

What else have we done?  We cooked our Memorial Day feast today… we started about noon and finally finished cleaning the kitchen about 8pm…. WHEW!!  I have not cooked this much in the last month!

We had:  smoked brisket and pork ribs, smoked sausage, homemade BBQ sauce, deviled eggs, fresh squash, baked beans, rolls, cobbler, and snow ice cream.  We have enough left-overs to eat all next week… I can go back to my normal “cook as little as I can get by with”.   We are all stuffed… well, ONE of us eats, and 15 minutes later says, “Granny, I’m HUNGRY!”  Of course it is the tall skinny one that does this!  I don’t know where she puts it all!

I hope you all have a wonderful Memorial Day holiday.  Pause and remember the brave ones that have given their lives to protect the freedoms we all enjoy in our wonderful USA.

Be blessed!  Remember the give-away details will be coming sometime next week.  See you again soon, hopefully with some quilting/sewing posted.  I know you think I don’t ever get any of that done, but I really do… you’ll see!

YUM-YUM! & Blog Give-Away

This is what we ate yesterday.  It is truly the fruit of our DH’s labor!  Fried deer tenderloin, new potatoes in cream sauce (OK… it’s a little “clumpy” looking because these were left-overs, but it was still delish!), and our very first fresh squash of the season.  YUMMO!

 

More wonderful things will soon be added to our menu… 1 zucchini  should be ready today (which means we will soon have zucchini out our ears), 1 eggplant is ready to eat,

grape tomatoes will soon be turning,

peppers are growing,        

 

beans are beaning, corn is corning, cukes are cuking, peas are (Hmmm… not going there!) …

BUT the okra is not growing much.  DH must have planted about 75 okra plants.  That is what you see in the front rows of the picture below.  Needless to say, we will have lot to share if they get going.  Lots happening in the garden right now…

    

But mostly a lot of WATERING is happening.  We are in near-drought conditions here.  We have not had any decent amount of rainfall in several months and the gardens are suffering.  As a result just about every day DH waters one of the 3 garden spots we have.  Lord, PLEASE send RAIN… SOON! 

Taking a quick glance at the sitemeter box on my blog tells me I will soon be hitting my 10,000 visitor and this calls for another give-away.  I am in the process of gathering/making things for this.  Sometime next week I will post an entry page and the drawing will be held around mid-June.  More details later… don’t miss it!   Keep checking back!!

May you have a really blessed day, and I hope YOU are enjoying garden blessings, too (whether from your garden, a friend’s, or from the local store… it’s all good!).

South Louisiana, Before the Oil

I am very glad we got the opportunity to go to South Louisiana again before the oil arrived on the beaches.  We spent 2 nights at Grand Isle… beaches there are now closed due to oil.  Here are some of the things we did…

We spent lots of time doing this, and came back with a good collection of sea shells.

I took lots of bird pictures… they were everywhere!  I am so impressed with the sheer size of the LA brown pelicans, our state bird.

We went crabbing… we used a couple of crab nets and turkey necks tied to a string to catch crabs from the Elmer’s Island marsh..

We just parked on the side of the road and started catching!  We managed to find 15 nice crabs, and then attempted to boil then on a Coleman Stove on the picnic table… too much wind.  We ended up cooking potatoes and crabs in a huge pot on the small stove inside the camper… took FOREVER!  BOY!  Were they good!  This is the first time I was actually able to get into the crabs successfully.  Sorry there is no picture… poor blogger that I am… I FORGOT to take a picture of the crabs!  Talk about missing a blogging moment!

Shrimp boats were everywhere.

I LOVE the very creative names of some of the camps!

 

HMMM… Is there Spell-Check for sign painting??

We went to Avery Island… the Egret rookery is a very impressive sight!  There were about a thousand (I’m guessing here… it is HUGE and there were birds everywhere!) birds roosting there.

And we saw ‘gators!

We toured the Tabasco factory….

And we had a couple of occasions to eat some of these…

It is so sad to see the pictures of how the oil has ruined that area now… I am very thankful we had the opportunity to go when we did.  Those memories of the beautiful coast, abundant water fowl, and wonderful fisheries will have to last until the cleanup is complete, and the area recovers from this disaster.

So here is my trip report… I hope you enjoyed this photo tour!

KICKING MYSELF 5 TIMES!

I KNEW it was going to happen one day, and it did…  As a result I have had to “frog” a whole row of rather intricate quilting.  UGGGHHH!!

I often use leftover bobbins to stitch down the edges of the quilt.  I can’t stand to waste this thread, and it also help conserve the thread on the bobbins I have wound.  Sometimes I have gotten to the very end of the quilt only to discover that I am 10” short of what is needed, and have to wind a bobbin for that small amount of remaining quilting.

I used a “different” but very similar in color thread to stitch down the top edge and sides of a quilt.  The phone rang, I talked, I walked into my office and scheduled a quilt appointment, I returned to my quilt room, and quilted the end filler and first pass of the pantograph.  Hmmm… I better check and see how much thread is left on that bobbin.  HORRORS!!!  I forgot to change the bobbin to the taupe thread I was using on the top!  And this is a CUSTOMER quilt, not my own.  Have I said, “UGGGHHHHH!”?

I have spent just over 6 hours of “frogging” to fix this “little” oversight… bet I don’t make THAT mistake again (but I can come up with some other equally ridiculous mistake to take its place!)!!!!So I am now ready to re-do the quilting on that one row, sew on the binding, and it is good to go.

Kick, Kick, Kick, Kick, Kick!  I should have known better!

CHANGING SUBJECTS:     And I am sure you are asking, “Where are the pictures from your south Louisiana trip you promised LAST WEEK?”  Well you know me, they are still in the camera.  Business has picked up and I am running from one thing to another right now, but I will hopefully have time this weekend to upload those…

right after I (read that as DH with me slightly assisting because I know precious little about all this technology) install a new wireless router and wireless 4-in-one printer for my laptop.  (YAH! I’ll have flexibility and a fax machine!!)  The old printer finally semi-died after about 12 years.  I feel like we need to hold a memorial service for it because it has been in the family so long!

Have a blessed day, free from any “Oopses”.  (And spell-check does not like that word oopses, but YOU know what I am talking about, don’t you!!)  And for a smile, chuckle, and a “lift” today, check Judy Laquidara’s post, and especially the video at the bottom of the post… I promise you will smile at this little girl!

BACK HOME!

We’re home!  We had a wonderful 4-day trip to south Louisiana.  I will give a full report and some wonderful pictures in a day or 2, but probably NOT tomorrow since we will be celebrating Mother’s Day at my Mom’s house.

HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY to all of you that are moms, also!!  I hope you have a really blessed day tomorrow, filled with lots of love and laughter.

Fabric Scraps… What To Do With Them?

 

 

What is this?  It is about a gazillion strips of fabric, each about       1-2” x 7”.  Some were cut with the rotary cutter, some were torn, just any way to get strips.  They are tied around about 14 ft. of jute rope with a simple knot and then scootched closely together.  HMMM. my spell-check does not like the word “scootched”.  It’s probably NOT a real word, but you all KNOW what I am talking about, don’t you?

 

Very simple to do… it just SEEMS to take forever, especially when you need 2 of them.  Why? 

     

Check out the new window toppers for the 2 HUGE windows in my quilting room.  The picture really doesn’t do it justice… poor photo lighting.  The colors are really neat, and it makes me smile when I walk in there.  What a great way to use up those small strips in your scrap bag!  Of course you COULD make a string quilt, but I have made enough of those… and who wants to use 1” pieces for a string quilt?   It would take F-O-R-E-V-E-R!!

PARTING SHOT:

Confession:  I forgot to trim back my rose bushes in February.

Result:  They are already LOADED with beautiful blooms!   And they smell really yummy, too.

   

Have a wonderful week!  I will be out of pocket for a few days but I promise a full report when I return!