Summertime, and the Livin' is Easy

Hello Friends!

It is a beautiful summertime day here in SE Michigan. I think everyone has recovered after our storms, although there are still some folks without power. My sampler, I'm happy to say, survived beautifully and there is no harm done. Unfortunately, I haven't stitched on it at all for a few days so there is no progress to show. In fact, I haven't stitched at all, on anything, in a few days - just too much going on. Thanks for each and every one of your comments regarding the storm and thanks for not calling me stupid (at least not in writing :-) for leaving the sampler outside!

We had baseball games today for Tyler's last day of little league (it was a double header; they won the first game, lost the 2nd). The league only goes up to 16 years old so this is Ty's last year. We have been going to baseball games since the boys were in T-ball and we are really going to miss it next year. Here's a pic of one of Tyler's last at bats in his Little League Career.



Tyler is a lot of fun to watch play - he's fast as lightening and it's really fun to watch him steal bases. I am really going to miss watching him play.

Now that we're all home, it's very quiet and relaxing around here. Both boys are plum tuckered out and so are the animals apparently..... This little guy was taking a nap on our garage peak earlier today.


ANDREA had a giveaway on her blog and she just announced the winner ~ lucky Tricia won. I am bummed, but not surprised. I never win anything. Nope, that's not true at all. I do win, come to think of it and I've won some pretty amazing things. Now that I have recovered from losing ANDREA'Sdrawing, I am thinking more clearly. For example, when I was maybe 12 years old, I went to BINGO with my mom. Hmmmmm... now I'm wondering how a minor was allowed to gamble but that's something I'll have to ponder another day. Anyway, we were living on a military base and we were playing BINGO. At the same exact moment that I, in all my 12 year old exhuberance could muster yelled "BINGO" another woman (she seemed grandmotherly at the time but was probably in her 30's!) yelled BINGO! too. Oh no! Now what to do? Well the BINGO caller said we could each pick a smaller prize or we could draw for the big prize (we didn't know what that was) and only one would win. I, being young and sweet and darling said I would be very happy with the less significant prize because that way, we'd both win. What could be better? Nope! Not the OLD, MEAN and UGLY, old woman. No - she wanted us to draw cards to see who would win. My mom, sweet as ever said "Don't worry honey, if you don't win, I'll get you a prize." As luck would have it, I won! OMG! The pure excitement, the exhilaration of it all. What did I win? From behind the curtain was wheeled out the most beautiful thing ever! Oh the joy!!! Just imagine the fun I am going to have with this beautiful, shiny, red, lawn mower! YEP! The first big prize I ever won in my life and it's a lawn mower. I have to tell you though that rather than being disappointed, I was so excited to take this home to my dad. He was going to be so surprised and I was so excited. He loved it. The really sad part of the story is for that woman. After they wheeled out the lawn mower she said in a very hateful voice, as I recall "What is SHE going to do with a lawn mower?" "Give it to my daddy!" I said. Funny thing ~ I've never been a gambler - doesn't interest me one bit. I wonder if the sore loser, BINGO lady has anything to do with that?

I'm also pretty lucky, I guess. This is a little something I found on my way out of the subdivision early one morning. The homeowners of a beautiful home had put it at the curb on trash day. I saw it and couldn't believe it so I pulled over. At the same time, another gal pulled over and beat me to it. She had a tiny car and I knew she couldn't get it in there so I waited and watched. She debated, paced around a bit and finally left. I swooped in and quickly put it in my van! I mean to tell you, I worked FAST. I didn't want anyone to see me garbage picking - what would they think? It was pretty comical because the piece is quite heavy. When I finally got it loaded in my car and made it to work I asked my dear friend Sheila to come look what I had picked up on the street. Yeah, she couldn't believe it either! It's a beautiful, little secretary and it now sits in my living room. It's a little too early American looking for me so I think I'm going to paint it. Why not..... Are some of you fainting in your chairs - what? Paint that pretty piece of furniture. Yeah! Why not? I think it''ll look great when I'm done. Don't hold your breath waiting though - who knows when I'll get to it.

This is with the desk closed:

And this is with it opened:

The little chair sitting next to it is a real treasure. My mom found the chair, refinished it and because the caneing was pretty non-existent she actually re-caned it for me. Thada definitely has skills! I love the chair and really cherish it.

And finally, summertime is easy living and we really enjoy eating outside when the weather is perfect. This evening was just such an evening. There were no bugs, it was comfortably cool on the patio and the food was yummy. Sorry for the upside down plates - I keep them that way until just ready to serve, just in case there are any bugs. I tried to get the boys to let me take another pic when I realized it but they were having none of that. They were ready to EAT!


I hope your weekend, no matter what the weather, brings you happy moments!

Peace,
Terri

Holy Tornado!

I got a call from Matt at work this afternoon asking if I was alright. What? "Mom, it's raining so hard here and the birch trees in front are almost bent over." He then asked me to listen as he held the phone in the air. The wind and rain were really loud so I told him to take the dogs and his brother (gee, I hope I said take your brother and the dogs but I can't be sure) to the basement. Anyway, he was concerned that I was driving in the mess. As it turned out I hadn't left work yet so it was fine. But, about 5 minutes later he called back and said the tornado sirens were going off but everyone was in the basement. When I finally left work, a 25 minute drive took me an hour and 45 minutes. None of the traffic lights were working so it was chaos on the main road I travel AND there was a ton of water in many places not to mention trees down, power outages and just plain rude drivers. We did have some damage and here are a few pics but for the most part, not too bad.

Here's a picture of our back lawn, a few branches down, nothing too serious


But these are our elm trees which are huge and the breaks in the branches are too high for us to get to tonight. More storms are supposed to come through and I hope these branches don't come down on our fence, the neighbors yard or our doggies while they're outside. We'll call someone tomorrow to take care of it.



Here are a few more pics from my subdivision (sorry for the blurry one, it was a drive by)




However, the biggest disaster in my yard is this.......




Yep, I took an outside pic last night, I must have gotten distracted, walked away and forgot about it and look what happened to my tornado stricken Friendship Sampler. I don't think the colors look like they've run so I think it'll be okay but can you BELIEVE it!!! I am a DoRk!!! It is soaking wet!!!



I may be a DORK but I am one savvy, shopping dork! Look what I found at the GW yesterday! I will repaint, stain and otherwise pretty this up but I love it. The best part, there was a sticker on it for $15 but when I got to the checkout the gal said "That's not our stitcker, that must have been someone's garage sale price. Here's our sticker" - can you see it? Yep! $4.95. Whoo Hoo! I love a bargain. Oh, believe me, I love spending money even when it's not a bargain and I have a few very pricey addictions that shall remain nameless but when you find something like this - it allows you to indulge every now and again on those not so bargainy items, right?





And Finally - this was supposed to be the headliner today but the tornado won out.....

LORRAINE and I have decided to do a SB SAL together on Sail Away. She and I have become blogging friends and are going to start this on August 5th which happens to be my, dare I say it, 50th birthday. Aaagh!!! Somehow, Sailing Away with 50 on the 5th just seemed appropriate. Lorraine and I will have to figure it out - neither one of us have ever done an SAL before but we're really looking forward to it. So, if you have this and haven't yet stitched it, I hope you'll join us, if you have it in progress, I hope you'll finish it with us and if you need to buy it to join us, by all means, get going. Let either Lorraine or me know if you'd like to join in - we'll work out the details and keep you all updated. It'll be fun, I promise!



That's it for today - I hope wherever you are that you are safe and protected from the weather. Thanks so much for all the wonderful comments you leave me! I appreciate it so very much and look forward to seeing a new ones and finding new blogs and new blog friends!

Peace!
Terri

I finally got something back from the framer. I have been such a slow stitcher of late that I've been having "pick up from the framer" withdrawls. For a while it seemed, I was finishing and framing constantly but not lately. Fortunately, I didn't have to take any drugs to get over the withdrawals because Sue came through - I finally got back BBD's Petites Lettres Rouges which I stitched in honor of my maternal grandmother. I love the way it turned out and it is now hanging happily in my home with some other small samplers. You know this, I'm sure, but if you want to really examine my stitching you can click on the picture to get a larger than life version. On second thought - don't do that - nothing ever looks as pretty up close as it does from a bit of a distance!




I am also happy to report that I have been stitching - albeit not very quickly. I started the Birds of a Feather Friendship Sampler on Monday night and boy, are the colors fun to work with. Here's my progress so far - I don't know where I'll put this because the colors do not really reflect those in my home but who cares??? It's gorgeous!



The other WIP I have going is the other BBD freebie, Souvenir de Paris. I got stalled on this one because I ran out of floss. I remedied that with my trip to the NSLLNS last week but haven't picked it back up yet. No, I've never been to Paris except in my dreams which had something to do with a very sexy frenchman under the Eifell Tower but that' s best kept to myself! I have some pretty pink velvet ric-rac that I'll put to good use on this when I finally finish it.


Not much else going on, my friends! I hope you all are well and livin' the good life! We have graduation parties to attend this weekend so not sure how much stitching will get done but I will be putting at least a little time in on something. Have a great weekend - do something FUN!

Peace,
Terri

A Quickie Little Post!

The Kindred Spirits Sampler Guild meeting was today. Deb, Julie (not a blogger yet) and I are all members and we always have a good time when we go. Of course, one of the best things about any meeting is the food. This time, it was our turn to bring the goodies and we had quite a good time setting it all up. We wanted it to be pretty so everyone would want to gather round. Julie was the color/design mastermind behind the whole thing - but we all contributed. Truth be told, the pretty foods, Julie and Debbie made. I am not a baker - not my strong suite at all but - I LOVE to eat though and I certainly appreciate their talents! Anyway, I thought you might like to see our tablescape.






Debbie made those pretty, little cheesecakes with the fresh flowers - they were as tasty as they were pretty! Julie made the pretty pink cupcakes and the punch with the flower ice ring. Debbie made sugar cookies and chocolate chip cookies and brought a meat and cheese tray. Julie also brought the fruit bowl, most of the decorations and the poppy seed muffins. I, being the weakest of the links - brought a taco dip, praline brownies and the veggie tray and the little mouse sitting on the cheese. I also contributed my antique (part of it anyway) cake plate collection. We also had some fun, summery candles on the table. Luckily for us, none of the baskets caught fire - we were a little concerned about that. We meet in a church and I don't think they'd be too eager to let us come back if we had set a fire.

The Guild has a great group of women and they are all so talented. I love when we have show and share but tonight was not so much that as a lecture. We had a gal visit from the state capitol that gave a terrific talk on Michigan civil war flags, their styles, their embroidery and their preservation. It was a great lecture.

I had a couple of folks (that I think may read this blog) ask for my praline brownie recipe so here it is:

One package of Brownie mix (per directions)

In small sauce pan, melt 3 TBS butter
stir in 3/4 Cup of Light Brown Sugar
add 3/4 Cup of chopped pecans and mix well

After pouring the brownie mix into the baking dish, sprinkle a 1/2 cup or so of Heath Toffee Bits onto the top (this is not a recipe for the calorie conscious). Then drop/spread the butter and brown sugar mix on top of that. Bake per directions. Let cool well before cutting or they WILL fall apart. Another helpful hint Julie told me is to cut your brownies with a plastic fork. The brownies don't stick to the fork and they cut easily. These are also quite tasty heated slightly with vanilla ice cream on top and chocolate sauce on top of that. MMMMMMM.......

One last thing - Deb brought her City Stitcher Adam and Eve with her. It is so gorgeous - stitched on 40 count linen and just perfect. Her pictures don't even do this justice - if you're sitting on the fence about stitching this beauty, get off - you won't regret it. Julie and I were both drooling all over it ~ sorry, Deb, hope we didn't mess it up too much!

Peace!
Terri

Threads, Beautiful Threads

First - this is BIG! You may recall a couple of months ago (more or less) I posted kind of a bitchy post about LHN and they way they (and other designers, too) package some of their charts (Bent Creek comes to mind, too). They create a design and then release it one bit at a time costing you a small fortune. Anyway, after that little rant, my friend Sabine sent me all her charts AND her left over threads. Can you believe it??? As soon as I am done with these, she and I are going to have a giveaway for the entire chart package. Not sure how many threads will be left by that time but if there are any, the winner will get them. You will have to be a follower on both of our blogs and will have to post on both to win but NOT YET. Keep watching and she and I will let you know when this is going to happen. You all know I'm a slow stitcher these days so don't go holding your breath or anything! Anyway, here's a picture of my soon to be started project with all of Bine's threads so neatly labeled. Thank you Bine!


I worked some yesterday on the ABC Hornbook by The Primitive Needle which I think is looking great and now that I have all the floss I need (I didn't have about 6 colors I needed) and had kind of stalled. But as you will see in a moment, my LNS had a sale and I got all I need and now I can really move out on this design (I hope).


As I said, our NSLLNS (not so local, local needlework store) was having a sale and so Julie and I trotted over there at lunch yesterday. In addition to the remaining threads for the ABC Hornbook I got:

I've wanted to do this chart since it first came out and at 20% off, it was time to buy. I think it's sentimental and reminds me of Matt moving on in his life's journey so I want to stitch it as a reminder of this wonderful time in our lives.

And again, because this is the greatest group of women, I was able to get the chart I had coveted for a long time, the BOAF Friendship sampler from a stitching friend. So, I bought all the fibers for that yesterday as well. I had some fabric on hand which I think is a 35 count or so and think the colors look pretty on it. This is my next start - then I'll be doing the LHN FSTSS (From Sea to Shining Sea) at lunch at work.
I can not wait to get started on this one - the bright, fun colors are some I haven't worked with in a while and I'm really looking forward to it.
This final pic is of all the fibers I bought yesterday for all my pieces plus a few extra thrown in just because they were pretty.



I should have a fun post tomorrow.... stay tuned!

Finally, thank you so much for all the comments on Matt's Graduation and making Eagle Scout. I know myself how easy it is to read a blog and then keep moving - never letting the reader know that you were even there or that you found their work, commentary or whatever interesting. But, for those that stop by and take that extra minute or two to comment, I sincerely thank you. And, if you stop by but don't ever have a minute to comment, that's okay too - thanks for stopping by anyway!

Peace!
Terri

It's a beautiful thing......

I am telling you - there is so much good about this week, this day, this season that I could nearly burst. First, my oldest son Matt graduated from High School on Sunday. It seems amazing to me that enough time has passed in our lives that he could be graduating. Wasn't it just a short time ago that I was taking him to first grade? What they say is true - time does pass quickly and the older you get, the faster it seems to go. This is a picture of Matt with Rob and me shortly before we left for the ceremony.

495 kids processed across the stage and it was wonderful! The event was outdoors at a music theatre and while we were in a covered pavilion, the air was crisp, the sky was blue the birds were flying about and singing - all was right with the world, for that moment. As the beautiful valedictorian was giving her speech - a well thought out and practiced speech, while I was just about to get teary - I looked up at the rafters and spotted a little bird flying around. For an instant I thought, that bird is going to poop on somebody. Yet I never imagined it would be......... no, not me, thank God but it was Rob. Right on his hand (better than in his hair or on his shirt but still funny!)! I almost burst out laughing - I quickly contained my amusement but for a moment those around me thought - what the heck is the matter with that woman? I was laughing so hard I almost cried but not before I remembered to snap a picture. Have you ever seen the movie with Diane Lane called Under the Tuscan Sun? There's a scene in the movie where she's buying an old villa and a bird poops on her. Yep, it's a sign - a good sign! I'd like to believe it's a good sign for Matt as well - even though the bird pooped on Rob - it was Matt's event so I'm giving the good luck to him.


Tonight was Matt's Eagle Scout Board of Review. This is the official Eagle Scout date - although he's still considered an Eagle candidate until the paperwork comes back from National headquarters. However, today's date will be his official Eagle Scout date and there is nothing left for him to do! Yeah!!!! FINALLY!!!! This was a long time coming and there are a lot of happy memories associated with this journey. His court of honor will be sometime in August and I can't wait for that celebration.

This is a picture of Matt with the folks that conducted his BOR. Thank you so much to each and every one of you! Every one of these people have been important to Matt throughout his scouting career.

This season brings such beauty into our lives. Our Spring has been very cool and all the flowers are loving the sunny, warm but not hot, temps. Here are a few pictures from around my yard.




And finally - stitching. I have not been as productive this spring as I have in past years ~ just too much going on, I guess. But I did finish the June block on the PS SAL and I've made miniscule progress on my ABC Sampler by Primitive Needle. Hopefully now that school is out, activities will slow and I can get more done. Working really does minimize the time I get to stitch and I am happy to have my job but sometimes I do wish I didn't have to work so I could stitch! Yet, in this time of hardship, especially in Michigan (we have the highest unemployment rate in the U.S), I am blessed and thrilled to have such a great job and one that I actually enjoy! That is a blessing!!!




Peace!
Terri