Long, Picture Heavy (hopefully not too boring) Post!

Dear friends,

~ Edited to say what's going on with my paragraph and sentence placement?

I'm here! I'm alive! I've just been BUSY! Thanks so much for all the emails
asking about me. Life has been crazy busy with lots of stuff going on.
But, the garden is blooming, the tomatoes are coming in (and tasting
fabulous), the graduations, weddings and birthday celebrations are in
full swing, estate sales, garage sales, dinners on the patio and the
summertime livin', while not necessarily easy, has been BUSY! I'm going to
bore you with a few shots of my garden interspersed throughout this LONG post.

Remember, all pics are clickable to see in their full glory (especially the doll
house with all it's great furniture)!



I have absolutely zero stitching to show you - so, if that's what you're
here for, I'm sorry to disappoint. I, like a lot of stitchers out
there, am just too busy to find time to stitch right now. Truth be
told, when I do have a few minutes to sit down and could be stitching or
blogging, I prefer to sit on the patio, admiring or working in the
garden (really it's a yard with a few plants but I like to call it a
garden) and watching the birds flit in and out of the birdhouses and
back and forth between feeders. Add to that a glass of iced tea or a
glass of wine and stitching and/or blogging quickly become a distant
memory.

I do have some cool estate sale finds to show you.



An estate sale is really a glorified garage sale but it just sounds a
little more upscale, doesn't it?

Do you think Martha (do I really have to spell out her last name?) goes
to garage sales? I've heard her talk about "tag" sales, AKA estate
sales but can't recall hearing her talk about garage sales per se'. I
doubt they do that in the Hamptons and I doubt I could afford anything
in a Hamptons garage or estate sale anyway. Wouldn't you just keel over
if she got out of her car (would she drive a Bentley, a Jag, a Mercedes, or
would she have a driver?) and walked up your driveway and said, "OMG,
I've just got to have that bowl. Would you take a quarter for it?"
You know, rich people are rich because they like a bargain even more than us regular folks do!



I would probably say, "I' don't know, Martha. Fifty cents seems fair to me."
Do you think she'd buy it? I'd love to meet her some day. Do you think she reads blogs?
Good golly, I barely have time to read them, I'm sure she doesn't. She probably
has someone read them for her and report in.

Okay, sorry, I digress.... back to garage, I mean estate sale finds.

Do you like doll houses? How about doll rooms? I found this at an
estate sale recently and it was marked $100 to include all the
furniture. No way I would spend $100 for it but as it happens, Rob and
I were there the last day, near the end of the day, and they announced
that everything was 75% off so for $25 I took it.


I thought I could stitch a sampler, punch-needle a rug and just have fun with it.
I brought it home and it didn't really work for me but Sheila has a
doll house she's been trying to furnish so I let her have it. Well, not
really have it, I sold it to her for what I paid for it but I kept the
spinning wheel for my craft room as my finder's fee. All the furniture
was wood and was in perfect condition. The big organ is a music box and
all the doors open on all the furniture pieces and the insides of the game table
are lined with felt. Very pretty!!

They also had this cool door that had once belonged to a built in cabinet in the house.
It was marked $40 so I got it for $10 and just love it. I've just set it in my foyer
window for now but Rob will hang it for me sometime so it will hang in the middle of that
window. The light thru the yellow glass looks really pretty.


At the same estate sale they had a deal where you could stuff a plastic
bag with anything marked $20 or less and pay a whopping $5 for all that
fit in the bag. There wasn't a lot of small stuff left but I did pick
up these little dolls and a few other small things. I got the Scarlet
O'Hara doll because Rob is always quoting a line from that movie to me.
When I don't like the way something is going, or something he's
suggested he'll say "Don't turn your nose up at me Katie Scarlett." The
boy doll, while not Rhett, was cute, don't you think? The other doll was just too
cute not to stuff in the bag.



I did hit a garage sale a week or so ago and while there was not a thing
there I wanted, the lady that lived there was charming and I sat and
talked with her a while. She asked what I was looking for and I told
her that basically I look for vintage linens, glassware etc. She asked
me to wait and came out with this beautiful tablecloth and these
wonderful hankies.


Isn't the edge of the tablecloth pretty:

The pretty hankies:


The table cloth was one her family had used every year for Christmas but
she no longer hosted the Christmas dinner so she'd love for me to have
it (for a price, of course!). The hankies, her great aunt had tatted
years ago. I snatched those up, too. There's something so much more
elegant about a hankie than a tissue. Don't you think? Well, as long as it's
not full of... you know....
Anyway, I went to a funeral a few years ago and an older, very elegant woman
had a gorgeous hanky she was using to blot her tears (not blow her nose - yuck!).
I knew at that moment that I wanted to do that as well and I've collected them
ever since, but these are my favorites. I ended up carrying one
of these to the wedding I went to last weekend and it came in quite handy.
Not for any tears I shed but for the heat induced glistening showing up on
my face!

I also picked up a TON of Tupperware at an estate sale in my subdivision. All this on the
table was less than $10. After I got home, washed it well and was putting it away,
I was kind of sorry I didn't buy the cake cover thingy they had for 50 cents.
I don't bake much but when I do need one, I'd have it. So, I ran back to the sale
and they had put out even more Tupperware. I ended up with a great amount for
well under $20. I gathered up all my junky stuff and sent it to Goodwill. Yeah!



Here's another tablecloth I picked up recently. Sorry for the wrinkled picture,
but isn't it pretty!? I think this was all of $3. I just love it for a summertime
table setting.







Here is my little family all dressed and ready to go to the wedding I mentioned
above. Matt has been cut out. The heat was sweltering and standing outside in
the heat to take "dumb pictures" was not making him happy and his face showed it!


The bigger event for ME over the past few weeks was planning and throwing
a surprise birthday party for Julie at my house. Julie's DH, John
wanted to give her a surprise party so I volunteered my services and
house. I am nothing if not a deal maker so I told him, if he foot the
bill, I'd host the party. He graciously accepted and off we went.
Trust me, it's really fun to host a party when you don't have to foot
the bill for the food and booze!

I love throwing parties; big or small doesn't matter. This was a moderate
sized party, I guess; about 50+ guests. Julie's parents
came in from Wisconsin, her sister came in from Minnesota, another
sister and her family live in the area and her sister's MIL and DH came,
a brother and his wife came from Pennsylvania, my parents came from
Virginia and Julie's closest college friends and her closest high school
friends made it in for the party, too. The party was a big success, Julie was
surprised and it was a lot of fun. I didn't get a lot of pictures as I was too busy
but here's a shot of folks sweltering in the heat:

This is Julie's son Josh (center) and her nephews Benjamin and Matthew sitting down to eat.




I went to my friend Sheila's son's graduation party on Sunday in Grosse
Pointe. If you've seen the movie Grosse Pointe Blank, you may recall
the gorgeous homes in this area. Very wealthy, old money. After the
party, Julie and I decided to take a little tour of the area. Guess
what? Sunday night must have been trash night and look what the rich
folks threw out and I picked up!

Free. Off the street. Gotta love it!

I am hosting another party this Saturday for my friends Sally and Julie who
are both turning 50. We have a group of 8 gals that get together as
often as we can for a girls night and we celebrate each other's life
events as well. I told them all this was going to be a pink party so
everyone has to wear some combination of primarily pink and white. I'm
hoping for a lovely picture of all of us together. I'll post more on
that next week.



I hope you're all having a great summer - ours has been busy with not
much stitching for me - but it has been good. I have started something new
but not much progress yet. Pictures and details to follow.

Last but not least - I took a walk the other day through a cemetery near our
house. This little angel was just beautiful and sweet and sad, too.



So - in a big nutshell, that's what I've been up to.

Thanks for stopping by, thank you for becoming a follower (if I haven't
visited your site, I will soon, I promise) and thank you for your sweet
comments.

Peace,
Terri