Productiveness

Hello! I've been wanting to post for a while now but just haven't made time, frankly. I'm home today doing some much needed house cleaning and waiting for the HVAC repair guy to return. Yep - it's hot out and the A/C has broken, but that's another story.

I have been visiting some of my favorite blogs late at night while trying to unwind before going to bed. My work days at Gail's lovely shop are long and I don't get home till at least 7:30. By the time I take care of all the animals and fix something to eat, it's pretty late. It's always so inspiring (and a little depressing) to see all the accomplishments you achieve. Sometimes I feel a little bad not having lovely pictures of things to post about. It isn't that I'm not productive, because I am. I just try to do too many things and don't get as many projects completed as I'd like to. And it's tough when you live by yourself to get everything done that needs to, let alone things you WANT to do.

The last time I was unemployed I set several goals, both major and minor, and actually completed all of them. This time is very different and I'm not nearly as focused but have decided to work on completing several of my projects before starting another new one. Now I know I'm not alone when I tell you how much fun it is to start something new. I love the excitement of getting all my stuff together and working on it only to put it down when it is so close to being finished.

While I was off work Tuesday I decided to complete my arbor and paint it. I was going to wait till fall but the Jasmine I planted is already growing up the sides so I couldn't wait. It's been really hot this week but I worked outside till 9 p.m. The arbor is now complete and I can scratch that one off my to-do list :) It isn't perfect, but I'm pleased enough with it.


Last fall I started a new flower bed across the driveway (in deer territory). I decided to make it a "hot" bed using orange, red and yellow plants - colors I don't usually use. After I finished painting my arbor, I started hauling a load of mulch that my neighbor got for me a while back (free from the town). Of course, my wheelbarrow has a flat tire so I had to shovel the mulch into a garden wagon and pull it several yards before applying it to the new bed. With several recent showers, the crabgrass had taken over the bed so I had to do a lot of weeding before I could spread the mulch. It still needs work, and one of my favorite plants died over the winter, but it will shape up by this fall. See the big field I get to mow every couple of weeks - what a job!

I haven't touched my wall hanging that is so close to being finished. I will get some work done on it this evening - I've promised myself that!

While cleaning it occured to me that I've never posted about some art quilts I have. This is the one and only I purchased a few years ago and I just love it. I've used it as inspiration and made two dragonfly art quilts as gifts. This one is about five feet long and made by a very talented artist in Durham.

This is a small wall hanging I made using the reverse applique method. I saw one in a shop for $75 and went home and made one for myself out of scraps. It was easy and fun to do and looks almost identical to the one in the shop.

This is a mini art quilt I made using some delicious fabrics I bought several years ago. There's no rhyme or reason to it - I just loved the colors.

And last but not least, this is another reverse applique mini I made a few years back - still unframed. I love trees, especially birch trees.

The inspiration for the birch tree piece is this lithograph I bought in Maryland years ago.


I sure hope those A/C guys make it back here today; it's really warming up inside now :( While waiting, I'm doing more house cleaning. I always feel better when things appear to be in order around me. Of course, that means I need to keep the door closed to this room - it's a mess from keeping the baby quail inside. Oh, I got them moved outside Tuesday as well - another chore to scratch off my list. :)

TTFN!
Phyllis

Hello, It's Been A While!

Hey Everybody!

I hope you are all well and know everybody is busy with chores and life in general - I know I have been!!!

I've been working hard for Gail and trying to keep my house and yard in order as well. I'm sure meeting a lot of nice people and enjoying some very interesting conversations with some of them. Some are a little hard to get away from - ha-ha!!!

I'm home today (yippeee!!!!) and wanted to share some pictures with you of my yard and the monster cat scratch post I made.

I have two wing chairs, which are very good even though the fabric on them is outdated. I've tried everything but my cats have absolutely ruined them. I've used the training sprays, sticky paper, tin foil, provided scratching posts - you name it - to no avail.

Diane Knott gave me the idea of bringing in a log or branch for them to scratch on and this is what I made. They love playing with the dangling ball but so far, they aren't actually using the limb to scratch. Gee, if I was a cat, I'd sure like this :) I cut a branch from one of my Mimosa trees and bolted it to a nice piece of discarded counter top from Gail's shop.


Last weekend Alissa and I worked in the back yard and I gave her the job of painting an old wooden ladder I got at the Habitat store.
Here are a couple of my monster hosta I transplanted from my front yard a few weeks ago:
This is the view from my front porch. This was an open field when I moved here almost nine years ago - not even a sapling. The trees in the background (darker ones) are woods around the edge of what used to be a field. Most other trees were planted by little old me.



The weather is gorgeous here today but I am determined to stay inside and finish my wall hanging from Diane's book. I'm about half finished and want to make them all so need to get busy. I hope you all have a nice day/week!

ttfn....

The Garden Market - After Photos

Here are some after photos of The Garden Market. I tried to post them yesterday but Blogger wouldn't save them.




These pillars are very large and weigh about 500 lbs each. Gail's husband had to pour a concrete base for each of them after installing the 8 foot fence.


Gail will be adding more merchandise but it's looking great at this point!


The cafe area...

Do you see this beautiful French table? You should have seen it before I painted it - it was in rough shape. I can only imagine the fancy dinners it must have been used at as a buffet table.


Some of the plants for sale...

Gail's place is so full of charm and we've had nothing but positive feedback. Her grand opening is this weekend. Today is the first day I haven't worked in over a week and have enjoyed staying home!

The Garden Market is OPEN!

Finally, after so much hard work by a lot of folks, The Garden Market is officially open!! We had our first day of sales Friday and received nothing but positive comments about how nice the shop is. Please enjoy the pictures to see the transformation :) I apologize for the poor quality of some of them....I mistakenly changed the setting on my camera.

This building had been a bank and an Alltel store. The walls were orange and the celing was black. Everything had to be cleaned and painted before work could even begin.

Gail's antique garden cart. Gail asked Anthony to make this window in the wall, which repeats the arched windows in the main part of the cafe:


Gail's brother, Anthony, installing the freezer. Jo, Gail's mom, is supervising to make sure it gets done right! :)

Jo cleaning the dirty windows:

The kitchenette:

This is the area where customers can get their fountain drinks, coffee and tea. Do you see those long, glass doors up on the wall? I think they're 10 feet long each. Gail's husband made the iron scrolls. I painted all of the doors with two coats of paint and then scraped them. They were in really rough shape when Gail acquired them.




This is part of the main gift area:
Outside before....




The guys trying to assemble the plant display:


Gail helping the guys try to figure out how to put this monster together. The company failed to send instructions :) It was so hot that day!

The other side of the building:

At one time, this building was a bank. To make use of valuable space, the old drive through teller machine had to be removed.


I'll post the after photos by tomorrow. I've got to get ready for work now. Have a great day everybody!

Some Special Art Works

This is a quick post to share pictures of two special pieces of art work with you.

The first one is a true crazy quilt hand made by my paternal grandmother for my sister, Susan. Nanny did gorgeous needlework and always had a project going of some sort. I was trying to study this piece to understand how she put it together. All I can tell you is that she didn't use any of the methods a lot of folks use now! Note under the date of the picture of Susan's name hand embroidered.

This is a beautiful wall hanging my sister made for mom of a trillium - mom's favorite flower.

And I took pictures of a very, very special piece of art that Nanny also made but can't locate it. I'll have to ask Susan to send me another picture and will share
that one with you later.

On another note - no signs of the escaped baby dove. I'm sure she's been made a meal of by something. I'll post a picture of the remaining "baby" soon. Sarah and Alex want him/her out of their home so I'll be making that aviary very soon now!

Have a good day - I hope to get caught up on my visits by the weekend!!

Like A Bad Penny...

I keep coming back :)

What a great visit I had with my mom and sister! I was gone for a week, something I rarely do, but it was such a good visit. I had some goals and met them all. My sister took me to two really nice quilt shops in Maryland on my last day and I bought some gorgeous fabrics. Now for the breakdown of the trip...

Saturday morning my daughter, son-in-law and baby Ginny (now nicknamed by me as Doodlebug) picked my mom and me up and we drove to my sister's new home in New Market, MD. It's in the western part of the state only 35 minutes from Harper's Ferry, WVA. We got a tour of my sister's house and it is gorgeous....and enormous! All those stairs about killed me - ha ha! Then we strolled the streets and went into some shops to have a look around and had lunch together. What a quaint little town set in the gorgeous foothills of the Applachian Mountains! Afterwards my sister and I took mom to Lowes and Home Depot to get some things we would need to re-do her kitchen and front yard - the two big goals we wanted to accomplish while I was up there. Then we had dinner together, took mom home and drove back to my sisters - about an hour away.

Sunday morning we headed back to mom's to get busy on her kitchen makeover. Her kitchen is small but it took us two full days to paint it and get some reorganization done for her. Of course, the best laid plans always have a glitch and we made several trips to the home stores and Ikea to get more things we needed. Susan bought her new window treatments - a nice roman shade - and I replaced her old, large microwave with a small one to save some precious counter space. We installed a nice shelf above her stove and my sister installed some small lights on the under side of the shelf for some much needed lighting over the stove. There was a lot more we did but you get the idea. Here is the new window treatment with some small medallions on the window corners to cover holes from all the old hardware.
While my sister continued to work inside, I was determined to get mom's small front garden weeded and ready for her to plant some pretty annuals. I was able to get most of the work done before it started pouring rain but still got soaked. It rained most every day but it only made the soil softer to dig. It was dark by the time I got to take a few pictures, but the work paid off and her little front garden was on its way to looking more like what she wanted.
We made mom happy visiting her and giving her a "new" kitchen and front yard. It made us happy too!

I've got lots to do here today and I'll tell you all about the rest of the trip in another post. It's raining today and I won't be helping Gail till tomorrow so will get to sew and relax a little and enjoy being home.

I hope you all had a very nice Mother's Day yesterday...I sure did!

It's good to be home.

Travelling

hey everybody,

I'm in MD visiting with my mom and sister and will have lots of stuff to post about when I get home Thursday evening. Still no sign of my baby dove according to my daughter :(

My sister and I are going to Ginney (?) Byer's quilt and garden shop Wednesday - I cannot WAIT!!

ttfn

I Saw Her!

My baby dove is still alive and she flew right over my head this morning about 8:30! I was so surprised and happy to see that she's still around. I ran inside and put the dove family in a small cage and placed the big one back where it was when I let her fly out. She hung around the yard for an hour or so and even landed on top of the cage but then disappeared again. I put the smaller cage with all the doves inside the larger cage and left the door open. Alex coo's alot and I thought that would draw the baby into the cage. I haven't seen her again and hope she comes back tomorrow. I had given up on her and now I'm worried about her all over again.

Keep your fingers crossed that she comes back and into the cage tomorrow!!!

I Screwed Up

One of the baby doves flew out of the cage this morning while I was feeding them. I was stupid and tried to catch her and she just flew further and further away. She won't survive tomorrow, I'm sure. Although they eat on their own, the parents are still feeding them some. And being white makes her the easiest of targets as prey. I hoped that she'd be sitting on top of the cage when I got home from Gail's, but no. I feel horrible and have moved the others back inside till I can make their aviary.

A Restful Day

After working hard all week at Gail's, I was out of energy. I did some mowing and planting yesterday morning before it got hot. The rest of the day I was content to sit and watch Alissa play on the patio with her sprinkler. I usually don't have the patience to sit around and be her audience, but she was quite happy entertaining me all day.




She got the idea to put the glasses on Zoe's little butt - she doesn't have a tail.

And my Princess....she's so gray now

Alissa and I moved the doves outside and she made the cutest chalk drawing of Alex and Sarah on the patio...I just love it :)

I Actually Got To Sew Today!

After spending three hours painting a huge piece of furniture in Gail's new shop, Alissa and I came home. Alissa worked too, pricing new merchadise with the pricing gun. She wanted to watch "Bolt" (an adorable movie) and I got to sew! I was sooooo happy. First I made Alissa a cute little dress out of some shirred fabric I got from JoAnns a couple of weeks ago. She wanted a dress that "went to the ground" with no sleeves. Well, this little dress wasn't long enough so I added several inches of bleached muslin and sewed cute coordinating ribbon I already had over the seam. I attached ribbon so that it could be tied over each shoulder or behind her neck - either way. She hasn't taken it off since I tried it on her this afternoon. (Note dingbat Zoe "dancing" just as I snapped the picture).
Then I was determined to work on my living room valance and got that put together. Yes, there are tools in the window sill; I was very anxious to get a picture to post. I haven't made anything in weeks!


I still have a small table sitting in the middle of my kitchen floor ready to be antiqued and it will be finished. And I have to make my new plate rail, paint the coffee table and the antique milking stool. Then I just have to rearrange the nick nacks and I'll be finished. Of course, it might be Halloween by then....

Weather Forecast

See what happens here in central NC - we go from spring to summer overnight. I love spring but suffer terribly in the summer. I haven't even gotten my annuals purchased and planted yet!!!