13 years to corrupt him!

Well it has finally happened my husband has brought home something from the neighbor's garbage! LOL..... I never thought I would see the day. I drive by on garbage day and my head spins to make sure there's nothing good out there, but Mark has always been against curb-sailing.

I remember back in 2000 we had just moved into the house and we drove down the street and a neighbor was discarding two lovely white wrought iron chairs for the yard. I oohed and awed and Mark refused to stop. We came back a couple of hours later and they had 'moved' to the side yard of another neighbor whose husband is an attorney and on the school board! To this day they are part of a nice little vignette in that yard - and they could have been mine!!!!

A few years later we were on our way somewhere one evening and I spied a vintage chrome/formica pedestal table at the curb. Lovely - oval, yellow top just like the ones I remember from my childhood. Mark was mortified when I whipped the van into a three point turn, jumped out, popped the back door and yelled at him to come help load it. It got moved to the garage and we never got a place to put it or use it so we ended up taking it to the street a couple of years later and turned around a few minutes later to see our neighbor snagging it for his farm down in Southern Illinois!

Maybe we should just have a neighborhood swap meet?

So this morning in lieu of a swim Mark got up early and decided to take Merlin for a walk and on the way back spotted two white adirondack chairs and a small side table at the curb around the corner. He stacked them up, carried them home and set them up in his 'cigar corner' of the yard. He seemed quite proud when he told me - so we'll see how this goes. The timing was right because we had been wanting to buy a couple of new ones for the back yard and looked at them this weekend but now that we don't have the van we can't make impulse or large sized buys like that anymore. We then talked about maybe getting an old truck for when we do need to haul large stuff - hmmmm if we get a truck will Mark go curb-crawling with me?

What do you think???

Only Tuesday??!

For some reason I keep thinking today is Wednesday, but it's only Tuesday!

Yesterday the dept at work was supposed to do an outing to the Summerfest in Milwaukee (think lots of music at lots of venues and lots of crowds!) but we had a number of people out ill and we all got too busy with work in the morning and so we ended upjust leaving work aboiut an hour early and going to a local restaurant with outisde seating and relaxing for a while before heading home.
I am thinking Mark and I might go up this weekend and overnight in Milwaukee to see some bands perform - tough choices - lots of good bands.

So Mark did not get up and swim today though it would not have disturbed me anyway as I had been up a few times with various interruptions - the dog barking at nothing, sinuses, headache... I finally ended up sleeping in 4 different spots over the course of the night before it was time to roll out and get ready for work!

It's a beautiful day outside and I'm am going to head out and catch the last few nice moments - more later - !!

This weekend...

Busy busy weekend - between naps!! Stephen was with us all weekend but spent a lot of time out with his friends. Friday night Stephen and I went shopping for the items needed for the NC VA hospital bbq then stopped for sushi at a place he knew. Good sushi - not too much!
Saturday I was up and out early to go get a pedicure then to Joanns for a quick buy and then to a local store that was hosting a book signing by 5 authors one of whom is my favorite Emilie Richards. Emilie is also a quilter so I took a strip of batik and had her sign that and she had me sign the bottom edge of one of the batiks I took her. (took her 1/2 yard each of two coordinating indonesian batiks - tied with a ribbon and a little chocolate.) So we will both have signatures in some future quilt. I am thinking of doing another 'favorite things' quilt and that's where Emilie's strip would go.
So that was a thrill - her next book Fortunate Harbor hits the stands on Tuesday so please look for it. After the book signing I headed home and read! and have no recall of anything else that night! LOL - I did throw together a stir fry and had dinner with Mark.
Sunday Mark and I headed out to get some fresh fruit, I wanted to make some strawberry jam - and I brought home 10 pounds of Strawberries, 3 quarts of blueberries and a blueberry bush so in another year or two I will get free blueberries!! I even have a spot to plant it in planned. Sunday afternoon and night I made all the strawberry jam in about 20 different sized jars - larger ones for the strawberry lovers and smaller ones for gifts baskets or whatever. I have not tried it yet - hoping Stephen will be my guinea pig! LOL.
Mark got the pool vaccuumed out and said it is perfect for swimming - in fact he wants to swim every morning. That 6:30 alarm this morning really was irritating - but maybe I will join him - gotta see how he swims in a circle! The two of us could create quite a current!
More later - Toby

I am a jam maker!

So... I got a canning set (HUGE!!) from my in-laws for my birthday (thanks Mike and Jean) and had to put it to immediate use. Whipped up a batch of blueberry jam late last night, allwent well just like the recipe said and at the end of the night I had the requisite mess in my kitchen and 4 sparkly little jars of jam! I actually cracked one of them open this morning and spread it on some 100% wheat toast and it was HEAVEN!! No really - there was something so special about taking a bit of something you have made yourself, from scratch - and you know all of the ingredients in that jar and exactly how it was made - it just makes it taste so much better!

Anyway I love my canning set - I realized I do need a special rack to hold my little jars in place but I am ready to become canning queen of Roselle! I may actually have to put a garden in next year and then it would really be from scratch!!

I highly recommend this to anyone who wants to eat better and you can actually save money. 4 jars of jelly would have cost about $20 at the grocery and they cost about $7 to make. I am also going to make spaghetti sauce and can it by the quart - that will save me at least $3 from every store bought bottle of sauce.

Every little bit helps when it comes to saving and it's fun !!

More of Julian

Okay - last one for today - this is julian actually sitting on his quilt. Wasn't it wonderful how mommy Holly dressed him to give some contract with the quilt? This thing is big - probably 50 plus inches by 60 inches - so he can move up to his toddler bed with it and if it lasts it could be a throw in his dorm room or first apartment! Really big - but filled with love and as he uses it and mommy throws it in the washer and dryer it will get that vintage wrinkly feel most quilters love. I know I do!

Julian baby pictures

Here's one of Julian with his crocheted baby blanket. Very oversized so it will last - made out of chenille boucle yarn, two strands held together and worked in double crochet at the same time. Light yet warm!

Julian's gifts

So I finally got a picture of the quilt for Julian before i mailed it and as usual I took it in my office with my phone and the colors are all wrong. But here it is. I showed the back because it is a beautiful lime green and blues and yellow and you can't see it at all in the picture. Oh Well. Going to post two more shots compliments of Julian's mommy who posted these on Facebook for me.

This is a snowball block with different contrasting colors in the corners of the blocks and when the snow balls came together it was fun to make sure no two corners of the same color were in contact with each other!! It was my first timemaking snow balls but will definitely not be my last. Fun and fast!!