Wearing o' the White for St. Patrick's Day?

***

Isn't Mother Nature feeling her oats lately?  Hubby and I enjoyed glorious weather in nearby Ireland, WV over the weekend when we visited their Irish Spring Festival AND THEN, we got roughly a foot of snow overnight..  Incredible!  I'm just so glad that it held off until after the festival.  What great fun it was to join the fine people of Ireland to help celebrate the coming of Spring.  There was jig dancing, horseshoe pitching, road bowling, harp concerts, kite flying and an EPIC parade with leprechauns, pigmy goats, lots of candy, step dancers and plenty of red hair to go around.

I truly haven't seen so many people having such a great time since that time I was on cold medicine during the St. Paddy's day parade in Baltimore in 1994, but that's a story for another day...

So, with a foot of snow on the ground, I'll be hanging out at the ranch today... deciding whether or not to hire an air traffic controller for the back deck:

The feeder has been busier than a cut-rate cathouse (if you'll kindly pardon the expression).

So, until next time friends, stay warm, keep stitching and beware of the ides of March!

March Beautiful March

 

 

I do not think it is possible for me to love the month of March more than I already do.  It is a clear and convincing sign that WINTER IS OVER, and we have survived yet another dark, cold season o'misery.
Sure, it may snow or sleet or hail or whatever else in the month of March, but that's okay because the days are getting longer, the afternoons are getting warmer, the birds are back and the flowers are starting to pop up everywhere.  Just like a hot cuppa tea on a cold winter's night, the Month of March warms me from the inside and fills my heart with hope and joy.

Of course, having a wee bit of Irish blood in my veins makes March even more enjoyable.  I confess, I am in heaven the entire blessed month listening to traditional Appalachian/Celtic music (the fiddles and whistles, the reels and jigs...), switching from Earl Gray to Irish Breakfast tea, baking multiple loaves of soda bread, and sipping on an occasional Nutty Irishman as I curl up under a warm blanket with a little book of Irish poetry in the evenings.  Heaven on Earth! 

If you find that your music collection is lacking a Celtic album (yes, I said album) jump on over to Amazon or iTunes and give the search button a workout.  You'll find the uber popular Irish Tenors, Celtic Woman and so many more.  And, before I move on, no library could be called complete without a book of Irish poetry.  I just picked up a small but elegant copy at E. Shaver in Savannah that I'm falling in love with:  Irish Poems.

And so, with that, I'm off to find a delightfully springy, leprechauny, or simply green something to stitch this evening, break out the Irish cream, and hum along to some great Celtic ditties. 

Good-bye February!   Hello March!!!

Here's wishing you a happy weekend, wherever you are!

4th of July 'round the house

***

Happy Birthday, USA!

A few things I'm thankful for:

• I am so thankful today for all the past, present and future uniformed service men and women who work, fight and die to protect my freedom. 
• I am thankful for the founding fathers and their infinite wisdom. 
• I am thankful for every teacher who leads her classroom in the Pledge of Allegiance. 
• I am thankful for our government leaders and their quest to do what is best for my country.  
• I am thankful for my pocket sized Constitution of the United States of America.  If it's been awhile since you looked over the Constitution, click HERE.   In the current political atmosphere, the word "unconstitutional" seems to come up frequently.  It helps to understand what IS constitutional in order to better understand what is NOT constitutional (aka "unconstitutional"). 
• I am thankful too for my freedom of speech.  I can not imagine living in a world without it.



I am also thankful to have marked many pesky little jobs off my "To Do" list lately.

Like finding napkins, tablecloth and silverware to match new dishes...

(better match in real life)

Making time to get a flower arrangement made for a special vase...

Having a lightening bolt of a great idea for organizing my espresso cups in the kitchen...

Finding appropriate frames for about 20 little pictures...

Hanging the pillow shams (I shared here several months ago) in my stitching room...

Finding an affordable, comfortable, attractive desk chair for my office nook...

!!!!!!!!!!!YAY!!!!!!!!!!

Nothing is quite as good for my mental health as wiping out an extra long To Do list. 

Hope you are enjoying friends, family and a fine cook-out wherever you are.

Guess Who...

You know it's been awhile since you updated your blog when you log in and Blogger says, "Who?  I'm sorry.  No one by that name lives here."

My deepest apologies for dropping off the face of the planet, but two years worth of "I'll get to that later" caught up with me about a month ago.  It all started with "Honey, have you seen the lid to this bowl?".  Which precipitated the emptying out and re-organizing of the pantry.  I threw away tea I bought when I was in college... 20 years ago...

You've seen this movie, right?  The "Git 'r Done" high you get from cleaning out a small area makes you think you are Super Girl and should tackle the closets, junk drawers, laundry room, kitchen cabinets, garage, garden, deck, car and everything else that has been overtaken by "I don't have time to deal with this right now".  Well, yes...that's exactly what I've been doing for the last four weeks, in addition to working very long days, six days a week. 

The Virgo in me is proud to say that as I sit here blogging at something til 2 am, the laundry is caught up, every dish I own is clean, the plants are watered, the fam is fed, the garden has been tended, the decks have been swabbed, the sheets have been changed, the pictures have been framed, car has been washed, oil has been changed, hair will be cut, and on and on...  I'm ashamed to say how long it's taken me to get my round tuit. 

As you may know (if you've been here before), hubby and I were on vaycay all of May.  Then we have June (a.k.a. the month of "Wine and Roses") with Father's Day, Sister's Birthday, Hubby's Birthday and anniversary.  So, as you can imagine, between prepping for our trip, then the actual trip, then celebrating something different every third day, there has not been much time for blogging. 

However, for hubby and me, the Fourth of July is always the marker of the slower pace of summer.  Personally, I can't wait.  I've whittled my "To Do" list down to the bare nubbin's, and believe I can see some serious stitching time in my very near future. 

I know. 

I KEEP saying that. 

:-))

Happy Fourth, friends!

Top o' the Morning to Ya

I love Love LOVE St. Patrick's day.  I love the leprechauns, shamrocks, jigs, and corned beef.  I blame it on having a drop or two of Irish blood in my veins.  So with St. Pat's celebrations this week, it looks like this week will be as busy, if not busier, than most.  

I'm sneaking in a quick post now before you all think Fat Tuesday got the better of me.

In stitching news:  I'm having a great time making a few greeting cards for a EGA chapter fundraiser.  We plan on stitching card covers in a variety of techniques and then selling the bunch of them until they are gone.  At $5/each, I think they will sell easily at our favorite LNS. (fingers crossed)

Here's a peak:

embroidery embellished felt appliques

scrap from hardanger project gone wrong

all cross-stitch design

The resident K9 is having a boo-boo issue that looks like it could entail surgery.  We'll be seeing Dr. Fred (the v.e.t.) asap, and maybe taking a quick trip to the OSU v.e.t. hospital, if necessary.  From the looks of it, I'd say I should go ahead and pack a bag.  :-(  

Therefore, there will be very little blog posting, blog reading, stitching, etc. until we get things back to the normal chaos level.

Happy stitching friends!

Mardi Gras planning

***

Fat Tuesday is just around the bend friends.  Will you be "observing" the holiday? 

King Cake

(click here for recipe)

Considering the modern reputation of Mardi Gras, I'm not surprised that most people under the age of 30 don't even know that Mardi Gras is the day before Ash Wednesday, which of course is the first day of Lent.  Growing up, we always called it "Fat Tuesday" and knew it was our last chance for anything tasty until Easter Sunday.  Yes, Lent.  Those 40 (or so) days of self-deprivation immediately following the big fat party we call Christmas-New Year-Superbowl-Valentine's-Mardi Gras. 

Getting ready for Lent was like getting ready for a drought.  If you knew you weren't going to get any rain for 6 weeks, you'd make sure everything was good and watered too.

As a young girl, too young to understand the deep meaning of the season, I remember my mother offering this completely inappropriate explanation of Lent - Lent was Jesus' way of helping us take off the 'winter weight'.  Oh yes she did.  Probably didn't scar me for life or anything.  

Breakaway to the tennis match in my head:

Angel on the right shoulder:  Don't eat those cookies. Jesus wants you to look good in your summer clothes.


Devil on the left shoulder:  Jesus would not want those cookies to go to waste.  If you don't eat them, somebody else will have to.

I'm sure none of that has anything to do with what's wrong with me today.   ;-)

So, in memory of my crazy mother, I think I will follow Janice's lead (click here) and bake these wonderful cookies for the office next week.

Think SPRING, everybody!

Ringing in 2011

...

Beignets for Breakfast

Margo (My Up-tight Northern Alter Ego):  "Oh my...aren't beignets nothing more than deep fried dough?"

Marti (My Southern Self):  "Why yes, yes they are!  Unless of course, you are lucky enough to be from the South..then they are beignets."

Truth be told, these little bite-sized chunks of love weren't plated until almost 11 pm tonight.  However, I have been in a very 'Nawlin's' frame of mind the past week or so.  Some weeks a girl needs a little more pampering than others.  Wouldn't you agree?

New Orleans is much much more, but on the surface, it is a sensual city of instant gratification.  It offers many, many ways to indulge your every guilty pleasure...food, drink, music, and that's just the beginning.  I may never have a breakfast as memorable as the chicory coffee and beignets I had in the French Quarter many years ago.. 

The memories of the sights, sounds and tastes of NOLA come back to me at the most unpredictable and unlikely times.  It is definitely a "total immersion" kind of thing.  Like taking a bath in pure, leave-me-be-I'm-having-a-moment, pleasure.  Wait - they have a name for it - MARDI GRAS! 

I haven't visited since Katrina, and don't have any immediate plans.   But, every once in a while, I feel an undeniable tug towards the Big Easy.  Today, it was beignets.  Yesterday, it was ACME oysters.  Tomorrow, who knows? 

...

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the warm, gold and olive Christmas decor is giving way (slowly but surely) to wintry fresh, white and silver. 

Hope your New Year is off to a Sweet Start!

Giving Thanks

It's been another highly successful Thanksgiving here at manor.  Family and friends gathered.  They came, we ate and some even napped.  The menu was traditional and made from scratch.   I was so busy in the kitchen, I failed to grab the camera for any braggin' shots but trust me, it was a sight to behold.  I'm thankful for my faith, family, friends, and feasts.  A good time was had by all.


No shopping for me this Black Friday -  just wasn't in the mood to fight crowds and hustle about in the pre-dawn hours.   Instead, I packed away the Thanksgiving tableware and brought out the Christmas-ware.  I do love to set the table.  I'm thankful for time off work.


In the process of swapping seasons, I was compelled to clean out a few storage cabinets and re-arrange part of the pantry.  That felt great!  It was long overdue.  I'm thankful for neat shelves.


Tomorrow, I'll be hard at work again on Christmas party favors.   I.may.never.make.another.favor.as.long.as.I live.


:-)


Happy Stitching friends!

Paging Dr. DooLittle

Happy 4th of July friends!  Hope you all are enjoying a little down time, family fun and local festivities, wherever you are!

You might be wondering what the 4th of July has to do with Dr. Doolittle.  Well, it seems a little hummingbird got itself lost inside hubby's man-cave and collapsed from exhaustion sometime Saturday.  Hubby found it, realized it was still breathing and brought it to the house for us to nurse back to health.  Having skipped Hummingbird Rescue 101, I really wasn't sure what to do for the tiny little creature.  Poor little thing. 

Deciding it probably needed rest and fluids, we put it inside a decorative bird cage I have in the sunroom (for safe keeping), set a dish of nectar closeby, covered the cage with a pillowcase and let it rest.   It rested all night and seemed stronger this morning.  I thought fresh air would be good for it this morning and took it out on the deck with me.  Soon it was stretching it's wings and looking all around, as if to say, "Where am I?  What happened?  Where are my clothes?"       (Kidding!)

Within an hour or so, it took flight, still weak, but we are praying for the best and have ordered a hummingbird repair kit from Amazon, just to be prepared in case this happens again!  ;-)

In addition to being a holiday weekend, this is the weekend of the MSACF that I blogged about last year here.  I had really hoped to get back there this year, but it just wasn't to be.  :-(   Maybe next year.  I'm glad though that they have had excellent weather this year for the festival.  So many years passed, it has been miserably hot or rainy.  Nothing but blue skies for them this year! 

It's also time to register for the State Fair.  I haven't decided yet if I'm going to send anything or not.  Registration deadline ends soon so later this afternoon (after cookout festivities and before fireworks display), I plan to survey what I've managed to stitch since last July and make a decision.  That is one nice thing about writing this blog.  It does give me a very accurate record of when I finished what.  At the rate I stitch, you'd think it would be easy to keep up with!  However, this year, I've been more interested in getting other people to enter the Fair than I have been about entering the fair myself.  Like, my sister, who is in a photography club and has taken some wonderful photos.  I have encouraged her to submit a few to the fair this year.  It would be great to see her bring home a ribbon or two (and some prize money)!

Gotta run friends!  Have a safe and happy 4th!

I STITCH!

It seems like forever since I had any stitching to post, and I'm pretty sure if anyone out there is still reading this little blog o' mine, you must be convinced that I'm on a stitcher's strike of some kind.  Truth is, I've been tired!  This old girl isn't the bundle of energy she used to be and I just needed to rest awhile.  But, I'M BAAAACK!

Before the month gets totally away from us, I wanted to share my only St. Patty's Day stitching with you:

Heart in Hand, Monthly Mania, MARCH

"G" coffee sleeve

The March leprechaun fits inside a little wooden trivet.  I love his little crooked smile and "whiskey" colored beard.  Of the whole Heart in Hand monthly mania series, I only stitched March, October (seen in the upper right of the photo below)

and June, which is a gorgeous dragonfly I stitched onto a nightshirt many moons ago for my ever so spoiled sister.  October is also stitched to fit in my little wooden trivet.  It's really not like me to pick and choose just a few patterns from a monthly series and not stitch the whole series, but that's what happened in this case.  No explanation really except I thought the other months were a lot of stitching and I wasn't completely wild about the other 9 designs.  I can however see myself going back and stitching the December design some day.  It's a darling Santa.

The coffee sleeve above is something I've been meaning to make for myself and family/friends for a long, long time but just never seemed to get around to it.  So finally (!),  I did what ever self-respecting workaholic does, I found a way to make it work related in order to "get 'er done", as they say.  How, pray tell, do you make crafting work related, you ask?  Simple!  I put on a "Lunch and Learn" lecture about Presentation Skills and after the lecture, I did a 7 minute demonstration presentation on Saving the Planet One Coffee Sleeve At a Time.  It was fun, I got my coffee sleeve, so did everyone else, and now we're all saving the planet, one coffee sleeve at a time.  There are tons of great coffee sleeve (or cuff/cozie) tutorials on the web in case you are interested in joining us saving the planet.  For mine, I used one sheet of regular felt, one sheet of fleece, one store-bought iron-on monogram, a little white floss and some fabri-tac glue. I don't need fancy.  Functional is fine by me.

Well that's it for me today.  I hope you are still stitching, wherever you are and wherever you are is beginning to show signs of life!

Happy First Day of SPRING!

I triple heart Easter

I was going to make my TOP TEN REASONS I LOVE EASTER list, but I think these photos say it all:

Neighbor Kay's flower garden

Hubby brought me this beautiful bouquet about a week ago and it just keeps getting prettier.  O the colors, the fragrance, the shapes and textures.  The wonder of the anatomy of a lily, rose, daisy, carnation.  I think I could stare at it for hours.  Hubs likes to bring me flowers but is "vase challenged", so I always cut them and plunk them in a vase.  These have turned out to be exceptionally pretty.

Although some might accuse me of rushing the season, but after the winter we've just had, I feel justified celebrating the season as early and often as possible. 

So, here's wishing you all the joys of the Easter season!

P.S.  feel free to click on and use these photos for any of your non-profit endeavors.  They make pretty greeting cards!

Luck O' the Irish

According to the records, I am a tad Irish, but truth be told, it's hubs and sis who could fall into a vat of manure and come out smelling like Irish Roses.  Seriously.  It can be depressing when your two best friends are the luckiest s.o.b.s in six counties and the only thing you ever win is the jury duty lottery.

Look what I came home to find the other evening:

Rainbow over the Dave Cave

Proof that hubby lives at the end of a rainbow.

Wishing you a kiss o' Irish luck this week!

Woodland Valentine

Back in the day when I thought Fiddler's Cloth Aida was the prettiest cross stitch fabric I'd ever seen, I stitched this piece for hubby.  Even though it was a Christmas present to him, it was definitely a Valentine.  The verse was something I had found in a book of Japanese poetry.  I charted it to fit in the rectangle insert which originally contained an alphabet.  Considering hubby and I were pretty newly wed back then, I remember thinking that the verse was exactly what I wanted to convey and the design reminded me of where we built our house, out in the woods.

design from: Better Homes and Gardens book

America's Best Cross Stitch

"Gladly I'd live in a poor mountain hut

Spin, sew and till the soil

In any weather

And wash in a cold mountain stream

If but we dwell together"

And, 13 years later, I still feel mostly the same. 

I'd rather not wash in a cold mountain stream.  ;-)

Love Will Light Your Way

This is an old D. Morgan finish, but one very near and dear to my heart:

click on pic for better viewing

Love Will Light Your Way

design by:  D Morgan

You can see from the fall colors and farmhouse that it isn't your typical Valentine's-y piece, but when I found the pattern years ago, it was exactly the advice I needed at the time.  I also loved the bare tree in the foreground.  I leave this piece up year round. 

It's still good advice.

Giving Thanks for Traditions...

With Thanksgiving less than a week away, today I'm giving thanks for Traditions.  The turkey is on order, grocery list complete, table is set, Christmas cards secured, and I'm counting the hours till the house swells with family and I'm tuning in the MACY'S THANKSGIVING DAY PARADE!


The Virgo in me springs to life with the careful planning and structured activities of the holidays.  As a working person, in order for me to preserve what precious little sanity I have left (don't laugh) AND enjoy the holidays, all preparations/festivities from November through Jan 1 must be scheduled with military like precision. 


Holidays are to be enjoyed, right?  Therefore, One.Must.Plan.


Designing menus, scheduling the grocery shopping (as you all know, if you need crushed pineapple or canned whole cranberries, you better know where to go and when), selecting gifts, decorating the house and updating the Christmas card list are all "fun for me" holiday activities.  However, one of my favorite memories of the holidays is from the early years of my life as a new step-mom.


When my youngest stepson was little, we did lots of crafts together.  When I cross stitched, he cross stitched. When I decorated cakes, he decorated cakes.  We really had lots of fun together and came to know each other better through crafting. 


One year, around the holidays, we thought it would be fun to make candles together so for some reason or another, the day after Thanksgiving became our "candle making day".  We used old Tupperware parfait glasses as molds to make tree-shaped green wax candles, then whipped white wax which we randomly applied to the green candles making them look like they were snow laden.  If we hadn't eaten all the silver non-pareils (who remembers those?!) by the time we got around to making the candles, we'd stick some of those into the white wax before it set, you know, to spiff them up a smidge.  Then, when our little forest of candles were cool, we'd carefully store them until Christmas Eve evening when we would light the family room with nothing but those candles and the Christmas tree.  The glow was so beautiful!

Even though our post-Thanksgiving candle making sessions have long gone by the wayside, I'll never forget the fun we had making them and beauty they gave us on Christmas Eve.

What fun, crafty, maybe atypical, holiday traditions do you and your family enjoy?

I plan to pop back in with a stitching update between now and Thursday, but if I get crazy and don't, I hope your Thanksgiving is filled with love, comfort, family and tradition!

Happy Independence Day!

4th of JULY.....the best holiday of the SUMMER!!! With it's fireworks and fireflies, hotdogs and hot dogs (K9s), lemonade and lemon meringue pie, need I go on? I've always had a wide patriotic streak, but many moons ago, after my first visit to Philadelphia, the Constitution Center, Independence Hall, etc, I discovered a deeper appreciation for my freedoms, my country, the servicemen and women of the armed forces, and honestly, my government. As stinky as the system can be from time to time, IMHO it beats everything else out there, hands down. So go grill something, wave the red, white and blue, thank a veteran, write your Congressman, and watch the fireworks!

For this truly is the land of the free and the home of the brave!!!