Busy Day

It doesn't look like much but it took a long time! My day started with freezing okra from the Farmer's Market. It was a labor of love because I only like okra breaded and fried (or maybe you could bake it? I'll have to check into that!) but my husband loves it boiled and now my grandchild does so I froze it in the whole pods. Anyway, that's done.

Next my husband starts complaining about not being able to find a lid for a certain "Tupperware" container so I pull out all those type containers and start trying to match the tops. I have about 50% success. ha! It's all still sitting on the counter. I left. I took him with me and went to Target to shop. That was more fun. Then we went to an hour and a half choir practice, came home to eat and I've been on the computer watching TV. The tupperware is still on the counter. I'll tackle it tomorrow.

I'm trying to do a little cleaning out for a yard sale, hopefully in the fall, as I go everyday anyway. So I just looked at it as an opportunity to clean out for the yard sale instead of getting upset about the complaining. Now he's complaining that the counters are full of tupperware. ha! Can't win. But I will stay positive and will finish that little job tomorrow morning.

I also enjoyed talking to one of my mother's sisters and packaged up some goodies to send her that I know she'll enjoy.

It doesn't sound like a lot but the day's gone. They sure do go by fast nowadays. As I said in my very first post, you might as well enjoy the ride, right? Thank you, James Taylor!

Paw Paw Day, Ducks in a Row, and Composition Mistakes

Today was "Paw Paw Day"! We had Paige today and had our day planned. First thing in the morning, we played golf and, of course, Paw Paw was everything. Then we had lunch and went to get my mother-in-law to help her with some banking and then on to the park to play and feed the ducks. She would not let anyone do anything for her or with her except Paw Paw. It was so funny. But we had a wonderful time.

Here are my "ducks in a row"! ha! I didn't realize they were in a row like this until I imported them onto the computer and looked at them. I took probably a half dozen shots of these cute little baby ducks and as I was looking at them tonight, I realized it all was just point and shoot and wanted to point out a couple of mistakes. Paige really brought my attention to this one above. She wanted to see the pictures I took of the ducks and when she saw this one, she said, "you cut the Mama's tail off, Bear Bear"! And I did! But I do love the three little ducks in a row!

Here's the second mistake I found. Since I was shooting in a hurry and not paying attention to any details or composition or anything, I saw this mistake later. You can see the shadow of my head reflected in the water. Of course, with today's cropping tools, etc., a duck or two could be cropped into an ok photo.

Another "fresh", positive day!

Fresh Outlook!

It's been WAY too long since I've posted and I am really mad at myself for this because I made a commitment to do this every day of this year. But what's done is done.

Today I took a fresh outlook, I hope, for the year. I really didn't sleep very well last night and had weird dreams but I got up early and decided to walk. The weather was great today. It felt like Fall!

After my walk (which did wonders for me), I got Paige and we headed to the drug store to get some new vitamins I'm going to try. She was a little too whiny in the drugstore but I just still tried to keep my positive, fresh outlook and just decided she was that way because it was first thing in the morning.

After the drug store, we went to the bank to get cash to spend later on in the day and to Wal-Mart to get a picture CD with index prints made. I kept telling her I had a surprise for her later in the day and she seemed to be excited about it.

We finally got to the surprise. We went to the Farmer's Market and bought the fresh food pictured above. She loved it. It was a different kind of shopping and she loved smelling the food and talking about what it was and how you cook it, etc.

So we had a feast tonight for supper. We had fresh green beans (which she helped me snap), fresh corn on the cob, fresh cucumber slices, fresh sliced tomatoes from our garden, and fresh peaches for dessert with vanilla ice cream on top! Yum! I bought okra to freeze and my husband loves it boiled or fried. I don't like it boiled but he boiled some for himself and tried it on her and she ate about 7 pieces of boiled okra plus beets! She loved it! I don't like beets either. I bought the zucchini squash to make zucchini bread. Maybe I can do that tomorrow when I freeze the okra.

So we did have a fresh day and I'm hoping tomorrow will be just as fresh!

Our Beautiful Sunsets!

We enjoy the most beautiful sunsets here. A couple of nights ago, I was in the kitchen working and looked out the back window and saw this. I grabbed my camera with no tripod and took a chance that it would show up in the camera the way it really looked. Sometimes it just turns out too dark but I got lucky this time!

Gosh, this is beautiful!

Sharing Beauty of the Season

This rose is a Betty Prior rose. My youngest daughter gave it to me a few years ago and it always flourishes. In fact, it needs cutting back right now because if is SO full of blooms that have finished blooming. I caught this one in beautiful bloom. The color is just wonderful. When a bloom from this rose is open completely, it looks like a dogwood blossom.

These next four photos are from the four Knockout Roses we have in our backyard. They are constantly blooming and so easy to take care of. I love the color of these, too.

I just love the combination of the sun setting behind these blooms and how the colors "shine" through the blossoms. Knockout really does describe this rose!

I Think I've Turned a Corner!

Yesterday I felt like I had sort of "turned a corner", or at least a little corner. I did go upstairs to my sewing room and start organizing things I got from my mother's house that I wanted for my sewing room and cleaning up in there so I can get started with my hobby again. I had a lot of things to wash and the denim quilt above was one thing I washed and put it outside on my screened-in porch to air dry.

After my mother died and my brother and two sisters and I started talking about the things we wanted to keep of hers, the quilt pictured above was the first thing that came to my mind. This quilt is about 45 years old. I really didn't know what kind of shape it was in or even if it was finished but it is finished. There are places that have worn or frayed or stitches have come loose, etc. and it is very primitive in design but the reason I love this old quilt and wanted it so badly is because of the good memories it brings to me.

I think I was about 15 years old when my mother and I worked on this quilt together. It was her idea. She just wanted to cut up old jeans of ours into these little squares and do some sort of design on each square, then join them together into a quilt. I hadn't done any kind of sewing much at that time. I did take what they called home economics in high school and hated it but I think this was after we worked on this quilt. My mother at that time owned a Merle Norman Cosmetics store and we would work on this quilt there when times were slack. I just have such fond memories of doing this with my mother. Then she put it together. I think she must have zigzagged around each square and then crocheted them all together. I don't know when she had time to do this because she worked all day and had four children at the time, the youngest being probably around two years old. She was just amazing at the things she accomplished!

Here's a close-up of one of the squares that I did. You can see how childish my stitches were but I was so proud of those stitches and that design. We made up all of our designs. We didn't have a pattern of any kind. This was all made up in our minds and we just used whatever scraps of materials that we could find. I remember my mother praising everything that I did. She was building self esteem and love of sewing with me as well as a bond.

Here's one of her blocks. There is one little place by the 3 on the right that's frayed from just age but you can see the difference in her stitches and mine above. I wonder how she chose the time, 3 o'clock? Maybe because that's when I got out of school and rode the school bus to her place of business every afternoon to help her until closing time? This quilt is full of memories and I love it.

More Beauties

Some golfing buddies of my husband gave us a bush two years or so ago called Bridal Wreath. I'm not a gardener and had never heard of it. We planted it out back by the pool in a corner and it just stayed green, I think, the first year. Then it bloomed the next year with these beautiful white blooms all over. If I remember right, it only bloomed during the spring.

Well, last week I was just outside taking photos of all the pretty flowers around and I thought I saw a bloom on this bush and here it is August! As I looked closer, I found about three blooms so I just had to get a photo.

Isn't it beautiful? Does look like a bride, doesn't it? And I don't know why it's blooming now but I sure did enjoy it while it lasted. Thank you Raymond and Shirley. :-)