Summer Days, Summer Daze

Hello friends how are you? Sorry I have been a little MIA over here on the blog. But just as it happens every year at this time, work has been in the way of blogging or actually the flow of any creative juices that I might possibly have.

I work in tourism and it has been crazy. Don’g get me wrong I am so happy for all the visitors that we have had. I’m glad to see that people are traveling and having fun and spending money. The only problem is we are somewhat short staffed and that makes everything a little trickier.

I have been working ten and twelve hour days and getting home barely in time to eat a little dinner and talk with hubs and love on the fur babies. It doesn’t leave a lot of time to get things done. I feel like I am in a summertime daze and work and sleep is about all I get done.

On Sunday I am hosting an anniversary party for my sister and her husband. It is their fiftieth wedding anniversary!!! They were high school sweethearts and now they are celebrating fifty years. Wow what a milestone. I am making a special cake for them. I can’t wait to show you the pictures, fingers crossed it turns out well. My niece is helping with all the prep work and she is going to come up on Saturday and help me clean my house. We should have about twenty five to thirty people so it is going to be a blast!!! A lot of our family hasn’t gotten together since COVID so this will be a great time to reunite.

My cutter that I use to cut my shrubs suddenly stopped working. It’s not electric so I don’t know why I say it like that. It just wouldn’t cut, I don’t know how else to describe it. It’s one of those long handled cutters. I started to use it last week and it wouldn’t close. Maybe it needed oil? Not sure, but I can’t believe that would make it suddenly stop working. It was almost like it was bent and the blades wouldn’t come together. I hadn’t used it in awhile and you would believe this if you looked at my shrubs right now. So I don’t know what has happened to it. I went to the hardware store Saturday morning and got me a new one. It is so nice, and red. I love red so I am thinking this will make me want to use it more than ever. I also bought some hedge trimmers, a tomato cage, and a spider web thingy that you use to get spider webs off of the outside of your windows. I had a blast at the hardware store. Clothes shopping is fun but there is something to be said about a trip to Lowe’s, Home Depot, or just your local hardware store.

I also went to the estate sale in town that is held about once or twice a month. It is held at the same location. The people in charge of the estate sales place all of the items from each estate in this one building and starting on Thursday they open it to the public. On Friday everything is 25% off and on Saturday everything is 50% off and by Sunday if there is anything left it is usually 75% off. They didn’t have the sale on Thursday this past week so everything was not 50% off until Sunday. This particular sale had a lot of dishes and oil paintings. I almost went back on Sunday but I didn’t really find anything I couldn’t live without.

The temps here have been quite lovely but the humidity feels like you are walking in warm water. I guess it could be 95 degrees and high humidity so the 85 degrees does feel somewhat better. I feel like I sweat all the time in the summer. Hormones could be to blame. Maybe being out of shape adds to the sweat trickling into places it shouldn’t or maybe it is just the hot stinking heat. Whatever, it is hot and sticky right now.

I bought a new comforter for my bed last week and that made me decide to order new curtains. I ordered white lace curtains. They were so white, sparkling white, blinding white. I decided to put them in a tea bath and stain them a little. I didn’t have any tea bags so I made several cups of tea in my Keurig and poured that into the sink with some warm water. I let each curtain panel soak for about ten minutes and then I rinsed them and hung them to dry. I love them. It toned them down just enough to not have the blinding white color.

***You can tell quite a bit of difference in the two colors. After I rinsed them and hung them up they lightened up just a bit and I love them.!!!***

***I wish I had taken a picture of the curtains when they were hanging and blindingly white. I love this soft muted color.***

***Of course Kitty Kitty loves the bed and thinks this is just for her.***

***The berries are starting to ripen we should have enough for a blackberry pie very soon.***

***Beautiful summer scenes. The grass and trees are so green. We have had a lot of rain and everything is growing like crazy***!!!

***Doesn’t this lemonade look yummy and refreshing? I haven’t tried it yet I saw this on Facebook and can’t wait to try it.***

How is your summer going?

Always remember

Love your day your way!!!!!

Wordless Wednesday, Churches and Steeples

Always remember,

Love your day your way!!!!

Patriotic Bouquet

Hi friends and happy Friday. Here is a quick tutorial on the flag bouquet I mentioned on Facebook and Insta. I know it is close to the Fourth but these will last for years and you can use them for Labor Day and Memorial Day or any day you feel patriotic. You can make one or two or as many as you like.

I first saw this project on one of my favorite blogs. Leslie of My 100 Year Old House. If you haven’t read her blog you should go there now and check it out. I love her decorating ideas as well as her recipes and crafts. You can read her blog here: http://www.my100yearoldhome.com

I first gathered my fabric that I wanted to use to make each individual flag. The flags are meant to look vintage and Leslie actually tore the fabric but I chose to cut mine. You can see that the dimensions are not exactly the same for every stripe but I like that. It makes them look even more vintage.

You will need about a 1/2 yard of medium weight muslin in white.
Fabric with blue and white stars or something that looks patriotic. I got all of this fabric at Walmart. I also bought some of the small rolled fabric pieces but I wound up using only the blue and white stars fabric on the top of the pile.
1/2 yard of red cotton fabric
Thread, needles and scissors. You can use embroidery thread or just regular thick cotton thread and double it.
Tall sticks, I bought some long dowel rods but I decided for a more authentic rustic look I would use stick out of my yard.
Leslie dyed her flags with a little Rit Dye (tan color) to give them a more vintage look. I did not dye my flags.

For the back of the flag cut a piece of the white muslin into 6″x9″ pieces. I suggest cutting all of these at one time so cut as many white pieces as the number of flags that you want to have.

Next cut the red stripes into 3/4″ strips that are 9″ long. Cut 4 times as many of the red strips because you will use 4 on each flag.

Next cut the blue and white star fabric or whichever you decide to use into pieces that measure 3″x4″.

Next cut the ties that you use to wrap the flag around the stick. These will be 1/2″x5″ strips, you will need two per flag.

I think the trick is to get all of the fabric pieces cut out first.

Pin four of the red strips onto the white muslin. I find It is easier to pin the flags before I sew them. You will then sew down the middle of each red strip with the white thread. I just used a regular sewing stitch. You don’t have to make sure they are super straight. I guess you could also glue these down but then you wouldn’t have the white stitches down the middle and I sort of think that gives it character.

Sew one of the blue pieces of fabric around all the edges on the top left side of the flag.

Make a small cut on the left side of each flag between the bottom two red stripes and in the top side of the blue fabric pieces. Be sure not to cut your hand sewn stitches. Insert one muslin strip into each cut.

If you decide to dye the flags this would be the time to do them. Do not leave them in the dye for very long, just about 30 seconds to give them an aged look. Rinse them and lay them flat to dry.

Tie the top and bottom pieces of the muslin around a stick or dowel rods and make your bouquet. I love to use the sticks because you can have a different sizes.

I guess you could use a sewing machine to do these. I actually found the hand stitching very therapeutic. It was a rainy day when I made mine and I sat at the kitchen table working on them and it was very soothing.

Look close and you can see the little hole in the bottom of the flag between the two bottom red stripes. and in the top left of the blue fabric with the star. This is where you will pull the piece of muslin through the flag.

I hope you have a wonderful Independence Day celebration

Always remember

Love your day your way!!!!

I’M ON VACATION!!!!! Sort of.

Hello friends, How are you? I have had such a wonderful few days. I took off a few extra days from work before the July craziness starts. I hate to use the word staycation but I guess that is what I have been on. NO!!! I am on VACATION!!! It started last Friday. My niece and I spent the day going to the Mennonite Market and going to yard sales, moving sales, estate sales, they are called many different things here in the south. I love them all!!!!

One of the sales we went to was a huge Victorian Style Bed and Breakfast that was being sold. The owners were ready to get rid of everything and anxious to move on. They were selling everything dirt cheap. The B&B theme was “Gone With The Wind.” There were pictures of Scarlett O Hara and Rhett Butler everywhere. It was beautiful!!! I just wanted to live in the house. I bought three sets of napkin rings. They were selling them in sets of six for $5.00 a set!!! I bought three sets that I thought could be used together. HA!! when will I ever realistically use cloth napkins? Well you never know, right???

***Look at all of these napkin rings. I loved all of them!!***!

***These are the napkin rings I purchased. I feel that they could be used together if needed.***

***Gone With The Wind was the theme of this Bed and Breakfast. How cool is that????***

***This is one of the bathrooms in the Bed and Breakfast. It was ahhhhhmazing!!!*** ***I want to live there!!!***

On Saturday my sister and I went shopping in Knoxville. We hadn’t been in ages. We had so much fun!! We laughed and laughed and shopped and ate a wonderful lunch and came dragging home tired and spent out. I bought several pairs of shoes. Shoes are the only thing you don’t have to worry about if you gain weight.

On Sunday I did a mountain of laundry. I washed everything that could possibly be washed in this house. Scruffy too.

Monday came and I decided to work in my shrubs. I will not be posting before and after pics because my shrubs look soooooo bad. I don’t know what is going on with them. Some of them are dying and I think they just need to be cut back. I have a plan but I haven’t gotten it all put together yet. You will see soon. So I spent the rest of the day finishing a pair of socks I had been working on and cleaning house and reading and just enjoying the time off.