Hello and happy Monday. What a fun weekend I had. My friend Lorie and I decided a couple of weeks ago to check out the annual Lavender Festival in Oak Ridge Tennessee. Oak Ridge is about an hour from us.
The Lavender Festival has been held annually since 1999, always the third weekend in June because that is when the lavender is in bloom in Tennessee, and was voted “Best Festival” last year by The Middle East Tennessee Tourism Council. The Festival is free and so is parking. More than 150 vendors are set up for the festival. There were several bands playing and lots of food and drink vendors. There were some Lavender garden tours that could be purchased but you had to sign up for those and I think there was an additional fee for those.
Lorie and I took off early Saturday morning and got to the festival around 9:30. Lorie spotted a prime parking spot very close to the entrance. What luck. The weather was perfect. It did get a bit warm as the day wore on.
I bought one of these lavender plants and then discovered they are toxic to cats. Lorie is taking it to her house.
This booth had infused glass. I love the designs. This artist has amazing talent.
There were a couple of vendors selling these concrete planters. They are made by mixing concrete and pearlite together and putting them in boxes or buckets to frame them. I bought the one on the right with this gorgeous succulent.
We didn’t get to try the lavender lemonade the line was just too long.
Beautiful and smelled so nice.
Several Bands were playing. This one was really good.
More of the infused glass. I especially loved the little cat ornaments.
Lots and lots of flowers, succulents and even fresh fruits and vegetables. Lots of everything.
By mid afternoon the crowd had really grown.
Me and Lorie. We have so much fun when we get together. I love hanging out with her she is up for whatever adventure we get into. Nothing is too crazy for us when we get together. This might be good or bad, HA!!! We decided to make the Lavender Festival an annual event for us.
We didn’t get to try the lavender lemonade but we did try the Bold Rock Blackberry Cider. It was yummy and really hit the spot in the heat of the day
Before coming home we stopped in Sweetwater at Sweetwater Creamery and got some ice cream. This is such a cute place and the ice cream is homemade and delicious. I got Peppermint Pattie.
Peppermint Pattie. They also make the waffle cones daily. This is a single scoop!!! Yummy.
I brought my succulent home and put it on the deck. I think it fits in well with the rest of my cactus family.
Sunday was a rather quiet day. Mostly hanging around the house with hubs and working on clearing some things from the garage. A really nice weekend. How was your weekend?
Hello and happy Monday. I had such a lazy weekend. I like having those occasionally but they make me feel like a sloth, and that I should be doing more. I did the usual groceries, laundry etc etc. Mark was off on Sunday and we grilled hamburgers and hotdogs outside. We’re trying to do some summery things but we both like being inside. Mark has really bad allergies. Plus it is rare lately that we have days off together.
The first thing I did Saturday morning was give some much needed attention to my orchids. I have ten now. I had one that was needing to be repotted. I don’t like repotting unless I really have to, but with this one I had to do. The roots looked terrible. I trimmed off the rotting roots and replanted her in a clear planter with fresh orchid potting medium. I gave all the others some love and trimmed off a couple of dead stems. They all seemed much happier.
I also did my grocery pick up but I wanted to stop at a little Marketplace in town. It is set up in a large building decorated with individual booths. So the booths can be very different. I didn’t have a lot of time but I will go back this week and get some things I had my eye on. Look at this little Americana Uncle Sam:
Isn’t he adorable.
And I love the weathered look of these flags.
Of course seeing those flags made me want to come home and get some of my patriotic things out. I made these flags two years ago. If you missed the post on how to make them you can check it out here. Patriotic Bouquet. I actually thought it was last year that I made them. But I started going back through my posts and realized it was two years ago. Man, time flies. That could also be the reason they are looking a little worn HA!!
Last week I finally got around to painting my little wrought iron bench. I did the chair a while back. This bench was in pretty bad shape. It came from my mother in law’s house. It had been in her garage for many years. It had a lot of rust spots on it. I scrubbed it down and painted it black. I used a spray paint with primer. I love the way it turned out.
A few weeks ago I bought a tomato plant from the Mennonite market near my house. It is doing great!! It has about twenty five tomatoes on it. They are all green and I can’t wait till they get ripe.
Tomatoes. I don’t even eat them but Mark does.
Marigolds are blooming. I just love the orange ones.
How have things been with you? Have a wonderful week!!!
Hello and happy Memorial Day to everyone. Especially our veterans who gave all for us. Let us never forget them and what they have given for our freedom.
The weather here has been chilly. I’m not sure if this would be considered Whippoorwill Winter or as some of the old timers call it, Woolen Britches Winter. Whippoorwill Winter usually occurs middle to late May so that is what I think we are actually experiencing these last few days. Woolen Britches is the last winter we have before late spring or summer temperatures hit us. I know my jacket felt really good this morning.
Being in tourism the days leading up to and including Memorial Day is very busy for me. People have started vacations and traveling is on everyone’s mind. My work has been so incredibly busy. I actually worked part of the weekend. Memorial Day is our kick off to summer and the Labor Day sort of ends the busy tourist season. All of the days in between are busy.
Because I only had one day off I had to cram a lot into it. This included visiting my mother in law and taking her supplies, buying groceries, doing laundry and trying to get some time in to chill and do a few fun things.
I had a few minutes to catch up on a book I was reading and have some coffee and a muffin.
I made a blueberry cobbler. I love to make one of these on Sunday and have it for the entire week.
I also wanted to try these lasagna cupcakes that I had been seeing all over Facebook and TikTok. These are made like lasagna but instead of using pasta you use wonton wrappers. This makes them very calorie friendly. I will trim the wonton wrappers on top next time because they stuck a little bit. I used a muffin pan. I made my usual lasagna sauce for regular lasagna. You can use whatever you want. You can also use grilled veggies or anything you might want to chop up and use. But you don’t have a lot of room in the muffin tins. I used ricotta cheese, parmesan cheese, and mozzarella cheese. I layered a wrapper then ricotta cheese then my sauce, then mozzarella and parmesan. I then added another wrapper and repeated the layer. For the sauce I used marinara sauce with ground beef but you can use ground turkey or whatever you would like. Basically you can make them just about any way you want to. They are delicious.
I finished the sock I have been working on a cast on the second sock. The second sock is never as much fun to knit as the first one. I can see the striping will be off a little but that will just make it interesting. Nobody will notice when they are inside my shoes. HA!!!
Other than working all I have had time to do is SCRATCH!!! The poison Ivy is slowly starting to dry up. I told you about the IVAREST I had been using. It really does the trick. It is so soothing. I think it has calamine lotion in it or something like that. I listed it on my Friday Favorites last week. If you missed it you can catch that blog posthere But the problem was the biggest area affected was on my wrist and it easily spread to a few other areas.
So how was your weekend? Did you do something fun? Have a wonderful week!!!!
Hello friends how are you? How was your weekend? Another long weekend for me. I took Friday off to take my sister Sandy to the doctor and to get her sixth and final Chemo treatment. Her appointment was at 8:00. We left out early around 7:00 AM. Her doctor is in Knoxville and that is about forty five minutes from us. You never know what the traffic is going to be like.
We got to the hospital right at 8:00. She had to check in and get blood work and then see the doctor and then start her chemotherapy. All of the testing and seeing the doctor often takes over two hours. Then it can take a little while for the pharmacy to get the chemo cocktail to the infusion room. She didn’t start the chemo on Friday until almost 11:00 AM. It takes about an hour and a half to two hours for the treatment. Because this was her last one and she “graduated” she got to ring the bell signaling that her treatments are over. We were so happy. We even decided to stop and have lunch and then do a little shopping. I remember when she started the treatments back in January if felt like this day would never come. Here she is doing great!! So this was the best thing that happened this weekend or all year I guess I should say.
As we were leaving the stores we had a little issue with my sister’s car. I was driving and as soon as I pulled onto the road the dash lit up like crazy with several warning lights. We pulled over and she called someone she knew from the dealership. Luckily we were very close to the dealership and we took it in. One of the service techs looked at the lights and said it was a faulty sensor. He said it was completely safe to drive and for her to bring it back Monday and they would replace it. Wow, that was a little scary.
Saturday I pretty much chilled. I picked up groceries, Mark and I went to visit with his mom. She was very confused as she sometimes is now. We picked up dinner on the way home. I went back to Granny’s flower market in town and bought a few more small flowers for some flower pots I have. I love this little market. Every year she has the most beautiful flowers.
The second great thing that happened: On Sunday I finished the temperature blanket!!!!! I have been working on this for so long. I actually started the blanket last year. You can read about it here I recorded the temperature every day. Usually I did the average temp for the day. Each crocheted row indicates a color pertaining to the temperature. I have never been so glad to finish something in my life. I got really behind last fall. I still recorded the temperature every day, keeping the figures in my phone’s calendar. I will have to be honest with you I got really sick of this blanket it grew and grew and grew. It was so heavy I couldn’t really take it from room to room to work on I just left it in one spot. I guess I just didn’t take into account just how long that many rows would be. I only did a single crochet for each row but man it is massive. It will be great when winter comes and I can snuggle under it. But for now It is finished and I am so happy about that. I felt like I couldn’t get into any projects until this one was finished. Well nothing big anyway. I have done a few small things. But now I can’t wait to get to some of my other projects. You know how it is when you finally finish something that has been hanging over you. This is how it felt with this blanket. I’m glad I did it but I am so glad it is finished.
Here are the different colors for the daily temperatures. It started at the top with the darker blues and then the orange and reds as we got into summer temps.
Here are the different colors of yarn I used for the blanket. I did have to have two colors of each skein of yarn for most of the colors.
That is what I have been up to. I have a full week coming up. Five days in a row. I love having the three day weekends. I think all work weeks should only be four days. I am sure people are more productive that way.
Southern Patches 