We are having friends over for dinner tomorrow, and the weather will be perfect for an al fresco meal of grilled goodness. Everything is greening up, the azaleas are close to being in full bloom, and I needed to get the veranda ready to enjoy. This time of year it is covered in pollen, so the first thing was to give it a good wash, scrubbing down the boards and rails. Here is the culprit, the oak tree pollen is rampant. This picture came out so well, I might enter it in the fair this year. I have tried for days to get a photo of a goldfinch in the redbud tree, and I did manage to snap several ..read more

Last week we met my husband’s brother and sister-in-law for a vacation together. They’ve only been married for a year and 10 months, and we really wanted to spend some time with them. Kentucky was a good halfway point, as they live in Ohio, so we planned to do a few distillery tours and a couple of other things. You all know that I am a bourbon gal. It is my drink of choice when I am going to have one, and I also like to cook with it. Sometimes I put it in the food, too, see my Bourbon Chicken. So doing a part of the Bourbon Trail has been on my list for a while. When we planned this, we had n ..read more

Finally, the weather seems to be warming up and I hope it stays that way. I need to get some plants for the veranda and move the ones from the Carolina room to the front. I am in a mood for fresh lemons both in cooking and in decorating. So, let’s take a stroll through some past posts to bring together springtime and lemons! First up, a Lemon Tablescape. I still have the lemon salad plates, and the melamine platter, but the little lemon bread plates and yellow cutwork chargers have been donated back to the thrift store. See the whole thing on Lemon Fresh Tablescape. You need something lemony ..read more

Moving to Daylight Savings Time has put a real crimp in my reading time. Now it is an hour later when the sun is coming up, so I don’t have that quiet hour I like to have in order to read while having my morning coffee. So, the fiction reviews may be a little thin this month, but I’ll make up for that with some great new publications I just got in ebook form from C&T, also available in print versions. Links to Amazon for the fiction titles, and C&T Publishing for the quilting and stitchery books. Dangerous Times on Dressmakers’ Alley by Rosie Clarke – Set in 1923, deplorable condition ..read more

This past week, I managed to eek out a bit of time for some creative fun, and stamped a few more cards for the boutique. I think I’ll stop at 30 to have for sale. The great thing is if they don’t sell, I’ll have them to use myself. I love this sentiment! Two more with a different sentiment. I put this same saying on the inside of a few other cards. Are you in the path of the total solar eclipse? See my posts from 2017 when we were able to see one. First, Preparing for the Eclipse will give you some information and suggestions to make the day go well, then An Awesome Day has photos from the 2 ..read more

Now that I finished the little table topper in yellow and grey, I wanted to set a pretty springtime table with it. I pulled out yellow chargers and my favorite yellow salad plates. They are called Chloe, and I got them from Pier 1 years ago. I start with putting the table topper at an angle on top of a white tablecloth, with the points toward the places. I have two of these adorable ducklings with eggs, with green hats and big orange feet. Pulling out my yellow ceramic basket, I filled it with faux spring tulips and hibiscus, along with greenery, daffodils and filler flowers. One duck is pl ..read more

During our February retreat, I began this project by making a couple of hundred half square triangles using Moda Cake Mix Recipe papers, set #3. I sewed a bunch of them into pinwheels, not really knowing where the design would go next. Without a better plan, I thought about making a smaller version of Quadrille for taking to speaking events. So, I started making those blocks. However, once I got going, I realized that the small size of these HSTs have really obscured the bee and honey theme I wanted. If I do more with the other prints, I am going to lose the essence of the line. While the col ..read more

Last week, during a couple of rainy days, I decided to flip my closet. This takes a couple of days to pull out everything, switch winter things for summer colors, look at every piece to see if it needs mending, donating or trashing, and trying on almost everything I haven’t worn in a while. Read about my whole process in the post What’s In Your Closet? (I’m still using the jewelry trick I figured out on that post). I usually do this earlier in the year, but I let it slide until now. Things change, and when I first published that post I was still working, but the principles still apply. Flippin ..read more

The peach trees we saw in South Carolina last week got damaged by the frost on Monday night. A report on the news said that only time will tell how much damage there is this year, but it comes on the heels of a 90% loss in peaches last year from a similar late freeze. So, it may be more expensive have a peach this year. Our apples are not budding yet, so they were safe from the cold temps. This week my little peach trees came into bloom. They are pitifully small trees, and don’t produce great fruit as they are in too much shade once the leaves come out. Still, the blooms are beautiful. Both l ..read more

The National (or Worldwide) Quilting Day was last Saturday with our local guild’s show. My co-chair, Gail, and I set up the show stands on Friday, with some help from guild members. We were excited for the exhibit to open on Saturday, and got there early to hang the quilts. Gail did a tremendous job coming up with the idea of the challenge of using Page 42, finding the challenge fabric, designing the layout, and collecting the finished quilts. We worked together on publicity, getting prizes, printing ballots, and the other aspects of an exhibit. This was the ‘front’, coming in from the outside ..read more