A Whole Week

It has been a whole week since I posted. This has been a crazy week of 4 (yes, I said 4) school picnics/field days, 2 "School's Out!" pool parties, 2 birthday parties, 1 cafe opening and now an (adult... well not 'adult', but for a 40-year-old) birthday party tomorrow! While it has been fun, it has kept me from my crafting, so today I made a purse, a headband and a stuffed kitty for V. He loves cats, so I designed him and sewed him up today.

Hope everyone is having a great summer. Ours just started Thursday and I'm tired already because we stayed at a friends' house until 11:00 last night. Yawn!!!

This bag is made using a set of cotton napkins from the home department at Walmart (the pattern ($2 on clearance), some outdoor furniture canvas (the white) and some regular canvas (the blue) and two layered vintage buttons.

Pictures from the pool party at Ellie's

Pictures from the pool party at our house


A picture of Graham giving his teacher bunny ears. (tsk, tsk!)

Graham playing Geckoman at the playground. I guess that is how to get a good picture of the kid. He is generally being a goofball for pictures. These actually turned out decently.

I put up a hammock in the little wooded area behind the pool and inside the pool fence for the kids. Next, I'm going to put some bird feeders and squirrel feeders back there. If they are quiet enough, they might see some fun wildlife. They love to take their books back there and just veg.

Cuties....

An old one that I never posted.

Tami

Happy Father's Day, Dad!

Have a great Father's Day, Dad!!!

Here is part of Graham's Stand Up Routine in the talent show.

In case you can't quite make out what he's saying {the sound is kind of odd}, I've included the jokes below.

1) What is long, green and dangerous? (Response: an alligator?)

answer: No, a herd of stampeding cucumbers!

2) What did the farmer say when he lost his tractor?

answer: "Where's my tractor?"

3) Three holes: Well, well, well!

4) {cut off} What do you call an elephant at the North Pole?

answer: Lost!

5) What do you call a hippo in a phone booth?

answer: Stuck!

6) Have you heard the one about the dinosaur?

answer: Of course not, it's extinct!

7) Why should you keep dynomite in your glove compartment?

answer: In case you need to blow up a tire!

8) Why was the mushroom invited to all the parties?

answer: Because he was a fun-guy {fungi}!

9) {cut off} Why do ballerinas wear tu-tus?

answer: Because one-ones are too small and

three-threes are too big!

10) What do you get when you combine a vampire with a snowman?

answer: Frostbite!

11) What do you get when you cross a great white shark with a porcupine?

answer: As far away as possible!

12) What is invisible and smells like bananas?

answer: Monkey burps!

There is one more quick part that I almost missed because I shut off the camera,

but he walked off the stage like a robot. What a natural goofball!

Cupcakes and Purses

We're getting close to the end of the school year here in NY! Finally! At least the weather has held out and the schools haven't been TOO hot this June. I always feel bad for the kids who have to go to school with no air-conditioning mid-June, but this has been our coldest June in history, so it has been nice for them.

Yesterday I baked cupcakes for my son's Kindergarten class. He is studying bugs, so I repeated my bug theme for the class. There were a few cupcakes left over, so I made on using my older son's comic book character, Meep! Isn't he cute?

Here is one of the cupcakes that I was particularly fond of.

Oh... and this one!

Another less glared photo..... The plates are black depression glass. Aren't those scalloped edges adorable?

Here's the whole box. If you click on the picture it should open larger for you.

While working on my "gardening" {and by gardening, I mean weeding}, I found these adorable little pansies among a million weeds. Awe!

Here is a picture of another purse I made today. I love this one so much, I may have to keep it. Of course, I've said that about all of them so far! How many purses can one girl have, anyway???

Have a great Tuesday!

Tami

A Junk Collector Makes A Haul

Seriously... you all won't believe the week my friends and I have had at our favorite thrift store (Salvation Army) which is, sadly, going out of business. Because they are GOB... I hit the motherload on Christmas goodies. We hung around like vultures waiting for the nice ladies to bring up the boxes from the basement. The truck guys came and hauled them all up. They sat them in big piles in an alcove in the store and said, "Have at it!"

Now, to my mother, this would be a total nightmare. To Wendy, Janet and me, it was like Christmas! Who knows which treasure we would dig up in those old boxes of stuff wrapped in tissue paper??? We came up with quite a few nice decorations and went back every day for 4 days to see what else we could find.

I'm going to show you the boxes of stuff, but I'm not going to take pictures of it all yet. I'm not sure if anyone would really be interested to see ALL of it. LOL! I paid about $15 for all of this.

This box has a whole village in it. We've never had one and this seemed a great opportunity to get it. There is a nice big church in there somewhere and a skating rink and everything. There are also wooden ornaments that I collected from MANY different boxes. I'm going to do a little tree with these wooden ornaments for V.'s room this year. He loved them!

This one has the snowmen I collected and 2 or 3 boxes of balls and some other fun ornaments.

More of the little wooden ornaments and some Christmas signs. These are from S.A. but I bought my mom the same ones last Christmas at the Christmas Tree Shops.

This is a Dept. 56 tree, a whimsical metal tree with bells on it, some shelf-sitters and a few more snowmen...oh, and a teddy bear.

More ornaments in a snowflake basket! A lot of what we collected we thought we could tie on packages... like these rusty tin onaments with little curly wires.

A Christmas tree basket with garlands in it. I love to decorate for Christmas. If you don't believe me, look HERE! What I don't use will go to my mom. I sure had fun collecting it though!

Few know the joy of thrifting, if you know, jot a comment. I'd love to hear from you!

If you read yesterday's post, you may remember that I said that the backyard can be used as inspiration for landscaping, but this is the eyesore that is my front flower garden. LOL! I'm hoping these will be the "BEFORE" pictures! I need to get out there and work. Graham and I did some of it yesterday after the pictures, but today it is pouring rain, so it won't get done today.

Most of the little bushes you see here on the right... yeah... they're weeds.




These bushes below have gotten really big, so I guess they need some
serious maintenance. They almost completely block the front door.

The brown you see on the left is where the deer ate all of our
ground cover last winter. Not sure what to do there. It is almost
an evergreen shrub and they ate it. It was fun seeing them right
outside of the window though.

The daisys have taken over!

This is to the side of one of our garages. There is a small flower garden where I've tossed some wild flower seeds and there are quite a few bulbs that come up in this area. There is a large maple tree and then this light green tree in the front.

Another of my issues.... the lawn goes to the edge of the forest and then there are lots and lots of weeds that get really tall and lanky. What DO other people do about these? They seem like an eye sore to me, but maybe it is just nature and I should leave it alone? It is a lot of work to weed whack them all! Can anyone tell me what they do in this instance?

This is the kids' play yard and the forest beside it. The fence is the side fence of the pool.
I thought you could tell better, but there are some nice plants that grow along there in differing shades of greens and reds. (Sorry... bad picture)

This is the bench that I want to spray paint. It will happen one of these days and you know I will be blogging the outcome!

Oh... and this is the other side of the poolhouse. The deer ate this ground cover like crazy this winter and it seems to have killed it. Now what????

This is the top of the driveway. Another place where the weeds get out of control along the forest. You can't mow over there because it isn't wide enough, but it is a huge area to weed.

This is the top of the driveway. This is a good area to see how the landscapers put in reds and yellows and greens in layers.

There are no flowres right now, but lots of color. The shaggy little bushes on the right are lilies and will be blooming soon.

Well, that's it! Our yard as it is now. I want to get out there tomorrow and get the front started. It will probably take all day. My poor aching back!

Landscaping Inspiration? Run Away!

I spent the day looking around Lowe's and another garden center with my friend Wendy. She is doing some landscaping in the front of her house, so we were looking for ideas. We took a little trip around town, stopping in front of peoples' houses and really looking at their landscaping. It was really fun because although we've driven past these houses 100's of times, we never really LOOK. If you're looking for inspiration, I'd say try it. It really does help you know what you should or shouldn't do.

Now, I decided to send Wendy some pictures because although she's been to my house tons of times, I'm pretty sure she's never inspected the landscaping. I take NO credit for the landscaping at my house. Landscapers & the previous owners did it all...Thank the LORD! LOL!
I don't know what half of the plants are and I'm only really figuring out what to pull out for sure and what are weeds. I'm getting good at that part though. Granted, a lot of our shrubs and bushes are overgrown, but my dh assures me that bushes are this weekend's project. Of course... it is also 24 Hours of LeMans weekend, so I'm skeptical. So, ignore the big huge bushes and some of the bad weeds you see and look at this landscaping for what it is worth as inspiration. My favorite thing that they did was this; they planted colorful foliage. This allows us to have lots of bright pretty colors even when there are no flowers blooming to provide color.

Here are pictures of the backyard. I'm starting there because it is the most "done" when it comes to weeding and trimming. There is still a hedge row that needs to be shaped. I'm hoping to use these as before pictures and then I'll post after pictures when everything is completed.

This one is looking out the door of our screened in room (aka "The Picnic Room"). Lots of hosta and ornamental grasses and lilies. The grasses are great because in the fall they provide me with great "wheat" stalks for in centerpieces! See the layers of color I was talking about?

This is in front of the pool yard. Japanese maple and a pretty blue spruce shrub. The vine you see gets a pretty purple flower and I know the name, but can't think of it now.

This is in the backyard looking out toward one of the garages and the top of the driveway. I love the way they placed rocks here and there.

This is the same garden as the first picture. There is a huge blue spruce in the corner. It is getting really big. Yikes. The tree trunk you see is a ginko tree. LOVE it!

Same garden with my cuties in it.

And another with G. facing the pool yard.

The other side of that huge blue spruce. You can see the corner of the picnic room.

Check out that weeping pine shrub. We call it Cousin It.

The poolyard fence with a little rock wall border and some ground cover.

The wooded corner in front of the poolyard. We're lucky to have a beautiful wooded backdrop to our yard.

This old moss-covered picnic table was out in the woods and I had dh drag it out so I could feed the birds and squirrels on it and I put a picnic basket and a planter on it. I planted plants in both. I'll save the closeup of that for another day.

Japanese maples and some other shrubs and a pine tree in the front of the house an in the area behind the deck.

An area in the poolyard where we put our fire pit. It isn't there yet. This bush needs some trimming and I plan to change the color of that outdoor furniture this summer. Wonder what color I should go with??? Thoughts?

This is a weeping something or other. LOL! The bushes under it need some trimming as well.... more for the "After" photos.

The tree in the pool yard. It has a robin nest in it. Awe!

A crazy pine that I'm not so sure about. I want to rip it out. It may be dead.

Another tree in the poolyard with a birdhouse in it that bird actually use.

Wendy, here's the verigated yellow and green ground cover. It spreads nicely. Yes, those are weeds in the foreground.

Major hosta!

We have 2 acres of landscaped yard. It is a lot of work, really. I suggest smaller! That's why I said, "Run Away" in the title! They've created 7 or 8 different flower gardens about the yard and they get weeded 2 or 3 times a summer. You can tell I'm not much of a gardener. I did get the boys to help me and they really love it, so I hope it stays that way. I'll pay them $20 each to weed for me. I'm still teaching them what to pull and what not to pull and how to cut with the loppers, etc. V. gets bored with it easily, but G. loved it.

Is it considered child labor if the kid WANTS to do it? LOL!