Patio

   This is our patio that we extended with pavers--not cheap!!  A few years ago we started this, and we didn't stop until we were happy with it, so it took us all summer.

The picture below, with my hubby, is what it looked like before we started.  Lots of monkey grass--at least that's what they called it where I bought it in Louisiana.  I got one pot of it back in 1977, and I have divided it through the years and gave lots of it away, and I still have a ton of it.

Here's the pickup with one load of pavers.  (We must have gone to the lake, because the pontoon is in the driveway; we normally keep it at a storage place when we're not using it.)

We called Erin bright and early one Saturday--She lives just down the street--"come help us unload".  She's a sweetie, and she's always good to help us and we're good to help her.  Pat ourselves on the back.  I love having her down the street.

We also picked up pavers in the SUV.

Unloaded, we began.

We started with a circle of grey pavers in the sand.

My hubby brought them to me and I laid them out using a level and a board.

Next we started filling in using the same method.  The pavers around the edges had to be cut with a grinder.  That was hubby's job--I marked, he cut.

Almost done with the circle; notice the pile of pavers has gone way down in the picture below.  After we finished the circle, we decided to make a couple of paths behind it and a landing for the water hose--more pavers.  We just kept adding on until we were happy.  Then we swept sand into the cracks.

We ended up just about buying the hardware store out of pavers.  We are happy with it now.
Some of the pavers look like this now.  Cool, huh?

The backyard doesn't exactly look like the picture below anymore, because we had a real bad Ice storm that following winter, and the neighbor lost their trees (partly in our yard).  We were without power for 12 days.  It was terrible.  After 6 days of freezing cold we bought a generator, so we had 6 days with a generator.  It was big enough to run the heater, refrigerator, freezer, a few lights, and the aquariums.  When I used the blow dryer, I had to turn off the heat first.  We cooked with a propane burner.  We made it just fine though.  To this day I think about all the power it takes to run our house when I turn something like the blow dryer on.  We had another  ice storm the next winter, but we were only without power 3 days.

Now we don't have any morning shade, and there is an extremely high wood pile next to the fence.

Bags Galore

While I've been on the subject of bags, I will show some more bags.  This first one I made is from a book I bought--I think it's called Pretty Home Made.  I love that book.  With some of these bags I changed the pattern a little to make them bigger, different--whatever I wanted to do.  I love this first one.

   This is a group of pictures below of the same three bags that I made larger.  I also made my hubby one this size out of camouflage to keep his meds in.

As you can see below, I put labels on the leaves.

I made three bags for my MIL, but for some reason my computer refuses to upload any more pics, so I guess this is all I get to post.  Maybe later it will be in a better mood----it's cranky right now.

Well, here we go!  It's working again--YaHoo!  The above bags were made for my MIL, but she only took one--it's not pictured here...it was a medium size bag in the same material as the two matching ones.

My columbine are just beautiful, so I just had to take more pictures of them.

I also took pictures of the beautiful clouds--just look past all the power lines.  A progression of God's handwork--WOW!  I am just continually amazed.

I enjoy playing around with pictures so here's the Moon:

Sorry, I know that's just weird---but---it was fun.  You can make out the face just a little bit.

Is It Snowing?

 This actually took place a few weeks ago, and I'm just now getting around to posting about it.  Our daughter, Celeste and her family came over so Jeff could repair our riding lawn mower.  Yeah!  Our grandkids discovered that the dogwood was dropping it's white petals and gathered some of  them up and threw them up in the air, so I told them to do it again and I would go get my camera.  Here are some of my sweet grandbabies (that's a grama term--and they let me get by with it).

In the sky in the picture above you can see a storm approaching--When it hit a few moments later, our bumper crop of whirligigs come raining down with the wind--It actually sounded like rain before the rain started.

And here is our sweet Sophie--she's growing like a weed, but a whole lot cuter.

Below is our great son-in-law, Jeff, fixing our mower--wonderful!!!  We have had so much trouble with that mower.  Now my hubby can mow--YES!!  It's pretty nice having a "gear-head" in the family.  I think he can fix anything.  He is sooooo good to help us.

Don't look at our messy garage--That's mostly my doin's.  I have so many hobbies and a lot of junk goes with that.  You should see our attic--Yikes!!!  My hubby is neat as a pin, and this goes against his grain a little.  We are planning on a multifamily garage sale at my niece, Niki's house real soon--so this should improve, I hope.  Here is something else I'm making for a fund raiser for someone who's needing a little help.

I've made 12 of them and I'm getting ready to make some diaper & wipes totes.

Brown Needle Book

This is another needle book that I made.  This one is actually in book form with cardboard, padding, and liner for the book binding.  The blanket-stitched edges of the pages are of felt, and stitched to a center spine.  It is about 3-4"  square when closed by a ribbon that is sewn between the lining and outer cover of the book.

This is my plan book below, and when I run across something I want to make I write it in this book with sketches and measurements and all.

 The page below is what I went by.  I don't know if you can figure out how I made it by my instructions, but you can click on the picture if you're interested.

Here is a picture of it open.

The picture below is the one I used in the header of my Blog.

Scissors Keeper

Here is a Scissors Keeper that I made.  It has embroidery on the front.  I used one-strand of floss, and a bullion-stitch on the roses, and I just love it--so cute, even if I do say so.  I'm a little afraid to use it much because it's white and not washable.  I glued the padding to cardboard.  I also made my own twisted cording to stitch around the edge.  The lining is also glued to the cardboard.  It's mainly for looks anyway.

It came out better than I thought it would.  In the picture below you can see the Hankie that I made behind the Scissors Keeper.   The lace is some of my tatting.  I think it's almost a lost art.  It is so slow though, I can see why.  It's hard to stay with it when it goes so slow.  I haven't tried the new needle tatting yet, but I'm not curious enough to see how it works to try it.  I really like using a shuttle.

A close-up of the embroidery.

An an even closer close-up.

Love the pink roses.  I think that's my favorite flower, and the color of flower.  I really like a lot of flowers though, so that's really a close call.

I want to show off some of my flowers that are blooming now.

And a little something I'm working on.

Six-inch wide bags for change or whatever.  Check out these: this site,and here, here, and this site.

The Great Escape Artist

Erin's dogs are great at escaping.  She has tags on them with her phone number, and gets calls on a regular basis.  We have tried many things.  Here we have another thing to try.  A dog pen inside her fenced in backyard.  Erin and I  dug up pavers in our backyard we were no longer using and took them to her house.   We laid them out around the perimeter of where the fencing and posts would go in her backyard.  The dogs are clueless--they think we're just having fun--Tee-hee!

We have some posts, fencing, gate, hardware, post hole digger, rock bar, shovel, and a cart.  Here we are, (meaning hubby)--digging for the first gate post.

Now the second post.

Erin helped her daddy with this one as well.  I mostly watched and bossed, or "supervised"  as my father-in-law would say.  Actually, hubby and I usually are a pretty good team, and work well together.  What I don't know about, he usually does.  Erin fits right in too--I've always enjoyed working with her.

Both posts set in quickcrete.

Now for the gate hangers--my technical name for the gadget.

Marking where the second one goes.

Drilling is daddy's job; I don't enjoy it at all.  We got the gate hung and the latch on, then we pounded the fence posts into the ground.  We wrapped the fencing around, and hooked the fencing in place, and lastly we used super staples that you pound in with a hammer to attach the fencing to the wooden posts.  I held the huge staples in place with needle nose pliers while he hammered them in place.  We were working on the very last one on the bottom of the post, I was all bent over (I forgot I had placed my cup of water on top of the post) and Guy told me what a good helper I was while he was banging away then----boom!!!  The cup landed on my head and splashed all over my back.

Erin has my sense of humor; she snickered and laughed, and couldn't stop--Thanks Erin!!  I would have done the same thing.  I always laugh at the wrong time.  I got that from my dad--my mom used to say:  "he laughs at things that aren't funny!"  Several of my grandchildren have been blessed with the same problem--It's my gift to them.  I love it.  What's bad is when you laugh in church at the wrong time.  The problem is you can't quit laughing--it's terrible.

All penned in---Wahoo!  Job done! 

Dogs:  "Okay--you can let us out now."

I'm sure there are more escapes on the way, cause I've already had to go find them.  We will keep trying, and someday we will learn how to  pen 'em.  I feel a song commin' on....I wish Erin and I could sing it for you.  It's one of our favorites. 

The Pig Song :

We was drivin' along,  doin' what would please us. .
We was on our way,  to do some gigs,
hit the brakes too late,  run over some pigs.

Chorus:
Pigs, pigs,  I got nothin' again 'em,
But if you'ins have any pigs,
You ourta learn how to pen 'em,
Buy you a  watch dog,
And name that dog Rover.
To keep your pigs off the road,
So they don't get run overr---rrr.

Mac is giving me the evil eye--I think he's figured out what is going on.