June GIFTAWAY!

I promised you a great Giftaway for this month and here it is: All you have to do to qualify for the drawing is leave a comment. I'm doing things a little differently this month - your name will be added to "the pot" each time you leave a post this month! If you mention this drawing on your blog, your name will be added yet another time! First, we have this beautiful vintage glass candy bowl: ...this vintage dresser scarf in near-perfect condition ...a whimsical, handmade dishtowel made by me ...this sweet set of three hanging ceramic jello molds ...a handmade gingham apron (I can't take credit for making this one) that is actually PINK but looks RED here! ...and finally, this little birdnest-basket designed and made by me. Well, not quite finally - I'm also including a couple bars of delicious-smelling homemade soap!!! The drawing will be July 1. Good luck!

WORDLESS WEDNESDAY: My version of a driveby shooting & After the Rain

HUGE Giftaway this Month!

Happy Monday! Aw, c'mon! Mondays aren't all that bad, are they? Okay, tell ya what - I'll share mine with you. Can you guess where I was mid-morning? Here's a hint:

Yep, a no-brainer, huh? At least it wasn't for one of those dreaded annual checkups, you know, the one with the awkward position on the table, etc. Good ol' Doc Finch and I only had to go over some blood work, review my meds, etc. He's not so old, actually. I think I was one of his first patients after med school. I think he's younger than my stepbrother, also a doc. He's pleasant, jokes with me and our meeting lasted perhaps all of 15 minutes. It's the waiting for him to come in that is the boring part. If you've been wondering why I haven't posted any info about this month's Giftaway, there's a reason: This one is going to be a BIG ONE! That's right, a really Blow-Out Giftaway! I'm only a couple posts away from my 100th posting, a milestone to celebrate (so I'm told) PLUS June is the month when the three men in my life were born. Hubby's birthday was the 7th, Brother's is the 18th and Son's is the 28th. See? A month to celebrate! Watch for the picture posting of the Giftaway package toward the end of this week! Let me assure you, it will be a doozy and all you have to do to qualify for the drawing is post a comment! Meanwhile, I decided to take another pic of the two fabrics used for the chair I've almost finished. This pic was taken outside and you can get a better idea of the richness of the fabric and colors.

The other chair will have two of these three fabrics.

Want to help me choose? I'm open to suggestions. Hugs,

More on the Chair Redo

Man alive, is it ever HOT here!!! I haven't seen much of the national weather reports lately but believe the entire southern part of the US is about ready to melt. It's 94° here and the humidity is almost as high. What's happening weather-wise where you are? Okay, I know you remember this ugly chair I showed you yesterday. I took this picture without the pillow seat: Right now, as I type, this is what it looks like:

Please tell me that you know it's not finished. I'd hate it if you thought my finish work was this awful. The cushion has to be entirely reworked (somehow) and I need to make a cording for the trim that will wrap around the bottom, where the green and yellow-ish fabric meets the wood. That aside, what do you think of these color and pattern combos?

I'm asking for a reason - not just to get your opinions (because you know I do value them) - I'll have some rather large pieces of this fabric left over and am thinking about offering them here. Keep in mind that this is upholstery fabric and very heavy. You certainly wouldn't want to make a summer top from it! However, it would probably make a cute pincushion or footstool cover, etc. It definitely would make a darling pillow or two. And for you nature lovers, my friend Baby Swallow decided to poke his head waaay out of his doorway this morning to check out what I was doing (which wasn't much, not in this heat). He allowed me to get really close with the camera, since Mama and Papa Swallow weren't around to yell at him. I'm still not sure how many babies are in the nest. I'm thinking either two or three. ...and now, I'm off to work on this pillow seat and to fix some sun tea. Keep cool!

Fixit Day Gone Awry

Today was supposed to be my Fixit Day. I had all these great intentions of recovering at least one of the two like chairs I've been storing in the attic for about three years now. Okay, maybe four. My biggest garden was definitely going to get my attention. My many photos that my CCG (cute computer guy) was able to recover when my computer crashed were going to be downloaded onto a disk. A metal railing that I painted a few weeks ago was finally going to have its home in the garden next to the house. It was a day to get it in gear, get my rear end moving, do the Fixit Cha-cha.

So, today for me started at 8:00 AM, about an hour past when I had intended to get up. Last night's low was about 70°; I knew that, in order for me to get anything accomplished in the garden without being flushed downhill in a current of my own perspiration, I would have to be out there 'way before 9:00. Well, at 8:00 AM, it was already above 80°.

Maybe the weeding would be best postponed until this evening. Wait! What was that? Oh, how sweet! The tree swallows who decided to move into one of our wren houses were feeding their babies! How clever of me to happen to have my camera strapped to my wrist.

These beautiful animals will let me photograph them from about 5'. This morning, however, Mama Swallow turned and looked at me as if to say, "Puh-leeze! Can't you see we're busy here?"

She flew away from her house, circling over me with Papa Swallow until I stepped back a couple feet.

Gee, what was happening to my Fixit Day? I had spent about a half hour watching the Swallow family. My focus obviously wasn't on that to-do list I worked on last night. Well, by noon I still hadn't accomplished much except meandering around the yard, getting really hot in the now 94° temperature and serving as dinner to about a dozen mosquitoes. Mosquitoes, by the way, have a preference for roasted Filipino meat and a finely tuned facility for picking - oh, let's say - me out of a county gathering.

Before I drone on too much longer, let me show you what I did get accomplished: This table was almost the beginning of a verbal tug-of-war between my Hubby and myself. "That needs to be painted," I announced. "Why?" he asked. "It's cedar. It will last forever. It just needs to be stained." "It needs to be painted white," I tell him. "If you paint it, it will need to be painted every year. It just needs to be stained." Obviously, the fact that the wood is rotting badly enough underneath that the nails can be pulled out with two fingers and that the end of a couple of the boards had already broken off did not affect his definition of "lasting forever". Plus, I thought he was beginning to understand my tendency to lean toward painted furniture. "I stain it every year," I countered. "What's the difference between painting it and staining it?" He shrugged away, answerless. Besides, I already had the paint can and brush in my hands.

And, as usual, I forgot to take a "before" pic, but I did take a photo of these little shelves (okay, so I almost had one finished painted, but at least I remembered before I did both of them) and they were laying on the ugly-table-in-question. Here's one of the chairs I've been wanting to recover. Trust me, this is a great picture of it. It's much uglier in person. I remember wanting me to pay $7 each for them, after first quoting me $7 for the pair. The manager overheard our conversation and let me have the two for $7. I probably still overpaid for them. Yeah, they look that bad. This chair has since been stripped and is ready for its new dressing. The wood is now fossil green and I'm hoping to finish recovering it tonight. Until tomorrow...

Countryside Scenery

Today has seemed like Saturday all day to me. Hubby is off work. He has a strange (I think) work schedule, in that he works three days, then has two days off, works the next two days, then has three days off. Each day he works is a 12 hour shift. When he has three days off on a weekend (Friday, Saturday, Sunday), the Friday always feels like Saturday to me. We drove into Gate City, Virginia to buy a riding mower. We used most of today for the drive and the transaction. Not that the drive is that long - we just took our time. I snapped some pictures of the scenery along the way that I thought you might enjoy. It was so dry last year that farmers had a real shortage of hay to bale. It was nice to see a scene like this: The Virginia countryside is beautiful all year round. Take a look at these wildflowers along roadside. And you also get scenes like this: The entire trip smelled of sweet southern honeysuckle. Riding in a truck with no air conditioning means riding with the windows down. It does absolutely nothing for a hairstyle. But what the heck? It was still a nice day.

Cheap Sun Dresses, a Recipe and a Giftaway Winner!

Okay, yes, I'm late again with lots of stuff to catch up on. First, let me announce and congratulate the winner of last month's Giftaway, Irma's Rose Cottage! Irma, please email your snail mail info to me so I can get your Giftaway package in the mail to you!

Secondly, the reason for my absence: It hasn't been all computer problems. In fact, I can only blame the computer for a day and a half - at a stretch, possibly two days. It was just a life thing that I won't bore you with. (You know it has to be absolutely boring for me not to blog, since I blog about everything.) However, I was having a problem with Windows after my CCG (Cute Computer Guy) rebuilt my (formerly) emachines computer. He tweaked a few things for me and upgraded a couple things. I haven't had any problems since I've gotten it back. Do me a favor and, anytime you get a computer error message send it to me. If this computer runs as smoothly as I think it will, I'll need new excuses to look at him. It's an eye candy thing, Girls. LOL.

Need a simple sun dress? Here's a frugal tip: Wally World (and probably all places selling fabric) has bolts of fabric suitable for a one-seam top or sun dress. One side has been gathered in a smocking style. The instructions will be at the end of the bolt, with the price (usually under $13/yard). Don't pay attention to the instructions. Instead, wrap the gathered end around your chest and judge the amount of fabric that you'll need. I followed the instructions and bought too much fabric; I could have saved about $4 (roughly a third of a yard) if I had known to do this at that time. If your hips are larger than your bust, disregard this tip unless you plan on making a top. If you are making a dress, you may find it to be a little tight around the hips. This fabric is looong, ladies! It hit the floor with me. I originally intended to keep it long, didn't even hem it because the selvedged edge was on the bottom and this is something I wasn't planning to wear away from my back deck. I've since decided to cut the bottom to mid-knee length and put in a hem.

One of my neighbors was scheduled to have a back surgery yesterday morning. I volunteered to take her to the hospital; she needed to be there at 5:30 A.M. I waited in the lobby with her until she was called into the prep area, then sat and talked with her daughter-in-law for a few minutes longer before returning home.

Later in the afternoon I found out that she had been prepped for the surgery, given the anesthesia and taken into surgery before it was discovered that there was a major miscommunication between her doctor's office and the hospital. The hospital didn't have everything that was necessary for her operation. The surgeon ended up shooting some cortisone into her back and sent her home. The hospital personnel apologized profusely for the error and gave her a $10 gift certificate to Target. Can you imagine? My poor neighbor is still in major pain and has no idea when the surgery will be rescheduled. Plus, it will cost a minimum of $10 in gas to get to the nearest Target.

Recipe time! This is simple - the most time-consuming part is pre-frying a few strips of bacon. No measuring, either - it involves pasta and only you know how much your family will consume!

You'll need: Even number of Boneless chicken (breast or thigh) pieces, bacon, garlic salt, small onion, shell pasta (or penne, or even wide noodles or do as I did and mix the remains of open packages together), 1 can cream of chicken soup

You'll want to pre-fry and drain a few strips of bacon to avoid excess grease.

On half of your chicken pieces: Sprinkle a little garlic salt, some chopped onion and grated cheddar cheese. Place an untreated chicken piece on top and wrap a slice of pre-fried (not crispy) bacon around it. Secure with a toothpick. Bake at 350 for a half hour OR pop the chicken on the grill until it's done.

Meanwhile, cook and drain the pasta and stir in the cream of chicken soup. Fold this and the cooked chicken pieces together and serve with a side veggie (I chose peas).

As for now, I'm off to tackle today's task list. Be sure to check back soon for my June Giftaway prize package!

As always, keep grinnin' -

Sher