Progress report - Day 1

I guess I can't put this off any longer. It's time for my daily progress report
My additions since yesterday are
One of these (not entirely happy with it) I don't know what's all over it in the picture but I can't see it on the real thing.

3 of these (not entirely happy with these either)

You may think I didn't do too bad for just one day. If you knew the whole truth you would change your mind. I had all the flowers done and the cans covered, I just had to put them together.
After I got these done I did a little experiment and came up with this

The idea really came from Cheryl who did a black and a white scottie dog a while back.

So I'm blaming my progress, or lack there of on the grumpy mood that I put myself in today. Tomorrow morning Wade will go off to work, the house will be quiet and I'm going to get busy.

You've been enlisted

That's right, each and every one of you has been enlisted to help keep me motivated. The best part for you is that you really don't have to do anything different from what you are already doing. I'm going to post a daily progress report while I'm on vacation, of what I managed to accomplish towards my goal for the craft show. I'm hoping that rather than embarrass myself I will be pushing full steam ahead and getting things done.
Today I'' show you what I had as of this morning.

Is t hat not pitiful. I've known about this for how long now and all I've managed to finish was 6 tags, 4 magnets and 3 necklaces. To make matters worse, those tags were made about a year ago, long before I knew about this and I just decided to use them.
Obviously I have a lot of work to do.

Take a slow ride

I think that this car was made more for parking than for driving.

I took this picture a couple of years ago at the beach. The reason I chose this for today is because the beach makes me think of vacation. As of 2:30 p.m. today I officially went on vacation. I have the next 9 days off. Even though I know those days will be over before I know it, I'm going to hopefully take full advantage of the time. I'm embarrassed to admit it but I have done very little to get ready for that craft show in September. The plan is to take care of that this week.

Do you believe in fairies

After yesterday I certainly do. Especially if it's the Fairy Hobmother

 

You're not familiar with the fairy Hobmother ? Well then let me tell you all about her (him to be more precise)

The fairy hobmother is from Appliances Online and flies around the blogosphere granting wishes to people who leave comments on posts like this one. My wish was granted (in the form of a $50 Amazon gift card) after recently leaving a comment on Missing Moments. Imagine my surprise when I received an email from the Fairy Hobmother (a.k.a. Alex Duthie) asking if I would like to accept his gift.

Now here is the best part. You too, have the chance to get a visit from the fairy hobmother just by leaving a comment here telling me what your wish is. Feel free to send your friends over too.

Hydrangea Season

I just love this time of year when the Hydrangea are in bloom. I know I've told the story more than once but I'm going to tell it again. Don't worry, it's a very short story.
Shortly after I moved in to my house, my father gave me a hydrangea bush. He brought it over and even planted it for me right under my living room window.

Maybe the fact that this came from my dad is why I love it so much. But even so, it's gorgeous if you ask me.

Even though I'm not much of a gardener, this bush thrives. It returns every year to grace me with it's beauty.

To me, a blooming hydrangea is the next best thing to having my dad return from heaven to spend a little bit of summer hanging out with me.

I walk out the front door and they just make me smile.

In other news, I'm going to skip responding to comments on yesterdays post. Instead I'll update you all here. Duke would like to thank everyone for their well wishes. He is happy to report that he is feeling 99% better today. 

A case of the ick

Someone isn't feeling so well today. I don't know if it's the heat or he ate something that didn't agree with him or maybe a little of both.
When I came home from work today I didn't even hit the other side of the basement before the less than pleasant aroma hit me. Right away I knew that Duke had a case of the icks.

Poor puppy. Maybe I should take the day off tomorrow to stay home with my poor sick dog. I'm sure my boss will understand. HA yeah, right.

On the fringe

I ordered a new toy and I spent part of my weekend playing with it.
This is what it looks like.

You run a strip of paper through it and this is what you get

I had lots of fun out on the deck. I had my stuff, or junk as Wade calls it, spread all over the entire table

Here's a close up some of the flowers I made with the fringed strips of paper.

I could just cut the strips by hand like my blog pal Cheryl (check out her fringed flowers) but I don't have the patience and my cuts are very inconsistent.

Before I go, I wanted to mention that my little toy came from Quilling Superstore. I was very impressed by how fast I got my order. I placed my order on July 20th and received it on the 23rd. If you ever need quilling supplies, I would  recommend this web site. No, they didn't pay me to say this and I didn't get any cool free products for giving them a thumbs up. Just a shout out to say that there are still some businesses out there that do good.

Early to bed and early to rise

Another early start to the day again.
First stop the deck with a cup of coffee and the laptop. It may be daylight in the picture but it was dark when I started

Next it was the weekly trip to the store. Shopping is a tough job but somebody has to do it.

Back home and hit the deck for a little quilling. I didn't get much done since my son called and asked if him and his girlfriend could come over and swim.
Duke enjoys entertaining in the pool

The pool got plenty of use today. My son, his girlfriend and her daughter and two others came over. He brought food and he cooked AND did the dishes afterward. I got a picture of the dishwashing, since that was the first time I think I've seen that in my house.

Duke found an intruder in the yard and chased him out. He'll be back. His home is under our shed. 

Tomorrow will be another early day but it sure isn't going to be as fun

Oh what a beautiful morning

Someone may need to explain the concept of sleeping in on ones day off. Monday through Friday I get up at 4:20 a.m. It's Saturday, and what time did I get up? I bet you're thinking 4:20. You would be wrong. I got up at 3:30 a.m. Not only did I wake up but I got out of bed, made some coffee and sat down at my computer to start catching up with my blog reading. After my first cup of coffee I took the laptop out on the deck and enjoyed the beautiful morning.

I watched my neighbor go out to burn papers before she headed off to work this morning. 

I watched the sky as it did it's morning magic.

And I said good bye to the moon.

 All caught up, I headed in the house to start some cleaning. I'm proud to report that once again my house looks presentable and all the laundry is done.
The rest of the day I spent hanging on the deck doing very little.

Pretty pretty

Yesterday I said there were two things that I purchased at the grocery store last week. I showed you Duke's sign yesterday and today I'll show you something I bought for me.
Another pretty pretty something for my garden. Can you guess what it is?

Love the braided tree trunk. The top has some of these on it.

Here's a look at the whole thing. Pay no attention to the dusty dirty and downright filthy siding behind it. I may have to go out there with the hose this weekend. 

If you still don't know what it is, it's called a braided hibiscus. Now tell me, just exactly how much would you expect to pay for this plant? Yeah, me too. That's why when I saw the price was only $12.99 I decided that it would look really nice in my yard.

Love is

I discovered what love is in the grocery store. Wade and I made another trip to the grocery store and while he bought pork chops and steaks I found something much more interesting to me. I actually purchased two things but I'm only going to show you one of them today. Tomorrow you can see the other one.
I saw this and just couldn't resist.

Duke gave me the paws up for buying this.

Once again we are feeling the effects of the heat here. I went outside on break this afternoon and the banks sign showed a temperature of 95. When I left work it read 99. The computer says 98 but with the humidity it feels like 109.  At least there is a breeze out there today although it is blowing a lot of hot air around.
If I don't melt I'll be back tomorrow to show you what else I got on the latest shopping trip

Saving Mother Earth the final chapter

No fancy costumers or dancers today but I figured I could stretch this out for one more post.
After a few hours of the sweltering heat, my friend and I decided to check out the craft booths before heading to the comfort of the air conditioned truck.
We visited one called Spotted Pony Traders. They sold Deer and Elk Leather, leather and cloth clothing, furs, antlers, skulls and beads. I'm sure that animal rights activists would have had a heart attack looking at this stuff.
Another booth we visited was Wolfheart's Herbal Remedies. Debbie bought some sinus tea from him and I'm interested to hear how it worked.
We saw jewelry of course and I did buy a necklace but forgot to take a picture of it.
I only snapped two quick pictures while browsing. This particular vendor had all sorts of things made from different parts of deer. He had deer legs, antlers, skulls and even deer hooves. I'm not quite sure what you would do with those things but there they were.
He also had jewelry and dishes of buttons. You might be able to see the buttons at the bottom of this picture. They were made from deer antlers.

 

 I snapped a quick picture of this display of walking stick, spears and I'm not sure what else was in there.

How about a closer look at that in sepia

And that is the end of my Saving Mother Earth pow-wow experience.

Due to the extreme heat wave we are having I'm skipping sitting in front of my computer tonight. We don't have air conditioning in the house so I'm going to be hanging out in the basement where it's at least a little cooler. So as not to disturb the man in the man cave with the clickety clack of my laptop keyboard I'm shutting down until tomorrow. Catch up with you later.

Saving Mother Earth part 2

The announcer gave the go ahead to take pictures and out came the camera again.
It was an extremely warm day and my friend Debbie and I chose to watch much of the dancing from the shade of some near by trees. I did move up close to get some pictures though.
I can't tell you what the dances were, I'm afraid that what information I did hear melted out of my brain before I reached home.

This next guy was my favorite to watch. I found the way that he preformed the dances was fascinating.

There was a younger boy who was dressed very similar to the guy above. I happened to be walking by him as he was bending over to pick something up. His feathers were just begging me to take their picture.

Saving Mother Earth part 1

So that I don't overload anyone on pictures today I'm breaking the Saving Mother Earth Powwow down into 2 maybe 3 posts.
Waiting for things to get started, I snapped a few pictures.

Before they could begin they needed to preform what they referred to as smudging. I don't know all the particulars because I couldn't hear the announcer very well but it consisted of waving smoke over each of the dancers. It had something to do with cleansing them of negative feelings. (Anyone who knows about native American traditions please feel free to correct me)

The dancers are lined up waiting their turn to be smudged.

Dancers waiting to enter the circle

This is where I had to shut my camera off. They requested that pictures not be taken during the grand entrance out of respect for the spiritual nature of the ceremony. The grand entrance was followed by a blessing, the flag dance which was their version of the national anthem and a veterans dance honoring all who have fought for our country as well as their families. When this was completed we could begin taking pictures again.
Tomorrow I'll bring pictures of some of the dancers

Thoughts

• I keep saying I don't have time for this or I don't have time for that. I realized today while I was taking time to weed the garden that it's because I haven't made the time. So today I made the time to weed, float in the pool and hang out on the deck.
• Kindness and courtesy are not completely dead. Yesterday when I walked by two young girls who were standing outside a convenience store collecting for their organization they greeted me with a good morning and opened the door. When I came out and handed them a dollar they thanked me and told me to have a nice day. Later in the day I stopped at a fast food place and met two more kids collecting for the same thing. I told them I already gave at the other store. The boy smiled, said ok and told me to have a nice day. Of course when I came out I donated another dollar and I got yet another thank you and have a nice day. 
• The few good kids out there make up for the ones like the two girls who were collecting in front of the dollar store one day. I had to step off the sidewalk to get around them as they were too busy dancing and jumping around to notice I was even there. Ok so I was walking up behind them, I'll cut them some slack. But, when I came out of the store and was walking right towards them they just ignored me. Apparently collecting was too good for them. They let the one boy that was with them do all the work.
• Spending time inside in front of the computer getting pictures ready for a blog post was not in the plan for the day.

Tomorrow I'll be back with part 1 of the powwow.                                                                                                                      

New Nieghbors

We have an empty lot next to our house. I've always liked it because that means I only have a neighbor on one side of me. It seems that a new family decided that they wanted to put their home on that empty lot. They showed up a couple days ago.

I haven't seen a killdeer in ages. We used to have a lot of them around when I was growing up. In the second photo I think that possibly it is performing what Wikipedia referred to as a distraction display. They do this to protect nests and small chicks.
Over the course of the weekend I will hopefully catch up with everyone. Tomorrow there will be no post. Yes, can you believe I am taking the day off from posting on purpose? I'm going to the Healing Mother Earth Powwow with a friend of mine. It sounds interesting and it's certainly a good excuse to take some pictures. If you follow the link it will take you to a site that has a schedule of all of the Powwows in Ohio. You can also read what each of them has to offer. I don't know where my friend heard about it but she wanted to check it out so that's what we're doing.
Hope everyone is getting their weekend off to a good start.

All that glitters is not gold

Even though it may look like gold don't let it fool you.

Another little item that is preparing to go to the craft show with me. It will eventually be on a chain. The quilled flower is made with strips of brown paper bag. It's coated with glue then I painted it with a gold metallic paint. I also painted the wood disc that it's glued to gold. I glued the blue gem to the middle but I'm not sure if I like it or not. I've made some others but left off the gem.
Not bad for a brown paper bag.

It's been a year

Yes, it's been about a year since I last saw my daughter. She's been living in Colorado so visits to Pennsylvania are few and far between.
She's here today though so I'm spending time with her. Catch you all tomorrow

The plan

Do you remember a couple weeks ago when I said that I had something coming up that was both exciting and scary? I thought about keeping it a secret until it really happened but it turns out that I have nothing else to blog about.
Well the plan involved some of this

This is about all I've been doing in my spare time lately. These will all eventually end up in a can like I did with the spring flowers, The smaller ones I have another idea for but not quite sure how I want to do them. So why am I making all these?
Because I'm planning on doing a craft show with a friend of mine in September. I have no idea if I'll be able to put together enough stuff or not but I guess I'll find out.
Aside from the quilling I thought I might take along some of my photography too. I'll be doing it in the form of either fridge magnets or cards or both.
The picture above I'm pretty sure will be going along only it will look like this.

Any way, if I don't spend as much time commenting in the next couple months you'll know that I'm frantically trying to put stuff together.
Wish me luck. I think I'm going to need it :)

Are the stars out tonight

No those aren't stars. That's not even a good picture of fireworks but it was the best I could do to go with today's post.
Saturday night I was sitting outside just after the sun went down enjoying the cooler evening air. First there was one, then two, then what seemed like hundreds. There were fireflies dancing all around putting on a spectacular light show for me. It was like the stars had fallen from the sky to dance on earth for my entertainment.
I sat there wishing that I had my camera so that I could attempt to capture the magic, but afraid to move and miss one single second of it.

I think this quote says it best.
His sanguine spirit turns every firefly into a star. (Quote by - Arthur Conan Doyle)

The perfect host

Do you remember Lola? That's my sons dog that I posted about a while back. Remember how cute she was and how much smaller than Duke?
Lola was over last Monday for the picnic we had and she's grown some

Normally I'm very careful about not showing my deck in pictures because it's really quite awful looking. However today I'm going to break away from that because the pictures of Lola and Duke playing together are just too cute not to share.

I don't know if they are kissing or telling secrets

Duke looking not quite so sure about what Lola's next move will be

These two did not stop all day long. I was constantly running around chasing after them. Duke is good about staying around when we are outside but Lola had a thing about wanting to check out the front yard. I finally ended up putting one in the house and leaving the other outside just so I could sit down for a while. Duke was exhausted by the end of the day.