Love a short work week

The best thing about a long holiday weekend is that it's followed by a short work week.
We're rolling into the weekend already.

A great big hooray for Friday. We can start the weekend. Celebrate, have a blast and live it up. Just please, if you are going to party hardy try not to get too tanked.

Saying hello

Sorry about being MIA yesterday. The night before we were getting some pretty bad thunder and lighting and I thought it best to shut down the computer. By the time the weather settled down I was ready to head to bed.

So on with today. I've got some flowers for you (sort of)

I have a Pinterest board titled Greeting card inspiration. Whenever I'm in the mood to make a card I browse the board for idea.

This is my version of one that I have pinned to that board.  I was going to give you the link for the original card but it appears to no longer be any good.

Tuesday Monday

As bad as a Monday is sometimes it's even worse when it falls on Tuesday. Trying to get back into the swing of things after being off for three days just sort of leaves me feeling drained and washed out.

I was taking pictures of a project I was working on and forgot to change settings on my camera. This is what  I found on the camera. At least I only took two pictures before I realized what I was doing

Happy Memorial Day

not a total waste

If you were with me last summer, you might remember when I made the redneck wine glasses. After making those I sold a ton of them. It's been a while but I got another order for 16 of them but the want 2 of them with handles on them. 

I headed out Saturday morning in search of mason jars with handles and do you know NO ONE has them. I could order them online but won't be able to sell them for the price I quoted them. 

Well heading back home Amanda and I stopped at a yard sale that a woman Amanda works with was having. I got the most amazing deal.  OK so it's Christmas stuff but I don't care.

 Would you care to take a guess at how much I paid for all 4 things in the picture above? Well wait, I also got this basket.

Believe it or not, the lady told me I could have all 4 things in the first picture for $20.00 and she would throw in the basket for free.  When we were looking at the stuff I had said to Amanda that I didn't know if I had enough money on me to get all of them and the lady said "Oh you have enough". They were pricing things to sell.


Duke wanted you to see just how big that basket was. Believe it or not it was actually priced at $1.50

In the hood

Welcome to my neighborhood. The picture is from google maps. My house is the first one from the left on the top. My yard looks really big but it's really only about half that size because the empty lot next to my house doesn't belong to me.

At the bottom of the picture the first building from the left used to be a Dollar General but they moved up the street to a larger building with more parking. The next building over is a doctors office.

We'll be enjoying a three day weekend starting today so I may or may not be blogging. It's going to be one of those weekends with no plans and just do whatever I want.

I won

I recently won a giveaway at Cathy's blog Tolentreasures. The giveaway was for a 7 x 14 snowman canvas. Let me just say that Cathy is very good with a paint brush and I was thrilled when  I saw that I won.

Imagine my surprise when I opened up the box and saw all the extra goodies she included.

Don't you just love that canvas? I fell in love with the flag also. There's also a painted snowman key (bottom center), an adorable bat magnet, a handmade rolled rose brooch and the super cute rabbit magnet.

Wordless Wednesday

(taken from my daughter's facebook page)

Waiting

Someone is waiting. Sometimes he waits patiently and sometimes not so much.

He says to hurry

If you can't make it in time for this game he hopes you can make it for the next round

Sure hope that rope holds out

Wiped out

Aside from being cute and one of the best darn dogs in the state of Pennsylvania, Duke is a very busy little pup.
He has so many responsibilities and only so much time in a day to attend to them. Now that the weather is nice he's even busier keeping up with daily yard inspection.

Of course a guy also has to look his best which requires appointments with a qualified groomer. By mid day there was one little white pup who was over due for a nap.

common sight

Dandelions are a pretty common sight these days and I'm not complaining one bit.

My next door neighbors pay to have their lawn sprayed to prevent these little beauties from growing there.

The rest of us in the neighborhood let them grow.

better late than never

My subject for today came from my daughter's comment on yesterdays post. She suggested that I show you what she gave me for mother's day.
Now I had every intention of doing that and I was working my way up to it. I had the pictures on the camera finally I just didn't have them on the computer yet.
If nothing else, I have passed on the crafty gene to Amanda and she put her talents to work to make me a wreath.
It's full of spring time with butterflies

a pretty little bird

and plenty of pretty flowers.

Now this procrastinating mother needs to get this from the dining room chair to the front door.

Skipping

Last night when I sat down to try prepare a post for today I drew a blank so I just decided to skip it.

(picture courtesy of microsoft images)

Ragged around the edges

I've always liked the looks of the rag garlands that I've seen at craft shows and on the internet and have been wanting to make one. The only thing stopping me was the idea of ripping all those strips of fabric then tying them all on to the jute twine.
I picked up a craft leaflet at a thrift store that just happened to have directions for making a rag garland that was a little different. This was cutting just three long strips of fabric and zig-zag stitching them to the twine. Then all you have to do is make cuts in the fabric every inch or so on both sides of the stitching, dampen the fabric and tumble in the dryer.

This cabinet isn't where I plan on hanging this but it was the brightest spot in the house for the picture.

The directions in the pamphlet also had wooden shapes attached to the garland and I haven't decided yet if I'm going to add them or not.

Are you contagious?

So take one....

...and pass it on.

Abracadabra

If only that magical word really worked. I seem to be doing more disappearing acts lately than your average magician.
I have no valid excuses to offer either. With the exception of the 40 hours a week that I'm committed to my employer, I've had no ambition or even desire to do anything.
I can't promise that I am back but I will promise that any future posts will not sound whiny like this one.

Duke and I will go curl up in my purple robe and try and get over whatever it is that has it's hooks in me.

Hooray for Saturday

I think I  might actually get to stay home all day today and maybe even get caught up on some blog reading.

Who's sleeping in your bed

Duke has a perfectly good bed

But Duke does not use it, ever.

He would rather sleep on the floor

I'm going to be missing for the next couple of days so I'll see you on Friday (hopefully)

The scoop

Wow, the last week has been something. My mind has not been able to focus on taking care of this blog or even reading your or my emails. 

One of the things that I've never mentioned about myself is that I am a smoker. Last Tuesday night at 7p.m. I smoked my last one. No patch, no pill, no gum, just cold turkey done with them. Now it's a matter of fighting the urge to break down and smoke just one little cigarette. They say that it only takes 72-96 hours to get past the addiction to nicotine but after that there is still the urge to go back. To make matters worse, I'm getting a cold or something so instead of being able to go out and take a walk I've come home from work every day and flopped on the couch until bed time. 

We are at least greening up and the pear blossoms have finally made an appearance. 

Saturday we went to Duboise to attend Wade's daughters graduation from Penn State. While I'm sitting there in the auditorium my phone starts ringing first my daughter calling, then my son. I text them back to tell them where I'm at and can't answer the phone. So they both ask me what happened to my brother's daughter. What? How should I know and what are you talking about? It was all over facebook that my 23 year old niece passed away Saturday morning. 

So I head off to work today still wanting a cigarette but still saying no. I'm praying for strength for my brother and his wife that they can carry on.

If I have any focus left once I get home from work I'll attempt to get caught up with all of you. 

Quick update

I'm just popping in real quick to let you know that I'm still around just not anywhere in blog land. I'm working on a bit of a project right now and my continued internet issues only cause me major frustration so I've been staying away from the computer. I'm taking the weekend off and hopefully will be back on Monday. I'm turning comments off for today too

The joke

I heard the funniest joke the other day and wanted to share it with you. It had me laughing like crazy. So yeah, I wanted to share it but....

weight/wait

...it's going to have to wait because I forgot the punch line.