A Break in the Routine

Yesterday was the last school day of the year. We went out to celebrate the end of it as well as to celebrate a few birthdays. Even though this isn't my drink, you get the idea of the photo:



Enjoy your day! I know I will enjoy mine. :)

Mid-June Already!

Sigh. I haven't had time to do much stitching at all. Work is very busy this time of year, for one thing. I won't bore you with all that nonsense.

I did start my next house on the sampler, but it's too small a piece of progress for a picture.

We celebrated three family birthdays last week, but the main celebrating has been delayed due to various reasons such as scheduling conflicts and illnesses. We did get my husband a new camera for his birthday/Father's Day, so I wanted to share a few pictures he took in our backyard.

Our "Endless Summer" hydrangea- one of my favorite plants:


A photo of one of our geraniums:


One of my favorite flowers for borders-lobelia:



A close-up of a rose bush we have in a clay pot that's called Scentimental:


This one has an overexposed look, but for some reason I like the bright colors. Our Christmas poinsettias are still red in spots, in the foreground:


A photo of the goldfinches:




Next is one taken on the older camera. In time the new camera will have a zoom lens, but for now the older camera has the capacity to zoom in closer, but the quality isn't as clear:



Finally, a photo of our feeder's latest visitor. This huge crow has been eating off the platform feeder, and has scared off our Western Scrubjays. I wish he would find another place to eat!



Thanks for visiting here, and I hope you have a great day.

WIP Update

Instead of attacking my long 'to do' list for both home and my job, I decided to instead finish up the seventh house on my House and Garden Sampler. You know, sometimes you just HAVE to do what you want to do, instead of what you should do.

Here's the sampler before I finished the seventh house on it:



Here's the 7th house, finished:

 

 

Another view:

 

After completing this house I realized I hadn't mapped out the rest of my houses on my graph paper 'blueprint'. I then had to think very hard to remember where I'd put my large taped together graph paper mess. Fortunately, I found it hiding in a drawer!

I spent a long time looking for other houses, and I finally decided upon a few. With one of the houses I had to erase two other plotted choices of mine before finally deciding on the house! Decisions, decisions.

Here is the end result of all those scribblings. Click on the photos for a better view, if you'd like. First, the entire taped up mess:

 

Here is a closer view of the two homes I'm going to add in the bottom row:

 

The house that will be in the middle of the bottom row is from the Prairie Schooler booklet "Farm Fresh". You can see it below, along with the home from Cross Stitch and Country Crafts Family Register pattern (1986) that I'm adding in the bottom right lower corner of the sampler. I changed the windows in that house and added shutters, along with making the one story portion of it larger.

 

A better view of the Prairie Schooler pattern:

 

Below you'll see a closer view of the old CS and CC pattern. The house I modified and am stitching is the building in the lower left portion of the design. Coincidentally, I stitched this sampler up for my in-laws back in 1988. That was twenty years ago! Time sure does fly, doesn't it?

 

I need to start thinking about what garden elements I will add to the sampler after the houses are all done. That will be another large search, won't it?

Thanks for stopping by here today, and for looking at my sampler progress.

Lesser Goldfinches~ Bird Love

It's been a really busy nine days or so, and I haven't had a chance to stitch at all.

On a bright note, I was very happy that a 'lesser goldfinch' showed up on our recently purchased feeder last week. It was up for almost three weeks before any of these gorgeous birds were attracted to the nyger seed. Here are some bird photos:




I also wanted to share a collage I made of some yellow and purple flowers that I've photographed in our yard. I like the contrast of these two colors together:



I hope to get in some stitching time on the weekend. Take care!