Amen!

Well, it is 1220pm and I can say Amen, the dining room is painted.  I have been living with the blah walls for almost three years.  Even Tom agrees that is looks so much better.  Now it is time for clean up, but first I think I will take a trip to Sonic and treat myself to a Route 44 diet cherry limeade!  I think I deserve it.  Then back to work doing the clean up.

March and April

I made these a month ago, but just got around to taking the photos. I really need to work on May and June so I get caught up. Hopefully I can do that Wednesday on my day off. It has been so hot here the last two weeks, sure hope we get some relief and we don't have to endure July and August with 100 degree days.

Well, It has been awhile, but I have finally finished my hand appliqued hawaiian quilt. I can't remember when I started it but I believe it was sometime late last summer. I really love two color quilts, especially red and white. This was a fun quilt to handquilt, it is very heavily quilted, no marking. I did a little research on hawaiian quilts and the echo quilting that is done, represent the waves in the ocean and the appliques represent the islands. I am glad to get it finished, as working on something new is exciting, but am also glad that I had what it takes to finish this project.

Garvan Woodlands Gardens

 
 
 
 

Tom and headed over to Hot Springs this morning to visit Garvan Woodland Gardens. We probably should have gone last month when the azaleas and daffodils would still be in bloom. It is a very nice woodland garden that has streams of water and waterfalls. Max really enjoyed finding the large Koi in the Koi pond. They are doing some construction. I want to go back to see the Rose garden that P Allen Smith designed. It too will have some water features. We really enjoyed the train garden also. The weather was so gorgeous here today we were so glad to spend it in such beautiful surroundings.

The Great Turtle Hunter

 
 

For those of you that know Max, you know, he is pretty happy go lucky dog. We tease him at times calling him a city dog! Schnauzer's don't do well when it gets hot and they start to shiver when it gets cold. We tell him he would never make it on the farm, but he keeps trying to show us that he can! He has added the box turtle to his lists of successful hunts. He has killed a baby rabbit, a senior citizen squirrel, a mole, and now he has captured a turtle and even ran around in the backyard with it in his mouth. He wasn't quite as successful with a rooster that lives out in our woods, although he did manage to get it to flee for its life! Sometimes he thinks he is Tiger from Winnie the Pooh and chases and jumps after bumble bees. He is constantly taking a safari trip in the front landscaping hoping to someday catch a salamander. For now he has graduated to being a southern suburbinite, keep trying Max if you catch that rooster, so we don't have to listen to it early in the morning, we will finally admit your the farm dog you aim to be.

Stevia

 
Well, I recently came across a natural sweetner called stevia. The plant grows well here in Arkansas, so I decided to make it my experimental plant this year in my small kitchen garden. I have two plants started and can't wait till it gets big enough to harvest some branches and dry the leaves and grind them to a powder and do a taste test. It claims to be three times sweeter than sugar cane. Time will tell!

Garden photos

 

 

 

 

My garden was getting kind of thirsty last week so I am so thankful for the rain. We are also thankful that we didn't get bad storms. I am really proud that my sum and sustance hosta is getting big, I have been babying it since I brought it here from MO almost three years ago. My roma tomato plant is really putting on the fruit. I also planted six strawberry plants. They are pretty much finished producing and starting to send out runners. The berries we did get were very juicy and and tasted good so I am hoping to have enough for a strawberry shortcake next year. They still have to survive the summer heat.

We have grass!

 

Tom and I spent quite a bit of time last fall leveling and grading our lawn after we had the unwanted trees removed. We took an additonal ten trees out of our yard, that is after Tom had cut down about that many the first year we had moved in. Walking around the yard we still have over twenty trees left. Our hopes were to get enough light in so that we could have some grass to walk on instead of slippery mud and moss. Max just has to have grass to do his business. Anyway I had to take a photo since I am not sure that the tall fescue will survive the hot summers here. Our hopes is that with the shade from the trees and some rain that it will. If not at least I will have this photo to remember that we did have a lawn in the spring of 2010. If it dies we will have to plug it with zoysia. The bermuda will not grow under the trees and we really enjoy the shade the trees provide so they are definitly staying!

February BOM

 
Well, with Monday being a holiday, I was able to take a few hours and work on my BOM. I am not sure I am real happy with my fabric selections, but I have limited myself to using only fabrics that are in my stash. Now to pull fabrics out for my March BOM.

Bunny hill design

 
 
I wanted to do this block of the month last year as it was offered online, but never got to it. I decided this year I would try to do the BOM faithfully, but just remember it is only January. I'm using my machine to do the applique so perhaps this is going to happen. Each block has a bit of embroidery to do and I love the combination of quilting and embroidery. So the enclosed photo is the January block. I also included a photo of a finished quilt, it was not done by me. I swear my sewing machine was so excited that she got turned on yesterday, and I must say it was fun to get it done so quickly.

hawaiian quilt

Well, I finally finished the needleturn applique on my hawaiian quilt. I have been working on this quilt since last summer. I chose it to get more experience with needleturn applique. It definitely gave me that! I am so excited to finally have a quilt to hand quilt again, which has become my favorite part of making a quilt. So the photo above is just the top before it has been quilted. I guess is will take me most of the spring to completely get the hand quilting done. It is nice to snuggle up in the evening and have some hand work to do and keep warm with all this cold weather we have had of late.