Ribbon roses

I just had to try out one of my ribbons after supper and am happy with these roses. The size of this piece from one end of roses to the other in length is 3 inches by 1 3/4 inches high.  Now it’s time to go get horizontal and read for awhile. I’m done for the evening with this, have to give my hands and eyes a break.  Mark would like these. I was so happy making them, I just can’t explain it.  I was in here making happy noises, and I could almost hear him asking what I was up to, and I said, you’ll see in a minute. Just like always.

I am so thankful for the love and encouragement from Mark in so many areas of our life together.

Stitch your stress away. 

Author Unknown

Memories are stitched with love. 

Author Unknown

FlowerLady

More winter blooms

 

At 6:26 this Monday morning, it is 49 degrees and feels like it is 47. For us that is COLD. I don’t know what the temperature is inside the cottage, but I’ve got a flannel shirt on, my fingers are a bit chilly as are my feet, which are bare. I just put the coffee pot on and the heat from the stove will add a little warmth in here. The heater is still in the attic as it’s not been cold enough to bring it down.

It’s been beautiful out during the last few days. Yesterday I worked on cutting back some jasmine that was about 3’ higher than it should be. Trying to get everything down to a certain level on the front hedgerow. It’s been months since we did it last. I’ve still more to do, but that’s for another morning. It felt good to be outside working in God’s beautiful creation.

I had some overwhelming moments yesterday but made it through another day and am thankful to God for ever being present with me. You can read more here.

Today is a new day, may I rejoice and be glad in it.

Here are the blooms. I sure wish you could smell some of them. Especially the one below.

This next is a beautiful orchid, a gift from my friend Nanci.

This is my climbing Maman Cochet rose. The scent of this is so wonderful.

And here is something I made for a new little grandniece. I didn’t want to show it earlier because she hadn’t received it yet. It was a joy to make for this new little life. They have it hanging on the mirror over her dressing table. The lace butterfly, the bird and the center heart/flower on the trim are laces I won in a give away from Nicki Lee at Ravioli Dreams.  The white lace flowers, the trim with pink edge were in the boxes of crafts that DH found curbside a few years back. I had the flower button in my button collection, and I crocheted the little baby girl. The little white enameled heart was also from Nicki Lee’s give away.

That’s it from Plum Cottage this morning. Have a wonderful week.

FlowerLady

***

Life holds so many simple blessings,

each day bringing its own individual wonder.

John McLeod

Homemade Pizza, Curbside Christmas Tree, Etsy sale :-)

Good afternoon Folks ~ It is Tuesday, partly cloudy, 83 degrees, but feels like it is 89, which is much cooler than it has been. There is a chance of rain. We did our errands this morning, had lunch, now I feel like a nap.

Last night I made homemade pizza for supper. We have half of it left for another night. I use my bread machine to make the dough for the crust. Two Italian sausage links are browned, broken into small pieces, sauce is 1 15 oz. can of tomato sauce, chopped onion and garlic browned in a bit of olive oil. Last night I added some chopped kale to the mix. I also used chopped fresh basil and Italian seasoning and let the sauce simmer for awhile.

Here are pictures. We love homemade pizza.

I add dried Italian seasoning, and garlic powder to the flour mixture for the crust.

On the way home from doing errands this morning we stopped to look at some things curbside. While DH (dear husband) was across the street looking there, I saw in the review mirror the stuff behind me and spied a section of Christmas tree. I am a sucker for Christmas trees. I got out and walked back to look and it was a whole cute little funky Christmas tree and I had to take it.  It was calling me. The trunk and the stand are made out of pine limbs, really neat. I’ve never seen one like it.  It’s sort of primitive. Anyway, it will be stored in the attic with the others.

This morning I found out I had another sale on Etsy. A nice way to start today.

This is the miniature piece that sold.

Home is definitely where our hearts are, no matter the type of house, or what part of the world.

Enjoy your week ~ FlowerLady Lorraine

A new stitch for a new piece

I have been so inspired by all the stitchers work that I am seeing at Stitchin’ Fingers and with the TAST 2012 project, that I dream about beads, wake up in the wee hours thinking about embroidering, beads, crocheting, tatting, etc.

I visited Ina’s website because she has some great tutorials for using different stitches.  Her peacock really inspired me and I want to try that too, although not on this piece. 

Most of you know I love roses, and when I saw what she did with a buttonhole knot stitch to create roses I had to give them a try.  I made a practice one, then decided to add one to the piece I just started this morning. I’ve got to try the rose buds too and add them to this piece.

I wanted to embroider another heart so here is the start of this next project. I used the blanket stitch to tack it down to the background fabric. The drawn lines are there because I’m going to make this another sort of ‘crazy quilt’ design.  The heart size is about 3 1/4” by 4”.

Here is a close-up of the rose and leaves. When I finished I was pleased and felt happy. Learning something new and having it come out half way decent is wonderful.

The size of the rose with leaves is 1 1/2” x 3/4”.

That’s it for now. Time to think about fixing supper.  Already have the beef in the crockpot that smells wonderful. I’ll fix mashed potatoes and some fresh carrots cooked somehow. The bread machine made a loaf of oatmeal bread this morning so we’ll have a slice of that too.

Happy Creating ~ FlowerLady

Monday

Good evening Folks ~ We’ve had supper, turkey meatloaf, kale and green peas cooked in a little olive oil, with garlic, onion powder, and mashed potatoes, and wine.  Nice.

Today was errand day. It’s always nice to get back home.

We never did get the predicted rain, barely had sprinkles. It is really warm and humid. Does NOT feel like October at all.

I washed a load of laundry and hung out on the lines to day.  I really  enjoy the newly fenced in clothesline area.  Tork enjoys it too.  I’ve got to wash the fencing down with TSP before painting, and hopefully tomorrow morning I can do that project.

I worked on embroidering another heart sachet today.  I finished two yesterday that I had been working on.

Here the three are, plus two smaller ones. I love working on these, and once I fill them with dried lavender flowers, the whole experience becomes healing of body, mind and spirit.

Below is a picture of our indoor/outdoor girl Tork. I had disturbed her sleep.  

She is now sleeping once again.

I found out about a nice place for ‘stitchers’ and joined. I am inspired by the creations shown there.

Stitchin Fingers

A fellow embroider contacted me as she wants to embroider the passion flowers and wanted permission to copy my pictures. I sent her the pics and can hardly wait to see what she does with the photos as she is an exquisite embroiderer.

That’s it for tonight.  It’s time to get horizontal to read for awhile before sleep.

Latest needlework and life

Good afternoon Folks,

It is Monday afternoon, partly cloudy, still hot and humid, but not as bad as it has been.  Fall is coming, hopefully sooner rather than later.

As to the ‘psychic vampire’, she was very subdued Saturday and that was such a huge relief.

We did our errands this morning and it always feels GREAT to get back to our little haven. 

I really look forward to the next few days off from work to putter around here.  I need to do some homecaring, I want to make a cobbler using star fruit that someone gave us.

I am eager to get out into my main garden to do some much needed weeding.  I want to work on the patio area that I see when I look out the window from my little space where I create.

Yesterday I got in the mood to do something with some quilt batting that I have and ended up finishing two sachets by last night and started on the third.  I finished the third a little while ago.  I have the materials cut out to make another two and can hardly wait to start. DH has started calling me Bead Lady now, as I sit for hours with needle, tread and beads.

My workspace is a wreck as you can see in the picture below. Beads and thread etc., covering every inch of space. 

Speaking of beads and thread, I want to thank the ladies who have sent me both from their stash.  I greatly appreciate it and think of each of them as I embroider and bead.  I also won a $20 gift card to use at Amazon and bought more beads there, plus these wonderful beading needles. They have a long eye from one end to the other, except for the ends, so that you can open it up and slip the thread in, very easy to thread.  The needles are very thin and just right for beads.

So here are my latest efforts, stuffed with a bit of fleece and dried lavender that I bought in bulk, I can’t grow lavender down here.  I love the clean, fresh, wonderful scent of lavender.  I’d like to get some balsam for that wonderful Christmas scent, need to look into that.

These are for sale. Will keep you posted when the next ones are done.  Can’t wait to see what color schemes they turn out to be.

I ordered some melt and our goat’s milk soap earlier, to make up bars of soap for us with different essential oils.  I’ve read how goat’s milk soap is very good for your skin.  We already have a collection of essential oils so I’ll make up some with tea tree oil, some with floral scents, and some with sandalwood and other ‘manly’ scents for DH. I don’t think he’ll want to be smelling like ylang-ylang, jasmine, roses, etc. Anyway, I look forward to making them up and stashing them away, not to mention using them.

Guess that’s it for now.  I need to look at beads and thread to start on the next sachet.

I want to thank all of you again for taking the time to visit and leave  your comments.  They are greatly appreciated.  It is a real pleasure getting to know so many of you and I enjoy visiting your blogs too.

Enjoy your week.

***

Needlework is a way to capture

Love, Beauty, Peace & Time

 Anonymous

Cure for the Common Life & Thanks

Good morning everyone.

First of all, thank you all for your kind thoughts and prayers about Hurricane Irene. As of now, she is staying well east of us and I hope she continues to do so. It would be great if she just kept off shore and kept heading east, but they are predicting her to make landfall in NC somewhere. My heart and prayers go out to all of those in the Bahamas, and other islands as she passes over them and also to those in NC who will be effected. Your comments were greatly appreciated.

One of the books I’ve read over the past few weeks is this one by Max Lucado, ‘Cure for the Common Life’. I was greatly encouraged and inspired by reading it, and highly recommend it.

We are all ‘fearfully and wonderfully made” by God and His works are marvelous. Ps. 139:14

I was pointed to another bit of scripture while reading this book "He has filled them with skill”. Each and every one of us was created with skills unique to us. What we do with them during our life is up to us. They are gifts to us. Being thankful for them and doing our best with them is a joy to God.

I love to cook and bake, have since jr. high school. It is something I truly enjoy. I also love to work with threads and have since a child. Knitting, crocheting, embroidering. I love to grow things and one of my hopes when I started gardening here at Plum Cottage, was that passersby would feel the love of God through the flowers, foliage, colors, etc.

No matter what we do, from the lowliest thing like cleaning toilets, to the highest, doing it with love and thanksgiving to the Creator of all gifts will fill our hearts, minds and lives with joy and peace.

******

This morning we’re going over to Walmart to see if they have the book 1000 Gifts by Ann Voskamp. ~ Back home now and neither Walmart nor Target had the book. Boo hoo.

We are having a thunderstorm, and had to run inside from the car with rain and flashes and booms. Glad to be inside where it is nice and dry and cool.

It’s almost time for lunch, so I’ll close with pics of my latest finished embroidery piece and the next one I just started.

My work surface, cluttered as usual. These are just ‘some’ of the beads I am working with so far.

Oh yea, last night for supper I first marinated a large chicken breast in lime juice for several hours. Then I cut it into thick strips, beat up and egg and dipped the strips in that and then coated them with shredded coconut. I gently fried them in Light olive oil. Oh my goodness, DH and I both loved this and I’ll definitely be fixing it again. Oh, and I happened to have a jar of orange marmalade, so we had a little of that for the chicken too.

Tonight I’ll be fixing tacos, my all time favorite comfort food.

Guess that’s it for now. We’ve had lunch and I am starting to feel like a nap.

My first Give Away

Dear Friends,

Here it is a little over two years since I started blogging, there are 120 followers, and over 3300 comments. I am a rather shy person, so did not know what to expect when I started blogging. I was timid to say the least, but just started sharing pictures and bits of our daily life.

You all have encouraged me in more ways than I can count. Your blogs have inspired me in so many ways from cooking, crafts, gardening and plain old 'living life'.

As a THANK YOU, this little give away is an embroidered piece that I just finished. The inspiration was from the book 'Embroidery for all Seasons' by Diana Lampe. I have two of her books on my wishlist and look forward to owning them. The book I have at the moment is a library book, which will be returned shortly.

I love working with thread and my first experience with it was when I was 10 years old when the lady next door to us taught me to knit. My stitches were too tight, and I also dropped a lot of them, but that is where this love started. My step grandmother taught me to crochet when I was 15. I also started embroidering around this time.

Over the years my love of working with threads has continued, even though sporadic at times. Recently I've gotten into embroidering once again and love it.

In this little piece there will be a little bit of DH too, as he is the one who showed me how to do a bouillon stitch. I was having a hard time and just couldn't get it. He has never embroidered but he does like to figure things out and asked me for a threaded needle and I gave him a piece of fabric in a hoop, and we read the directions and looked at pictures. It was while reading the directions out loud that I saw where I had made my mistake. I was taking the thread to the left instead of the right. He made a little bouillon stitch and I am happy to give him credit for teaching me this stitch. He has encouraged me many times in our life of over 40 years together for which I am eternally thankful, he is my love, my soulmate.

So, here is the deal, all you have to do is comment in this post, to be entered into the give away. I will number each comment from the first to the last, then I will use random.org as the number generator.

I will make and post a list of every commenter and attach a number. When the deadline is over I will post the list, so that you all can see it and the number you've been given, and hopefully I will get it right. DH and I will go over the list several times to make sure it is correct, but will give you all a chance to see that it is right. Then I will post the number of comments to the number generator, and someone will be the winner. Let me know how I can contact you.

For a closer view click on the picture. The overall size of this piece is 3 3/4 inches by 5 inches. The size of the embroidery is 1 3/4 inches by 3 inches.
DH made the frame from molding left over from our picture framing days.
The fabric is ecru/cream colored with flecks of darker threads here and there.

The bouillon stitch is the outer stitch of the sunflower petals. You wrap the thread around the needle so many times then pull the thread through and go into the back of the fabric. I am happy to have learned a new stitch with this project.

The deadline for entering is a week from today,
20 October 2010,
midnight Eastern Standard time.
I will post my list of numbered commenters the next day,
and on the 22, will put the number into ramdom.orgs generator.

Thank you all for visiting my blog and for your comments.
I do appreciate your time and thoughts.

Zone 10 ~ s.e. FL

Embroidery finished

Finished at last.

I really enjoyed embroidering this piece.

The size is ~ 3 3/4 inches x 3 3/4 inches.

This is our state butterfly,
and the flowers are Hamelia paten, or Firebush.
The inspiration was my own photograph taken in the secret garden.
We see these butterflies all the time
flitting from flower to flower
out the scullery window
which is over the sink where dishes are washed.

A new day

Good morning Folks ~ Here it is another middle of the work week day, Wednesday. I hope you all have a good day today whatever you do, wherever you are.

I hate to even say what I might do today as plans can be changed at the blink of an eye, any given day. I 'was' going to do laundry yesterday, and realized I didn't have any detergent, so I came back inside, got out my supplies and went to work. The Zote soap smells so good. Grating it is tiring work, but now I have enough to keep me going for awhile. I didn't get to do laundry, because we had a few sprinkles, and later a good ole' downpour. Hurray, we needed that. There's a chance of a thunderstorm this afternoon, so I better get out early so I can hang up the wash and hope it dries before the storm comes.

After making up the laundry detergent, I filled 200 caps with powdered dandelion root. I 'hope' to do up another 200 today. That is tedious, but so rewarding, as herbs are great for our health and well-being.

Here is a picture of those two projects.

Here is Kathleen, one of my favorite single roses. Her scent is wonderful too. I really need to see if I can get cuttings of her to root, I've tried a couple of times and had no luck so far.

Here is my next bird for embroidering. I've still go to put the drawing to the material, and get started, but I am intimidated with each new work. Maybe I'll get started with that today, we'll see. I also want to 'maybe' do one of the rose above, time will tell. :-)


Last night I started a new blog, can you believe it. What is my problem? Anyway, this one is called FlowerLady's Favorites, and will be a music blog.

Thanks again for visiting and all of your comments.

Do what you can,
with what you have,
where you are.
Theodore Roosevelt

Zone 10 ~ s.e. FL