Despite being home ALL weekend, I did very little crafting. What can I say…it was a long week, I needed lots of sleep and there was a pile of laundry, a stack of magazines, and several episodes of The Voice calling my name. By Sunday, I was back on track and began cutting up this new stack of Lotta Jansdotter’s Glimma for a new baby quilt:
Can’t wait to start piecing! Have a good week.
Here’s a sneak peak at this years garden. These pictures are actually a few weeks old now. I spent an afternoon cropping and editing them using this awesome app, A Beautiful Mess, but then never got around to posting them. Will post an update soon, the tomatoes and lettuce are growing crazy fast!
Tomato Earthboxes (2 Black Cherry, 2 Grand Pace, 1 Beefsteak, 1 Roma)
Cucumbers and Peppers (lots of reds, my favorite!). Also can’t wait to try making pickles.
Herb Garden.
Random stuff on the deck…
Thai Chilies getting a late start.
First round of radishes.
Front porch pots.
Despite only working 3 days this past week, it’s felt like a long one. A bit of traveling and trying to squeeze 5 work days into 3 probably had something to do with that. But then I came home to a very nice surprise that ended the week on a good note. Shortly after the Boston Marathon bombing, I made these blocks for the Boston Modern Quilt Guild‘s Quilts for Boston, which will be given to the marathon bombing victims.
Tonight I got some time to catch up on a few blogs that I follow and stumbled upon these posts! Check out the third picture down (hint: one of my blocks is in the bottom row), and the top row of the third picture here. These quilts are absolutely gorgeous and make me happy for so many reasons:
1. I feel privileged to see my blocks next to so many other beautiful blocks, made by quilters who are much more experienced than I am.
2. I love the way these quilts have come together, better than I could have imagined. Great work Boston MQG!
3. Most importantly, I’m happy to see so many quilters from around the world come together to share their craft in order to help those in need. So thankful to have had the opportunity to send a little bit of love to those who are needing it right now.
Looking forward to seeing the rest of these quilts come together.
Have a great weekend!
D.
We had a wonderful fresh meal out on the deck last Friday. I stopped and picked lettuce and strawberries on the way home from work at Dondero’s. The radishes are from my garden.
Our strawberries are starting to ripen and the sugar snap peas, tomatoes, and peppers are blossoming!
My herbs are filling in nicely. I found this sub irrigation planter at Paul’s & Sandy’s and made it Earth box like by adding a fill tube. It already had the bottom reservoir and overflow hole, just not a great way to fill it.
Got a few new pillows for summer for the couch. The 3 (which happens to be our house number) was a $5 target find. The “Lake life is best” was a gift from Burkett. He found it in a shop in Lake Placid after a recent backpacking trip up in the Adirondacks. And the sailboat pillow is one that I made a while back. I’m planning to make something new for the love seat as well, but the sewing room is currently in a bit of disarray.
So I haven’t been doing a good job of keeping up with the granny square sampler. Here are weeks 2, 3, and 4. I went to Baltimore for work 2 weekends ago and spent much of last weekend designing, shopping, and painting furniture for a sewing room makeover (more to come later), so needless to say I wasn’t crocheting…now if only I can do last weeks and this weeks squares soon, I’ll be back on track. That’s it for now!
We’ve been back from vacation for well over a month now and I’m really late on getting these pictures up, but I feel like I need to share them anyway because we absolutely LOVED this place! Dauphin Island, AL is my new idea of paradise…spent an entire week with my family in a beautiful house with lots of time spent sitting on the beach, hunting for seashells, cooking, flying kites, fishing, playing bocce and relaxing…all in honor of my grandmothers 80th Birthday! Hopefully we will get back there again some day.
We rented bikes to get around on the island
Made my mom one of my packable beach totes for mother’s day since we were on vacay down in Alabama that week.
I am very thankful to have a few days at home this weekend. We had planned to go backpacking up in Vermont on the long trail, but it looks like its raining all weekend up there. We may still go up later in the weekend for a day hike. Anyway, here’s what I’ve been up to:
Started off the morning by poking around the “garden” a bit. We live in a condo, so it’s more or less containers on our deck, since we can’t plant anything in our big beautiful shared lawn. We’re trying a few Earthboxes this year on our upstairs deck, we’ll see how it goes. Here’s a little photo tour:
Then went for a walk downtown. Picked up a coffee along the way at Higher Grounds. The East Hampton Garden Club was having an outdoor plant sale and art show in the center of town. Also stopped by my two favorites the Red Door Boutique and Anything Goes. Both are always worth a stop if you are ever in the neighborhood.
Then I came home and whipped up this little headband. It’s so muggy here today and I just cut my hair short again and needed something to hold it all back while I worked around the house.
Then I proceeded to finish redecorating the table. The spring decorations were getting a little old. I was able to incorporate some of the shells we found & a photo from our recent trip to Dauphin Island, AL (more pictures to follow soon). The blue wicker place-mats (69 cents a piece) and white frame ($3) were Christmas Tree Shop finds, what a deal!
Made a surprisingly good lunch from the little food we have left. We didn’t buy groceries this week in efforts to use up what we had on hand since we had planned on going away for the weekend. But I threw this delicious pizza together using a leftover pita shell, a bottle of pizza sauce, fresh mozzarella, Italian seasoning, and garlic!
Now I’m off to go crochet outside for a bit and finish the laundry before B comes home from work. By the way, I finally learned how to crochet this week (with the help of You Tube) so that I can do this granny square sampler afghan crochet-a-long. It’s a pattern created by Blair based on a 1970’s Better Homes & Gardens pattern. The original is a very cool design, but the colors are hideous! Each week this summer she will be posting instructions for a new square on her blog, with instructions on how to sew them all together at the end of summer. Here are my week 1 squares:
Speaking of yarn crafts, one last thing…or two rather. My knitting got two really cool shout-outs this week… The first, was a hat that I had knit for Burkett’s sister, Aili, which she happen to wear in a Helly Hensen photo shoot. Also be sure to check out Aili’s Helly Hensen video here (scroll about half way down).
Here are my Easter decorations! I made the wreath and the place-mats! Apothecary jar (with Cadbury Mini Eggs of course) and birdcage are from Michaels.
Spent the past weekend finishing up a few gifts & projects to take on vacation. I have been wanting to make a new beach bag, but need something light weight and easy to pack. After searching the internet and usual craft blogs, I came up empty handed in terms of a pattern, but did come up with a few features that I liked. So I combined these with a few ideas of my own and came up with this lovely little bag!
a.dora.bly stitched 