Gardening and Stuff

I decided to do some weeding in my woefully neglected garden this past weekend. 

 I was happily weeding along but did not have my gloves on like I usually do.  

We live by a woods and I always worry about Poison Ivy and spiders.  

No Poison Ivy but as I was walking to the next section I happened to look down 

and found this helpful fellow.  

Now I really don't like spiders so this guy creeped me out.  

A Fishing Spider

They are HUGE! 

 Like the size of a silver dollar!!!  

I took it as a sign I should go back inside and sew some more napkins!

First though I snapped a pic of my beautiful Stargazer Lillies!!

I think I forgot to share this sweet little grouping of hexies my friend Windy gave to me at the retreat. 

 I was working on my Christmas Sampler quilt and she thought it would be great for the label.  

Thank you friend!  That made my day.

I have some fabric purchases to share too but need to snap a few pics first. 

 I hope you are having a great week so far.

Oh I almost forgot, someone asked me to talk about how I glue the edges down on the napkins.  

Since the pattern is purchased I can't show with pictures but 

you can use the same technique for your binding. 

The beauty of the glue basting is no pins, perfect positioning of mitered corners and 

everything stays put. 

 You can even reposition if necessary. 

 I use Elmer's Washable School Glue.  

You just put a thin line of glue on your quilt where you want the binding to be, turn the binding and finger press it into the glue then press with your iron.

  The iron sets the glue and your binding will stay in place.  

It will wash out when you wash the quilt! 

 Super easy!  

I watched this video tutorial by Sharon Schamber and decided to give it a try.  

I basically used the same technique with the napkins. 

 I let them dry overnight and sewed them the next day or a few days later.  

I hope that helps.  

If you decide to give it a try let me know how you like it!

Have a wonderful day!

~XOP~

While I Was Home

I took yesterday off of work.  I was/am exhausted.  Both physically and emotionally.  I was so emotional on Wed night.  With everything going on with the dog and with my DD2 leaving to go to NC, so far away!  It's about a 12 hour drive from our house, or so DH tells me.  I guess I will have first hand knowledge on Saturday night as we will be making the drive.  First, thanks to everyone that took the time to comment and encourage me about Laxy, our dog.  I don't know if she will pull through this but I am doing everything I can to help her make it over the hump.  I've given her subcutaneous fluids twice and she is a trooper about sitting still while I stick her and put the fluids in.  I have to give her Malox 3x a day to help bind up the excess Phosphorus and she is tolerating my shoving that berry tasting liquid into her mouth.  I found the antibiotic pills are *much* easier to swallow wrapped in a piece of turkey too.  She seemed perkier this morning.  Still not herself but more herself.  Time will tell and now it is in God's hands.  Thanks for the prayers!  We all appreciate them.

I had 2 friends tell me about doggie disasters recently.  One of them, her son's dog was bitten twice by a rattlesnake.  Once on top of the head and once in the eye!  The dog will lose sight in that eye and I am waiting to find out if it will be ok.  The other one, her dog had an ear infection that turned the ear canals to stone!  They did a surgery to remove the ear canal (who even knew you could do that?) and sewed the ears shut.  She is now deaf, but still alive.  Please keep these good people and their pooches in your prayers too.  I'm glad the cats are stable, one issue at a time, although we still have Blu, our peacock living in the house.  He had surgery on his ankle joint to remove a foreign object.  I have to give him his pill and liquid medicine tonight and tomorrow am, wish me luck with that!  I'm kind of nervous to do that.

So on to some other news.  Everytime I walk out my front door this is what I see, so I thought I would share it with you too.

I am in love with all the cone flowers that have sprung up! I am thinking about taking the bushes out and just letting them spread! Just look at those moon flowers too. Each morning when I step out they are open (they open at night). We are getting so many butterflies with all the cone flowers too.

Lest you think I have not been doing anything quilty I did make a trip to JAF yesterday looking for the new DS Quilts fabric due out in August. No luck, but I did happen on this DS Quilts fabric that I had not seen before.

I didn't buy any but had put my camera in my purse in case I found the new fabric. Came in handy to take these pictures. Anyone else seen Lisette fabric? Is this a new line by her?

I finished up the gift for my friend. I still can't post the pic of the top since her birthday is not for a little while yet. I had laid it out on the couch behind my sewing machine. I open up the afghan and use it as my design wall. Aiden happened to be napping on the couch, of course. She just let me unfold it right over her and kept sleeping. I put the quilt top out and laid the borders around it to make sure I had them in the right order. She was just so cute I had to snap a few pictures. (Plus you get a little peek at the top )

She was so adorable!

I guess that catches you up. I am hoping to make the back for that top tonight. I will also make the binding, if I can figure out which fabric I want to use for that. I think I want a deep navy, but may end up having to buy some since I used up the darkest one for the inner border, we will see. Family reunion tomorrow, then leaving for NC to bring DD2's car to her. She is taking our van and we are driving the little Saturn (hey how did that work??) We will be back on Tuesday night. You may not hear from me until we get home. So enjoy your weekend and we will talk soon.

Working in the Garden

Today was a very busy day. It was DH's birthday but we had to celebrate last night because he and DS left early this morning for Canada. If you have been with me for awhile you may remember his going off last year and the year before. His grandfather bought some land about 10 hours from us in Canada (Mewburn lake , not sure if I spelled that right). You have to go down old logging roads and then you abruptly dead end at a lake. Not the one the cabin is on though, oh no. You need to put all your stuff in the small boat, having brought the motor with you of course, then you motor across the lake, get out, portage across some land (carrying your stuff, the boat and the motor) and motor across another lake to the cabin. How do I know all this you ask? Well, 27 years ago, right when we were first married, I went there. It is a beautiful place but once was enough for me. You pump the water up from the lake to drink, there is an outhouse and the leeches in the lake are like 8 inches long. Have fun boys!

All that being said, and you all know he is a pilot for a living so is gone a LOT, but I struggle when he goes to Canada. No phone, yep, no cell phones where they are going. Great for him, anxiety producing for me. Why when he is gone for a living, I have no idea. I just HATE it. So my goal is to be super busy the whole time he is away. So, let me share my day with you, ok?

He got up at 6am so I got up at 6am to "help" him pack. Finally got them on their way around 8am. Tried to go back to bed but I was ready for the day to begin. I actually just putzed around for awhile on the computer. Our baby chick hatched so had to ooo and ahh over it. Isn't it adorable now that it is fluffy?? Seriously, DD1 could not be more excited.

I decided I needed to eat and then it was time to work in the garden. I had sooo much to do and there was NO rain today so it was perfect. I have 5 garden areas to take care of around the house plus the gazebo area. I got the front garden all planted and wood chipped. I got the side garden mostly weeded, planted but not wood chipped. I was sweating BUCKETS!! DD2 decided to come home and help me, THANK God!! One of the gardens is hers. DD1 wanted to go see How to Train Your Dragon, again, so since DD2 needed to go out and get boots we went to the movie (I had to shower first). Love this movie. Really, really cute!
We came home and DD2 was almost finished weeding her garden. About 2 hours of weeding. So I planted the 3 Stargazer Lillies that I got for only $1 each!!!, another group of lillies I got for 50 cents and the Impatients. Still needs woodchips. I got most of the containers planted too. Just need to do some clean up of those. As I was re potting on the table outside, I happened to look down and here is what I saw:

This is a fishing spider and this one was about 2 inches in diameter! UGH!!! Spiders, please stop following me. I looked around and the calicos had come out to help too. What's up with that? They don't even like each other!

That's Hallie on the left and Autumn on the right. Oh yes and there were a TON of these although this is one of the bigger ones, all over everywhere.

Anyhoo, I still have to 2 biggest gardens left to week and beat back the lemon balm in. I will stop for some wood chips and a few other things on the way home tomorrow. I did find a weird fungus on the bricks in the gazebo area but forgot to take pictures of that, maybe tomorrow. Then you can tell me how to get rid of it!

Re heated smoked chicken and had some potato salad I had made yesterday for dinner tonight. Had a shower, and am now on my third load of laundry. I'm a little tired.

One of the highlights of the day? Bringing in this beautiful boquet from my garden (the peonies are from the neighbor and YES I did ask her before I cut them) Aren't they lovely?

I hope you all had a good weekend too! I'm beat but still need to pack a bag for the gym in the morning. Oh yes...about that. I gained 0.4 this past week. Darn it!

Gardening with my Friends

I have needed to get out in the garden for so long now and beat the weeds under control but it has been so wet out that I haven't been able to do anything lately. Yesterday I finally had a nice sunny day and also some great helpers (or at least one really good helper). DD2 happened to come home and told me she would help me weed (not a job anyone else will help me to do) so we gloved up and went out in the front yard first. I didn't get any before pictures but trust me it needed to be weeded! As we were weeding we saw this beauty, just hanging out on a bush.

It was beautiful and about as big as my hand! It stayed there quite awhile. We also saw a million toads! We were moving the rocks and re-doing them as the grass grows between them and they sink in so every spring I pull the grass and move them around a bit. I didn't think to take any pics of the toads either, or the billion wolf spiders with their egg sacs (you're welcome). DD2 decided to work under some of the bushes moving rocks around.

Nice shot of her by our Mustang.
The BIGGEST helper though was Hallie. She was the Hosta inspector first.

Next she made a wonderful look out cat.

Followed by some very patient weed flattening. A difficult job to be sure.

I have more gardening adventures planned for today. I need to take advantage of the sunshine and lack of rain while I can.

Weekend Fun

It was a good and productive weekend.  I got a chance to work in the garden.  I got a large section of it weeded (still lots more to do though! *sigh* it never ends).  These are some close ups of the beautiful lilies in DD#2's garden.  Aren't they beautiful?

Last week DS went to Lax camp and this was after he came home.  He was a little sunburned and very tired!  Jack felt it necessary to keep him company during his nap.  Notice the Texas fleece he is sleeping with?  I took the quilt so I can put a sleeve on it and de-cathairify it.  (Like that word I just made right up??)
I was determined to get the "M" string quilt, if not done, at least mostly done.  I had quilting with the CL's this Sat and worked on sewing the blocks into rows.  Here is Hallie helping me make the additional yellow blocks I needed to make to make this quilt work out how I wanted it to.
Here is the quilt all layed out at the church.  All the rows are finished but now sewn together.  I thought the "M" looked a little squat so I needed to make one more row to lengthen the "legs" of the "M".  I did manage to get the whole top finished on Sunday.  I will photograph it today (By the time I finished it it was dark outside and I don't have anywhere to put it inside).  It turned out to be 84" X 105", so it is a HUGE quilt.  
If you are a Michigan fan it certainly is an "in your face" Michigan quilt!  Now I just need to put a back together and I can had it off to Liz.  This is for the Pathology raffle for this fall.  So, what do you think?