Weeds, Weeds and More Weeds!

Hi!  I know I've missed a few weeks but hopefully I'm back on track.  I just don't know where the time goes.  I have every intention of posting my weekly pics and things and then before I know it, I'm halfway through another week.  So instead of trying to catch up I'm just going to start from today.

I'll start with these pictures

This is my lovely little vegetable garden.  Behind all that mess is my shed that my dad and Hubby built a few years ago.  The plan is to get it down to the bare bones and start all over again.  The weeds are as a result of getting FREE mulch/topsoil from our Township.  It's a great idea but...
 I spent this morning working on clearing half of the garden and luckily for me I had some help from Lucy!

I'd been very carefully scaring away any snakes and other little friends when all of a sudden something wet touched me.  I turned around and had a fright of my life - there was this big black thing sitting next to me who was dripping wet from a quick cool off in the pool!  It's not the first time she's done this to me and I'm sure it won't be the last!!  After lunch Hubby came down to help me and by about 3 o'clock it looked like this.

He even fixed my pickets that had been hanging off for the last 6 months. Tomorrow after work I'll put some netting over the blueberries and gooseberries in the hope that this year we will finally get to taste them before the birds!  And now I need to decide how we're going to proceed with getting rid of the weeds and making it look pretty again.

Here are my Photo-a-day pics for the previous two weeks.  I'll post this past weeks pics later in the week.

The rose is a climber in Molly's garden (our puppy black lab that was run over at 4 months).  The clematis next to her garden hiding the ugly fence.  Some pretty white flowers that have appeared!  The Beans Happy Meal. Happy Birthday to The Bean, she turned 3!  A sign at Home Depot.  My car.  A yummy treat from Handel's ice cream.  Out front just off the front porch.  Love the ottoman and the huge wall clock.  A woodpecker on his way to the bird feeder.  I saw this licence plate and thought my mother-in-law should have this for her car and some pretty tiles that were in an open house we went to with friends of ours.

Hope you had a great weekend, until next time...

Goodbye Pixie

Today I found that Pixie, our dear little white and grey guinea pig, had died during the night.  We're going to miss her happy little squeaks when it's time to eat and her pretty little face looking out of her cage when Maddie and Lucy pass by (our labs).  Tomorrow I'll bury her in the guinea pig burial ground - we have six buried out in our front garden - five of ours and one for a friend!  Hopefully Peanut won't take too long to adjust to being the only one.

Goodbye Pixie we love and miss you

Happy Planting!

What a fun weekend. Saturday morning we had The Bean and Sissy for a few hours so took them to Lowes so I could buy a few plants for the deck.  We strapped them into a double wide cart and gave them a juice box and away we went.  They were so good.

 
I ended up buying some portulaca to put along one of the beds by the pool, a few trailing plants for my two window boxes out front, two already planted bowls for my hanging baskets on the porch and a few plants for the deck.  Oh and a new water lily for my mini pond that seems to have sprung a leak!  That's a project for another day as I need to dig that container out and put in a new one, which I still need to buy.

In the late afternoon Hubby and I went to a 50th wedding anniversary party for one of his uncle and aunts (actually they're my favourite uncle and aunt!).  We had a great time.  They'd put up a large tent in the back yard, had a DJ playing music the whole time and had plenty of food and drink.

Then this morning Hubby and I went to Home Depot and bought three tomato plants, a couple of pepper plants, some herbs and some soil.  I wasn't going to do any veggies but Hubby thought we should just put them in some planters on the deck.  So I spent most of the day outside planting and cleaning up.  What a great way to spend a Sunday!

I also went to the library this past week.  I haven't been for a while because once I start reading I can't stop and then nothing gets done!!  I rented the book that everyone is talking about - the life-changing magic of tidying up by Marie Kondo and checked out three other books - two are novels and the third is a book of dreams!  It's Country Living's Porches & Outdoor Spaces.  As I finish them I'll write a brief review.

Here are the photo-a day pix for the week - it's definitely a mish mash of photos!

 

 The first pic is the new Mini Frappacino from Starbucks.  Next is an oversized badminton set for the pool.  Sweet Lucy with her bone out back.  The Queen on my locker at work with the addition of the American flag!  Some orange blossom on an Azalea or deciduous Rhododendron out front and the last two are my plants from Lowes and Home Depot!!

Hope your weekend was a good one.  Until next time...

Yay - We've Opened The Pool!

Hope you all had a Happy Mother's Day.  Hubby made me breakfast, I "facetimed" with L before she went to work and got a phone call from M.  I got some really great gifts - flowers, some yummies and two books, one a colouring book and the other a drawing book.  I can't wait to start them

After breakfast Hubby and I went and trimmed part of our Privet hedge, cut the grass and did some weeding and mulching and then we opened the pool.  We had a bit of a shock when we saw the colour of the water.  Usually it's a little dirty but somewhat clear.  Today it was GREEN!  After a couple of hours and whatever you do to get it started for the season, the water was beginning to look blueish.  I can't wait to start using it again.  The Bean and I are going to have so much fun this summer!

Last Monday I went over to L's to help get her started with her new Cricut machine that she got for her birthday.  It's fab!!  I have so many ideas of what she might be able to do for me - I may have to get one for myself!

Twinnee and I have been doing our usual Skype sessions and during one of them she was working on some little watercolours in her daily journal.  Wow - she's very talented.  Maybe I might be able to show some on here?...

Gardening has been taking up most of my spare time but I'm getting back into knitting and am almost finished with my fox.  I've got so many ideas buzzing around my head of what I'd like to do next but am making myself wait until I get some stuff finished first - that's very hard to do!

Here are my photo-a-day pix for the week

The first pic is the new "toy" - Cricut machine.  Next is beautiful Maddie sunning on the deck.  The bird on the planter is taking some of Maddie's fur to build a nest.  A trip to the Mall - love LV!  The crabapple blossom doesn't last long but it still looks pretty on the grass.  Another trip to the Mall and we had to take a detour into the Apple store!  And finally, my squirrel is back - he was laying flat on the fence post and let me take his picture!

Have a great week and enjoy this warm weather.  Until next time...

It's May Already!

It's hard to believe that it's already May.  During the winter months I kept telling myself that as soon as there are signs of Spring I'll get out in the garden and get a head start on cutting things back and doing clean up.  Well guess what - it's May and I've only just begun!!  It was really nice out today, a warm breeze and lots of sun so I  brought out Peanut and Pixie so they could nibble on some fresh grass and they loved it!

I did get to spend some time up in my sewing/craft room this week.  I skyped with Twinnee twice and on one of the days we did some art in our Dylusions Journals - we decided to work on our page that we'd started when we were together in England last month, the one that we didn't particularly like.  I'm not finished with mine yet but will get back to it, as it needs more on the page.  I covered it over completely with gesso and then stenciled using "spackle" as I don't have any artist paste and gessoed again before painting with acrylics.  I've stamped and doodled on top of that and used some washi.  I'm liking it but it's lacking.

I also did some of my travel journal. Hopefully I'll be able to work on another page tomorrow morning before I have to go into work for two hours of training.  I'm having so much fun putting it all together, I just hope I don't forget anything as I have lots of photos and ephemera.

Here are my photo-a-day pix for the week

The first picture is a stencil by Tim Holtz that I bought at Michael's!  The next are my latest acrylic paints.  The pale pink blossom is from our blueberry bushes along side the vegetable garden.  The paper clips are what I've been using to hold my photos and stuff in place as I work on my Travel Journal.  The dark pink blossom is one of my crab apple trees that I bought from Lowes about 5 years ago.  The Porsche Panemera was at the mall so I had to check it out!  And the fox is a "Jelly Cat" which I love that I'd bought for a friend who is having her first baby very soon!

Have a great week, until next time...

Skype And Art Journals!

We did it!!  On Thursday Twinnee and I skyped and worked on two pages together in our Dylusions Art Journals.  It was so much fun.  Earlier in the week we chose three projects each, emailed them to each other and then made our choices.  On Wednesday we did our prep work - gessoed our pages and gathered everything together so that on Thursday all we had to do was focus on the project.  Of course we found our ideas on Pinterest.  The one we chose was from Dina Wakley.  I'm really happy with how mine turned out and am looking forward to using the techniques we learned in other projects.

Then we moved on to the second page.  At first I wanted to do something that tied into the first page but that was a bit of a disaster so out came the gesso and I started again.  I used a cake decorating sheet that Twinnee had given me and pressed that into the gesso whilst it was still wet.  It's hard to see it in the photo but you can see it in the flesh!  I used the same colours as the first page and added a few butterfly stamps that I'd just bought at Michael's the day before!

The time flew by.  We were very happy with what we achieved and are planning on doing it again on Tuesday!

I've also been busy out in the garden.  I'm just doing "clean up" at the moment but have some big plans for my sad looking vegetable garden.  I'd like to set up my little bistro table and chairs and put up my umbrella that I made hubby carry home from Europe a few years ago - it's just a cheap thing we bought for the beach, but it has lots of fun memories of that holiday!  Hopefully I can get out there this week in between work and meeting up with a couple of girlfriends.  Maybe a trip out to some Garden Centers and a purchase of a vegetable or two might motivate me as well!!

And yes I've been taking my photo-a-day again.  It seems like I've taken quite a few from inside the house watching the birds and this one squirrel.  Well here goes, these are from this past week.

This weeks pix are my guinea pig mug with a hot cup of Vienna (the mug is from mum and dad from this last visit - we have a thing for mugs!?!), a Carolina Wren building a nest in a wall mounted planter by the kitchen window on the front porch, my work table with my stuff for my travel journal, the seat of a shopping cart (at Target) - we thought Bean was funny 'cos that's what I call my first grand daughter, my resident squirrel, the stamp on the package I received from Twinnee and lastly the beginnings of a fern unraveling - a bit blurry but you get the idea!

Hope you all had a fun weekend, looking forward to another busy week so until next time...

I'm Back!!

I had the best time with my Twinnee and BIL (brother-in-law) over in England.  Time flew by but I think we did just about everything we'd planned on doing.  We wanted to do a couple of projects in our Dylusions Art Journals, spending time with our parents, playing games and doing a little sewing.

We found a video on Pinterest (no surprise there!) by MixedMedia Jenn and followed that.  It was a good first project as it was quick and easy.  Mine is the first picture and Twinnee's is second,

Our next art project is not quite finished, mainly because we think it looks awful, but we have plans to work on that in the not too distant future so I'll hold off showing that pic at the moment.  Again we found our tutorial on Pinterest but when we work on them next, we'll be on our own!!  More on that in another post.

In between our art projects we began our vacation journals.  Twinnee chose to do hers in a mini Smash book and I was making mine as I went.  I took photos at the airport, on the plane and everywhere we went.  Picked up ephemera along the way and had planned on putting it all together so that when I got home all I had to do was to get my photos developed and put them in the journal in the appropriate place.  Let's just say it didn't quite happen that way!  I'm slowly working on the entire journal at home but I'm really enjoying putting it together.  I did journal most days in a small notebook that I'd bought from TJMaxx a long time ago (I have a love for notebooks) and that is a great reference for all my photos and stuff.  We also did some Zentangles in our composition notebooks.  I'd like to do more of that but have a bit too much going on right now so I'll look forward to that soon.

Over the first three days at Twinnee's we enjoyed a delicious home cooked meal the first night as I was a little tired from lack of sleep on the plane, a traditional English dinner the next night of good ol' Fish & Chips, a yummy Indian buffet the night after that, breakfast in bed each morning consisting of a cuppa (tea) and toasted hot cross buns, a trip to Hobby Craft and a follow-up appointment to the doctors for Twinnee's back surgery.  We then headed down to Mum and Dad's to spend a week or so with them.

Our plan at Mum and Dad's was to go out for coffee and cake in the mornings and browse some shops.  Come home and spend the afternoon up in Mum's sewing room making our bucket bags,

                                       

our aprons,

I made mine from a Crate & Barrel napkin - they have the best selection of napkins and dishtowels! and our leather journals - another from Crate & Barrel (leather swatches!!)

The journals aren't quite finished yet but they look pretty good so far!  And then in the evenings playing board and card games after eating delicious meals that Mum had prepared ahead of time.  We even got to spend some time with Big Brother and his family and Twinnee's best friend from school.  It was a busy time but we had the BEST time and were sad to leave to go back up to Twinnee's.

Once back at Twinnee's we did another Pinterest found art project - a cupcake collage inspired by a pin of a cupcake by Nancy Standlee.  I don't have a completed pic of Twinnee's but here's mine

I have to say this is my favourite so far.  I love it.  We tore pages out of my magazine I took from the plane and one I'd picked up when we met up with Twinnee's best friend.  I watercoloured the background and did a little stamping and that was about it.  The photography is not the best as you can see my shadow to the left but oh well!

Another trip out to the Indian Restaurant - Table 27,  lunch with my niece at Prezzo followed by cocktails at The Alchemist, a little shopping and then my vacation was over.  It went by so fast but we had so much fun being able to spend all that time together.  I can't wait until we can do it again!

So now that I'm home and back into my routine I'd like to get back to taking my photo-a-day and posting them here.  I also need to finish knitting my fox.  So for the remainder of this month I'm going to CHALLENGE myself to do just that!  So until next time...