Easter candy or lack thereof

Where is it?  What are these gifts?  Hats for the baby, puzzles for 5 the year old, jewelry for the 75 year old (sister), spices for the 70 year old (brother), money for the 20 somethings, golf bag for the 43 year old.  Where's the chocolate?  I'm not sure if color or chocolate is my nemesis, but they can both bring me down.  If I walked in to my two local chocolatiers (Philadelphia and Daffins), I would be in a glucose coma by the time I arrived home.  It's that bad.  I feel like an addict and need to stop.  There is no way Easter candy would have made it to the intended recipients.  I've tried hiding chocolate in the basement corner where spiders lurk, the freezer, the garage, attic way, my husband's car, thinking I can just take two a day from these inconvenient spots.  No.  I have to stop buying it completely and go through the withdrawal.

In the years before Mom came here, my spring cleaning would have been over by Easter.  What happened?  My entire life changed and even after she passed, I never got back into my prior routines.  When I heard that sis's friend is having a large sale at her church, I thought it would be a good time to start ridding.   A set of three spongeware patterned bowls, stuffed angels, new sweaters, pip berry garlands, stitched Santa pillows, and more to come.   These two patriotic sweaters were never worn and my husband is not a sweater guy, but he bought them because of the theme.

 

 

 

 

Made in the USA and the name of my last sampler!  Yes, these were bought years ago.  The Hilfiger is Pakistan.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And speaking of Liberty, she is finished and I'll show her tomorrow.  Guess what I'm doing tomorrow morning?  Meeting with Dominic.  His stepdaughter ripped out her entire kitchen even though he told her to wait until he was done with orders, which meant that she got her way and he had to drop everything to do it now.  Good.  I have a little change.  I should not have gone back to Phoebe Troyer's pins of her current home, but her style is exactly what I love.  Simplistic.  Stark with warmth.  Lighter paint colors.  It looks easy, but it takes a special talent to decorate like this.  I try to stay away from too many ideas/photos on that damn site, but I've been following her for some time. 

Geez.  Lots of yakking about nothing on Easter morning when I have a dinner to prepare.  Most will be done here with finishing at my sister's since my house is a mess.  It's going to be a warm and perfect day.  I hope yours is also.

Happy Easter!!

 

 

Easter

To everyone who will be celebrating Easter,

have a blessed and joyous day. 

 To those who will not be, give others the same respect and tolerance, that you demand for your beliefs.

A poor photo of The Lord's Prayer
 from Stoney Creek.
~ Happy Easter ~

The top twenty

Greetings.  The grass gave up and is covered.  The birds are shivering.  The cats are back inside.  They say it won't last long because it will climb to 40 degrees today.  Oh boy.  Get out the sandals.

Melissa at Words and Blooms asked - if you have 20 years to stitch one big sampler a year, what would they be?   That's a tough question. I would like to list samplers that I want on my wall, but someone else stitched.  I know that many of my wants are projects I would never tackle for whatever reason.  Lack of patience for a BAP, lots of over one stitching, beautiful borders requiring color changes every few stitches, to mention a few.  Is my aging a factor and would I have stitched more intricate samplers years ago?  Maybe.  But I'm still drawn to marking samplers because of their simplicity.  That's why I label myself a stitch wimp, and if I attempted some of these questionable projects, I may finish them without incident, but my gut tells me otherwise.  It wouldn't hurt to try, but I will only list samplers that I feel may actually be stitched, not just wishful thinking.

Could you choose a favorite from your completed samplers?  Even tougher!  Look at the samplers from Margaret, Glenna, Carol Sims, and bloggers that continue to work on the bigger and fancier girls.  Each one a treasure.  Hannah Breed is at the top of my list, but what about Lydia, Fanny, Mary, Safrona, Mary, Eunice, Mary, Thankful, Eliza, Margaret...the list goes on.  I love them all.

Isn't Liberty sweet?  Time to start thinking about who will be next.

Thanks for the kitchen comments.  When I saw that Penny has Smith's work in her home I had to stop myself from turning green.  He's in Ohio, I'm in PA and I'm sure I could have contacted him.  I've been visiting his site from the very beginning. The problem - we're retiring and I can't see justifying the cost of an entire new kitchen when we need to replace the cedar siding and windows. We're adding additional cabinets and details to what we have, which are solid wood and well built, new appliances, counter, sink and faucet. 

Still lots of decisions to make throughout the house and I have to wonder.  If I ever had the chance to build another home, would I be able to decide on a design?  Yes!  Starting with a clean slate is so much easier.  

I wonder how many items I will misplace today because the sampler bucket list will be distracting me.  Hopefully, no more than four.

Have a good one!

Thanks for visiting.

 

 

 

My buds are frosted

Stop snowing!!!!  Those aren't flowers on that crab tree, it's white crap.  All the trees and plants are coated but the greening grass refuses.  After being covered under a heavy blanket for so long, it is not allowing this stuff to smother any longer!! 

Dominic wasn't grasping the details or the design -so more days of relentless graphing and cardboard cabinets and templates of various sizes and foam board cutouts, ended with basics.  I give up. Working with existing sizes and a guy that doesn't deviate from standard wasn't easy. Tomorrow, only three cabinets will be built.  Good enough for now.  I drew the specs for the third cabinet while in the car outside the bakery.  Done. 

Five cabinet makers, and not one answered yes to my question .. "are you familiar with David T. Smith, Kevin Ritter, or Sunderland?" 

Liberty is almost completed and I hope to relax and catch up with the world this evening.  Right now I need to clear the kitchen of the mess and put a heat pack on my neck.  Tomorrow I will give in and buy bigger panties.  Hopefully there won't be a bakery close by.

I hope your week has started out well~

thanks for stopping by.

Hingeing on more decisions

Happy weekend to you.  Ours will be warm and sunny, hopefully drying some of the mud from the rain which is packed into little paws of a princess that doesn't bathe very often.  As you can see, I'm still getting attitude.  Today I have to make a decision on hinges.  The ones originally chosen many moons ago, are discontinued.  Of course they are.  So I found three options, two of which show just the barrel and the other is the iron H.  Might be nice for a change since the cabinets are painted.  Currently they are barrel only and painted the same as the wood so not noticeable at all.  I can always paint over the hinge as I did in the dining room. 

The kitchen's doors are 3/8" offset but Acorn makes the usually flush H for those also.  The only thing for sure is they will be black as will the counter top.  Barrel or H?  I'm leaning towards H but may fall over and bump my head causing a change to barrel. 

Coming back from another trip to the county courthouse (which is so beautiful) we stopped at the antique shop in Volant and I bought this tall cheese box.  Not extremely old but I don't care.  I like old wood and had an extra $20 in my pocket.

 

 

 I just love my gourd bowl/spoon and vase from Fanatic's Country Attic.  No wonder I couldn't find the beans for the French Market soup.  You know how we walk around with something in our hand, get distracted, set it down, and then can't find it?  Yesterday I went into my craft closet and there it was.  The coffee cup that had been missing for quite some time, along with some dried up green stuff inside. 

And here's Liberty.  I have to say that for all the dips - both dye and bleach - that the DMC endured, you really can't see much difference in the new stitching compared to the abused.  The 221 is slightly darker so I dipped that skein, only because of it being the border.

This weekend is also decision time for the slide in range, hammered copper sink, and new faucet.  Am I making a mistake going with copper?  I would like to have a quartz counter top with an undermount sink in the same material and color but so far have been told NO.  I've found that some salesclerks don't look further than the store shelves.  Absolute black granite is second choice, but all the suppliers are telling me that honing it to take off the shine is a mistake and they don't like to do it, costing quite a bit more. Does anyone anywhere give the customer what they want?  And the range quandary - stick with Jenn Air downdraft or install a cabinet depth slide out ventless hood?  Jenn Air has such bad reviews and I need to consider that.

Sorry I dump all my boring stuff on you but that damn cat ignores me.  No help at all.

Have a great weekend and thanks for visiting!

That's better

My name is Marlene and I am a colorholic.

But I wanted to start over on 30 count anyway, so if it didn't work, no big loss.  Floss doesn't grab as quickly as the linen and except for the border, I'm not concerned about a slight difference.  Well.  I just dipped a WIP 9 times in various blends and in Clorox twice.  I guess you could say I'm not concerned, period!  With all the work I have here, I am spastic enough to work on this instead.    BUT!!  I made a decision on the trim color - I'm sticking with the Studio Taupe that is in the first room.

 I found this on Pinterest and love the color.  This is putty!  But I can't do this any longer and have exhausted every paint manufacturer.  All my sample jars will be thrown into a gallon can and shaken.  It may end up being the perfect shade for the bathroom.  Dominic called and my cabinets will be started next week.  They will not be what I want but again, I can't wait any longer.  My search for a true cabinet maker that is willing to go a tiny bit outside the box is over.  There is no one left to call.  Think how bad it will be 10 years from now.

Right now I need to get the dyes put away and clean up my mess.  Mark will be home from golfing soon, walk in, and see that nothing has been moved.  I'll just quietly grind my teeth and he won't dare ask anything. 

Have a good weekend!

Thanks for visiting.