Thursday, April 30, 2009

Bits and pieces

So Juliet got home safely on Saturday night and has been spending the last few days getting settled in. She is due to start work next week. It's been nice having another adult in the house during the daytime. I'm feeling spoiled because she has been making lunch and helping with dinner, laundry and housework :)

Yesterday we looked at language books at "Books A Million." She helped me with Spanish pronunciation and I helped her with French pronunciation. She found the Spanish CD's that we already have and is going to help me with learning those.

"Dougal" has been trimmed and looks a whole lot better. The shrubs beside the driveway are in the process of being done because they are interfering with us backing vehicles down to the street. 

Our neighbor had three trees that looked like they would fall over any time so they had those cut down. Opens up their front yard quite considerably. Looks nice.

The mini watermelons that Kris planted are sprouting. She did 10 and 9 are coming up. She has not had to do much watering yet because of all the rain we have been having :) Looks like my Brussel Sprouts are liking the area they have been planted in.

All the Dogwood trees have been in bloom over the past 3 weeks or so which has made our part of town look very nice. They are now past their best and the wild Honeysuckle has taken over. Our "tame" Honeysuckle is intermingling with the wild grape vine along the back fence and we have Trumpet vine growing amongst the "tame" grapevines on the front fence.

With all this "pandemic" talk that has been going on in the media recently it's gotten me to thinking about are we prepared for a lengthy confinement to home if a huge outbreak did occur - I'm not convinced that we (or a large section of the population) are.

Saturday, April 25, 2009

Transplanting

This was in front of some chrysanthemums and is now in another flower bed. Why? Because our holly bush decided to start growing back after I thought I had gotten rid of it a couple of years ago. So now we have to move all the plants out of the way. The Mums are going over by the fence line with the newly transplanted Iris and Lavendar. I cann't wait to see how silly the peony bush looks flowering through the holly!!! Speaking of peonies. I transplanted a few from the grass over to the fence line about 3 years ago and finally they look like they might actually flower. Whoopee !!!!

And wonders of wonders, miracles of miracles, our baby redbud tree has come back from the dead. I have a temporary cage round it till we create something a bit more permenant. That thing is going into "protective custody" till it's more mature. It started out as a tiny "twiggie" thing and has been mowed, chewed and generally mistreated (not by me I might add). It still looks like a tiny "twiggie" thing but one of these years .......

Our peach tree is now less a few twigs and smaller branches. There are peach buds growing. Not nearly as many as last year but hopefully enough for us to experiment with a few recipes for us and our neighbors.

Shabby look


Some people like the "shabby" look.Personally I'm not one of them though at times that would be hard to believe!!!
Our garage shutters need a good paint job. We've been talking about it for a couple of years now. The black looks great behind our Azalea bushes when they are in full bloom. It's about the only time the peeling paint looks half way attractive :)

Oh woe is me


Our poor bush. We had a few rain storms go through the area last weekend and the beginning of the week. It all totally ""wooped the tar" out of our bush. It kind of reminds me of Dougal from "The Magic Roundabout". Now normally things would be back to normal within a couple of days but this time round we are going to have to do some serious trimming. This also impacted our grass cutting. Looks relatively okay in the picture but by Thursday it looked like a prairie in the making !!!!!!
So the Music City Marathon is almost over for another year. I cannot imagine what it must be like to run in 85 degree or hotter weather. I tried mowing our front yard and was pooped out after about 15 minutes!!!!!!!
John did his volunteering stints Thursday and Friday for the marathon set up. Takes a lot of people to put that together. Sad news for him was that he did not get the promotion at work he was after.
We also had our big day of service today. I was on the quilting committee and between our two buildings we put together about 60 quilts. I'm a firm believer in letting volunteers do the areas they are good at and will take any reasonable suggestions for improving things. So the ladies, gentlemen and kids picked the areas of quilting they wanted to do and had at it :) Makes things go a lot faster.
There was also a blood drive, emergency packages, visits to the elderly, some training for disaster mediction distribution. At the moment I don't remember what else was happening but the day was a success.
Juliet is due home today but her flight is delayed. Why am I not surprised :) Something to do with a stinky fish smell.
Elizabeth is on the move with one of her friends and starts spring term on Tuesday.
Kris and Nik enjoyed their part of the day of service. Kris is now waiting for the heat to lessen a bit so that we can go water the veggies.

Monday, April 20, 2009

The blue corner ?

This is the area of our back yard that I am slowly turning over to anything blue or purple in color. Having said that, yes there is some pink at the far end and in the spring the tulips are yellow :) AND our tree has fuschia colored blossoms for a good chunk of the summer.

Please excuse some of the gardening "mess." Kris and I are in the middle of planting bulbs and Iris. It rained a lot over the weekend so we could not finish the tidy up.

In the blue corner


Some of our ground cover is in bloom. It has taken a long time to establish itself but when it fully covers it's assigned area it going to look fabulous.

Weekend activities

We've had a productive few days.

John was in Atlanta, Georgia for a Lego Convention from Wednesday thru Sunday. They had a carnival for their closing night activity so he came home with some fun toys for K and N. Kristina really likes her doggie collar bracelet which lights up and Nik had some sticky stuff that eventually was beaten by the kitchen ceiling and is now banned :)

Saturday Nik participated in a 25 mile bike ride down in Leipers Fork. This was for one of his scout badges. 21 miles into it his tire blew out on a piece of glass :( He has a 50 mile ride still to complete which he is not looking forward too.

Also on Saturday I dragged Kristina to a Preparedness Fair at church and let her pick which classes we went to. For spiritual she chose the musical presentation based on the book "The Ten Virgins" by Emily Freeman and Simon Dewey. (I was good friends with Simon's mother when I lived in London and knew him during the time he was dating his to be wife.)

Then we went to Prepare Every Needful Thing. It was amusing. Some of it was about what NOT to do with food storage. Came away with some useful web sites to follow up on and room temperature information.

Finally we went to Gardening Made Simple. Great presentation and we learned a lot. We came home with some more Iris and some seeds to plant (Bachelor Buttons, Forget-Me-Not, Carrots and Radish). Every gardening area is different so we were given a calander specific to our part of middle Tennessee. Looks like we might have planted our tomatoes too early.

There is an Online Quilt Festival running for the next few days so every so often I have been looking in on it and leaving comments. It's been interesting to see so many varieties of quilts and a lot of the stories have been worth taking the time to read. I'm in there too with the wall hanging I made for Juliet as a Christmas present :)

Juliet and Elisabeth have been taking their end of semester exams. J gets home this Saturday. E is staying for spring semester. They both have to pack up and move this week. E is purging her belongings and I have no doubt will be down to the bare minimum come the weekend :)

Nik has TCAP's this week which is basically Tennessee wide end of school exams. He made chocolate chip cookies this morning before heading out to school. They went with him as his contribution to the snacks.

Kris took the Gateway Algebra test last week. I really hope she does well in it. She went in with her project on Henry Ford this morning. It took her a while to complete since I have to help her read all the resources. Her end of year exams are not for a few more weeks yet.

Saturday coming is going to be way over the top for some people. We have the Music City Marathon in down town Nashville which John volunteers at AND a major Day of Service which we are all involved in. I'm helping to get the quilting session at our church building organised. And most impotantly for us Juliet flies in on Saturday night :)

Friday, April 17, 2009

Flowers


A few days ago John showed up with some bunches of flowers he got on deep discount. This is part of the arrangement I put together for the sun room. The vase is a cut crystal cookie jar we got as a wedding present. It lost it's lid years ago bit works great with flowers. The perfume is quite potent so we have to open up the windows fairly regularly :)
So today looks like it will be a great one weatherwise to work out in the back yard. More plants to get settled in, a general clean up, and veggies to water etc. But first I am going to our local genealogy group to learn more about ......... Scottish research !!!!!!

Thursday, April 16, 2009

How to cook an egg

http://startcooking.com with Kathy Maister.

I got a phone call this evening. Juliet wanting to know if 10 minutes was long enough to cook for hard boiled eggs. It is ......... but then I got to thinking :)

So while we were watching one of those "crime lab" series  I googled. Who knew there were so many sites devoted to how to cook an egg. Even the New York Times ran an article.

Which is where startcooking.com comes into play, literally - a little time lapse video showing how to cook an egg. Got to love it :)

By the way KM's "apple snack attack" time lapse is a hoot !!!

My girls can cook and do it quite well but have found that cooking for one or two is a whole different ball game to helping mom with six. We talked at Christmas about putting together a family cook book for meals for two people so maybe we should tackle it this summer.




Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Garden up date

It's gotten a wee bit chilly over the past couple of days but we did get some planting done over the weekend. Kris and I went back to the garden center on Saturday and bought more plants. To try and keep our bill in check we laid out the plants we got on Friday and did a count of what we would need to fill in some of the spaces. We made a list but still managed to buy a few extras :)

So what did we plant?
veggies
3 different varieties of tomatoes.
mini watermelon (seeds)
bottleneck squash
strawberries
parsley
bell pepper

flowers
lantana
aster
geranium (front yard and pots by front door)
dahlia (pots by back steps)
oriental lily
Abyssinian gladioli
marguerite daisy
gerbera daisy
marigold

still to plant
corn
beans
brussel sprouts (my experiment for this year)
lavender
succulents
chrysanthemum (transplant)
iris (transplant)
peony (transplant)

We are going to plant the corn and beans in the little flower bed beside the sunroom. Nik has decided he wants to look after that. I used to have iris there but they needed thinning out so I dug them all up last year and they have wintered out in containers. Most of them will go into the main flower bed on the other side of the sun room. A few of them may show up amongst the corn and beans :) We are also contemplating putting some out by the mail box.

We have a large tree stump that we are working on removing. John burned some more of it out on Saturday. It currently has the bird bath sitting right in the middle and we are contemplating turning the area into another flower bed. Might be a nice spot to put the peonies.

So after the storm that went through on Friday John got up on the roof and checked it all out, cleaned out the gutters and hammered any loose areas back into place. We may have to get some work done by the porch and front right eave.


Tuesday, April 14, 2009

"Guest" bedroom

Technically this is Liz' bedroom and the guest bedroom when she is not home.

This room has been through a few transformations. Originally the formal dining area we put up a wall, built a closet and gave the space to Liz.

She originally had it painted pale blue and insisted on keeping the original chandelier but about 3 years ago decided she needed a change. This is what she proposed and proceeded to paint (with a little bit of help from our pocket book). She designed, and had John help her build a computer table which fits in the space beside her floor length window. We found new bed linen for her bed on-line and used the top bed sheet (which she did not want to use) to make drapes. At some point we may make a cover for her body pillow so it matches the rest of the room.
I have plans to make a wall hanging to put between her bed and desk. Lots of circles to match the drapery.

Our front living room

This is our quiet area in the house dedicated to reading, studying etc. and has a distinct lack of any electronic "gadgets". I like to sit in there and watch the birds hovering round the Althea tree by the window. It attracts Ruby Throated Humming birds on a regular basis. Fabulous birds to watch in action.

Most of the rooms in our house are 11' deep and our front room is no exception.

The back wall with all the pictures used to be an archway to the formal dining room. We needed another bedroom so we filled in the wall and Liz was a happy camper :)

We ordered a new picture (for us) called "O Jerusalem" by Greg Olsen last weekend, and when it gets here we will be doing a new picture arrangement on the wall. Most of the current ones came from our family room about 3 years ago when it was being re-modeled.

Our front entry

I love our front entry and it's one of the areas that "sold" the house to us :)

The random marble floor is not unusual for the houses built about the same time as ours. 

The entry runs straight into the kitchen and the front living room is directly across from the book cases.

Welcome to our kitchen

One of those "look the sink area is clean and tidy" moments :) We now have a small rug in front of the stove and Lucy loves to lounge on it. The L is about 11'x15'.

To the right of the plant are the French doors to the sunroom.

Friday, April 10, 2009

Good Friday greetings

Hope you all have a memorable Easter weekend.

We had plans, yea verily we had plans but........ "tornado alley" was struck again :(

Kris and I made it out and back to get some plants for the garden before the weather moved in and Nik went to a friend's house. We already had a bad storm during the night that John slept right through :)

Part of Murfreesboro was hit by a tornado as was a section of Thompson Lane. Search and Rescue is currently searching homes for trapped people and so far there does not seem to be any serious injuries. We got lots of rain and wind but otherwise are okay.
Addendum - There has been at least two deaths and some injuries. An area of Arkansas, where the weather system originated, was severely hit.

Thursday, April 9, 2009

My sewing room


This was Nik's old bedroom. When we moved into the house it was in need of a complete do over. We think it was used as a work room. There was dark wood panelling and old orange shag carpet with ratty tile underneath.
We took the walls right back to the studs and put in new wall board. Originally the walls were going to be red but for whatever reason the paint did not take. This blue was Nik's second choice. For such a "manly" color choice it was surprisingly difficult to find anything boyish to work with it so we opted for white and also used the quilt that is in his "new" bedroom.
We took the floor back to the base and then laid wood parquet. I love how it looks. We were originally going to run it into the family room but it took so long to do this small room we would have been at it forever in there. One of these years we will replace the door. The previous owners chopped a piece off the bottom so it could open up over the carpet. Now we have a space along the bottom that does not look very attractive.
So now I use the room for sewing in and enjoy it very much. Everything is close to hand and I don't have to go burrowing in closets or boxes round the house to find whatever I need. Surprisingly I miss using the kitchen table, only because it has a large surface area, which is great for large projects. I keep my really big pieces of fabric in tubs in the basement but that is dwindling as I donate items or finish up projets.
We have a single bed in here for overnight guests or one of the girls when they visit. It's also great for those days when I am feeling sick, like today, and want to sleep into a smaller bed space :)
I'll continue the tour of our house soon. The current pictures are in our old computer where there is currently no internet access. I need to take more pictures and download them to my laptop.

Nik's bedroom


Yes teenagers can keep their rooms tidy and here is proof positive :) This used to be Juliet's room and was white and lavender (where the green now is.) We still have to paint out the white. Nik wants burgundy but John is not too sure about that. We might have to compromise with a tan and maybe a burgundy stripe between the two colors. Still undecided about that.
We got frames recently for some of Nik's pictures and will probably hang them up this week-end.
The cushion on the bed used to be one of Nik's favorite t-shirts. When he outgrew it we changed it into a cushion by sewing up the bottom and arms then putting in a bag of stuffing before closing up the neck. We are getting ready to re-stuff it due to many years of usage.
Just a few steps from the bed is Nik's desk and the doors into his closet. There is a long floor to ceiling window next to the end of the bed on the far wall.

Looking out our front door


This is looking toward our neighbor's front yard just before a storm hit. See all the lovely purple flowers round their trees- that will turn into the more familiar looking dried plant referred to as "Dollar Plant". We are letting it grow into part of our yard but have to watch it closely as it can be quite invasive.

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

My favorite garden blog

Three posts in one day. My goodness.

I just introduced Kris to my absolute favorite garden blog. It's to die for (well not really but you get the drift). She loved the flowers and birds then said "Oh look, we have some of them." Indeed we do but not in quite such an artistic or exuberant abundance. They also have Celine Dion and Enya singing for you while you view. Loooooove it all :)

http://warrengrovegarden.blogspot.com/

Enjoy.

Technology issues and our dog

I mentioned to John this morning that I have not been able to access the www on our main computer for a while so he took a look. Now he is on "scurry mode" to download a number of pieces of information related to e-mails and our photographs. Our main computer will have to be scrapped altogether. My old laptop is going to be cleaned out and sold.

All of this means we will be reorganising our family room ..... again :) The MAC will now become our main computer and be moved to the corner where our current main computer sits and the MAC desk will be moved out and either used in another part of the house or given away. Mmmmmm it might be useful in my sewing room. I feel a few ideas coming on :)

We love our dog but some days she can get hyper-active (for her). It looks like today will be one of those days. She has been bouncing around and barking at everything since about 5.30 this morning !!!!!!! Most of it is due to one of the neighborhood cats strolling through the yards but I have no idea what the rest is about. I may have to take her out for a loooooooong walk if she does not settle down soon.

News from the tunnels at the Y

Last night Juliet called Kristina and we went on speaker phone to listen to the pandemonium that was going on in one of the tunnels at BYU. If you have ever paticipated in any of the tunnel activities you know how loud things can get in there :)

Mark was opening a very important letter from Salt Lake. He is, as of last night, leaving for his mission in June and going to ....... Santiago, Chile East Mission. His brother is currently serving in the California San Diego Spanish speaking mission and was recently made a Zone Leader.

Needless to say we are very proud of both of our nephews for taking time to serve the Lord. One of our other nephews served a mission in the Phillipines a few years ago and did well there.

Next in line in the family is our darling daughter. She is contemplating serving but has to pass a very stringent physical in the summer first before she can send in her papers. The boys can go when they turn 19 for 2 years, the girls have to wait till they are 21 and serve for 18 months. Couples serve a variety of lengths of time from 6 months onwards and can go multiple times.

Monday, April 6, 2009

Start from where you are at.

I like this sentiment. I may do a cross stitch with it and hang it in our kitchen :)

The first weekend in April is General Conference for members of our church and this phrase was mentioned in one of the talks. Made me feel a whole lot better because I feel like I have been in a spiritual slump for a while now. So instead of "beating myself about with a wet noodle" regarding where me and my family are not, I'm going to actively encourage us all to look at where we are at and move forward from there.

I'm finding that the older I get the more I appreciate General Conference and the messages that are given. Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday is, and should be, a significant time of remembrance for all Christians. May we each remember Him well and honor who He was and is.

I'm looking forward to being able to read all the talks later this week at www.lds.org and discussing them with my family for the next few weeks.


Companion Planting

Kris and Nik did some research on companion planting at the weekend. I asked them to find out what would work well with corn, strawberries, peas and tomatoes. This is what they learned.

Corn - amaranth, beans, cucumber, white geranium, lambs quarters, melon, morning glory, parsley, peanuts, peas, potatoes, pumpkin, soy beans, squash and sunflower

Strawberries - beans, borage, lettuce, onion, spinach and thyme.

Peas - pole beans, bush beans, carrots, celery, chicory, cucumber, egg plant, parsley, early potato, radish, spinach, strawberries, sweet pepper and turnips.

Tomatoes - asparagus, basil, bean, carrots, celery, chive, cucumber, head lettuce, marigold, mint, nectarine, onion, parsley, pepper and saw thistle.