From my pal Carole/Pea’s blog:
5 Minutes for Mom is giving away a 37″ Flat-Panel LCD HDTV and you have a good chance to win! Click on the above link to their blog to read all the rules and to be entered in the draw-you have until the middle of August, but why not do it now? This tv is courtesy of Best Buy!! This contest is open to both Canadian and US shipping addresses!! Good luck:-)
When I way checking out the front garden the other day, I noticed this:
I hadn’t seen it this year or for a while! What a neat Clematis plant. It sure looks pretty around the bells.
And as a new purchase back in May, 2005.
I’m a little inspired (a little) to weed one of these days to see what else is hiding from me!
I never saw a guy get so excited about big boxes of food like Sean was in BJs Wholesale Club today! He loves that place. ☺
Since we have a small family, we don’t shop there that often. He was looking for snacks and meals he could have in his dorm room. He got lots of soup-the noodle kind and Healthy Choice, Chex mix, dried milk, lots of little boxes of cereal, Starbursts(!) and a few other things. He also got a ‘safe’ made especially for his laptop with a combination lock on it and a wire that loops around something for added security. He also got a Penn State folding chair. His room has a microwave/frig combo. He’s been using a lot of his work pay this summer to buy the things he needed. He helped today with BJs too.
I did buy myself a few things. Two scrapbooking books-called Instant Memories-Travel and Love editions. They have vintage images on nice card stock, but you also get a CD with all the images in the book. I saw them on Amazon with a bunch of other editions for under $6 each (used and new), half of what I paid. I also bought a faux scrapbook by Cicely Mary Barker, the flower fairy illustrator. It has little envelopes you can open up, one of which may have what is suppose to be a butterfly wing. That is also a good price at Amazon.
So Sean is all set!
We went to Bertucci’s, a brick oven pizza/Italian food restaurant. Mom had fettucini with asparagus and shrimp while Sean and I shared a Shrimp Bella Venezia pizza. Best pizza I have tasted for a while.
Going to my mom’s still makes me anxious as there is a lot going on there, mostly things that need cleaning. Her yard needs attention around the house. I guess the first cooler day I’ll have to go weed wack down there. And the inside is crazy. She tries to go through too many boxes at once. Plus instead of going to the department stores, she is now going shopping at the Goodwill! She bought a nice glider rocker that was new (Sean loved it) and a small wing back chair with a saggy seat. She thinks it is comfortable and more so then a leather chair I bought for her many years ago at a nice department store. I’m thinking about bringing the white leather chair home. I like it. It has big arms and you can curl up in it and read or stitch. We have a recliner that is a good make (Lane), but I have never liked it and it’s Bri’s chair. He said he’ll have to check out the leather chair.
We had to drive home tonight in the pouring rain and had to get the stuff in between raindrops. Bri is complaining about his new job already. Says that when he drove around a lot, it helped with his salary. He’s not driving that much, but he has more ads. We’ll have to see how it works out.
For Zoey, are you watching ‘The Parker’ about the Palm Springs hotel on Bravo? Just wondering.
Guess I’ll play with my new books tomorrow.
He’s watching out for his fellow Toms-so beware! : ) I couldn’t resist taking a photo of this funny looking guy.
And some ATCs I worked on. I started with the background on a most unusual kind of paper a few days ago. Can you guess?
I used travel ‘wipes’ (they smell so nice too) and watercolor pencils! The wipes are wet already which makes it fun to draw on them with the pencils. I also added water to the colors. The children are from the art e-zine link in my sidebar. I’m still working on a little boy with a sunset background on the wipe. Cool, huh? Vonna-I use playing cards for the base. These particular cards have white card stock glued to the playing card before I added the wipe layer.
The green beans, my little zinnias, mini sunflowers and most of my squash are gone. : (
However, I did pick 6 more squash, so the count is still growing. I will check again in a few days, but there are so many fallen apples, I’m a bit afraid that the stinging critters will go after them. Mr. Groundhog should be in hog heaven if he ventures out to that part of the yard. When I retrieved the squash, I had to walk on the big, thick stems of those plants. It breaks my heart to see it that way. I wonder if I could replant and get an early fall harvest? We have nice weather until the end of September or beginning of October a lot of times. That of course would mean doing a big clean up and we are going to the beach next week for a few days and the following week is the drive to PSU.
Both guys went out to cut more branches down after a spaghetti dinner, so they were pretty full. When they came in, they got a banana/pineapple/guava smoothie in a new smoothie maker! Sean gets 20% off at work, so he picked one up for us.
I’m in a cleaning mood still (gasp) and did half the family room before doing a few baskets of laundry. I seem to put off the book end of this room all the time. I just start sorting out my books and end up reading them.
Hopefully we can see my mom tomorrow and maybe go to BJs so Sean can get a few large items he needs for college. The time is growing so near now.
My pal Angela gave me the cutest accordion book, about 4″ x 4″. She had added lots of cute friendship things to it, but I just didn’t know what else to add…so I altered it. I saved lots of the things she included, but it’s a fun and daunting task at the same time-there are 40 pages to fill! It’s good to print out favorite pictures you like and want to look at a bunch. I have one tip, don’t use anything but a glue stick or tacky glue. A glue gun leaves the page lumpy.
One of the covers: new background, photo corners and butterfly and rider print. Kept flower and jewel.
My Mom mom as a girl graces one page:
I had to have a cross stitch page with real aida cloth.
I worked on this during those dog days when it was so hot. I hope Ang likes it as much as I do and you aren’t even seeing half of it. See a few more pages here plus a few more items I made in the last few years.
Thank for the comments. I didn’t actually make the book itself, but I did find a tutorial as I want to try making more.
It’s so darn muggy! When I got up it was 80 degrees outside already. I wanted to mail off a birthday card to a pal in Ireland and was filling it out when the UPS guy brought my new flip phone! It’s pretty cool and Sean has one almost just like it. With a rebate of $50 it will be a freebie. It pays to call up your provider and see if they have any specials. They would not have accepted the rebate if I had bought the phone at Wally World and some other places. Yes, it’s magenta!
So what’s the title up there about? I happen to look in the direction of the vegetable garden and the fairly good size apple tree there had fallen over directly in the green beans and yellow squash part of the garden, the area I take care of! Bri may have a hard time cleaning it all up, but maybe we’ll be able to save the garden. I don’t know if my ‘count the squash’ contest is still on as it literally got squashed last night! The tomatoes are fine. The tomatoes are visible in the foreground and the my part of the garden is under the tree. We only have a chicken wire mesh fence. I kinda know why it fell over. This and the two pear trees next to it are suppose to be dwarf trees and were not kept trimmed back correctly. It’s not like I didn’t remind ‘someone’. The pears are hardly producing anymore and he won’t cut them down.
My uncle needs someone to put his a/c units back in the windows of his house. If he can’t find anyone, Bri and Sean will have to go over and help him. I’m hoping someone will do it today.
Update late Tuesday-Bri and Sean went out after dinner to clear away some of the tree. Sean couldn’t stand the horrible humidity and Bri wouldn’t give the trimming up until over an hour later! He came in looking like he had been in a downpour-he was drenched to the bone from perspiration. The veggies are pretty well squashed. I reached in and got 1 MORE SQUASH! ; ) I think one in the far corner didn’t get ruined. I came in and made strawberry smoothies. Thanks again to Carole for the idea of freezing the berries on a tray first. It took a while with ice and strawberries (live and learn-like put a few in at a time instead of dumping them all and making the motor run weird). I think I need a new smoothie maker as the one we have is letting off an electrical burn smell. Sean can pick me up one at Big Lots.
We watched a movie called Disturbia. It was really scary at the end! One of the characters was played by David Morse, a resident of Penna. I still think he was the best in St. Elsewhere (doctor show from the 80s).
The lady who came to help my uncle today put in the a/c units (they are small ones) for him and cleaned like crazy too! I hope she comes several times a week.
Please check out my new link to a cool art e-zine. I’ve been visiting there a lot lately!
Watch out for spammers who use your old blog entries to comment. I wrote to word press about it and finally just ended up taking off this particular entry they were using all the time. I deleted about 10 comments today and some were a bit obscene. I just removed my archives from this blog to see if that helps.
I went out to take a few rose shots after dinner and my lens kept steaming up! You could cut the air with a knife. I got my photos after a few tries and turned right around to come in again.
My mom said my Uncle Don came home today. I sure hope he is getting help. Mom thinks someone is suppose to be there helping him 3 hours a day. He has a great neighbor who even went to get him ‘sprung’ as he left against the doctor’s wishes unfortunately. He’s very thin, like 138 pds for someone who is 5’10”. He’s also very stubborn like his mom. He came home to find his stepdaughters had removed the a/c units as they were afraid it would have been too easy to break into the house with them in place. The good thing he is about 20 minutes or so away from me instead of 45-50 minutes. Sean won’t be here, so I can surely bring meals and such over to him. When he came home right before last Christmas, he seemed pretty content. Then he fell and broke his hip. He said good-bye to my aunt who is still at the nursing home. She’s a bit older than him and in a wheelchair and naps a lot. Keep my 84 yr old Uncle Don in your thoughts and prayers. Mom feels that him being home is another thing to worry about. Where he was cost over 1K a week(!) and he had to share a small room with another man. Sounds sucky to me. I’d want to go home too.
A few years ago (pretty sure), I bought ‘dinner plate’ hibiscus seeds from an eBay seller. I actually raised about 4 little plants and planted them where I have the glads, irises and box hedges. Last year a plant came up and I was sure it was just a weed, so I snipped it off. I didn’t want to ruin the garden with a big, gangly weed! Sure enough, up it came again this year and some of my brain’s cobwebs cleared as I thought to myself, didn’t I plant a hibiscus here? Look what bloomed today!
I know what you are thinking-not quite the size of a dinner plate-more like a saucer! The link above considers these ‘hardy’ hibiscus and that they are a perennial. Check out all the buds (and you aren’t seeing all of them) and they are suppose to bloom until the first killing frost. The guys were visiting Pops and I ushered them out to see the blossom and hadn’t a Japanese beetle started to nibble it! Pops got my old cellphone as I am getting a flip phone in a few days.
Here’s what was for dinner last night:
Squash frittata-with a little turkey bacon, cheddar, fresh Italian parsley and basil thrown in!
Does this remind you of Little Miss Muffet?
Awesome Autumn Beauty Sunflower (background-8 power/ cable lines!) 
I’ve getting so organized in certain ways (nesting because my baby bird is leaving maybe?). Last night I tidied up my photo files here on the computer. What a job and a half! I have lots of new folders and deleted things too. Today I tidied up a big pile of my ATC papers, etc. I am learning from my mom that you have to do this or you will forever be looking for one little thing like she is.
Tonight we are having a pot roast and some of the fresh green beans we raised.
Keep cool and hope for rain!
I saved this little waterlily flower the other day. I purchased two waterlilies at Wally World a few months ago. They were suppose to be orange and yellow. I put the yellow one in the in ground pond and the orange one in my above ground container. They come in a mesh bag with the peat moss packed inside. In the middle are the waterlilies. First the smallish leaves appeared and that was it until a few days ago. I noticed the little flower head was still entrapped in the mesh. I stuck my hand in and it was free. In one day it was touching the surface. Today it opened! It’s more of a peachy color, but so pretty. I am lucky to get one or two blooms and this is the third I’ve gotten. The first two were from it’s neighbor plant and they were white:
My two buck Peace rose is blooming. It looks like it belongs on a wedding cake!
Here’s a trio of more pale yellow sunflowers. The deer left them alone in my yard but nibbled all my brother’s flowers and he lives in a well populated neighborhood and his were planted on a steep hill!
I’m not showing you the weeds of course, but the first cooler day, I’m out there with the weed wacker going to town. More photos from today will be added to Flickr on the right.
Collages & Creative Goodness 