June is Busting Out!!!

Hi there everyone. How is your new month going so far??? I was hoping to get a post going on June 1st, but had some computer problems....seems my computer got attacked....Geez, did not realize it. Tried uploading some pictures, but to no avail. Finally had to give up.

Today I am back, files are cleaned and got my pictures uploaded, always have some kind of hoop to jump through....such is life!!! Today I thought I would show a few pictures of my house, and garden and flowers around the house.

Here is a picture of my house, we've lived here going on 23 years this July 27th. Where has all that time gone?? There definitely has been lots of changes since we moved here.

A picture of the back part of my yard.....things are just starting to grow and I have lots of work yet to do. Not sure I will put in much of a garden this year. I mostly just want to enjoy the work of my labors and just do fun things around the house. What that is, I do not know as yet.

Another view from the bird houses towards the pond. I am slowly getting some of my garden animals out...they always seem to make the back yard homey.

These are my little flowered crocuses that come up along side the house....as soon as they die off I will be planting some Zinnias along side the house. Big tall Zinnias this year.

This is a cute little Begonia plant I got for JP for his birthday. It is planted in this pot and sitting on the porch.

Walking Kylie around the neighborhood, I passed by this house that had these beautiful purple flox growing outside. The lady was sitting on her front porch...I told her the next time I pass by I am bringing my camera for a picture. I passed by today.....they are almost finished blooming, glad I got the picture when I did. 



This is another picture of a garden I pass by while walking Kylie. I thought it was so intriguing  with the ladder over the garden. The plant growing under the ladder is a tomato plant. I shall be keeping an eye on it as Kylie and I pass by and watch it grow.

Well, time to close here...JP will be home soon and I did not get a chance to get downstairs to make some cards. I have some birthday cards in the process of being made. Take card and keep looking up.
Cheers ~ Louise

Flowers and Antique Roadshow.

Hi everyone....hope you are keeping warm. Going to make this a short blog. Thought I would put a few pictures of last summers garden flowers up today (I am missing my flowers)....need a little warmth to look at instead of ice and snow and cold wind.

In the above picture is my Habiscus. Apparently I cut the bloom off the bush and brought it in the house, putting it in a container of water. I don't think it lasted long though and wilted. I brought the plant in the house for the winter...seems to be doing well with little tiny blooms beginning to appear. More flowers coming in the near future.

This is my lovely white rose......a lovely plant that takes it's time to start new growth in the spring. Last spring I almost dug this bush up because it was taking so long to grow....I thought the hard winter had killed it off. So right now this lovely rose bush is sitting under 3-4 feet of snow right now.......hope it is keeping warm and will bloom again.

These flowers are my zennias....I always love to have zennias growing on the side of the house....flowers to look at as I walk into the house.

It's 2:50am. JP is eating shelled nuts, I recorded Antique Roadshow for him to watch. He does for a little while then dozes off. For some unknown reason this program makes me sleepy too, so while I am typing and listening to the program.....my eyes are getting very heavy.....so maybe I need to close this blog for tonight. So you all take care and keep looking up!!!
Cheers ~ Louise

Something New in My Etsy Store

Hi everyone...whew, where did this weekend go??? Well, tomorrow is MONDAY and the beginning of a new week. I tell ya, life flies by so fast, what does that mean anyways?? Am I too busy or not busy enough??? I don't know, it's either one or the other. Sometimes I have so much planned (24 hours is not enough) I can't get everything done, then there are days I just back off from everything. I can't imagine when I was working....I must have found the time, but then maybe everything went half done....I don't know....it's one of those mysteries!!!

So this weekend, JP and I went to Archivers....can you believe it? He went into one of my favorite stores. JP wanted some sheet music enlarged as some of the notes are hard to read. I wanted to print off some pictures from my camera disk and turn them into beautifully framed pictures, something I have been thinking of doing for awhile. Archivers has a section of the store available to work on their computers. You can pick pictures from your flash drive or disk that you want for scrap booking or framing, and make them any size you desire. I usually use a coupon from Achiever's for "10 free 4x6 pictures". I have decided to matte the pictures and sell them on my Etsy store.

So in the following pictures you will see some of the pictures I have chosen to matte and sell. Enjoy.

I really love the way this flower turned out...it almost looks like a hand painted Zenia. There are a few more colored Zenia's to print off and matte. Will have to see how this print fares on Etsy. I will be selling the matted print for $5.50 + postage ($7.00). (a trip to the Post Office with a sample mailing to see exactly how much postage will cost is in store).

This is one of my Black Eyed Susans. I just love when they pop up in my flower garden. I always try to plant lots of seeds....one or two of them will usually take. This picture shows that the black eyed susan is matted, but not in the frame. The picture will be sent like this with the clear plastic sleeve protecting it. A frame does not come with the pictures. The frames serve as a sample of what the picture will look like.

I just love my roses...in the above picture is my beautiful yellow rose framed....so pretty! Oh, about the frame...this was one of those little gems I picked up at a rummage sale. Fill a bag for $1.00.....there were about 7-8 frames in the bag...I think I got a good deal!!!

Here are my pretty white roses. This year the white rose bush had as many as 15-20 blooms at one time....gosh it was gorgeous!!! I have a pink-salmon colored rose...but for some reason, did not take pictures of them this year. I will have to go back into my files and find one of those roses.

Now this was an interesting picture of the pink Zenia and a little butterfly....I was told by a professional butterfly keeper, this was not a Monarch, which I thought it was, it is actually called a "Painted Lady" (Vanessa Cardui). This little butterfly visited while I was having my garage sale...it would stay the whole afternoon fluttering around on the Zenia's. It must have been having a ball, cause it visited 3 days in a row....so naturally I just had to get some pictures of it fluttering around on different colored flowers.

Last, but not least is my "Volunteer Sunflowers" I am not even sure when we had sunflowers in the garden, must have been a couple of years ago. The seeds ended up in the Compost at some point. When we planted some daisies, JP got a couple of shovel fulls of "gold dirt" planted the flowers and up came these volunteers. Wow...they sure were fun to watch, as they grew and the bees would suck up the nectar. Fun flowers to have in the garden...plus seeds for the birds next summer.

Well, there you have it, my new project for Etsy. As soon as the Packer game is over I shall add one of the pictures to my Etsy store.

Green Bay Packers are winning 31-17 in the 3rd with 23 seconds to go. On to the 4th...Ummmm...I think they have this one, Packers are looking pretty good...Oh, I am an Aaron Rogers fan!!! OKAY....FINAL SCORE PACKERS 44 - VIKINGS 31....GO PACKERS!! Next game is with Chicago in Green Bay....should be a good one.

You all have a great rest of the evening and hope your Monday is a good one. Keep looking up for your redemption draws nigh. Cheers ~ Louise

Picked a Bouquet of Flowers 4 U

Hi everyone...hope your day was beautiful and full of little surprises along the way. I picked a bouquet of flowers for you all..........

Here it is, zennias, daisies and some small sunflowers oh and some lavendar to add a little splash of purple....so pretty isn't it??? For some reason I was not bringing the flowers in the house that much. Just enjoying them outside I guess. As you can see, the sun is shining....it was positively a beautiful day.

In this picture is a close up of the flowers.

Here is a picture of my hibiscus. The plant is about 4 years old now. I paid $1.50 for it at Walmart....it sure is a survivor. It seems to really like where it is growing. I my prune it down this year, which is something I have never done before, I think it might need it now.

In these next two pictures is a funny little monarch that fluttered around on my zennias, all day Thursday, Friday and Saturday. I thought that was quite an exciting thing...it must of loved those zennias. So, I decided to snap a few pictures of him or her.

Another picture on a different flower....I think he or she was just enjoying the sun and the smell of the flowers. I was just enjoying snapping pictures. I think when I can get more pictures made up free at Archivers, I will have these made and then frame them. I am also thinking of selling a few pictures in my Etsy store. Maybe a 5X7 for $5.00. Still thinking on that one, we'll see.

And........here again is my volunteer sunflowers. It has been fun watching them grow and watching the bees do their thing. I just could not get enough of these flowers...probably I will not see them grow like this again. I think they did very well volunteering themselves to grow in my garden. God is so good and He knows just what we need to make us smile. I hope the neighbors and passer-byers enjoyed them also.

Another shot of my fountain. I have planted some white, yellow and burgandy mums in urns and set them out in different places. The white mum is in front of the fountain....pretty isn't it?

Well, I guess this is the final white rose of the season....(sad face) I shall miss my roses....they were pretty this year, but I don't think it was a very good year for them. I have seen years when they went crazy with blooms, this year not so much.

And last but not least....my wonderful apple tree made some wonderful apples and here is one of those pies. I found a really neat recipe this weekend for apple pie. The base of the pie is a pancake. Heat the pan up in the oven, make a pancake batter and pour it into the pan, roll it around to cover the sides and stick back in the oven to bake a bit. Then add your apples and then I topped the apples with a crumble of butter, sugar and flour and spread it around. Stick it in the oven till browned on top. OH MY GOODNESS....then topped with whipped cream....that was goodness on a spoon, my taste buds were a dancing!!! (Happy, happy face)

Well, time to close as it is getting late and I need to get some sleep....this next week will be busy as we are having company from Chicago for the weekend. The flyer in the newspaper from Festival food says the Burgandy Spoon Roasts are on sale this week. Sooooo I think I shall make Roast Beef Sandwiches, chips, potatoe salad, coleslaw, relish tray and APPLE PE of course.

You all have a great day and keep looking up for your redemption draws nigh!! Cheers ~ Louise

PS....an update on my garage sale...this past weekend, I made $8 for the three days. Weather was too nice, plus someone stole my "garage sale" sign and I had competition with Octoberfest. So not such a good sale. Depending on the weather I shall do another one as long as the stuff is set up....you just never know, the next one could be a bountiful day and I could unload some more stuff!!!!

Some "End of the Summer" Flower Pictures

 Hi everybody, how are you all doing this wonderfully bright and sunny day, September 17th??? Well, right now I am sitting at this computer doing this blog....as you can guess. But afterwards, I plan on getting dressed and going outside for a bit. Need to get the garage ready for a "garage sale" this week and next. Hopefully I can make enough $$$ to buy a new computer. (Dream on)

Now for a small tour of my flowers. In the above picture is my "Star Clementius" they cover the whole side of the porch....they are amazing!!! We have to cut them down every fall, down to the ground. But as you can see, by this time of the year they have grown to the roof. The flowers usually last for about 4-6 weeks there about. Then they start to fall off and leave a BIG MESS!! But they still are pretty for the time they are with us.

 This is what you see on the stairs going down from the porch...I put my hibiscus plant on the stairs to catch the rain water...she was getting kind of dusty, so the rain washed her off. Those are giant marigolds down there with a sprinkling of little purple flowers, (forget their names right off hand)

 Now this is my volunteer sunflower with a bee attached to it. In the back ground are 3 roses and the star Clementius. Anyways, the sunflower came from the compost pile, apparently I had some sunflower seeds in the compost that decided to grow. We must have planted some flowers and JP used the compost for extra dirt and "wa la" DAISIES. There are a couple more flowers that are about to bud....just as soon as they do I will take more pictures. This is a first.....probably won't happen again, not unless I plant some daisies from a package of seeds. Ha...and then they may not grow.

 In this picture, is our little cottage type house. It is over 125 years old, one of the first houses to be built on this block. Although you would not know it by looking at it....it's been updated quite a bit. It's a very sturdy house with a 8x8 solid, center beam running down the middle of the house. The joists are 2x8 actual beams and floors (not 2x4). In previous years there used to be a big tree growing in front of the house...a wind knocked it down and it landed on the roof....you can still see where the front part of the roof is a little tipsy.

We had the house resided with new doors and windows added. The roof was redone also. Sad to say, it had never leaked till we had the roof redone...now it leaks. There was like 3 layers of shingles, so no leaks were allowed. Then, the roofer took all the shingles off, and put on new ones.....ever since then, we have had roof problems. Guess we need to get the roof re-done....but alas, no money.....maybe I need to do a garage sale for the roof.....lol!!!

 These lovely flowers are my zinnias......I loves my zinnias. I have planted these flowers along the side of the house for the last 5 or so years....maybe more, guess now it is a tradition for me....the bees like the flowers too.

 Ahhhh yes, my apples.......I really enjoyed my apples this year. The tree is about 15 years old (or more) and this is the first year that it produced so many lovely apples. The lady at Sprangers Apple Orchard told me, now that my tree knows that it can produce apples, we will most certainly have apples next year too.....oh yippie, I can hardly wait. So to date, I got over 115 apples and the birds and varmints got the rest. I made lots of apple pie filling and have about 18 containers in the freezer....lots of pies and smoothies coming up!!!

In this last picture are my roses....I have 4 rose bushes and these are the red ones. Sweet huh?!? I shall have to remember to get a picture of each rose before the season ends and post it here....I love roses. I have this red, a coral, yellow and white rose bushes....I used to have a bright pink one but it died after 20 years. I am sure I still have pictures of it though.

So there you have it, a few pictures of my "end of the summer" flowers.....each year I say I will do less, but more seems to show up....I probably will eventually go with perennials, rather then annuals....less up-keep. But for the mean time this is fine with me.

Well, you all have a great day and keep looking up for your redemption draws nigh. Cheers ~ Louise

Mother's Day Cards

Hi y'all.........well, been busy lately making Mother's Day Cards. They are turning out really pretty. Was going to try and get them down-loaded tonight, but alas, the Olympics took priority tonight. So I shall try and get them up in the next few days. They are sitting on the dinning room table ready for their picture.

We went on a date tonight. JP bought me some seeds for Valentines Day (belated) Candycane Zennias.......I love Zennias, like to plant them along side the house and they just bloom all summer long...............oh I can hardly wait to see what they look like. We also went to Mary's for dinner........good food. I had a ceaser salad and tomatoe bisque soup and JP had fried shrimp and french fries.

Well, it is getting late, better hit the bed........church tomorrow and 8am comes around pretty quick.
Hugs.............Louise