This, That and the Other

Not much going on around the Ranch these days. Routine daily life in suburbia. Currently the creative juices are flowing, overflowing actually. I'm trying to come up with some kind of landscaping for the yard. I should be honest and admit that growing things is not one of my talents. I don't usually invest a lot of money in plant life to only have to dig it up in a few months and use it for mulch. But I'm inspired by one little rose bush we purchased at the store that will not be named for about $3. We can't kill this thing. It's a survivor, a warrior of a rose bush. I think it's really more of a tree. At first I was afraid to cut it back, but now as cold weather moves in I cut it down almost to it's roots and as the warm weather arrives so does new growth, new little buds. I don't know what we're doing right with this rose plant whatever it is, but it's become a member of the family. We talk to it, we discuss it like it's a family member. If you haven't figured it out yet we're just a wee bit nuts. But that's ok. Anybody can be normal, we like being a little odd. This rose bush is coming up on it's 4th birthday. That's like 80 in plant years for any plant that comes to live with us.

Yesterday I picked up BH&G's Garden, Deck & Landscape magazine and found the perfect color for my front door. I'm so excited. Our front door is doo-doo brown. It's so ugly. Our house is brick and not a pretty brick so finding a nice color for the door has not been easy. The one in the magazine that caught my eye is light sage with dark green trim around the door. I think it's going to look great. Really spruce up the front of the house. Hope we get around to doing that this weekend and also painting the railing around the front porch. Boring white but a new coat of paint will give it a clean fresh look. Once that's all taken care of I plan to start a butterfly garden in the front flower bed. I've been planning this for a while and sort of have an idea about what I'm going to plant but I still need to do a little more research.

In the Workbasket:

Houses of Hawk Run Hollow has been my focus project these days. I'm working on the lamb house block, next to the cow block. I really love this piece. I don't see it being finished before the end of summer but then again when I obsess over something it usually manages to get finished in a timely manner.

I'll get back to work on 13th Colony Bay this weekend. I'm using huge Q-Snaps for this project and I can only work on it a few days in a row before I have to set it aside and give my hands and shoulder a rest. The plus side is that the stitching on it moves along rather quickly.

My oldest son will be 18 in a few weeks. Man it hurts to type that. 18 years old. I had always planned for each of my boys to have two handmade quilts from mom by the time they were ready to leave home. I think the 18 yr old is going to be around for a while, he's still got one more year of high school, but since I'm the slowest person on the face of the earth I really need to get started on one of his quilts. The first one is going to be an Ohio Star. He was born in Ohio so that's why I'm set on that being the pattern for this quilt and for a while I thought about a tropical Ohio Star quilt since he spent most of his life in Florida, but after months of collecting fabric, I realized that the colors just weren't going to work well together. He wants the main color in his quilt to be green so I'm going to rework my color scheme and see if I can get the fabric and this quilt cut out and handpieced by the end of the summer. The second quilt is a "My Life Story" quilt. I want to do blocks to represent everywhere we've lived, embroider the addresses on the house blocks, do school blocks for each school, do state blocks for each state, you get the idea. I want the back of the quilt to be photos printed out on fabric. I've had this in mind for a long time but when I do the "My Life Story" quilt I want to cut out all the school and house blocks for each son at the same time. All three will look similiar but there will also be blocks to represent their interests and sports. I don't know why I've been stuck on this idea for so long. Quilting is not my favorite thing to do. I don't mind the handpiecing at all. I can handsew til the cows come home. I just hate the sewing machine. Handquilting, no problem. What I don't like is making the quilt sandwich and the basting. It's like you're sewing it together twice. But I love the idea of my kids having something that mom made just for them.

So the last few days I've been dreaming of flowers, butterflies, stitching, quilting, and painting. I'm overwhelmed with creativity at the moment.