Of seedlings and such...

 My little paper pots have sprung to life!

All the tomatoes and cantaloupe have sprouted.

I'm seeing "fine hairs" of snapdragons today, but

nothing yet of the mini-peppers.

Soon, I hope.

 Here they are underneath their clear tops that cause it to rain inside.

 It looks like The Holiday Cactus is going to continue to bloom through Easter.

How sweet of her!

 On Sunday I took a long walk to a place where I like to go sit and think.

This rocky ledge is where I sit and look out, and lucky for me,

there were sheep to gaze upon.

(below)

 Everything looks so brown and dry.

There are little sprigs of green grass and forbs underneath the brown, 

but we could sure use a rain

or a big, wet snow.

There's a gusty wind today and we're hoping it stirs up some rain for us.

 ......................................

 

As I was coaxing the sheep to a pond of water today,

 I was thinking about the 23rd Psalm.

~~~~~~

The Lord is my Shepherd

I shall not want for anything.

He makes me lie down in green pastures;

He leads me beside still waters,

He restores my soul.

~~~~~~~

I was guiding the sheep from their green pastures to the still water.

Some  of them ran right to the water to drink

 and others waited for me to feed them the alfalfa cake.  

We can lead the sheep to water and to the green pastures,

but we cannot make them drink or eat.

They have a choice.

We have a choice.

The Shepherd brings us to what we need

 and waits for us to receive it.

~~~~~~

A bloggy friend sent me a box of goodies!

A comfrey rootling, blood oranges and  Meyer lemons from her own yard,

 sunflower seeds from her own garden, 

and a beautiful hooked rug from her own hands.

Wasn't that so nice?  Thank you Kim!

Thanks for stopping by today!

~smile~

The Bakery....

 

My fondest memories of The Tri-State Bakery were when I was a little girl.  Every Valentine's Day I remember getting to walk to the bakery to buy an iced, heart-shaped sugar cookie with a red hot in the middle.  I remember nibbling around the sweet edges of the cookie until I got to the center and then cane tge cinnamon hotness of the red hot candy.  To this day, I make my own version of the iced sugar cookie, complete with red hot candies at home.  There were many, many other goodies that could be bought for a nickle or a dime from The Bakery. Their cinnamon rolls were out of this world!

With the arrival of grocery store bakeries, the need for a store that only served up baked goods became obsolete, and so The Tri-State Bakery closed its doors.  The charming building was all that remained until the townsfolk and countryfolk started to spy life there once again.  Annie and her husband bought it and turned it into their home and then turned it into a turn-key business in our small town.  Toady there's a new twist on The Bakery -- delicious fabrics!

A visit to The Bakery is always a yummy treat!  And as always, today's  visit was no exception.  Pom Pom asked me a few days ago if I might take some pictures of The Bakery and I thought, yes, it would be a fun bloggy post to do.  Only Daughter, and her daughter, Cupcake and I stopped in after we scored a sweet, old-timey chair at a garage sale.  It just begged for a new seat cover.  I had it in my mind that it should be a bright, cheery, laminated fabric, and I knew Annie at The Bakery would have just what I wanted.  And she did.  So come on in and see what's cookin'.

 

 

As you walk through the door, you'll see the display case where lots and lots of baked goodies once were shelved.  Now you'll find delicious goodies-by-the-yard!

 

After you walk through the front part of the store, you'll come to the back where all the cutting and rolling-out and measuring of the ingredients takes place.  Here's Paula (Annie's co-partner who runs the Bluestem Studios which joins The Bakery)  They help each other, and these two creative ladies make a great team.  Paula is cutting a laminated print for my new-old kitchen chair seat cover.  Bright and cheery, just like I wanted!

 

One of the old ovens is baking up some goodies for Halloween!

 

Here's where the children like to play.  There are some nice toys for them to play with or they can be mesmerized by the fishes swimming in the aquarium.

 

Way in the back by the ironing board, I spied an old, vintage quilt that I just love!

Here are all Bakery Trimmings where you can add some "sprinkles" to your sewing.

Now we move over to The Blue Stem Studio where Paula collects wonderful vintage pieces and antiques.  She also has some fabrics that have spilled over to her side.  Paula loves to sew handbags and aprons which she sells in her shop, and she also sells many locally-made goodies.

 

Uh oh, it's time for me to go.  Only Daughter and Cuppycake have come looking for me!  I hope you enjoyed a *taste* of The Bakery today!  If you want to know the latest, check out The Bakery Fabrics on Facebook.

Ode to a sheep dog and a friend...

What do you say 'bout a friend who's been with you
Fourteen years on the range?
Herding sheep and nippin' cows
And working side by side all her days?

Jessie was her name, but we called her Jess
There's an unwritten rule 'bout ranch dogs
That says they only need one syllable for a name
Unless they're in trouble with The Boss.
Then the name changes back to full-length
And a few "blue words" come out too.
It's not meant to be rough, bad-mannered or unkind
But just helps the dog "come to."

Jess helped me raise our five young kids,
She followed them everywhere
So all I had to do was yell her name
And she'd bring them home then and there.

She'd fetch a stick, a snowball, or a rock ~
Whatever you happened to have on you
I never saw a dog catch a Frisbee like her,
She'd dive in the pond to get it for you.

Jess had a litter of pups when she was nine
Three females, Liz, Merv, and Sue.
We kept Sue and gave the others away
It was fun watching her mother her brood.

Jess walked with me almost every day
Up to the mail box and back,
Or out in The Woods where we'd scare up birds
Jackrabbits,  deer or rac's.

But her favorite thing of all was to help at lambing time
She'd stay in the sheep shed all day
Guarding the gate, nipping at ewes,
Or licking a bum lamb's face.

She liked to take sheep out to new pasture
It was hard to make her see things left-handed
She took the right, and you took the left,
How could she be any more candid?

We did things her way on many a day
It seemed she just knew what to do
A lamb would run off and we were sure we'd lost it
But Jess took off  would run, nearly flew!
She would knock the lamb down and roll it around
And she'd pin that lamb down and wait for you.

She loved a good pat and she always sat
On the rug by the kitchen door
Content to be there since we were there
Why would she want any more?

The Littles always loved her and wanted to hug her
And sit right down on her and play.
She never minded, no dog could be kinder
And patient with wee ones all day.

As she got older, Old Jess's eyes, they got dimmer
And her hearing wasn't much good
But her ears would perk up when she felt the rumble of the truck
In the spring going up to the shed.

Spring always gave Jess a new lease on life
There were just some things that made her life full:
Lambs loudly bleating, pushing sheep up the alley,
Or barking behind old bulls.

We're gonna miss our old friend
On the tailgate end
Of the truck when we are lambin'
But we'll think of her then and and know in our hearts
That she's out herding sheep in Dog Heaven.

Good-bye old Girl.

Girly gift...

I'm leavin' on a jet plane.....

just for a few days to sunny Arizona.  I needed a nifty hostess gift for my friend so I fashioned a girly gift just for her.  I made matching padded hangers, two zippered pouches for cosmetics or jewelry or whatnots.....

....and I stitched up this handy-dandy drawstring laundry bag to put everything in.  Each item was very easy to make and all were made from online freebie patterns.  I used a little less than one yard each of the outer fabric and the lining fabric.  Here is the pattern for the lined drawstring bag, and here is the hanger pattern and here you'll find the lined zipper pouch.

I really have much better instructions for the hanger pattern than given above so I'll share how I made them.   First off, I buy pre-padded hangers at Walmart (a 3 pack of satin hangers).  I figure, why reinvent the wheel or the padded hanger?  This way I don't have to wrap hangers with batting which seems like way too much work to me.  The next step is to measure my fabric.  Cut rectangles (2 for each hanger) 4 1/2" x 9".  These will become the sleeves that will cover the hangers.  With right sides together, fold the fabric the long way and sew a rounded end on one short side and then come straight down the long side using 1/4" seam allowance.  It's a good idea to back stitch each sleeve.  Leave the other short end open.  Turn it right-side-out with a chop stick.  Repeat with the second rectangle.  Now I add a little polyester batting, about the size of two cotton balls, to the ends of each sleeve to make them extra soft.  Push it down to the end with the chop stick.  Slide the padded hanger into each sleeve so the seam is on the bottom side of the hanger.  Hand stitch the two sleeves together at the middle.  Cover the stitching with a nice hunk of ribbon and tie a pretty bow.  I like grosgrain ribbon for this, but you can use scrap fabric in matching or contrasting colors.  Bows with raw fabric edges look chic too.  You could tie a sachet to each hanger if you desired.

My zippered pouches are made just like the pattern above.  I added a little thin cotton batting along with my outer fabric as I sewed it together.  It gave the pouches a bit more structure.

I love the lined drawstring bag pattern given.  Since I was making a laundry bag, mine was larger than the dimensions in the pattern, but that's easy to do once you've made one drawstring bag.  Be sure you read the instructions given on how to thread the drawstrings.  I decided to make a drawstring bag (unlined) out of a red plaid dish towel that will be a gift bag for some coffee beans and homemade vanilla. 

Adios until later!

Coffee break...

This Sunday afternoon, I enjoyed my regular coffee time, but added a couple of sweets. One sweet cinnamon roll and a sweet letter from a friend. She also included a bit of spring sweetness...



....from 1,000 miles away....
a pressing from her Jasmine bush.
Oh, the wonderful fragrance that filled the air when I opened the envelope. Sweet!

We don't get mail on Sundays, but no one had fetched the mail for a few days since the gravel roads have been in poor condition for our mail carrier. It was nice to find "real mail" amongst the bills and newspapers.

NaNoWriMo

Today I'm giving Michelle, a friend of mine, the Blog Floor. She's a newly published author and a regular wife and mom like you and me. Here's her story.
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For thirty years, I was a fiction writer who avoided writing. I read about writing, wrote in a journal, shared family stories in scrapbooks, and blogged. Deep inside, though, I knew I was a writer, and I almost didn’t give that part of myself a chance to be heard.

That changed in 2005 when I read a little book called No Plot, No Problem by Chris Baty.

Mr. Baty is a man who came up with the crazy notion that all it takes to write a novel is to write it. The catch is that you write it in 30 days. His reasoning is that if you write it that fast, you have to turn off your internal critic and just write. Of course, writing it that fast means that you have to lower your expectations from “this will be the next bestseller” to “this will not make someone throw up.” On the other hand, if you don’t write anything, you’ll end up being the “one day novelist” – as in “I’ll write a novel one day.”

In October 2005, I visited Mr. Baty’s website and read about his contest, known as National Novel Writing Month. The thought of writing 50,000 words in 30 days was staggering, but I decided to sign up for NaNoWriMo anyway, just to see if I could do it. I could have done it any month, but November is the official month of NaNoWriMo, and there was something exhilarating knowing that I would be furiously typing 1700 words a day with thousands of other people around the world.

As I subjected myself to neck cramps, bleary eyes, and possible carpal tunnel, I learned that the story in my head was frantic to get out (I guess it had been in my head for too long). By day three, I had 9,000 words. By day 17 I had 53,000 words, and the story was only half-finished. I stopped and realized that I had not written the story that I really wanted to tell. But I had written something, and I had proved to myself that I had a story in me.

To pursue my dream, I had to give up time with my children, time with my husband, and time with friends. I put aside nagging household projects, and did only the minimum to keep my house running.

Would I do it again? Yes, because it was the best thing I ever did for myself. I enjoyed it so much that I’ve signed up to go through the 50,000 word frenzy again this year. In my opinion, NaNoWriMo is a great way to discover the writer who may be hiding inside. You could join me and find out if there’s a writer inside of you.

Michelle Gregory and her husband of twenty-one years reside in Mesa, Arizona. Amidst the craziness of homeschooling three children and taking care of four dogs and fluctuating numbers of fish, she finished her NaNo novel – Eldala. It is now available at Amazon.com. When she isn’t writing, she also enjoys blogging, playing with her kids, watching chick movies, working on her scrapbooks, and reading a good book. You can visit her blog at Life in the Midst of Writing.