Patios, pizza boxes, and butterflies...

What a busy day I've had! Warning, this a picture heavy post...

First, my morning started early with the sight of this gorgeous newly hatched butterfly. I love blue butterflies!

Next, I retired to my sewing room and took out a pizza box block collection from two years ago. I had ten blocks made by ten very special ladies from my Dogwood Quilt Guild. I need more blocks, so I made the top block to add to the others. Aren't they all beautiful?

I was speeding right along until I reached for my fabrics to make some more blocks. Hello, Callie. Okay, that quilt is returned to the back burner. : /

I went to the sunroom to check on the other kitties and found Maxie in high excitement. She was scanning the ceiling for something...

It's a wasp! There it goes! 

Get it Maxie!

Reach for it again! (Don't worry. Maxie was never in any danger. The wasp was well out of reach on the ceiling. She was just paddling the air out of frustration and eternal hope!)

On to the afternoon. The patio team showed up when the temps reached the high nineties. Why didn't they come early in the morning when it was cooler outside? Here they're leveling the ground.

And they're beginning to lay the blocks beginning in the corner under the faucet (lower right of picture).

And they're done! But it's dirty!!! Ewww...

A couple of hours later, I rinsed the blocks off some. They're still really dirty but you can just see the mix of colors and patterns. Hey, we live in the country; the chickens don't care if we've used recycled blocks mixed with a few new ones.

And now I'm off to watch a movie with my beloved before hitting the sack for the night. I have another early morning tomorrow with our monthly Dogwood guild meeting. It's a workshop day. I think I'll take my green and yellow fabrics with me and see if I can sew up a few more blocks - without Callie's help this time!

See ya later -

Debbi

Patio Progress

Have you been wondering where I've been for the past few days? Well, my hubby and I have been working on clearing out the front of the house in preparation for a new patio. We live out in the country. No none cares what our patio looks like because no one ever comes to visit us (except for Mom, of course). Nevertheless, we want a usable patio even if we don't care what it actually looks like.

Below is a view of the prospective patio area looking north. The patio will be 10' x 20' when it is finished. We started prepping the area, but the 100+ temps that have been sitting on us since the day I started summer vacation have sapped our strength. We're too old for this! So we've hired some guys to come in and complete the patio tomorrow! Woohoo!!!

Here is a view looking south towards the sunroom door.

As part of the clearing process, we decided to remove the exceedingly old juniper bush at the corner of the house. It was shaded by the cherry tree, but that's not why it had to come out. It had to come out because the darn thing was HUGE! A few years ago my husband spent an entire day shaping this juniper so that we could get around it from the car to the house. He pruned and trimmed until it finally looked like a Hollywood poodle - little tufts everywhere. Awwww. It was adorable! For about a month... Then it became an overgrown mess with the temperament of a poodle! I tried for two or three years to keep the temperamental beast trimmed back, but finally one year the monster bit me on the ankle and I gave up. It then attempted to eat the northwest corner of my house. But in the end I won. This is what it looks like now...

We are recycling bricks from Mom's old patio. Here is the pile of red bricks. Rectangular pattern.

Here is the pile of gold bricks. Circle pattern. My husband has a plan for making them work together. We'll see tomorrow.

Here is the nest of eggs we found while clearing out. It's so hot that the hens don't want to lay in the hen house. We're finding nest of eggs, and occasionally chicks, all over our property.

Here is Tessie supervising from the comfort of one of my new reclining chairs in my sunroom. I'm not allowed to sit in them very often. They belong to Tessie and Sinbad. Or so they tell me.

 This was the unusual sight that greeted me when I entered my sunroom this afternoon. What could it be?

Here's a picture from my husband's vantage point. He's much taller than I am. Maxie was comfortable in her bed at the top of the kitty tower. Yeah, that looks comfortable... 

Oh, I almost forgot. A third style of brick to go along the outside of the patio and form a pathway to my car. This patio should be interesting (and colorful), to say the least.

Hopefully, I'll have pictures of the finished product tomorrow. Let's hope they can get the job done in one day like they think they can!

Until then,

Debbi

The birth (and early demise?) of my Farmer's Market quilt.

Okay, I hate it already. I warned you that it would look like a baby quilt. Of course, it doesn't help that it's on that baby green cutting board. I have a feeling that I'm going to scrap this start and just make this block into a baby quilt. I don't buy light fabrics very often, so I'm not sure what kind of Farmer's Market I'll end up with, but it really don't want it to look like a receiving blanket for a sumo wrestler! I have five of these blocks cut out. I may finish these and add the four alternate block and see how they look. The other colors are not as babyish. I don't know though... Hmmm...

Look! I bought myself a new sewing chair! It's the most comfortable chair on Earth, and I'm so excited to have it! I think. I have a feeling that getting it away from Sinbad is going to be a challenge. I bought two of the chairs. He spends all day sleeping in the one that is already set up (it's in the sunroom), but if I try to get near the boxed chair, he takes it over instead. I feel diversionary tactics may be called for. Kitty treats, here I come!

I have graduation tonight, so I doubt that I'll be able to get any sewing done. But the good news is that tomorrow is my last day before summer vacation, so I hope to be able to get some more sewing done later this week. Yay!

My husband and I, Okay, okay, I have plans to build a new front patio this week. My darling but unhandy husband is being bullied into helping me. We'll only be able to work for a couple of hours each morning since the heat seems to be building daily as I get closer to having time off. Amazing how that happens, huh? Anyway, we have an unused area that cannot be mowed, but needs to be kept up. I figured the easiest upkeep would be no upkeep. Hence, the patio. I bought the weed guard yesterday. Mom is getting rid of a patio she built some years ago, so she's giving me the patio stones (that's a great savings - thanks, Mom!). Now all we need is the gravel to bed the stones on. We plan to regravel the driveway at the same time, so this part should be easy. We'll just get the truck to back up and pour the gravel exactly where we need it. Or, if that doesn't look like it will work, I'll buy big bags of gravel at the landscape store and spread it myself. We'll see. Anyway, lots of work ahead! I'll show pictures as I go. See you later.

Debbi