bootcamp, wreck, Copper

Time sure does get away from me!  I can't believe it has been so long since I have posted on my blog.  So much has been happening lately and I have just not taken the time to sit down and put it all on here.

First of all my daughter, Tara, who is 20 now, joined the Navy.  She left for boot camp in February and will graduate on April 20th.  We are so excited for her!  She is in Great Lakes, Illinois doing her boot camp and we will be leaving a week from today to drive up there to see her graduate and visit with her for the day.  We sure have missed her!  Here is a picture of all the family as we saw her off to boot camp.  She hated the fact that she had to wear her glasses and could not wear her contacts.

Keith, Clark, Tara, Diane, Amber

Here is a picture of me hugging my baby goodbye.

Also in February my baby boy, Keith, had his 18th birthday!  He will be graduating in May.  I cannot believe all my kids are grown up!  I miss my babies :(

In March I was sitting with my Daddy at the nursing home one morning before work and got a call from Keith saying he had been in a wreck on his way to school.  Thank the good Lord he was not hurt and neither was anyone else.  The wreck happened not even a block from where I was so I rushed out of the nursing home to go see about him.  He is a tall boy and drove this little tin can of a car.  He did not realize the girl in front of him had stopped cause she could not get onto the hwy due to traffic and he hit her from behind.  Her car looked fine.  His was totalled!  He was so worried his daddy would be mad.  I told him no.  That we could get another car, but not another son.

When spring first started to arrive I would notice these little spider webs in the grass and bushes across from our house every morning on my way to work.  There are lots and lots of them.  They look so neat.  So I stopped one morning and took pictures.

Here is our dog, Copper, with his "baby".  I had this crate full of my daughter's old baby dolls that we were throwing out.  Copper walked up to the crate, looked inside, and pulled out this baby doll to play with.  He is so cute with his baby!

BIRTHDAY & BRACELET

My birthday was this past Friday.  It is hard for me to believe I am now 52 years old!  Time sure has flown!  It seems like I should still be in my 20's.  hahaha  I can wish, can't I?!
My husband bought me a beautiful cake and he and two of my children sang Happy Birthday to me.  My daughter, Tara, had not gotten off work and we had to go ahead and have cake as my husband had to go to work.  After the kids are grown it just seems to never work out to get everyone together at a certain time.
Here is a picture of the cake and then one of me blowing out the candles.

Here is a picture of my husband and me:

Here is a picture of me and two of my kids.  Left to right is Keith, Me, and Amber.

My son, and his two friends sang Happy Birthday to me later that night.  Of course, Keith is on the left, his friend, Daniel, is on the right and his friend, Phillip, is the one playing the guitar.  I walked into the house from putting clothes into the washer and they were waiting there and started singing.  I was so surprised!  It was so sweet!

Here is a Romanian Lace Bracelet I made.  I think it turned out pretty good.  I love the thread I used.  It is called Autumn Apple Pie.

Butterfly & Purse

I finally finished my Romanian Lace Butterfly.  I think it turned out pretty good for only my second piece of Romanian Lace.

Here is a little coin purse I crocheted and a small Romanian lace flower I made and put on it.

Close-up of the flower.

CHRISTMAS & NEW NEEDLEWORK

I just realized that I have not put any Christmas pictures on here.  Of course we did not take many pictures at all this year.  Just a few at the nursing home when we went to visit my Daddy.

Here is a picture of me and my kids.  I was trying to get my son, Keith to smile and so we all look silly.

Starting on the left is my daughter Amber, my daughter Tara is in front of her, me and then my son Keith. 

Keith had decided that he wanted to shave all his hair off.  Here it has grown back just a very little!  That boy!

Here is a picture of the kids with my Daddy.

I am sure you see the whiskers on Amber's face.  I am not going to comment on that at the moment.

Here is a picture of my Daddy & me.

Here is a picture of my husband Clark and our daughter Tara.

Christmas night I decided to read my book before going to sleep.  Tara's cat, Lily, decided she wanted to sleep on top of me.  She is the funniest cat!  So here she is sleeping on me and me trying to read!

My Daddy is such a hoot!  Bless him.  As I have mentioned before he is very OCD.  He has to have everything just so so and in it's proper place.  He has these napkins that he keeps on his table that goes over his bed.  People are always bumping into them and knocking them crocked or sometimes off the table and this drives him insane.  I don't blame him, it would make me crazy too.  So he decided that I needed to make him a box to put them in and put something on the bottom so it will not slide.  I finally got the box made yesterday.  I just used some cardboard.  My son told me I should put a picture on the top of it.  I found a copy of my wedding photo of me and my Daddy and put that on top.  My Daddy loved it!  He was so excited to have that box.  He put his napkins in it right away.  And he loved the picture on top. 
Here is a couple pictures of his box.

I have been working on some Romanian Lace.   I have seen lots of this lace on Sunshine's Creations blog and on flickr.  I learned how to do the cording for the Romanian Lace from Sunshine.  I have done lots of searches on the web for Romanian Lace and looked at how lots of people do it.  I think I finally have it.  I bought an old issue of Piecework Magazine with a Romanian Lace Butterfly in it and am presently working on that.  I just love it!  The butterfly was done in size 20 thread and in ecru color.  I am doing it in size 10 thread and in a variegated pink, yellow, blue, and turquoise color thread.  
here are a couple of pictures of it.  I still have a lot of work to do on it.

Before I started the butterfly I did this little ornament to get some practice on Romanian Lace. 

It is lots of fun doing Romanian Lace.  I have also been looking at other kinds of lace out there to make.  I would like to try other kinds of needle lace.  I don't think I will ever want to do bobbin lace.  It is so beautiful, but all those bobbins scare me.  I don't think I would be able to keep them all straight!

I hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Years Holiday.  My favorite part was being off for a couple extra days from work. 





Felt, Sequins, Beads and Louisiana

Long time no see!  It has been awhile since I have been on here.  I tell myself that I am going to post more often but then time just seems to fly by in between my post.  I have been keeping busy. 

First I want to show you a picture of my cactus.  I keep calling it a Christmas Cactus but really it must be a Thanksgiving Cactus as it blooms right around Thanksgiving.

I have been busy working with felt and sequins lately.  The man who owns the building that the store is in where I work and he also has a business next door came over one day with a felt Santa that he was trying to sew sequins and beads on for a stocking he was making for his new grandson.  He had made a mess of the thread!  He said that he has made these stockings in the past but that was 19 years ago when he was 50.  So he asked me if I would make the stocking for him.  I told him sure thing.  Here are some pictures of the stocking and closeups of the objects on it.

He and his wife were very happy with how it turned out.  Working on this socking got me in the mood to work with felt, sequins, and beads.  It has been years since I had done anything out of these supplies. 

First thing I made was this beautiful redbird pin.  The picture does not do it justice.  Sequins just don't photograph well.  At least not for me.  It really looks a lot darker and sparkly then this photo shows.

I also made these gingerbread people ornaments for my best friend in Minnesota.  She lost all her Christmas ornaments and decorations.  This was a great loss for her.  I put the word out to all her friends so they would send her a special ornament to rebuild her collection.  These are the ones I sent to her.

I also made several of these little Kokeshia dolls that are lanyards.  Below are two of them.  I forgot to take pictures of the other two I made before I sold them.

Below is the Nativity scene I have at work.  It is clear acrylic and I love it!

We made a trip to Lafayette, Louisiana this past weekend.  We went to celebrate the graduation of my nephew, Ross, from college.  My husband's twin came down from Michigan.  My husband had not seen him in almost 3 years and their sister and her husband came from Arizona.  They had not seen her in quiet a number of years.  It was a nice little family reunion.

My husbands twin Mark and my husband Clark.  Do you think they look alike?  Everyone says Mark looks older then Clark.  That is because he lives in Michigan with all that dry air.  I told him he needed to move back to the humid South!  He said he looks older cause he is older as he was born first.  hahaha

 My husband with my niece's rat on his shoulder.  My nephew put that rat on my shoulder and it climbed into my hair!  I was screaming at him to get it off!  I hate rats!  I told him not to put it on me in the first place.

 Mark & Clark with their sister Jackie.  My husband is on the right.   All three of them kept taking off their glasses for the pictures so I told them to leave them on for one!

 My nephew Ross and me.

 Me, my son Keith, my husband Clark, my daughter Amber, and my daughter Tara.  My husband was loving that yacht in the background.  We had the party at a small yacht club that my nephew is a member of.

 Here is the whole clan.  My nephew Ross, my brother-in-law Claud, my sister-in-law Jackie, my brother-in-law Mark, Clark, Keith, Tara, me, Amber.
My camera does not take very good pictures at a distance.  My nephew's friend took some really good ones with her camera and is going to email them to me.

 My husband's sister Jackie and her husband Claud.  This was at breakfast the next morning.

 The sunset on the water at the yacht club we were at.  It was beautiful!

We had a great weekend.  It was a long drive and I tell you having three grown kids in the back seat is worse then having three little kids back there, I think!!!  They were always fussing about something.  Mostly about how croweded it was!  Poor Tara is the smallest and she had to sit in the middle.  She said she felt like a sardine crammed in between her brother and sister!  hahaha  I was so glad to get home and get out of that car!

Hopefully I will post again before too much time has passed again!

I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas!

Magnolias & Earrings

Have you ever noticed the seed pod on a Magnolia Tree after the blooms all fall off?  I hadn't until recently.  There are a couple of Magnolia Trees at the nursing home where my Daddy is.  The past few days I have noticed the pods with red berries on them.  I figured it must be seeds and not berries.  Today I pick one off the tree.  Following are some pictures I took of it.  The red color is beautiful!  I think I am gonna try to plant some of the seeds.  I looked it up on line how to plant them.  My cousin, Minnie Mae, has a huge Magnolia Tree at her house.  When it blooms it is so beautiful and smells wonderful!  I have always loved Magnolia Trees.

I have tatted a few more pairs of earrings.  I hope you like them.  I am having the most fun picking out thread and beads to make my earrings.  Although it seems to take me forever to decide which thread and beads to use!  hahaha  The pattern for the first two pairs of earrings is by Jane Eborall.  Here is the link to the pattern if you would like it : http://www.janeeborall.freeservers.com/Palmetto3DEarwigs.pdf  Jane does beautiful work and has some great patterns!

CHRISTMAS RED DROP BLOSSOMS - $20



JUICY WATERMELON DROP BLOSSOMS - $20



MOCHA BROWN DARK - $15

MOCHA SWIRL CHANDELIER - $12

The next pair of earrings is my first attempt at macrame' earrings.  It has been a lot of years since I did any macrame' at all and I never did do very much of it.  But when I saw Donna Littlewood's, of KnotGypsy Designs,  beautiful creations I had to give these earrings a try.  I bought the pattern from her and got right on them.  I am afraid my knots are not very good.  I had the hardest time with the Double Half-Hitch Knot.  I still can't seem to do it very well.  I sat and worked on another pair of earrings last night and just finally gave up on the knot.  Maybe it was because it was late and I was tired.  I'm gonna give it another try today. 

These are called Fan Earrings.  They are not for sell as they are my first macrame' earrings and like I said before the knots are not too good.  Be sure and check out Donna's website and see all her beautiful creations!