Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! 

It's been ages since my last post, when Blogger said I couldn't post any more photos. Haven't had a chance to work on that yet, but saw that some post their photos from Flickr.  This is what I'm testing today.  Hope to learn a lot more about photos and blogging in 2013!

December's been a busy, busy month!

Celebrating our 50th Wedding Anniversary!

Cake for church coffee hour

A friend gave me the Gingerbread ornaments not knowing that our family's
made gingerbread cookies and gingerbread houses for many, many years!

What could be sweeter than yummy chocolate tucked in with beautiful flowers? 

Decorated our Christmas Tree with mostly  gold and white ornaments

Definitely have to learn more about posting from Flickr - and also about so many other things! It's always good to have a few projects lined up, especially with a brand new year ahead!

May 2013 be a good year for all!

It's a LONG Story!

Whooomp! There Goes Another Tree!

Just when I thought I was all set to post some craft photos - a swap here, a swap there, gifts sent, gifts received ..... all that fun stuff .... I  once again woke up to the dreaded "tree falling" sound in the middle of the night! 

This is always pretty scary since it's a very distinctive sound and, of course, it's pitch black outside - 20 or so wooded acres with no street lights or close neighbors. The first thought is always, "Am I sleeping in the safest room? Is it going to land on the house - and on me?!"  

Our telephone pole is under there somewhere! No telephone - no dsl - no email - no Internet - no Facebook - no Pinterest - no Words With  Friends! Just a plain little cell phone for my lifeline - not even an iPhone! 

This isn't even an entire tree, just one "branch" or section! That's the remains of our old tool shed in the foreground and my parents' house (unoccupied) in the background.The house was not damaged. 

It extended quite a ways and actually knocked down two smaller trees as well as the telephone pole.

The smaller branches of the large "branch" seemed to just keep on going! 

Lopping off the remaining branches of the tree 

Here you can see where the piece broke off the tree. That was the second piece of that tree to fall, so we decided to have the rest cut off since it extended so far towards our house. Very expensive week!  

The Bobcat pulled the smaller logs to the truck but they used a crane for some of the larger pieces.  

There's another tree directly behind. See how tiny the men look!

It's so sad to see these huge old oaks go! They've been here so long - at least 60 or 70 years.

This all started way back (!) when Tropical Storm/Hurricane Isaac was heading up the other coast of Florida and on towards New Orleans. We had no wind but quite a lot of rain over here on the Atlantic side.  

A few days after the pole was knocked down, a telephone man came and temporarily hooked us up, but the tree people came the next day and unhooked the temporary line. Then they came back a couple of days later to finish the rest of the tree so we didn't call AT&T until they were all through. Now today AT&T put in another temporary line and said another crew will come by the end of this week to bury it. Yay! Love those buried cables!

Enough tree talk! I usually post things like this on my Aralia Lane blog (which I've also used for the 52 Books in 52 Weeks challenge this year), but this has consumed my time for the past two  weeks or so. Have posted so little this summer that I wanted to show something!

Time to get back to my crafts and swaps! 

What Happened to July?!

We celebrated the 4th, and now July's over! 

What happened?!!!

If I spoke German, I'd say: "Kinder, Kuche, Kirche "-- along with a few other odds and ends!

Grandsons - lots of quality time during the summer - birthday parties, church camp delivery & pickup, day camp pickup and then afternoons here, sick days, even a Graduation! 

I didn't purposely make this out of focus but decided to use it for that reason.

Our youngest grandson graduated from Pre-School! Kindergarten, here we come!!!  No more little babies - sigh.

Our church camp - about 1-1/2 hours away - the lake in the distance had almost dried up during the past few years of drought, so everyone's very happy about the rain from the two Tropical Storms earlier this summer. I think the nearer water is part of a lagoon they were using to bring water in from a nearby river. So happy to see water there again!

Yummy Oreo Cake! Wish I could bake one like that!

Too hot for much cooking here, but have done a bit from time to time, of course. We do like to eat!  Also working on clearing out things we no longer need. Gave away pressure canner and then decided I don't need my pressure cooker any more either. Who knows what will go next?

Better Than Anything Cake! 

Not quite finished! Looked better with the toppings!

Yes, it did have another name - I checked the recipes - same thing! 

We help some friends who prepare the Wednesday night dinner at church about once a month by helping set up, serve, and clean up. Another friend and I usually make the desserts, a good way to try out recipes.  Made this cake a few weeks ago, and then made 3 pies today for tomorrow night.  Didn't want to bake so they're all in the refrigerator: Key Lime, Grasshopper Mint, and Peanut Butter. After  mixing them all up, licking the beaters and cleaning out the bowls I'm not sure I'll actually want to eat any of them tomorrow night! I wonder what my friend's making?

Molasses Crinkles Cookies for a special gift

I covered the box with some of my newest Graphics 45 paper  -  "ABC Primer" - since this was for a school principal who's moving to a different school I thought she might like the box. We know she loves these cookies! The paper is obviously very "old-fashioned" looking and certainly doesn't reflect the diversity in our schools today, but I think anyone looking at it would realize that it's supposed to be from a long time ago.

Lots more activities during July, of course! My shredder has been one of my best friends as I go through paper, paper, paper. Oh, my!

Hard to believer the summer's almost over! But more fun to come!

Rainy Day Fun

Rain?  Did We Say We Needed Rain?

Yes, we did! 

Birthday Bee Basket

It does seem a little excessive, though, to have SO MUCH rain all in the same week!  However, it's much better than drought, so I am not complaining.  In fact, I've been busy as a bee.......

I had to buy this cute leftover Easter basket when they were marked down. Knew just what to do with it!

Love this cute birthday tissue paper - doesn't have anything to do with bees, but all these birthday cakes are lovely.

At least one of the little gifts is bee-themed: cute little memo pad!

Doll Ornament  from The Small Object as shown on Kiddley.com

Along with a gift certificate for afternoon tea, there's another "little person" to add to a special garland I made for the Birthday Girl's important birthday a couple of year's ago. 

She still has the garland hanging up and asks for another one to add each year.  This little paper doll is a bit more dressed up than some because she's celebrating the Queen's Jubilee, complete with flag! She's right in style with her 'fascinator', but I think I put her earrings just a little too far up. Maybe she wears them at the tops of her ears rather than on the earlobes! 

The cute frame I used for her portrait came in Michelle's wonderful "stash" swap from my partner, Leann, of The Old Parsonage. Still finding new things to do with all the goodies she sent!

And what does this have to do with the Birthday Bee Basket? Well,  I think it's stopped raining now, so that'll have to wait!

What Do You Do While Waiting For a Tropical Storm?

Stormy Weather and Swaps

www.artjoystuff.blogspot.com

Living in Florida, we know the "Hurricane Season" lasts almost half the year, June - November.  As June approaches we start collecting our supplies: bottled water, non-perishable foods, batteries. Time to check all the flashlights, portable radios, portable generators, etc!

What's this? Work in progress ....

A few years ago after a week with no electricity, constant rain, mosquitoes,  high winds, and fallen trees, I was so jealous of one of my co-workers.  When we finally got back to school and started comparing stories, he said he'd spent the week watching movies on his battery-operated dvd player! 

Note the $.49 price sticker! Many beads left over from the original satin and lace project!

Now there's so much wireless technology available - a big help!  After that storm our local power company put all the electrical cables underground.  Before that we could lose our power any time, just by a small branch falling on one of the lines.

Last weekend we experienced our first 2012 storm - Tropical Storm Beryl - before the official start of the season!  

Jacksonville has been extremely fortunate - blessed - for many, many years by not having any direct hurricane hits, but TS Beryl came straight across our city last Sunday and Monday.  While not a hurricane, TS Beryl had pretty high winds at her peak (up to 70 mph - has to be 74mph for a hurricane).  Lots of rain and wind, but not nearly as bad as it could have been!  

The Mayor and other leaders cancelled quite a bit of the Jacksonville Jazz Festival and all of the Memorial Day activities. That was sad because the Jazz Festival is very popular and we had many visitors here for the US v Scotland Soccer  game too!  

Since Monday was Memorial Day the schools, government offices and many businesses were closed.  Everyone was advised to stay inside and "hunker down", after spending Friday and Saturday gathering supplies and preparing for the storm.

Sewing beads on bits of satin and lace carefully saved from  both my daughters' wedding gown fabrics saved me from just sitting here worrying while watching the treetops wave around in between torrential downpours.

Was it just a week or so ago that we were so thrilled to have some rain after months of drought? Between that week of rain and TS Beryl, everything's looking pretty green around here at the moment!  Best of all,  while there were plenty of downed trees and branches, no deaths or serious injuries were reported. Several dried up lakes a bit further west were filled up as Beryl passed by.

Now that it's June and officially "Hurricane Season" who knows what will come next?  The only good thing I can say about hurricanes, which have destroyed so much in many of the coastal areas of our country and others, is that we do get the warnings ahead of time.

Both my daughters asked me to make their wedding gowns. What wonderful summers those were! Precious memories!  As I collected the fabrics and pearls for these ATCs,  I realized that almost every one of the stores that carried wedding fabrics and lace at that time has since closed. That makes me so sad.

For the Sew Many Flowers ATC Swap, Kimberly asked us to make only three instead of the usual six.  I made an extra one for Kimberly and kept the first one for myself. I almost always make a few changes after the first one for any swap. I forgot that the Post Office would be closed Monday, so had to race out to mail them Tuesday morning - the drop-deadline day!

Looking forward to seeing what everyone else did with this theme. Thanks to Kimberly of ArtJoyStuff for hosting this lovely swap!

Ferns and Flowers and More

Rain At Last!

Darkening sky - early afternoon

Recently had a week of rainy days, or afternoons, after many months of drought - oh, so welcome! 

Raindrops on thirsty leaves and ferns

Another attempt to capture the welcome wetness

The ferns on this little overhang were totally dried-out and looked dead before the rains.  Now  a week or so later without any rain, they're totally dried-out again.

The rain and cooler weather that came with it inspired me to buy some flowering plants.

I bought the coleus because it reminds me of my mother. I purposely bought one with that big side piece hanging over so I could cut it off to root.  She always had coleus "rooting" in the house - just a piece of the plant stuck in a jar of water on the kitchen windowsill.

And I bought the red geranium because it reminds me of my Virginia grandmother who always had them on the doorstep or back porch. Every time I smell a geranium I think of her - and also of a friend who had left instructions to use geraniums at her funeral service.  She had loved the book, Stick a Geranium in Your Hat and Be Happy, by Barbara Johnson. They had hundreds of little geraniums all over and encouraged everyone present to take one home to remind them of her lovely spirit during her courageous battle against cancer.

My flower pot doesn't look quite so pretty today because some wormy creatures have snapped off the zinnias! But it still adds a bit of color to all the green around here.

One of our cute but pesky raccoons came out looking for something to eat. Don't be misled by that cute face - they are wild animals and can be quite fierce! I was almost afraid to get so close to snap the photo! They shouldn't even be out in the daytime.

Hoping for some more rain soon, but not too much, of course!

Happy Mothers' Day!

Happy Mothers' Day to all!

Every woman may not have children of her own 

Large teacup arrangement, from our son and daughter-in-law

but everyone has or has had a mother 

My Mother - late 1930s or early 1940s

My Mother-in-Law - early 1940s

Oh, the memories!