Birds and Blooms

I love this time of year with all the pretty flowers and the songs of the birds.

There have been a pair of finches hanging around the yard just singing away every morning.
This is a close up I was able to get of one of them in the maple tree in the front yard. Some of these pictures of the finches were taken through the front screen door so they may be a bit blurry and I apologize for that. I was afraid if I opened the door to take their picture they would fly away.






 


Just a few more pics of them :) Yesterday I had one in the front yard and one in the back yard singing to each other, so I suspect I have a male and female pair hanging around. I bet they have a nest around here somewhere but haven’t been able to locate it. Their song is so very pretty, it’s a joy just to listen to them. It amazes me how such a little bird can sing such a LOUD song.








The hostas in the front flower bed are starting to bloom. They never fail every year, I don’t think anything kills them.













The dahlias are doing well too.












My balloon flowers are open too. Obviously I need to get on the ball and deadhead my flowers :)
That’s it for now, thanks for stopping by!




 Sure wish Blogger would stop messing up the spacing on stuff. If there's a big gap between pictures or text, it's Blogger, not me!

Quilt Frame Deal

Look what I got Saturday!!

A friend of my ex sister in law was selling her wooden quilt frame for only $25.00!! When I saw the picture of it on her Facebook page my first thought was “oooooh, I NEED that, lol.
Well of course I needed it. And when she told me she only wanted $25.00 for it, I needed it even more!
Needless to say, we made arrangements for me to get it on Saturday, so I grabbed my daughter and we went with the truck to pick it up. When we got there I found out it was made by the Grace Company, who makes awesome quilting frames. It’s a little bit older model, but I sure don’t care about that! I have wanted one of these forever but could never afford to fit one in my budget.
I asked her why she was selling it and she said she has a quilt “bed” that she uses on her sewing machine now and hadn’t used this for 3 or 4 years. Umm, ok. And she just wanted to get it out of the house cause it’s taking up room.
Works for me! Discovered that it folds up almost flat and is 48 inches wide. Doesn’t weigh all that much either, maybe 20 pounds.
I’m so excited, now I just have to get in gear and use it. (and figure out HOW to use it, since I’ve never used one). Went to the Grace website and found instructions, so I don’t think I’m going to have too hard of a time figuring it out.
Did I say I’m excited, lol??

Fourth Of July Quilts

Our group God’s Tiny Angels has been working on trying to get enough blankets for all the preemies in 3 NICU’s that we supply. So I dug through my stash and was able to come up with enough material to make 4 of them at least.

The 2 patchwork ones are “cheater” material so all I had to do with those was back them and bind them, one with muslin and one with navy material. The other two are squares in the center, then I put muslin strips around those and added other scrap strips around until I had a big enough quilt.

Nothing fancy but they still take a bit of time to put together and quilt them. Does anyone else dislike doing the binding as much as I do? I always seem to have a bit of trouble getting my corners all nice and neat. They turn out looking ok, just not quite up to the standard I would like.

Just glad I was able to come up with enough material for four of them, every single quilt helps! And that is what matters the most.

Bird Feeder Critters

The birds have been coming around to the bird feeder but we have had other visitors too.

  This little black squirrel thought he was going to get a free meal, but my feeder has a spring mechanism that tosses a squirrel off when he gets on it. Guess that ticked him off because he decided he would go and see what he could find in the grass by the maple tree instead.







  


    This baby bunny was making himself a feast under the feeder, cleaning up what the birds dropped. Isn’t he cute??!!

 








 


    Here’s a close up of him under the feeder.



I have picked two nice pickings of strawberries so far from the strawberry bed. They are SO much tastier than what you buy in the store.
That’s it for today! Thanks for stopping by.


Darn blogger is sure messing up how I place my pictures so sorry for the big gap in between, it's not me!!

Quilting With The Cats

Haven’t been crocheting much lately since the carpal tunnel decided to kick in. So to give my hands a rest, I’ve been in quilting mode.

Our group, God's Tiny Angels , is in dire need of preemie blankets and quilts for the Fourth of July. We have 3 NICU’s that we provide for that like to dress up the babies on the fourth. Right now, we only have 76 members in our group, and we need 120 blankets or quilts to wrap up the babies. So, every single blanket or quilt we can crank out will be a big help. If the desire hits you, we can use your help! Preemie blankets need to be at least 20 inches by 20 inches, and we need to have them mailed to our group leader by June 19th. I know that’s only 10 days, but even one quilt or blanket will help so much!

If you are interested in helping, email me at (mamasu55 at gmail dot com) and I can give you all of the particulars.

So, I dug through my stash and am frantically working on Fourth of July quilts. I have 2 done so far, with at least 2 more, maybe 3 ready to get quilted.

I usually set my sewing machine up on the kitchen table so I have room to spread out. Of course, you see who has to try to supervise, good old Rocky, the nosiest cat there is! I just had to take this picture. Just as I was walking back into the kitchen, there he was, peeking out at me through the opening in my sewing machine :)

 

When he’s not busy supervising my sewing, he enjoys hanging upside down to watch tv.

 

 

 

 

Now Baby could care less if I’m sewing. She would rather roll around on the floor playing with an old drawstring from a pair of sweatpants. Doesn’t take much to amuse her!

That didn’t get to last very long though. Rocky just can’t stand it when Baby is having fun all by herself so he has to go pester her and get involved. That usually ticks Baby off and she is all done playing then. That’s when it’s time for her to go sulk because Rocky just couldn’t leave her alone.

Such are the joys of life with the furbabies.