Trying to find some color...

in this grey and cold spring.

I do not have any beautiful outdoor pictures, since it has been cloudy, cold, raining, hailing, snowing, sleeting or some combination of the previous. I have always admired Alicia's and Jane's abilities to capture beautiful still lifes. So here is my first attempt:



However, if you click through to Alicia's blog, it is a riot of color due to a weekend trip to the tulip festival. At least spring is happening somewhere.

So onto other color news in my life... here is my latest purchase:



It seems a little bit Hello Kitty sometimes with the purple/pink.





My previous iron died due to a fall on the cement floor. Also it had an auto shut-off time of 8 minutes which was stress inducing to say the least. I would be sewing away at my machine and hear the iron click as it was shutting off. I would have to run over to the iron and tip it a few times to get it to turn back on. This new one has an auto shut-off of 15 minutes which so far seems to work well. Does anyone know of an iron that does not have auto shut-off? or are the manufacturers trying to save us from ourselves again?

Oh the aches and pains of outrageous gardening...

So last fall I had all the grass removed in our upper front lawn. Our house sits up above the side walk, so we had these little bits of grass on either side of the front walk... which required the mower to lift the lawn mower up and over a short rock wall. This was not fun... nor easy for myself, since I'm 5'0" tall... very challenging. To fix this problem and to provide more planting space, the grass was removed. Since we had 3 days in row of sun forecasted starting last Friday, we ordered pea gravel and mulch and rented a rototiller Friday morning and set to work.

At the end of Day 1 and beginning of Day 2, we had the site leveled and the path edging put in:





The rest of Day 2 involved hauling and spreading the pea gravel. Two cubic yards of it!
Day 3 was consumed with the moving of rose plants and mulching, mulching, mulching. The neighbors have remarked that the mulch smells much like poo, to which we have replied that the smell will go away... over time.



We still have about 16 roses to move. The original rose bed is too shady and we get one good bloom of roses and then nothing but leggy plants for the rest of the year... which does not work for this rose loving lady. Now we can plant more small perennials and edging plants. But it is raining again and I am really, really sore and having seriously bad allergies after this grand event, so that will have to wait for a bit.
For now here are some gratuitous flower shots to show that spring has really finally arrived:

A little spring color

I had a whirlwind of errand running this morning. I grabbed my camera hoping to take some blog worthy pics... since I have posted very little in the way of inspiring photos since the beginning of the year. I'm in love with the Oh Joy! blog. It is full of color and beautiful pictures and ideas... not that I want to copy what she has there, but I would at least like to contribute in a similar fashion.
However, upon arriving at IKEA which was full of their new fabric collections and spring/summer merchandise, I realized that my battery had died. There was no way of even fooling said camera into taking one picture of their glorious fabrics hanging in space. So I will have to post these images from their website....







So I returned home in a fit of color inspiration. Last week Miss E and I had purchased some new grosgrain ribbon for belts. So we put them together on this grey afternoon... right before the hail and rain.



I love all the grosgrain stripes that are available now. About 4 years ago, these belts made a huge comeback at retail, but there was very little choice for the home sewer or even the internet shopper. So I wound up using a rainbow stripe for a 2 year old Miss E, who was perfectly happy with it... but these stripe combos are waaaaaaaay better.



She's a well accessorized little lady.