In my blog I plan to chat about nature, crafts, baking, gardening, beekeeping, family, and whatever else seems appropriate at the time. Sit back, relax, and enjoy!

Monday, May 31, 2010

Memorial Day

Have a safe and happy Memorial Day. Don't forget to have a moment of silence at 3:00 p.m. today in remembrance of those who have died for our freedom.

Cindy

Friday, May 28, 2010

Gardening at the Granny Bees


Beth & Liz are neighbors and live in the Olde Silk Stocking Neighborhood. They have this business called The Granny Bees, and inside this cabin is where the Granny Bees sell their wares. When you step inside, you go back to the days of long ago. It's so peaceful and fun shopping in the cabin. We also get wonderful gardening ideas when we are there for the granny bee garden party weekend. Here are a few of their gardens.



This is between their garages.



This is a tea garden in a wheel barrow.
You will all need to make a trip to Kokomo, IN next year for the Granny Bee garden party weekend. Bring your knitting, crocheting, whatever stitchery you want to work on and come and join us.
Cindy

Thursday, May 27, 2010

Which bag to get?




Don't look at the flabby arms please. I know - you already did, didn't you. {sigh} It happens ladies, and it will happen to you. Go ahead and make fun, but when you turn 50, all the stuff you used to make fun of other people for, it happens to you. Anyway, I couldn't decide between the orange bag or the tan bag. What? Get them both you say? Okaaaayyy, but I really don't need another bag. Besides being a bee lady, I'm a bag lady. I know they are big, but they are lined and will hold knitting, crochet, and other stitchery projects. I got these at the Granny Bee garden weekend from "All Wooled Up." She has an etsy shop www.allwooledup.etsy.com
The flabby armed bag lady,
Cindy

Monday, May 24, 2010

Let's go shopping!


I'm not going to tell you about my life this week of picking berries, making jam, pie, working beehives, etc. when we can go shopping!!!! I'll tell you about it next week! So, back to the Granny Bee weekend. I got as far as the porch and found this little girl waiting for me! I had to have her. Only $15.00 and handmade by Leslie, who is a wonderful artist, although she's too humble to claim it. I think she has a couple of these left!

I got my vintage aprons and other wares set up before doing more shopping.

This is Carol taking a break. She sells the hand made painted wooden items below. But before looking below, see that purse hanging in the bottom right hand corner in this photo. Well, that's Marilyn's hand made purse, for sale, and it was featured in the last Green Craft magazine. A publication put out by Somerset which is really cool. Marilyn has Grandma Peden's Porch blogspot, listed to the right of my blog. BTW- do you all know you can enlarge these pics by clicking on the pic. Well you can.

This is Carol's wooden ware. I love the basket hanging with the sweet annie, but my husband is highly allergic to sweet annie {sigh} Also, if you look between the pickets, you'll see a bee skep linoleum rug. Love it.

Marilyn decided she needed one of my aprons. Well, it looked so good on her she wore it all day. You see, if she wears something like that all day, it looks like part of her outfit and everyone loves it. If I wear something like that all day, people would remind me that I forgot to take my apron off when I finished in the kitchen.

I decided to do some trading with Marilyn. This is a pillow that she embroidered, stained, and it has a wire in the top of it to hang it up.

I also traded for this wool needle book. It's a book that has blank material pages to hold my needles when hand sewing. So cute.
I also met some interesting people this weekend. One of those people is Ronda, who has a blogspot - The Crafty Crow. (listed to the right) She is another primitive make by hand artist. I am not so much into primitives, but I learn a lot of stitchery from these people and I just love being in their company.
More to come later....
Cindy

Granny Bee Weekend


These are the Granny Bee's and they are the most talented people I know. They are doing rug hooking, punch needle, and felting.
This is Erin and Marilyn. Marilyn is showing me her granny squares.
So, this past weekend was so fun that I'm going to spend the rest of this week sharing it with you :) After the garage sale on Friday, I packed up some hand-made items and headed for Kingston St. in Kokomo. The "Granny Bee's" (the stitchery group that I am in) were hosting a garden show all weekend long. Beth & Liz open up their yards to the public. The Granny Bee's have several hand crafted items for sale. It's a fun, fun weekend. So, Friday night, I wasn't on the porch five minutes when someone says, "Cindy, have you met Erin (sorry if I'm spelling it wrong), you two need to meet, she is making granny squares." I look at her, and she says something about how she got this pattern from a blog, and I say, "I have a blog!" She says, "you have a blog, I have a blog!" Marylin says, "I have a blog!" Don't you just love us bloggers? I do. I have made so many friends through this blogging world and I love it. So, Erin pulls out her phone and says, "here is a picture of my granny squares." I said, "HEY, Did you get it from Attic 24?" She said, "YES!" and that's all she wrote folks....the conversation was all granny-squared-chitty-chatty-blogging-fun from that point on.
More later.....but in the meantime check out Attic 24 who is listed in my side bar, as well as Marilyn's blog, Grandma Peden's Porch. I don't have Erin's blog yet. Erin - get me your blog! I need some faith based blogging.....
Cindy

Saturday, May 22, 2010

Garage Sale & Breakfast Casserole Recipe


(Christy & Theresa)
On Friday, our neighborhood had a garage sale. We decided to get in on it. So did my sister Theresa, and my friend, Teresa. If you think that's not confusing, trying to keep track of each other's stuff, then think about this....Theresa's initials are TC now, but used to be TB. And Teresa's initials are TB now, but used to be TC. AAUGH! Christy (above), Theresa's friend, came walking in around 7:30 a.m. and said she just came over for breakfast! Which is not unusual, because theses sales have become an event. Mom came over around 9:30 and took some lunch home, then Dad came over and said, "Mom said I could come over for breakfast." So he did.

But at least Christy did some serious shopping. She bought some stuff for her 'nieces'. Mom and Dad just came over, got food, and left! They did not shop!

Teresa & Theresa watching over the stuff.


Have you ever seen so much junk!

Even stubby came to the sale for food! Remember stubby, from a few posts back? She's still around.

(Teresa)
The biggest hit was the breakfast casserole. What I love about this recipe is most of it is put together the day before. So when you get up the next morning, all you have to do is bake it. It does take a while to bake so make sure you get it in the oven a couple of hours before breakfast. Add fruit and you have a wonderful breakfast!
Egg-Sausage Casserole
8 slices bread, cubed
2 cups grated cheese, American or cheddar
2 lbs. sausage, browned and drained
8 eggs beaten
2 1/2 cups milk
3/4 tsp. dry mustard
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1/2 cup milk
Place bread cubes in 9x13 pan. Sprinkle cheese over bread. Add browned sausage. Blend eggs, 2 1/2 cups milk, mustard, and pour over ingredients in pan. Refrigerate over night. Next day blend soup with 1/2 cup milk and pour over casserole. Bake at 300 degrees for 1 1/2 hours. Enjoy!
Cindy

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Jimmy Buffett Concert

Remember Vickie? The one who turned 50 a couple of weeks ago. Well, for her birthday her daughter, Ashley, bought her four tickets to see Jimmy Buffett in concert. My Sister (Theresa) and I were invited to go along. Now, it's been a few years since I've been to a concert. I remember saying I was done with them, the crowds, the drunks, etc. But in the name of celebrating 50 years, I HAD to go.

Now, you all know what a thrift shopper I am right? It just happened that the day before, I got a trash bag FULL of leis, two grass skirts, a hat, and a coconut bra at a garage sale for 2 bucks!

My husband decided to personalize the bra for Vickie!

Here is Ashley helping her Mom tie on the bra. Vickie was very apprehensive about wearing it.

Until we got there......

This is us at my Sister's house. We all had little gifts for each other, leis, skirts, hats, glasses, hair flowers, flip flops, drink cups.....We put on everything that we all bought for each other. A little much, I know.

So we toned it down a bit when we went to the concert.
(Ashley, Me, Vickie, Theresa)

Coulda, shoulda, wore it all!

Can you find the "hat" in this picture?
Now see it! Yes, that is a hat.

And the beach balls were EVERYWHERE. Lots and lots of beach balls being tossed around throughout the entire evening.

I think one of them knocked over Ashley's $14.00(?) drink. Which made her sad, until.....

She saw what drinking does to a person. "DUDE! Get off my coat!" This guy was so drunk that he fell backwards in his lawn chair. Lucky for him it was a beachy type lawn chair, close to the ground. I did not help him, I just took his picture. Welllll.....if you are going to ....ok my family would not let me yell at him then, so I'll let it go. But let me just say, I'm hormonal, I want to yell! (and I do just want to add this... You know how you drink and you THINK you get better looking the more you drink. Trust me. You don't. Sorry family. I just had to say one thing on my mind. Just one. And let me add.....just kiddin'!)

Now Jimmy Buffett is a happy man. He smiled the entire time he was on stage. I'm thinking if I made that much money in one evening, I'd be smiling too :)

We all had a good time. It was a nice concert, and quite an experience!
Thank you Ashley for buying the tickets and Thank you Vickie for inviting us to go along.

Cindy
Hey everyone. As I was checking out some of the blogs that I sent the photo challenge to, I noticed Melissa Goodsell is having a give-a-way! Check it out. You can click on her blog in the post below, or she is listed in my side bar.

Cindy

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Photo Challenge


This is a picture of me and my niece, Taylor, when she was about three and I was about 40 something. It was taken on July 4 weekend, 2006, at Conner Prairie. I LOVE going to Conner Prairie in Fishers, IN, and listening to the symphony, especially on July 4 weekend. They have reinactors and they have a beautiful fireworks show for the finale', including canons! We always take a picnic and decorations and make an event out of it. It's very crowded but being at Conner Prairie for July 4 just reminds me of what it would have been like back when people were patriotic and really, really cared about our country. When people would actually stop what they were doing, put their right hand over their heart, and listen, when they heard The Star Spangled Banner. This is a truly wonderful event that I hope everyone can experience at least once or Make it a tradition!

Now, this picture was posted because I was "tagged" in a photo challenge. Here are the rules....

1) Go to your photo files, select the 8th photo folder.
2) Select the 8th photo in that folder.
3) Post that photo along with the story behind it.
4) Then challenge 8 blogging friends to do the same!
Easy peasy!


http://attic24.typepad.com/weblog/

http://melissagoodsell.typepad.com/day_to_day/

http://grandmapedensporch.blogspot.com/

http://happymrsc.blogspot.com/

http://brtowsleyblogs.blogspot.com/


http://www.notasparrowfalls.com/

http://talefromthecoopkeeper.blogspot.com/

http://www.maryjanesfarm.org/MJFBlog/


The challenge was sent to me from
http://ceelew.blogspot.com/

Have a good day, and be thankful for your country!
Cindy

Friday, May 14, 2010

Auction goodies!

Ok - so I gotta share some cool stuff I got at an auction last weekend. Remember the crocheted squares from the last post. Here are a couple of other items I bid on and got. I had to leave the auction early, and it's probably a good thing!


These bowls will be great for soup or salad. There are five pretty nice size bowls, one larger bowl, and two candle holders that match. All for $6.00.

Now this bag was in a small box and I just had to have it. I paid $2.00. But look what was in the box below the bag. I had no idea these were under the bag.

These are beautiful funeral fans. The colors are so vivid.






I imagine they were the air conditioning at one time!


I got these beautiful plates for $6.00.

And I bought these tablecloths at a garage sale for $3.00 each.



I love sailing!
Cindy

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

A chance to win some cool stuff!

Hey everyone,

Check this out. A chance to win free stuff! Go here

http://blog.thevintageworkshop.com/

Cindy

Crocheted goodies!


Remember back on my Easter post when I said my MIL would make some crocheted goodies for me? Well she did....but.....she didn't like the way they turned out, so she won't make anymore and she doesn't like the yarn :-( My MIL is 87, and she hasn't crocheted much since her stroke. Before her stroke, she would crochet with thread and make doilies, table clothes, etc. She isn't able to do that anymore, even though she is fully recovered from the stroke in most areas of her life, but she just can't like her crocheted pieces anymore. Now me on the other hand, I like the big colorful cotton yarn. {sigh}

And this is something I need your help with. I went to an auction the other day and I got this for $6.00!! There are 55 pieces and they are approximately 4 1/2 inches square. I was thinking of a throw, but it's not really big enough for a throw. Should I make it a throw anyway and just lay it on a piece of furniture, or should I make it longer and more narrow and put it at the bottom of a bed, or on a dresser, or what? What's a person to do? My MIL said she would put it together for me as soon as I decide what I want.


Close up. Someone went to a lot of work to make this, and to only have it sell for $6.00 at an auction. The weather was cold and rainy that day and the auction was outside. There were a ton of craft items but I had much to do to get ready for Mother's day, so I had to leave the auction early. Anyway, any ideas on what to make out of this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
Cindy