Thinking ahead on a Slow Sunday...

 Hello - well another week has gotten away from me and this one wasn't nearly as productive as the last one... but that's what  I expected. At my age a high level of activity is not sustainable for more than a couple of days...LOL  

Now I did get a few things done but there are still plenty of projects on my list.  

Over the weekend I got all the Easter decor put away. I was determined it would all fit back into 2 bins and it did after I jettisoned about a dozen knick knacks that I haven't used in years. Then I turned my attention to putting out Spring-y stuff and my bird collection... I do LOVE birds!  I started with the idea I'd just recreate the displays I had last year but that went off the rails pretty quickly and the arrangements I came up with are about 90% different than last year... and I like them... but this takes waaaaay longer to do... lots of moving stuff from place to place and dithering and adding things and taking things away ... I swear I walked 2 miles and never left the living room!  Now I'm not totally done as I never did get around to putting a binding and sleeve on the quilt I want on the wall ... but I'm happy with what I'm looking at and the bins are back into the basement. There will be more purging when I put this stuff away as I still had a bin full of decor left over... obviously it isn't all vital stuff... 

And speaking of the decor here is a bit of it... my small shelf display...

Up top  I picked up some new flowers for that vase at HL and there's a cute little bird pulling a wagon of flowers from Homespun Elegance... Delivering Posies... if you have minute go check out her Etsy shop... several of her charts fell into my cart...LOL..

I left up my little tulip quilt and parked a small pillow snippet from Pineberry Lane's Tansy Yarrow Rue chart in front of it.  I'm a big fan of the primitive quality  of Pineberry Lane but not much into the color palette so I brightened this up.

Middle shelf from left to right has the full version of Tansy Yarrow Rue, again with a palette change...

a little field of yellow tulip knick knacks and  Good Deeds from With Thy Needle and Thread... notice the big tulips in this piece... love them!

Bottom is Because It's Spring by Wendy Peatross, a recent  McCoy pottery acquisition, love the bird on this one...

and a little sampler with tulips from the OOP Blackbird Design book Thank You Sarah Tobias... the chart is called Pins & Tulips Pincushion and I stitched the back and front as one piece.

 Next to the TV I've got another little display... I LOVE this vase... it may be McCoy but it doesn't have a clear mark on the bottom... when you put flowers in it they just arrange themselves so nicely... I picked up this marked down $2 bunch of alstroemeria at Krogers... the color is gorgeous and they last a long time so I'm definitely getting my money's worth here...

the pear is from the Annie Beez pattern Spring Green Pears...  I want to stitch more of these and I have a bunch of the pear patterns in my stash. 

And speaking of stash... as I was putting away the Easter stuff and getting out the Spring-y bird stuff I jumped to thinking ahead  about my next display which will be patriotic... I want to get that stuff out mid- June ... so I pulled out my bag of patriotic charts and found that I had several pieces that were almost finished... sheesh... so I picked them back up..  this one Patriotic Tiny Town only needed one roof and one chimney and then all of those backstitched stars...

I know how I'm going to finish this one and it shouldn't  take a lot of time.

Then I turned my attention to this one by Melisa of Pinkernpunkinquilting ... the Marcher of the Flag... 

gosh I do love stitching on Aida ... I know that Aida isn't the style right now but it is so comforting... as I recall Melissa said this piece was in honor of her daughter who was in the Air Force... I painted the Aida  and it came out so pretty IMHO.

And I even put a couple of stitches into this one... American House Sampler by Annie Beez... I only got a hold of this chart late in July last year... it was sold out everywhere... 

now I'm making changes (when don't I make changes...LOL) and instead of the house being white it is going to be yellow... like my house... right now I'm thinking DMC 3821... 

I've decorated the living room in red, white and blue for years but this year I want to extend that decor to my sunroom porch...so I need a few more pieces... I was cruising ebay and found a couple of Debbie Mumm patriotic pieces I've never seen before... still deciding what I might purchase... and I want to do something large... which I've narrowed down to thes 5 choices (not very narrow is it?) 

First is God Bless America by Erica Michaels... 98 x 177...

Next The Pledge of Allegiance by Crocette a gogo...131 x 275 

And this one, e pluribus unum by jan hicks creates!...114 x 171   

 And last but not least...  Allegiance...185 x 128

 and the whopper ... 1776 Sampler ...225 x253

These last two are both from the book Hello America by Teresa Kogut.

I'll think about my choice as I work on the other 2 pieces and I thumb through the rest of my patriotic stash... so many I'd like to stitch!

Well the week ahead is mildly busy...errands to run on Monday, Elliott on Tuesday, Wednesday the dental procedure that was scheduled for last Thursday and then got cancelled by the dentist at the last minute... oh and I'm supposed to dinner with a friend that night... hope I'm up to it... so far nothing on  Thursday and Friday. 

I haven't gotten anything potted up from last week... and I need to clean out the window boxes of the dead stuff. I put a down payment on a fence for my backyard... and dealt all week with the bureaucracy of my local government to get a $25 permit to have it installed. I think I got them all the documents they wanted. Had a guy come and look at the mess I made with spray paint around my window boxes a couple of years ago... tip: spray paint goes everywhere.!!.. now when the boxes are full you don't see the overspray but it is very evident right now ... the company that came does graffiti removal and says they have a process to remove the paint from brick... I researched it and there is a chemical spray you can get that I thought I'd try, but then I thought it through... chemical spray, me on a ladder, scrub brush, hose... doesn't sound like an activity I should  engage in.  Gonna leave it to a professional. 

Indoors there is still cleaning and purging to do and as I mentioned before (I"m hoping if I repeat this enough times it will motivate me...LOL) the quilt for the living room wall still doesn't have a sleeve or a binding...sigh... Hopefully I will get some things accomplished but as I type this all I want to do is sit on the porch and stitch and watch the birds at my bird feeder... (ok I wanted to insert a picture here but for some reason blogger is balking)  

oooh another tip... a baffle under the bird feeders is quite the squirrel deterrent.  Here's what it looks like, I got it on Amazon. Now everything I read said it needed to be 6 ft off the ground... this is only about 5 ft... and the feeder is about 7 ft from the house... I thought they may still try to propel themselves off the side of the house but I haven't observed that and I haven't seen a squirrel at my bird feeders all week!!  Why didn't I do this years ago?? I've bought several "squirrel proof" feeders that didn't seem to deter them and the birds didn't want to eat from them... this was a simple $20 fix... live and learn... 

Well I'll link up with Kathy's Quilts today... it has been stormy all weekend so it is perfect weather to stay inside and cozy on the sunroom porch... my idea of a great time!  Hope you have a great time doing whatever you want to do this coming week!

happy stitching-

carol fun