A Boy and his Toys

DS wants to earn some $, I want the grass to be cut, and DH hates cutting grass. Obvious solution? DS cuts grass! However, our Kubota tractor is a little too much for DS to handle, according to DH. So, when a friend mentioned he had a little John Deere garden tractor he'd like to sell, DH hopped on (well, not literally!). They brought it home last weekend and DS learned how to drive and mow!I think I'd better put little fences around all my flower gardens!

Why is this a significant event to me? It reminds me of all the little die cast John Deere tractor toys that are in a bin in his closet, of buying a new tractor toy every year at the county fair at the tractor store's display, of hiding a tractor toy I bought here in my suitcase when I took a business trip to Omaha just in case I didn't get to buy him a gift while in meetings all day. It reminds me that my little boy is growing up. Picture below is many summers ago, at a local farmer's barn.
They grow up so fast!

Can You Read My Mind?

You can't? Oh, drats! Then you have missed all the lovely and clever blog posts I've composed in my head over the past couple of weeks. Great pictures too! Life just gets hectic sometimes, and suddenly washing a load of laundry takes precedence over typing a blog post. But, you all know what I mean. The fact that I'm away from the house 12 hours a day 5 days a week (most weeks) really puts a crimp on some of the fun stuff I'd like to do!

Enough complaining! It's spring! I have hundreds of daffodils blooming in my yard, the trees and bushes are budding (and pollen count reflecting that) and the days are getting longer! We're plotting what to add to our little chicken flock this year, and baseball is right around the corner!

I haven't taken any pictures of this years daffs yet, but here are a few of my favorites from last year:

Don't they just make you smile?

I'll be back later with a sewing-related post!

New Friends and Fans

Look at my new sewing room friends!

I've been wanting to get African Violets again, and the sewing room has great morning sun! I have a couple of prettier pots to put them in, but they sure do make me smile!

I'm hoping tomorrow I can spend a bit of time sewing during one of the football games. DH bought me a bunch of tops and jackets for Christmas so I want to perfect my pants pattern in PMB so I can start cranking out pants to wear with them!

This is who I'll be cheering for tomorrow:It's pillow I made for a co-worker's daughter who is a big Patriots fan. I started watching them, and I am so impressed by Tom Brady I've become a fan too!

It's not the heat...

...it's the humidity. All too true around here the last two days. It was almost feeling fall-like earlier this week, but summer is back with a vengence! And with the summer heat and humidity comes summer storms. They've been very hit or miss, mostly miss around here, so the corn across the street from us was looking pretty pathetic and I'd noticed one of our oak trees was starting to lose its leaves. Today's storms were a direct hit - two hours of storm to be precise! Heavy heavy rain that left huge puddles in our yard and put a trickle of water in the previously dry streambed. Lots of thunder and lightning and a few blinks in our electricity. It's all clear now, so hopefully we're done for today.

So, what better to do on a humid, stormy day than stay in and work on decluttering the soon-to-be master bedroom! I've found the floor, and there is still brown carpet on it, but not for long! I'm going to have to get a few more bins to pack my scrapbooking stuff in. The clear bins with the hinged lids I got at BJs yesterday worked well. I have two boxes of stuff either for a thrift shop or maybe we'll have a yard sale.

I was hoping to watch the induction of Cal Ripkin Jr into the Baseball Hall of Fame while I decluttered, but our cable system doesn't carry ESPN Classic. Or at least I couldn't find it. :-( I remember Cal's rookie year, in Memorial Stadium. In fact I recently found a picture of him, well, a series of pictures that I took the last game of the 1982 season, Earl Weaver's last game as the Baltimore Orioles' manager. See, I grew up in Baltimore and my dad split a season ticket plan with a friend, so I grew up watching the O's from 5 rows behind the third base dugout. Brooks Robinson, Frank Robinson, Jim Palmer, Rick Dempsey, etc, were my childhood heroes. OK, so they are still my heroes! Cal started playing while I was in college, and then I married and moved away, so while I remained an Orioles fan, I wasn't able to follow daily as I did growing up.

So, instead of that, I listened to several episodes of the Material Mama podcast, still trying to catch up on all the podcasts I've subscribed to! It was like having a friend in the room with me!

I'll try to get some pictures of the bedroom progress. The before pictures are too scary, so I might have to start with halfway!

Dream vs. Reality

I'm carrying a small dog (?) around my front yard when a fox comes out of the woods and runs at us. I stomp and yell but it's not scared off. I head to the house, but as I get to the front door the fox gets too close, so I turn and kick at it, landing my foot squarely on the side of its head. "OUCH!" it yells, in a voice that is vaguely familiar, like, DH???? Oops! It's all a dream and I've kicked DH in my sleep! A hard kick too, I think! Sorry!

Speaking of the front yard, the daylilies are in full bloom and the butterflies are feasting:

And speaking of reality, I've measured the bedroom I'll be moving my sewing and scrapbooking into and it's NOT going to fit as I'd planned. In my dreams the room is 20 by 20, but in reality it's only 9 1/2 by 11. I diagrammed the room and furniture on graph paper now and have a plan for the sewing stuff, but there's no room for scrapbooking. Now I'm seriously considering making the closet in that room a scrapbooking closet. Then where will my fabric stash go? I think there will have to be some serious stash reduction in the very near future, both in fabric and scrapbooking supplies. I think the best way to do that is sew sew sew and scrap scrap scrap, right? Stay tuned!

Mother's Day Ramblings, or, Call Me Poke-Mom!

Happy Mother's Day to all Moms, Grandmoms, Great-Grandmoms, Aunts, and Godmothers! I hope each and every one of you had a lovely day with your loved ones!

Not many Moms spent the day as I did - at a Pokemon Pre-release tournament! We are a Pokemon Trading Card Game (TCG) family, in case I hadn't mentioned that yet. E was interested in Pokemon TCG and about a year ago we took him to a real tournament. There we met a group of folks who have a Pokemon TCG league. After sitting and watching and trying to occupy ourselves a couple of times, DH started playing and then the two of them talked me into playing. I don't go as much as they do, as I enjoy having the house to myself for a couple of hours, but the special tournaments for the release of new cards I like. Today was my all-time best day, my record was 3 wins, 2 losses, and I came in 4th out of 20 in the "over 15" age group! I even had to go up against DH in one round (OK, who did the pairings?!) and beat him! If you have kids who are interested in Pokemon cards, I recommend you learn how to play! There's even a tutorial on the Pokemon website, http://op.pokemon-tcg.com/content/ .

Before we left for the tournament I wandered around the yard and snapped a few pics of springtime! We have pink lady slippers in our woods:

The impatiens baskets that followed me home from the garden center a couple of weekends ago are thriving under the trees out front. You might be able to make out the T-Rex in the crook of the tree branch, just above the left basket. He's supposed to be scaring away the squirrels, but I think I've seen a few talking to him!

A Miracle of Modern Medicine!

A mere 24 hours after my first dose of prednisone and the poison ivy is 75% better! Hardly any itching or blistering, but it's still pretty ugly looking! In fact, when I woke up at 4am, a mere 7 hours after medicine, there was a noticeable improvement. Now why didn't I go see the doctor sooner? I'll know next time - oh, yeah, there won't be a next time, remember? I'm going to get a goat next time I have to de-poison ivy the yard!

No sewing tonight, emergency laundry night (when specific clothes are needed in the morning). I'm thinking about taking a pattern to trace during lunch tomorrow - Ottobre Woman or Kwik Sew robe pattern for E? Tune in tomorrow!

Itch Itch Itch!

One of the downsides of yard work is poison ivy. Yes, yours truly, despite wearing sleeves for protection while pulling out a patch of the nasty stuff on Saturday, is covered with oozing blisters from wrist to elbow. And oh, the inside bend of the elbows are the worst! At work today I wore a light jacket when "in public", but as soon as I was in the privacy of my office the jacket was off so that nothing touched my rashy arms! Years ago I never reacted to poison ivy, but about ten years ago I started getting an occasional teeny tiny blister and each summer I seem to get a worse case than the summer before. Maybe this will be "it" for the summer.

And next time we decide to clear an overgrown area I'm getting a goat!