End of March 2024!

 poodlegirls  cooking, Daily Happenings, Donation Quilting, Life at home, Nature, Our Girls, Quilting, Scrap Quilts, Wildflowers  March 30, 2024 2 Minutes

A fourth of 2024 is over tomorrow! Seems like we just celebrated New Years Day! Actually we are looking forward to a quieter rest of the year-no major surprises when it comes to our home. Yes, there are still a few things on the home to do list, but nothing like what we were having to deal with!!! Some trim painting-outside and repairing some landscaping in the front.

We did get to Old Settlers Park one day to get pictures of Lady in the Bluebonnets. They are really thick this year. The red flowers are Indian Paintbrush. And yes we checked for snakes.

I did get the Picture Frame quilt bound. That’s all set to go to Linus Connection. As always Osie does a great job of quilting for me. Since I bought wide backing (108 inches) there was enough to do another smaller quilt. Will get that one back from her soon.

I started cutting fabric yesterday for another baby quilt. Another friend is expecting this summer. Have several other patterns pulled for other quilts. Those are on the list to make as well as quite a few other projects. All from fabric in house!!! Hopefully in my next post I will be able to show other projects in the works.

We did buy some more herb plants, hanging baskets and other flowers this past week. Once we harvest the garlic, hopefully end of April-early May I will have more areas to plant flowers.

Spent sometime in the kitchen- dehydrated chicken for Lady’s nighttime snack. Yes she’s a little spoiled, but no more than Tilly and Tiki were! Also tried a new recipe last night. Singapore Chili Shrimp. It is from Tuesday Night cookbook by Milk Street. I was introduced to Milk Street by an online quilting blog. Am really liking their recipes as well as some of their products. Fun to try different ways of cooking foods. Anyway, we will definitely have the Singapore Chili Shrimp again. Reminded us of being in Singapore enjoying Chili Crabs and a pitcher of beer. It was a favorite thing to do when we visited there. A lot like growing up on the East coast and gorging on a bushel of Steamed Blue Point Crabs along with cold beer! Those were some fun times.

Speaking of crab we are having a quiet Easter tomorrow. Will be making crab cakes for the 2 of us and what ever else that looks good from the fridge! Haven’t made them for a little while and they sounded good!

Hope everyone is able to enjoy family and friends time be it around a table at home or at your favorite restaurant this weekend.

 

Bits and Pieces

 poodlegirls  cooking, Daily Happenings, Donation Quilting, Life at home, Nature, Quilting, Wildflowers  March 22, 2024 2 Minutes

wasn’t sure of a title for this one, so bits and pieces it is!

Last week was an off week for me, under the weather the first 2 days and the rest of the week to get motivated! Galen ended up planting most of the plants we had bought for our raised beds. If they do well and produce we will have a bumper crop of various hot peppers and little yellow pear tomatoes as well as Roma tomatoes! We now have 3 plants of Yellow tomato plants as well-big slicing tomatoes. Hoping they do well. And I planted most of my herbs. My garlic is doing well. I can certainly tell which bed has the jumbo garlic. It’s at least twice the size of the other plants!

My older amaryllis bulbs ha e doing well. One more will be blooming soon! You can also see the spray bottle of Squirrel Away on the table. It really does help keep the squirrels from chewing anything and everything. Before we found this stuff they really did damage.

My Merkot Lime is also coming back. We thought we might have lost it do to our week of very cold weather but it’s leafing out again. I still need to plant my Lemon Grass. Then we will be all set for some Thai cooking!!

On the sewing front I handed over my Windblown Wildflower quilt to a friend for quilting. It’s a queen size and she has a bigger longarm for machine quilting. I also picked up my Picture Frame quilt top (Cozy Quilt Pattern) from another friend and gave her 2 smaller ones to quilt for me. The Picture frame and the 2 smaller ones will go to Our Linus Connection group. This is before quilting.

We have had just enough rain so far for the Wildflowers. The Bluebonnets are really thick this year. Hope to get out to get some pictures of Lady in the flowers.

I have made the decision to stay off my Facebook page for the time being. I would really like to drop it all together but am in several groups that I enjoy. So that is where I will be spend a little bit of time and not look at the rest. There is so much I want to get done and lets face it, Facebook is a rabbit hole some days! So this is the last time I will post my blog on Facebook, at least for the near future. If you want to follow along here, either bookmark or sign up for it to be sent to your email.

Hope you have a wonderful rest of March.

 

Busy First Week in March

 poodlegirls  Daily Happenings, Life at home, Nature, Quilting, Uncategorized, Wildflowers  March 11, 2024 1 Minute

Things here are slowly getting back to normal. We were able to go to lunch last Thursday for my birthday. A few days late but that’s never a problem. We needed to get a few more things done around here after the workmen finished up. Plus we had calls in to some other people to do a few things. We had lunch at Salt Traders in Round Rock. Definitely worth the wait. Their food is always good.

One call was to Leafguard for for some gutter work. The gutters needed to be flushed out since having the roof done plus we needed to replace 2. When the garage lights were installed again we couldn’t use the downspout and we needed a longer gutter since we did the extension on the deck last year. A rep was here on Friday. Took measurements. Later on Friday the truck was here to form the gutter. It was fun watching them extrude a 100 feet of gutter out of the back of the truck.

Saturday they were here and installed the gutters and downspouts. These new ones are a little bigger than our old ones. They took away all the old ones that were replaced. That’s another job we can cross off our list!

Sunday morning we had the prettiest sunrise. I rarely get to see them once our Red Oak is leafed out

Spring is certainly here. The Bluebonnets are blooming. Our Spirea bush is in full bloom

I am getting some sewing done. Have top that needs to be ready to hand over to my friend for quilting. It’s just about ready for her. Have one to pick up from my other quilting friend and hopefully will be able to give her 2 smaller ones to quilt for me.

With most of the work done on our home Galen has been able to go down to our local LCRA lake to look for Dragonflies and Damsels. Soon he will be taking off on a few day trips and some overnight ones looking for them as well. I know he’s ready.

That’s it for now.

 

February is almost over

 poodlegirls  Daily Happenings, Donation Quilting, General Sewing, Life at home, Nature, Quilting, Scrap Quilts  February 22, 2024 1 Minute

Haven’t been keeping up on my blog. Been spending time watching work on the outside of the house. Too bad the builder is out of business and we have no recourse. I can understand why he went bankrupt etc. Things are getting fixed now. And we are learning a lot about how to lay brick!!!

I have also been sewing. I can now show the baby quilt. Mom and Dad like the quilt. I think Cedar does too! It should give him lots to look at as he starts to recognize things.

I also handed over a top for my friend to quilt. It’s a pattern from Cozy Quilt-Picture Frame. It uses 2 1/2 inch wide strips. This one will go to our local Linus Connection group.

Have another quilt in the works. Trying to use up some of my Texas Wildflower fabrics. I am using a pattern called County Lines.

I think we had our last cold snap. My garlic is going to town. If it all matures I think we will be giving some away!

Our Paperwhites are blooming and bushes are leafing out. We do have to figure out what we will do in the front now. They had to cut down some of the bushes so they could work behind them and the front bed by the door is pretty well beat up. We knew that would happen. We have been having a hard time getting plants to grow there anyway. I think it may get river rock and then a big planter or two. It gets the hot summer sun in the afternoon. We need to think it through. When we moved in the bed was full of Asian Jasmine. That disappeared when our landscapers decapitated a fairly large rattlesnake. Not something we wanted at the front door. It was one of our hot, dry summers. He found a nice cool spot in the jasmine under one of the outdoor spigots!

My Amaryllis bulbs have really been putting on a show. The one in first picture is a pale salmon color. My bulbs from previous years are starting to grow. Hoping to have blooms by Easter.

Bluebonnets are starting to bloom. We haven’t been out looking for them yet.

 

A Lot has Happened Since My Last Post

 poodlegirls  cooking, Daily Happenings, Life at home, Our Girls, Quilting  January 30, 2024 2 Minutes

Right after my last post we had some colder than normal days and then some very wet days. I did manage to get some sewing done. Finished a quilt top, finished the top of another table runner and made the napkins to match. 2 more kits out of my box of kits! Table runners or toppers are generally a fun and easy project and quick! Of course I still need to quilt it. That will happen soon. This is just a quick look see!

During our cold snap I had seen a recipe in one of my Milk Street cookbooks for Taiwan Beef Noodle Soup. I do have the American Club in China recipe that I got before we moved back to the states but was curious to try it. It was good but not quite the same. And yes still using our Taiwan dishes.

A nice cheery spot is one of our Amaryllis is blooming and lot more blooms coming. It cheers me up while listening to the work being done outside!

With the rain ending last Thursday they started tearing off our old roof on Friday. That led to getting the masonry crew here. When the house was built in 1995 they did a terrible job on lots of things and things that don’t necessarily show up on an inspection. We had fixed things over the years of course but this is the worst. If you follow me on Facebook I have been posting pictures. By the end of this week there won’t be a lot of brick on the front or at the garage. The roof will have much better flashing. When they start putting brick back up it will be supported by angle iron and not just sitting on the shingles etc. And tied into studding and mortar will be the right ratio and not mostly sand. We have been learning a lot.

The roofing is all done in the back now. Last night we sat on the deck with a bottle of wine and Lady got to enjoy being out as the gates were closed. She had some good runs around the back! She’s even been able to chase squirrels!

I know the rest of this week is going to be noisy outside. My plans are to stay in and sew or get back to going through and getting rid of things. Of course I will have to go out and check on the progress a few times. We do have confidence in these crews. They have been in the business for 30 and 40 plus years. And very happy we have a great general contracture. They all work together. Plus they are very good at showing us pictures if we can’t see the problem from the ground. What did we do before smart phones?

Everyone have a good rest of the week.