Beautiful Summer Blooms

Hello Everyone and hope you are having a happy week end! It is so lovely here in sunny Florida today. I walked around looking for blooms and there are many! I have a pretty bromeliad on the porch that looks gorgeous.

I was so excited to find my first Sunflower bloom! It is so pretty and a fairly delicate one on a plant only about 3 feet tall. I have no idea the name, as I just took a handful of mixed seeds out side and scattered them and lightly covered them ....POT LUCK!! I now have a garden full of zinnias, cosmos and sunflowers!

Here are some of the zinnias and you can barely see the cosmos in the back of them.

The crape myrtles are in bloom and are so gorgeous! They are trees that look so bare and ugly in winter, but come Spring they are just glorious!

Breathtaking Blooms against a blue, blue sky!

Do you remember my little pond the grandchildren built for me by sinking a plastic tote into the ground. It is really cute now with plants and blooms around it. I painted the rock turtle and the pond has been a little water feature that I have enjoyed all Spring. It looks so cool and refreshing and quite "real".
Have a lovely weekend and enjoy Nature wherever you are!

Is there such a thing as too many baskets?

Hi Everyone,

I have been making little rag baskets for quite some time now and it seems to be an addiction!

Every night while languishing in front of the Telly, I have clothes line rope in lap with strips of fabric to wrap around the rope and sew together. It takes about 30 minutes to make a small basket without even thinking about it, but my hands are busy!

The baskets will be sold this Fall at our church bazaar.  There are many, many uses for such small, colorful baskets, one of which is to give as a gift with a little candy inside. 

Or almost anything inside. Maybe a piece of jewelry or something unusual, such as some ear plugs for swimming (or the T.V) or some fun pencil erasers. I'm sure you can help me out by telling me what YOU would put in one.

Never lose your thread again!

I even got carried away and made a giant one about 10 or 12 inches long. This one took a little time and I prefer the little ones actually.

To make a basket, just use cotton/poly clothes line wrapped with 1 inch wide strips of fabric. Don't worry about fraying..it IS a Rag Basket. Sew the coils together with quilting thread. You can shape the basket by having the coils slope gently outward or straight up. Attach handles. Very easy and quick. Happy crafting!

But....how many of these do you think we can sell? I have already make about 50! Perhaps I should move on to some other craft project.

Saturday in the Garden and a new painting started

Hi Everyone,

There are many new blooms today in the garden. The Day Lilies are blooming. I have had Stargazer Lilies and even Easter Lilies (late). 

Zinnias are blooming really well and I have some that are mounds, others that are giant ones and are very tall.

One of my favorite plants is the Caladium. The leaves are so beautiful and look lovely mixed in a flower arrangement. I love to make bouquets for the house about as much as have them blooming outdoors!

Aren't these just gorgeous!

The Springeri fern looks great mixed in a pot of geraniums.

I brought in some garden flowers and mixed them with a few bought blossoms to make a vase for a painting.Below is the start of the painting.It has a long way to go, but I will post it next week. I have a lot of building up of colors and this is just the start, but I am excited about the possibilities. Isn't that what life is all about...endless possibilities! Have a great weekend.

Quilts, Cookies, Tea, Painting...it is a busy life!

Hi 

Everyone, 

Yesterday we celebrated my grandson, Austin's birthday, which is this Friday. He was visiting all weekend, so he and I made his birthday cake, just the kind he wanted...chocolate with strawberry icing! It was a fun day! He will be 12 on Friday and I can not believe how time flies. Children grow up way to fast!

Tomorrow is my quilt group at church. I am working on this Iris quilt, which is from an old pattern book my mother had. I have made 30 blocks and appliqued the iris on using the blanket stitch around the edges. Now I am sewing the blocks together, alternating a pattered back ground and a plain green one.

When all put together, the quilt group will put it on a quilting frame and all of us will quilt it. It will be raffled off for our bazaar in November. Hopefully it will be finished by then.

I am in charge of dessert tomorrow at quilting, so I made a big batch of Snicker doodles and will also take some watermelon slices for those who had rather have something healthier, if there should be the need!I have already been sampling the cookies and they are SO good. I know you all have the recipe for Snicker doodles, but if not, let me know and I will post it.

Tea time with my favorite Irish tea cut and saucer!

This is one of my favorite tea pots. I haven't seen another one like it in my many antique buying frenzies.

And here is the last thing today. I just finished this painting after working on it a week. Margaret, my neighbor gave me some lovely bright reddish-orange glads and I waited until they were almost gone before starting this. But I loved the way they looked after loosing some of the blooms, so I put them in an old vintage Mason fruit jar and set up a still life using lace and an old book and a small crock of glass balls. I love to paint lace and reflections, but I will say it is hard and doesn't always turn out like I would like it to. But I finally finished the painting and here it is! Thanks for looking.

Tropical Storm Andrea

Hi Everyone,  It is a rainy day in South Florida and I guess all over Florida and up the Eastern coast of the U.S.    Tropical Storm, Andrea, is out there in the ocean, churning up some windy and rainy weather. We are also under a tornado watch today. It seems to just rain in bands off and on, and right now it has cleared a bit.

But it is a great day to just stay inside, so I have been in the studio staring a new painting. I peeped out earlier and took these photos of the back walk leading to the porch ........WET

and this photo in back of the house of the patio and little back garden. The grass is really green now and you can hear it growing if you listen really close! Don't make fun of those two lions guarding the garden. They are really not to my liking, but my hubby had them, so to please him I have installed them in the back of the house. They really don't deter any of the wild animals from entering the garden. Cayenne  pepper does a much better job sprinkled among the plants!

Raindrops splashing on the driveway. What a gray day, but we do need the rain!

A friend gave me this Passion Vine in a pot yesterday and I wanted to get it planted, but it will have to wait. It is very happy though, and last night it bloomed! Was I surprised this morning to see that bloom!

Five Flower Paintings

Hi Everyone,  I have been doing a lot of flower paintings lately! How can one not be into flowers when there are so many blooms around this Spring? My garden is over run with yellow and golden Cosmos, it seems and they just re-seeded themselves from last year, even more now than then! But I love them and just let them be. In fact I have thrown out handfuls of zinnia seeds among them and they are popping up, too.

I am trying to paint in a looser, more painterly fashion than I normally do. Below is one of my more realistic paintings and above is a "painterly" one, both done with watercolors. They are both nice in their own way, but which style do you like best?

This year, I have planted three Hydrangeas and am so happy to see they are getting established and growing. I have to water them nearly daily as they require lots of water, but I am determined to have them bloom! The blooms below in this painting were given to me by a friend. She has given me many cuttings, too, but I only have one growing, so I am not very good at getting a nice plant from a cutting, even though I used Root Tone hormone to help get started. This painting is not a watercolor...it is done in oils.

I just noticed that I often use that little blue pitcher in paintings!

I hope you enjoy a look at some of my paintings of late. Click on them for closer views. Hope you are enjoying the flowers of Spring as much as I am!