Tuesday

Spring mash-up

 It's a beautiful day outside.
The sun is shining and the temperature is rising.
With spring here, there is a lot to do.
Gardening, spring cleaning, projects, crafts, holidays, etc..
I've been working on a little bit of everything.
Our youngest son bought me this gorgeous galvanized tray. Isn't it wonderful?!
It's really quite large. I placed it on the table and put some spring-ish items on it for display....
little hen and rooster, angel vine, faux fluffy orange flowers in a large glazed clay pitcher that I bought last weekend for just a dollar!
Yeah!
Yard sales have begun again, and there are all sorts of treasures out there just waiting to be snagged up.

I've been doing a lot of reading, and making a good dent in my personal reading challenge for 2015.
Have you read the book " All the light we cannot see" ?
Such a good book; a real page turner, with an ending that came as a surprise!
 
I love the following quote by Gladys Taber... sums up books and the love of reading in a great way.
 



 “And whether rich or poor, well or ill, happy or sad, books can be a refuge, they do not change with changing circumstance, they are the open highway to yesterday, today and tomorrow wherever you will to travel.”
Gladys Taber, Stillmeadow Daybook

The mantle has been decorated for spring with a gardening theme.
An absolutely adorable fluffy sunflower yellow wreath is the centerpiece... a sweet friend gifted it to me, and it is even more adorable than a picture can convey.
Our youngest son, Spencer brought me over some of the old junk wood from his place and built me a miniature garden fence.  I really love that little piece!
The seed packets are actually seeds that we will be planting later this spring..... once it warms up some more.

 We've been slowly collecting these little stained glass stars.
I bought four of them when we moved to Mill Hill Meadow, and just last week, we added two larger stars to our collection.

The aqua blue star and the red star are about 8-11 inches in diameter.
I am hanging all of them in the transom window above our entry way.
Lastly, a picture of the library doors, now that they are painted black.
I have never second guessed myself on painting them black.  So much better for our house, than the wood tone natural stain that they were previously.
Maybe it's all the British mysteries I've been watching recently, but I love the rich, dark color of the doors now, and they have so much more character now.....they look older and more substantial. Love the result of a little black paint.
Now they look like library doors.

Hope you are all enjoying this spring.

Attitude of gratitude:
~Feeling grateful for a wonderful family celebration. Celebrating my husbands birthday with all of our children. So happy that they were all able to be here with us!
~I'm grateful for daily devotionals with my sweet husband.
~Feeling happy and grateful to have gotten all the hostas divided and re-planted this past weekend.

~ Summer Everlasting ~

 Success!
When the weather started turning colder last Fall, and I knew that the growing season was coming to an end.
 I decided to save some of my outdoor plants, re-pot them and grow them in the sunny kitchen window.
Here it is, March, and I feel successful in preserving a bit of last years summer season.
 Geraniums and herbs still growing.
Bar any disasters, these plants will make it back outside to enjoy another summer season.
Did you save any plant to winter over indoors?
 My one small rosemary plant has given me two additional starts, and two more plants growing to enjoy.
 The decorative angel vine, which I never guessed would have made it this long, is thriving.
It's actually a bit older plant than the others, I bought it last Spring, so that means it's been growing in the sunny kitchen window for a year now!
The basil is getting leggy, and I need to pinch it back, and perhaps take a few starts from it.
I love fresh basil, and the recipe below is one that we use at our home, at least once a week. It uses fresh basil, and fresh lemon juice.
It is such a delicious marinade, and so far we've not only tried it on steak, but on chicken as well.
I would declare it my all time favorite marinade.

Best Steak Marinade Recipe ~ 1/3 cup low sodium soy sauce 1/3 cup olive or grape seed oil 1/3 cup fresh lemon juice (1.5 lemons) 1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce 1 tablespoons garlic powder 3 tablespoons fresh basil 1 tablespoons dried parsley flakes 1 teaspoon ground white pepper 1 tablespoon minced garlic.... So Good!!!!
 Marinate meat for at least 4 hours and then grill meat for best results.


We buy our lemons in bulk, at Costco, because lemons just don't grow on trees in Utah you know.
I recently found out about pink lemons!
I've never tasted them, and I haven't seen them for sale in any of our grocery stores, but I would LOVE to have some!
Has anyone else bought, grown, or tried pink lemons??
While I have summer everlasting in the house, in the form of wonderful plants, and herbs, and delicious marinades to use... outside it is still winter here.
Still snowy.
Hey, but just look at that bright blue sky, and the sun shining down on the snow.
Before we know it, the snow will all be melted and the meadows and mountains will start to come alive again.
 Sleepy winter will be over, happy Spring on it's way.
On my kitchen window sills..... summer continues anyway.

Attitude of gratitude~
~Feeling grateful for things to do, and the ability to do them.
How blessed our youngest is, to have his own home. This weekend, we hope to help him out, and clean away a ton of debris from an old shed that was on his property. We'll haul off all the junk to the landfill and that space will make him a fine garden plot.





Little by little....

It's hard to believe just how quickly the weeks are speeding by.
I never meant to be absent from blogging for so long.
Little by little, time just flies by!
Each new day has a full schedule, before the sun rises.
We repainted our master bedroom.
The before:  The wall color was tan......"clay beige" to be precise.
Also, you can see a bit of the dresser in the above picture.
All of our bedroom furniture is maple, and it was stained and left the natural maple color.
After. Freshly painted furniture, and room.
I painted all the maple furniture. Fresh, clean and white.  I love it!
The color that I used is called " Dover White".  I mixed up my own chalk paint and used on all the furniture.

I really love how " Farmhouse ~ Cottage" the furniture looks now.
A fresh coat of paint made all the difference!
Of course a fresh coat of paint in the room made a huge impact as well.
This is the color that we used on the room : "Whitened Sage", by Behr.
It's a nice neutral color, with hints of green, and soft blue.
We painted the master bedroom, and of course the master bathroom also.
 
We ordered and bought a garden shed.  It had to be built in St. George, and then delivered to us.
We also bought paint for the garden shed, and once the weather co-operates, we'll be painting the garden shed.
My sweet husband is also building my a potting bench inside the shed, and some shelving for storage.
We are also adding another window on one end, and adding shutters and a window box.
We want to give the garden shed a make-over, and add some charm to it.
Our only daughter celebrated a birthday last month too!!
For her birthday, she had cheesecake fresh from New York city!
It was a fun treat to have, and a little extravagant.
Hey, but it was her birthday.... a special daughter on her special day deserves a bit of spoiling.

Sadly, we also said 'goodbye' to two of our friends, in the past weeks.
Our dear Archie {above} passed away.  He was dear to our family, and we are so blessed for having had him in our lives!!
Also, we said 'goodbye' to Steven.  He will be sorely missed!!
How Steven loved his family, and especially his Grands!! He passed away just 2 days before his newest little grandson was born.
I like to think that means that Steven got to see him before everyone else, and send him to his earthly family.

Just another thing... a little thing.
I did get the library doors painted black.  Although, this picture obviously doesn't show them painted black.... I did get them done.  Painted around each and every pane of glass.

So, little by little the past weeks have just sped by. 
Seems as I get older, time just speeds up. You know, there are actually scientific theories as to why it seems that time speeds up as we get older.
I've linked an article about time, and how it seems to slip by faster as we get older.
Feel free to read it..... if you have a little time **smile**.
http://www.bustle.com/articles/38204-does-time-perception-change-as-you-get-older-why-life-goes-by-faster-and-what-you


Attitude of gratitude:
~Believe it or not, I am grateful for the snow that we've gotten in the past few days.
After all, we've had a pretty mild winter.  We planted around 200 bulbs and tubers last weekend however, and I think a nice blanket of snow will be good for them.
~I'm grateful that the bursitis that I've had in my hip is beginning to heal up.... finally.
Good grief! I have felt like the oldest woman on the planet, trying to navigate and paint with that hip giving me fits!
~I'm grateful that our amazing daughter was able to find her a car. She has been so blessed in finding the car that is perfect for her: reliable, and budget friendly, and best of all... it's really cute!