Goodies for me!

It was dreary, grey and nasty today and I was missing my daily walk, in fact I wasn't in too good of a mood when lo and behold the mailman brought me some goodies. My sweet daughter sent me these lovely new soaps from her Etsy Shop to try out and they come in the most delicious fragrances, Red Tea, Oatmeal Milk and Honey, Lemon Verbena and Creamy Buttermilk. So tonight I am going to have a wonderful soak in the tub and try one of these lovelies.
Also in the box was this wonderful little bar, it is actually called a bubble bar and it has the most wonderful lavender fragrance. Thank goodness she has instructions for use as I would have put the whole thing in the tub and would have had bubbles all over the bathroom. Apparently you break it into three or four pieces and just use one piece, the bubbles last forever she tells me so I will have a go and report back how it went.
I haven't done to much sewing this week other than these little linen pouches, and I don't think I will get a great deal done this weekend as we have company coming, but maybe I can squeeze a few projects in.

Well I am hoping that our weather will dry up for the weekend so I can resume my walking and hubby can resume his picture taking.

Have a great weekend!

Stanley

I began to feel so sorry for poor little lonesome Millie that I knew I just had to find her a little friend, so little Stanley came to life this weekend. I am not sure if Millie likes him as he is a little goofy looking but I think his charm will win her over!

We spent this weekend doing a lot of walking and I have the sore muscles to prove it. The weather was just so lovely and sunny and my hubby took some real good pics. I think this Bald Eagle picture is one of his best ones so far, he sat there for the longest time and was very co-operative while a strange human stood below clicking away with a camera. We also saw these wonderful Northern Shoveler Ducks, looking at their beaks I can see where they got their name from. Near the end of our walk a whole flock of geese took off and came right over the top of us, thankfully they didn't give us any surprises. When I saw this pic I was amazed at all the different positions their wings were in. Our daughter said it would make a real good jigsaw puzzle!

So that was our lovely weekend, I hope yours was fun too!

Millie

Sweet Millie and I want to wish you all a very lovely weekend.

I Love Taking a Walk!

I love taking walks especially ones way out in the woods as you never know what you will see. I came a cross these two cute little mushrooms... ...so I just had to stop and take a picture.
It's that time of year when a lot of birds are getting very territorial and looking for a mate, so as you can imagine lots of arguing and fighting is going on. These Canadian Geese were making such a racket but in just a few minutes it was all over and they were swimming about serenely. In fact they had calmed down enough to even let this pair of ducks stop by for a visit.

It was really quite wonderful at how many different birds and animals we saw, but the highlight of the day and a big surprise was coming across a family of river otters. There were three of them but only this little fellow stayed put for a while so hubby could snap his photo, it was fun watching them twist and turn and almost do somersaults in the water. Soon it was time for us to leave but all in all I think we had a pretty fun day!

Margarita

Just like me Margarita is constantly thinking of Spring, she still needs a wool jacket though as it is still quite cold here and there is nothing more pitiful than a bunny with a cold! On a rainy Sunday afternoon we made a trek to our favorite antique store where I picked up not one...
....but two beautiful English bone china teacups and saucers, I have a plan to turn these into two sweet pincushions. It was very hard to decide among a very large selection of teacups and saucers but I am pretty pleased with my choices.

I think gremlins have invaded our house! Last week the pump went out on our pond, my electric tea kettle quit working, (that was a major disaster) and my iron decided to act up so I think it is on its last legs. I am beginning to wonder what will go wrong next, I hope that this week will be a bit better. As long as my trusty sewing machine behaves itself as I have a lot of sewing to finish.

I have to say a very big thank you to my sweet daughter, once again she surprised me with a new blog design....what would I do without her!

Have a lovely start to your week.

Snowing again!

Well as you can see it snowed here again today, I was so hoping that we had seen the last of it but I guess Old Man winter is not done with us yet!
To cheer myself up I went off to the store where there was some more lovely Spring flowers... ...but all it did was make me want to get out in the garden and plant some!

This lovely little bird has been coming into our garden for a few days, I believe it is a warbler, if you click on the pic it will get bigger and you can see how really lovely he is. I hope he sticks around and calls our garden home.

I really don't have much to show on the crafting front, I have made a couple of felt brooches and will again soon get back into making some little animals once I get some loose ends tied up.

Well this is going to be a short blogging week for me so I hope you all have a wonderful Valentines Day, ours will be yummy as my mother-in-law has invited us to dinner, hmmm, I wonder what we will be having!

Supplies

As a seamstress one of my biggest peeves is not having what I need on hand and constantly having to run to the store to get what I need. For example, not having the right color thread or not having the right size zipper etc. Fortunately for me I now very rarely have to make those emergency trips as I am very well stocked.And it is all thanks to Ebay. The lovely DMC embroidery threads believe it or not only cost me about $23, a bargain for sure, and the zippers were about $27. Even machine sewing thread I buy the same way......I usually keep them all color co-ordinated in these plastic containers, I haven't brought thread for years, it is so lovely to have all the colors I need. I know a lot of people are not that crazy for Ebay but when it comes to stocking up on supplies for very reasonable costs I have to give it high marks.

A few of you have asked where I purchase my felt in past posts, (I would get that from Ebay too if they sold it in bulk). I get my felt from Prairie Point Junction, a link is over on the right of my blog under favorite shops, I have always had great customer service from them and that is the only place I buy felt from now.

Well there you have it, tips of the day for Monday, now I am going to go and use some of the stuff I just talked about.

Have a wonderful day!

A Lovely Week

What a wonderful week I've had! Not only did I get some lovely new felt but yesterday I was surprised to find that one of my items had been picked for the Etsy front page, it was one of the little pencil cases/pouches that I had made. Oh lucky me!I am still having heaps of fun with my new felt, I made this little sewing set for my Etsy shop. With so many colors of felt to chose from it takes me a while to decide which color to use for which project. Oh the decisions I have to make!I couldn't finish out the week without sharing this wonderful photo taken of our beautiful Mt. Rainier, my hubby took this a couple of days ago when we had a rare wonderful sunny day and the mountain "came out to play". I often think back to when I first came to live here in Washington State many, many years ago. I arrived in late October to rainy foggy weather and I never got to see this wonderful mountain for almost a month. People kept asking me "Have you seen the mountain yet?" After a while I really started to wonder if it really did exist! Then one day in November I saw her for the first time and I was amazed at how she could have stayed hidden from me for a whole month, she was spectacular and I have loved her ever since. I cannot begin to count how many times we have made the trip to get my "mountain air fix" as I like to call it, we usually go several times a year when we just want to get away from it all and it works every time.

Well that's all from me for this week, I hope you all have a great weekend!

Lovely new felt

Look at what turned up on my doorstep a couple of days ago, this lovely new felt. It comes in some of the yummiest colors, oh the wonderful things you can make with felt.......I made this little pin today and I popped it in my Etsy shop already, even though the little mushrooms were tiny it was so much fun to make. I think felt is probally one of my most favorite things to craft with.I have been meaning to post about this little stamp for a while now but I kept forgetting. My lovely daughter had this made for me and gave it to me as a surprise. How thoughtful was that?

Speaking of my daughter, she is having a wonderful giveaway on her blog. Pop on over and leave a comment to enter and you could be the lucky winner. Just click here to enter. Good Luck!

Cold but Wonderful

Like most people at this time of year cabin fever has touched us in a big way, so on Saturday we decided (that would be hubby and I) to bundle up and get out of the house for a few hours and get some fresh air.

Down the road we went about 3 miles or so to a wonderful wildlife sanctuary, there are numerous trails to walk and lots of wonderful things to see if you are lucky... (and boy were we lucky!) Hubby, of course, took his camera. We saw numerous geese and ducks as well as quite a few bald eagles hunting for dinner along the river.

As we were walking along one of the trails we came across a very nice man with a camera and a tripod, he was so kind to tell us that he had just taken some pics of a pair of Great Horned Owls. Well, that was all my hubby needed to hear. I was left in his dust as he took off following the nice gentleman's instructions,"...go until you see the large pine, shortly after will be a broken tree. Look to the left and a little back you will see them." I finally caught up with my hubby whose camera was clicking furiously. I have to admit that when I first saw them they almost took my breath away snuggled together up in the tree. Apparently they are very hard to find and see during the daylight hours so we couldn't believe how fortunate we were. As I stood there looking up at them my hubby called out to me, "Can you come over hear a minute?" said he. I of course thought that seeing this wonderful pair of owls snuggled closely together had made him go very romantic. So over I went. He then asked me to turn around where he promptly stuck his camera on top of my head and said, and I quote, "I need something to steady the camera so I can get some good shots!" Well, as you can see he got his good shot as I obliged and became his human tripod. But all is forgiven as he made me the most wonderful cup of tea when we arrived home... Oh the things I will do for a good cuppa!

Don't forget to click on the picture to see it full-size!