Busy Sunday

The family is coming for dinner today to celebrate our May birthdays. Yesterday I made two dishes for dinner. We're having prime rib (Mike's favorite), green beans, mashed potatoes, spinach salad, and an angelfood cake with espresso mascarpone cream. I have the green beans all finished. The rest needs to be done today. It's not a difficult dinner, but it requires some planning to have everything on the table at the same time. I still have a couple of housekeeping chores to finish up before everyone gets here, but otherwise, things feel pretty well under control. And all of that to say that there probably won't be any time for sewing today.

That's okay. I got quite a bit accomplished yesterday. For one thing, I finished embroidering the little quilt for my latest Quilting Snowlady block. That's always the biggest part of any one of these.

There's still plenty of stitching left to do, however. I'm guessing I still have at least another week of work on it.

Also, I sewed all the blocks together for the Doors of Ireland. I'm really liking how it's looking so far.

Next, I'll be making the four cornerstones. This is a paper-pieced block, but I'm going to piece it the traditional way.

When those are complete, I'll be ready to add the borders, and my quilt top will be finished!

Also yesterday, I needed to feed the birds and water the flower pots. The rhododendrons are really showing off right now.

This one is humming with bees.

This one at one end of the herb garden is all in bloom now too.

At the other end of the herb garden is this peachy one, just now starting to open up.

Also, the white azalea is starting to bloom.

I showed you the white one first so that it wouldn't be overshadowed by its more showy red neighbor.

Things in the greenhouse needed watering too. I planted 15 sunflower seeds a couple of weeks ago, and four of the seeds didn't come up. You can see that they're getting pretty big now, and finally two more of the four late bloomers popped their little heads up. That gives me hope for the remaining two.

While I was outside yesterday, a delivery came from Amazon.com. It was in a rather large box, and addressed to me. I couldn't remember ordering anything from Amazon, and so I needed to open it right away to see what was inside. Get a load of this:

Okay, so this requires some explanation. My friend Lisa is teaching kindergarten this year. Recently she was showing us some of the stuff her students are working on, and let me tell you, it's a far cry what I learned in kindergarten. Good grief. I think I was in 2nd grade before I was doing the things they're doing in kindergarten these days. Anyway...I mentioned to Lisa that the only thing I remember from kindergarten is that it was my one and only chance to fingerpaint. The experience of fingerpainting was downright orgasmic, and I've been chasing that feeling ever since.

Lisa, smarty pants that she is piped up (via email), "Now I know what to get you for your birthday."

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

Well, sure as shootin', she did it! OMG!!! With the family coming over today, don't you suppose we're going to have fun with these? Pictures are sure to follow.

So...plenty going on at the Three Cats Ranch today. It's going to be a great day. I hope you have an action-packed day planned for yourself...with fingerpainting!