Around the House

Wow!  Thanks for all the Goofy Bag love!  You’re all so kind!

Did you all have a good weekend?  It’s been nice and relaxing here in Thimbleannaland after being away all week.  We cleaned the house a bit, saw Mama Mia (which was a pleasant surprise) and had a nice day with MeMum and Big Daddy today.

So, in the absence of any exciting crafty news, I thought I’d follow Sharon’s Flora and Fauna lead and show you a few pics of summer around here.  Remember my Gerbera Daisies?  This is their second bloom — aren’t they funny though?  There are two pots there — one pot grows really long stemmed flowers and the other pot has twice as many, but they’re short stemmed.

My pretty pink lilies bloomed while I was gone this week.  They won’t be around long with the heat,  so I’ll try to peek in on them every day.

I have a few pots of petunias on the patio.  I’ll probably be trimming these in the next week or they’ll get too leggy.

Now, for fauna, we’ve had a very exciting spring this year.  Two or three months ago, two big hawks moved into the top of one of our trees in the front yard and built a very large nest.

After they moved in, we didn’t see a whole lot of them.  At one point we even thought they might have abandoned the nest.  Then one day, we saw an extra head peeking over the edge of the nest.  So, we just watched for a few weeks and nothing exciting happened, and again, we wondered if they’d grown and gone.  Then one night about 10 days ago, we came home and there was lots of squawking up in the tree.   The kids all happened to be home and I’m sure the neighbors wondered what we were all doing under that big tree looking up and pointing.  It appeared that mama was kicking the baby birds out, as they were on the branches around the nest.  Then, one of them flew to the top of a nearby tree — convenient for a picture, as the top of the tree has lost it’s leaves.  I wasn’t sure if this was a parent or baby.

Again it was quiet for a day or two and we thought they were gone.  Don’t birds leave the nest and fly away?  Apparently not…the Saturday morning that I went to see Cami, they were all lined up on a nearby branch.  Aren’t they cute?  Look at those new little downy feathers.  We initially thought there were only two babies, but these three all look like young birds.

Tonight when we came home from MeMum and BigDaddy’s, these three were playing on the front lawn.  They were springing straight up in the air and TheManoftheHouse says he saw something in one of the birds talons.  We watched them for a minute and the neighbors came over.  They’ve been watching them too — it appears that the hawks live in our yard and their dining room is in the neighbor’s tree.  He said he frequently finds small bird carcasses at the base of his tree.  While we were watching them on the ground, they got spooked and flew into a tree where I could get a little closer and take this picture of one of them.  He (she?) looks older already.

TheManoftheHouse came inside and did a little internet research.  He thinks they’re Cooper’s Hawks and this Cornell website is full of more info if you’re interested.  According to the website, they leave the nest around 5 weeks and go out on their own around 8 weeks.  According to that schedule, we might only have a week left with them.  We’ve had great fun watching them.  The downside is that our birdfeeders (and the neighbors) are pretty lonely this year.  It will be very interesting to see if they return next year.

If you have some interesting flora and fauna where you live, I’d love to see it!

XOXO,
Anna

We’ve had an incredibly beautiful day here today, so I was finally able to get my annuals planted. Better late than never — it’s been so cold here this spring and combine that with the wedding last weekend, I’m pretty late planting this year. We have quite a few trees in our yard, so it’s hard to get very many flowers to grow. I still try every year anyway, and usually with the same ol’ thing.

In the front yard I always plant impatiens.

Begonias in the back yard.

Some pretty gerbera daisies in the pot on my patio table. I’ve never planted these before, but I love them, so I had to give them a try. I hope I don’t kill them, but they’re in a pot, so their chances probably aren’t great.

Just outside the patio door, I have a small herb garden. The chives, tarragon, and thyme are perennials. Today I added sage, rosemary, oregano and two parsley plants (’cause one just isn’t enough!)

And lest you think it’s all fun and flowers around here, here’s what you’ll see if you look up. A new and special treat just this spring on the south-facing roofs: curling shingles.

Apparently, the roof didn’t get the house memo issued 5 years ago. We’re still in tuition hell for another year so nothing is allowed to “break” or find itself in need of replacement. The other day I told someone that this house is only 15 years old and how could it need a new roof already? They said, gee, those must be 15-year shingles. What??? Who knew there was such a thing? I thought roofs were supposed to last 20 to 25 years. You learn something new every day. And sometimes painfully. Any chance those icky shingles will last another year? Fifteen year shingles that last 16 years? Anyone? Junie-Lou???

XOXO,
Anna

P.S. I’ll bet you thought I said everything that could possibly be said about those wedding cupcakes on my last post. But noooo…I forgot a few things:

• I know I sound like a Food Network cook getting a cut on vanilla sales, but be sure and use a good (translation: expensive) vanilla. I used to think this was a joke, but just smell a bottle of expensive vanilla next to the grocery store variety. BIG difference. I ask for good vanilla for gifts when someone needs a suggestion.
• The kids got me an awesome cupcake pan for Christmas last year. It’s heavy, it holds 24 cupcakes, and it fills up my oven. It’s available at Williams Sonoma, but they don’t show a link for it on their website.
• If you’re going to make paper picks for cupcakes you should think about laminating them. I was worried that the fat from the frosting would bleed onto the paper. That didn’t happen, but the moisture from the frosting did cause the ink in the pictures to bleed just a little bit.

When last I left you, I was going to spend my day yesterday doing yard work. But then it rained all day so I ended up running errands with SweetiePie. While we were out, she reminded me that the big annual Very Bradley sale was this weekend, and “Hey Look! We’re right across the street, we should go check it out!”

Do you all know about Vera Bradley? They’re a quilted handbag company that was started here in Ft. Wayne, Indiana by two women. They’ve since added home accessories and personal items like umbrellas, luggage, etc. and every year they have a huge sale of seconds and close outs. It’s a pretty big deal and women come from far and wide (some even on bus trips — I imagine like going to a quilt show) to shop the deals. (And something new I just learned, supposedly there are big Vera Bradley sales in other cities like Charlotte, Atlanta, Northern California…who knew???)

Anyway, I would have completely forgotten about the sale (among other things, I kind of enjoy making my own quilted bags.) I went to the sale once or twice, years ago, and it was a miserable experience. Big crowds with all their associated problems and bags that I didn’t really find appealing. So, I’ve never been back since. But things are different now — I have a blog and thought maybe I should take a few pictures for posterity — and you LOL!

When you enter the sale, these pink ribbons line the barriers between people going in to the sale and people leaving the sale. Vera Bradley has been a HUGE supporter of breast cancer research.

I didn’t really get a good picture of all the rows of tables — I needed a chair to stand on for a pseudo-aerial view, but I only saw three chairs and they were occupied by tired women. But here you can see the crowd — it was definitely more crowded that I expected. Friday was the third day of the sale so I didn’t think there would be many people there.

I guess part of the reason people still come after the first day is because they apparently drop the prices each day. I don’t remember them doing that years ago — maybe they did and I just didn’t know it.

SweetiePie and I were standing off to the side watching people and these two guys came walking up with a bin full of stuff. They were pretty funny — they had big smiles on their faces and they were trying to strategically place this bin as if it was a big joke — then they stepped back and watched the feeding frenzy.

This is an area where you are allowed to sit down and figure out what you want to buy. (They keep making announcements that you aren’t allowed to sit on the floor because it’s a safety hazard.) When you enter the sale, they hand you big pink plastic bags to collect items in. At some point you have to stop and take inventory of all the stuff you grabbed off of those tables.

This was a sign on the way to the cashier. People used to come and buy tens of thousands of dollars worth of stuff and then re-sell it on ebay. Not anymore though — now they have a limit. SweetiePie and I were laughing at the thought of spending $2500 on quilted bags — in spite of how much we love fabric and bags.

This is the checkout area and it’s a terrible picture. I couldn’t get good perspective to show you how big the area is — it’s in a separate big room from the merchandise. I’m guessing there were 30 – 50 checkout lines. But, hey — I’m a terrible guesser, so take that for what it’s worth!

This is just some random woman and her purchases. That’s a lot of bags for all the sisters, daughters, friends, quilty peeps, bloggy peeps, etc. I’d say this is pretty typical though. We saw lots of women leaving with 4 or 5 big shopping bags full of goodies.

So, there you have it. Ft. Wayne’s claim to fame. (Aside from being where tv was invented. And where Johnny Appleseed is buried. And probably a few other things I can’t remember.) Vera Bradley. They’ve just built a big new Vera Bradley factory south of town. I wanted to drive out there and take a picture for you (they have pretty lamp poles) but, gas prices being what they are, I decided that was a bit wasteful. You’ll just have to make do with pictures of this year’s sale.

XOXO,
Anna

We have built-in grill on our patio — it isn’t mobile, it’s attached to the cement. We use it a lot during the summer but it’s getting pretty old. So, here’s your riddle:

If TheLadyoftheHouse says “That grill is going to fall over, and no one listens to her, will it still fall over?”

Here. I’ll help you out and make the riddle a little easier.

If TheLadyoftheHouse says “That grill is going to fall over, and no one listens to her, and a big storm comes along, will it still fall over?”
Well, here’s proof, that those of you who answered “yes” would actually listen to TheLadyoftheHouse, aka Me:

A big storm did come up and it did fall over. It was probably time, there was a lot of rust on that poor ol’ grill — it’s been here a lot longer than we have. So, we went grill shopping yesterday. Woohoo! New grill!

Hope you’re having a Beautiful Sunday!
XOXO,
Anna

*The title of this post would have been more accurate to say: How I wasted spent my Saturday. I had lots of other things that I would have rather been doing!