May Day

 Happy First day of May or May Day

   When I was a child growing up, My Mom, little sister and I would gather flowers mostly found in Mom's garden, make paper cones and hang them on our neighbors front door knobs, wishing them a happy May Day

  When I first started looking for links about May Day the first one I came across was a surprise to me-as this started out as a political socialist event about workers-ah no I am not interested in that one. So below is the happier version and what I grew up with at home as a child.

A little more information about this celebration for May Day here I found this an interesting article

From the Farmer's Almanac here with more history information and interesting tid bits

   

I grew up with hanging May Day baskets on door knobs

  Have you celebrated May Day with baskets of flowers?

My Friday The Pantry

 Hello Friends, how was your Friday?

    We had lots of rain and storms off and on all day today, and lots of Baltimore Orioles and the Orchard Orioles too. Right now I only have hangers for two hummingbird feeders on the deck, so I need to find another hanger of some sort. The orioles seem to be sticking around for awhile, some years they do that during stormy weather.  the rainy weather did not stop the orioles from drinking almost all day today.

This was a real treat for us today to watch these two species of orioles hang out with us most of the day. We are also seeing a few hummingbirds but strange as of yet no males only females-wondering if the males got lost in one of the storms.

I also cleaned out a food cabinet today-a big job as I had around 40 home canned jars of juice, salsas, and pickles that needed to be dumped, glass jars washed and put away. These all were 10 to 15 years old and needed to go. I didn't have time to do it when we moved to the lake. Since I use vintage glass jars for canning-as they are thicker glass I wanted the jars.  A rainy day was perfect for this job. I still have about a dozen canned wild grape juice quart jars that I need to test out as these are 10 years old but look good.

When I went food shopping this week the store was still low on no salt canned bean products and no sugar added canned fruits. Also more items were missing on the shelves and the fresh produce was low as well. 

   I went online and discovered Wal Mart online-and they had most of what I needed-a variety of canned black beans, light and dark kidney beans no salt added, chili beans and lots of fruits no sugar added-so I got most of the cans for around a dollar a can I ordered over 30 to get the free shipping, and to fill up my pantry. I usually can all these beans but can't use the pressure canner on this electric stove.

  I had discovered canning your own beans-pinto, black, kidney etc-a couple years before we moved to the lake. Easy to do and tastes delicious  Start with dried beans soak overnite-rinse fill jars add water and follow instructions for canning in your pressure canner.

  I still can not find no salt cannellini white beans or the no salt chick peas canned in the stores or online so will keep looking for those.  Also when I went food shopping I made sure I was stocked with canned chicken, no salt beef and chicken stocks, and those large cans of usa beef and turkey meat.  So I am pretty set with my pantry right now if things get worse in the stores.

  Depending on the price of produce at the Amish market this summer I would like to can a small batch of salsa, and freeze some fruits.

  Going through this food cabinet, allot of things were hidden from view as things were not sorted out well-wow I had forgotten that I had brought over all the extra baking sweets we will ever need of sorghum, molasses, agave, honey, and homemade maple syrup- a gift from our Wisconsin friends-I knew I had those maple syrup jars somewhere haha.

  So by the time our 2pm main meal came around I was really happy I had leftovers to warm up.

  Hoping no rain tomorrow-we'll see what tomorrow brings.

Oh and just for fun our Wisconsin friends are going to have a hippie birthday party since Rob turns 60 next month. She has been asking me about hippie clothes etc haha-yep I am that old. I looked online to see if there were any hippie type rubber stamps so I could make a birthday card for him. I just ordered this set The seller gave me a deal that was better than just ordering two of these from other sellers. So this should be fun to create.

Happy Friday and Weekend

This & That @ An Art Find

  Hi Everyone,

     Today I was finally able to get out the weed killer and start killing off grass. It had gotten pretty high on the one side and front of the house. We have really had allot of rain here. I sprayed a gallon of it, made lunch was going to go out with another gallon, but I was pretty tired from the first dose and the winds are a little too strong right now. Rain coming in again tomorrow, with the next no rain day on Sunday so hoping I can get back to it then.

   When I was working in my craft room I uncovered two favorite items that I didn't know where they had gotten to. A gnome embroidery piece that my Mom did for me, to go with my gnome plates, and an art piece that I truly love. They both needed to have hangers put on the backs. I will really enjoy seeing these pieces up on the walls. That is my to do thing right now-finish little things that have been waiting on me.

I had the perfect spot for this one too, there was space to the left where the gnome plates were hung across this wall.

I was really happy to find this piece again. I dyed the fabric in the back, and a friend of mine years ago in blogland-and have lost touch with over the years-did a limited edition of this screen painting or block print not sure now. I always loved this and goes so well with one of my hand dyes. It needed a hanger for the back as well.

 So when I walk into this room which is off the kitchen, I will view this piece I have two windows in this room and those curtains must go-they came with the house. I need to go through my fabrics and see if I have something. Yes I have pretty much taken over two rooms in the house for crafts etc.

  Both of these pieces are in the room with my ranch oak desk with desk top computer and printer, weaving loom along with some weaving supplies and my spinning wheels. To the left of above photo is the wall of gnomes. The loom has been threaded and ready to weave a different pattern of towels. I will probably get to these on upcoming very hot summer days.

  Since the weekend we began seeing this beautiful oriole. He has been really difficult to get a good photo of, I finally was able to today. I do have oriole feeders but here in Missouri they usually stop for a little bit and then migrate on. The hummingbird feeder seems to work ok. These first two photos were fun as he was sitting behind the nectar tube

  I was able to capture these photos this afternoon

  I did get brave late yesterday and cut around that hooked piece my Mom had made into a picture to hang. She put some sort of board inside-that over time broke in pieces, had backed it with corduroy and screwed in a wire hanger. This has to be over 50 years now since she gave it to me.  I cut just past the stitching line of the front and back, to protect the hand rug hooking, and got brave and washed it in a special wool soap.

Back in the 50's when my Mom hooked this most used a quality burlap to hook on. This was so dirty it just needed to be gently hand washed.

It has been lying flat on a table on top of towels-as the towels get wet-I change to a dry towel-so far looking good

   Not sure how I will proceed with this piece  This is the rug hooking style my Mom made-incredible work.

  I have also been adding more items to my Etsy shop, hand knit sweaters and two reclaimed blouses that I natural dyed with annatto

  Here is one of them

Happy Mid Week everyone

Food Wednesdays

  Welcome Everyone to our Food Wednesdays

     Food Wednesdays is a link up to share food posts with each other. Being all about the Food, there are no rules except the topic is Food-recipes, restaurants, cookbooks, history of food-what ever you would like to share with us about Food

  This past week was another one with very up and down weather, so I didn't really make too much for us out of the ordinary or something special.

  I did bake us an apple-blueberry crisp, it goes together well and easy to make gluten free and my husband loves these Instead of cutting up enough apples to fill the deep cast iron skillet, I filled it just half way this time. The crisp topping actually turned out allot nicer on top being not so full.

One of the few new purchase of cast iron pieces (most of my collection is finding pieces at sales that are vintage) that I have purchased and really love is the Lodge griddle pan. I love it and use it for grilling meat on the stove. (and makes using this electric stove top tolerable)

  I have recently found in the grocery stores near me turkey tenderloins-they are sooo  delicious and juicy tender grilling them this way

I also wanted to share my favorite way of cooking fresh sweet potatoes. We both really love sweet potatoes and for us healthier than regular potatoes. I am still finding nice ones in the stores.   Microwave cooking ruins a lovely sweet potatoe, baking in the oven takes too long, but steaming them is perfect.  No matter the size I cut them in half for faster cooking-usually takes around 45 minutes,

I was not familiar with these steamers until I met my husband who had a large one just like this, and I found this smaller version at a garage sale-perfect  These come with two steamer racks that will stack. The large one I use to steam homemade tamales with.

When I am blanching fresh veggies for the freezer I prefer steaming them over putting them in boiling water.

Now it is your turn to share your Food Wednesdays post with us. 

    Please link up with the url to your post and not your blog's url thanks, and if you have time please check back late Wednesday to catch all the link ups.  Have Fun

T Stands for Tuesday

 Hello Everyone, and welcome to this week's T with our hostess Bleubeard and Elizabeth. Friends gather together with a drink related photo-link in my sidebar.

 How has your week been?  We ended up with two days of summer on Friday and Saturday. Mid 80's f both days but it came with strong winds-so no burning for me-I have lots of that to do, or much weeding either do to allergies running crazy outdoors with the winds. It was beautiful though and we enjoyed sitting on the deck with friends.

  These were good friends from near our woods property and they came out to visit and to do some fishing. It was a bit early for catching crappie, but it was good to be able to just sit and talk with friends. We are very isolated here.

  I did finish cleaning and organizing my craft room, listed books in my Etsy shop, and found hand dyed blouses with annatto that I will be listing and also "vintage" hand knitted sweaters that my Mom made us girls when we were very young. They are too nice to take to a resale shop. I posted a video here  of my craft room This is a much much smaller room than I had before but I was not leaving anything behind just yet-smiles. Many of you have seen this when I first moved to the lake.

  Saturday evening I sat down for a watercolor practice, and Sunday morning I finished it.  I did the squirrel first and then looked in the book for more trees, added stamped acorns.  I used inks and watercolors.

 This was fun using watercolors, watercolor inks, and a stamp  I will fold this one in half and use it for slow mail I would like to try the squirrel again.

  I grabbed the camera Saturday when I went to check the mailbox, the redbuds are almost finished with flowering and I hadn't grabbed a photo yet-it's been raining here most every day for a couple of weeks.

  Lilacs Just started blooming

The creeping phlox-an animal took the third plant,  wish I would have bought two tubs of these-really nice older plants.

   I was so thrilled to see this iris blooming-it came from my Mom's garden, they are short and will bloom spring and fall. Didn't know if they would make it, all the bulbs I brought over the woods home a couple years ago are growing good this year-loving all the rain.

 

   For my beverage share I grabbed this decaf coffee like tea.  and I grabbed this handmade pottery cup from the cabinet, one I bought a few years ago at Fiber U-Large but light weight.

Early sunrise

Happy T and enjoy your new week

I Made a Video of my Craft/Art Space

    When I downloaded this video  to see how it turned out the sound was all strange, my digital camera is very old so thought perhaps the sound broke.

    Larry listened to it on his computer and said it was all good. So after looking at my computer he discovered when It upgraded the sound got moved to the computer instead of to my speakers. Glad he knew how to fix this.

  Some of you have seen this space before when we first moved to the lake home, so it is probably pretty close to the same, except for the bottom of a Hoosier cabinet  that I changed up the storage in and on top-sooo much better.  Today I removed that vintage sewing box to the right and used a nice bread box instead-much more room in there for calligraphy supplies.

Full Screen will give you a better view

Just Popping in To Say Hi

 Good evening friends,

   For some reason this has felt like a really long week. Perhaps because I spent most of it working in my craft room, but I kept thinking today was the weekend and it's Friday-haha

   I can not tell you how much better I feel getting my craft space cleaned, things back in their places, and re organized. It's a joy to walk in there now, had no idea that room was getting me down.  

   Tonight I caught up on a few slow mail letters, and being evening realized how very poor lighting I have in this room. For some reason many of the rooms in this home have no ceiling installed lighting, including my craft room. I have been using a floor lamp that I never cared for-so I will be getting rid of that-I was always very unhappy with it, and ordered another floor ott lamp for crafting. I have one by the couch already for reading books and hand sewing etc in the evenings so looked into buying another one. The prices have increased since I bought the first one.-of course the cheapest and by allot I found on Amazon. The bulbs are full spectrum and just perfect for crafting and our eyes too.

  Wow today we climbed up into the mid 80's F along with humidity so a blast of summer. Another day like this tomorrow too before more rain and back to the 60's again.  I need to get outdoors tomorrow early and finish digging up some weeds in the main area in front of the house that I had been working on. Time can sure slip away from us-I have so much to get accomplished with the gardening project.

  It was so nice to have visitors today. Good friends of ours that live in the area of our woods home came up to visit and go fishing. It is a bit early for crappie fishing but they had a fun time-and could wear summer shorts and tops-how fun!!

  I haven't gotten any good photos of the hummingbirds yet, they have been coming out blurry, but we have discovered two females that are sticking around the area. Strange we have not seen any male hummers as of yet. They were migrating here when we had some rough storms so may have gotten delayed.

  I did get these two photos this past week, when we had little sunshine

  

  We have been enjoying a pair of these red headed woodpeckers that visit every day, especially when I put out song bird mix that has different nuts and dried fruits.

Happy weekend

Another Long Day in the Craft Room

   We still have cold and rain here at the lake, so another good day to work in my craft room. I put in another full day and got allot accomplished. Happy dance

   The closet area that has steep and very wide steps is perfect for clutter haha.  I have one side that is big pillowcases full of fibers to spin, and on the other side I have big plastic storage containers labeled with wools, my hand dyed fabrics and other fiber related goods.  What had turned this into a mess-was a huge stack of old sheets that needed to be gone through and torn into rags-I did that and so this space is pretty much back to normal again.  Towards the bottom steps I have boxes of essential oils, and melt and pour soap making supplies, along with lots of butters and things to make into salves, creams etc-leftovers from when I was selling in my Etsy shop.  Now I just make things for me and for gifts for slow mail friends.

  When I open up the closet door to the left are wide built in wood shelving-full of quilting batting and fabrics, and also books. Straight ahead looking into the space we bought shelving that just fits-that is loaded with my craft and art books. I also got several books posted now to my shop.

  We both have always collected vintage country farm items-crocks of all sizes, you name we have it haha. So sad there was no room for our crocks here at the lake house-I was able to bring a few small ones over though. Anyways, straightening up the closet I uncovered two vintage bread boxes-perfect for storage. I used one right away for all my acrylic paint supplies which made more room on my desk. 

  I also found my Navajo rug and hung that up right away so I can enjoy it again. I purchased this back in the late '70s when I was living in Denver Colorado and got the job working for the phone company, which ended up being my career. There was a sale on Navajo rugs of all sizes and all cost points. I always admired the Navajo weavers and looked and looked til I found one I could afford. I will always remember that I paid $75.00 back then which was allot of money for me. I have always loved this piece. The yarn is very very fine.

  and you can see the bread box to the left now filled with acrylic paints and brushes.

I also found a little paint easel I guess I would call it. It was super inexpensive when I was first starting to buy painting supplies. I had forgotten about that-set it up to see how it works.  Watching some your tube videos the other night to learn more about watercolor backgrounds-washes-one was showing that she uses these clear clip boards-takes the clip off and tapes her paper to the board and she can move it around for wet on wet backgrounds. Found that I have one-haha  I am thinking why not just use the clip instead of the tape?? I will try this out soon. 

Here is the other bread box and found this empty plastic container so two more storage units.

  A couple years before we decided to look for a lake home, I had the idea of looking for nice blouses at the resale shops and then natural dye them and sell on my Etsy shop. I did a few with annatto which was a long process in the end, but they turned out nice. I uncovered those today too These are pretty small size but I think I will hand wash them and iron and offer them in my shop.

  I have a couple pieces that I had dyed with goldenrod back then, that are big and bulky that I love, that dye usually comes out a bit blotchy so will keep those to wear for myself.  I had done a couple pieces of transfer silk pattern on cloth-over to another piece of silk cloth. That was really fun, and I sold that piece the day I put it in my shop. I would like to play with that again someday.

 Haven't checked the weather for tomorrow yet-probably more rain and cold. Hoping those of you that need rain will get some soon-I am ready to share-smiles

Have a good evening

Food Wednesdays

 Welcome to our Food Wednesdays.

     I set up this link up so we could share food posts with each other

   I want this event to be all about the food so no rules except to be sharing posts about Food. Anything you would like to share with us-recipes, restaurants, cookbooks and more for us all to enjoy and learn new things.

      This past week I didn't do much cooking or any baking. It was cold and dreary (when I usually like to bake) but we both were not feeling well.

    I did make a really nice homemade chicken soup one day that I really loved-when I make my pots of soup I don't have a recipe-I just start throwing in hand fulls of dried veggies and lots of herbs and not salt spices.  My husband was having stomach issues too from eating too much cheese and I had made hamburgers last week for a treat for us,  so we ate bread  I looked up foods that were not constipating when I put this soup together. I made this different than I usually do.

Sweet potatoes and darker beans were  mentioned. Never thought of adding sweet potatoes to a soup. I peeled then cubed it and added in the last hour of cooking-really delicious I will do that again. For the beans Wal mart stores have a good organic no salt line now of canned beans. One I like for many dishes is their 3 bean-all dark beans. I added in zucchini cubed, and in this photo is floating the dried soup veggies I get at the Amish store. I also added in a pint of my home canned tomatoes-which I will need to can up again this summer as I just have about 6 jars left. I usually can enough for two years-something my farm girl Grandma taught me to do.

   

This is my go to canned chicken now-it does have salt added but I just rinse it with cold water

I started making Larry an omelet a couple times a week now for breakfast. Something different than yogurt and raw granola

I love these little cast iron skillets-perfect for eggs.  I saute veggies, add in a little meat left overs when cooked through,  I put a lid on and start the eggs in another little cast iron skillet.

My Mom always would lift the egg around the edges of skillet to bring down the raw egg for cooking. Makes the omelet a bit more fluffy too. When almost all the egg is cooked underneath, I then flip it over to finish cooking the egg-and then add the veggies and fold over. I will take the skillet off the heat and put a lid on for a few minutes to insure the eggs are cooked through. Larry then adds hot sauce or salsa to his omelet

   I was adding cheese to his omelets so I left that out this morning.

Now it's your turn to share your Food Wednesdays post.

  Please link up the url to your blog post and not the url to your blog site.  Also if you can please stop back again late Wednesday to catch up on any late link ups. thanks and have fun visiting.

T Stands for Tuesday-Recycling Water Bottles for Earth Day

   Hi Everyone,  It is time once again to join together for T over at our hostess Bleubeard and Elizabeth. Just share a drink related photo in your post to join us-link in my sidebar.

  Hope everyone had a nice Holiday weekend. Saturday I received surprises in my mail box. A handmade card from our Elizabeth-thank your so much. I love these rocking bunnies, a card from a nearby friend, and a little Easter from my new slow mail friend Cathy that sent me local maple syrup treats. Thank you so much for thinking of me 

  I spent most of the weekend, especially Sunday, re organizing and cleaning up my very full craft room. It really is a happy spot in the house for me-when the clutter is in control. This is a small room compared to my space I had at our woods home. You can take a look here

  Since Earth Day is coming up Friday of this week, I thought I would share links for recycling water bottles into something useful.

  Water Bottles are really an issue when it comes to the mountains of plastic they produce, and so many end up in our oceans and waters. This is one item in particular I wish manufacturers would research how to make bottles that will decompose in our compost piles.  The world really does use too much plastic for so many things.

  There are ways to reuse these plastics to expand their use. I have seen shows where people have tied them together to make floating islands out of recycled materials I found this video too

  This link is for kids 56 plastic bottle craft ideas for kids   There is allot of fun and creative ideas in this post-here are a few photos from this site

Green Living-20 Ideas

How to build a greenhouse from bottles

House walls made from bottles 

  This was interesting-they used over 600,000 water bottles to change up the plastic and make into walls for this home

  All of these bottles are my drink share, but I also enjoyed a couple of cups of Martha Washington's cocoa hulls one day last week.

It's been so dreary here with mostly rain, wind and cold but I did capture this pretty view early morning over the weekend 

I put my hummingbird feeder out on the 15th and we had one visitor on the 16th and also one on the 17th. So the cute little hummers are arriving in the Ozarks.

Updated:   Oh and I have just reopened my Etsy shop and I have added a link in my sidebar.

     When we moved to the lake I brought everything with me-well I always bring my craft room when ever I have moved since the late '60's smiles. It is time for a little de stash.  I am going through books now-I have lots of them. Books are difficult to sell, but I would rather try and find good homes for them by selling first before needing to donate them.  I just pulled a big stack that I will begin listing this week. These first books are of surface design on cloth-will be offering free shipping

Happy T Everyone