Doggy love sandwich

Or, as my husband refers to it....sleeping like a rock star. Have a good night.

Public apology

To Kelly from "The Party Dress".

I'm sorry if my prior post offended you. I've already received several e-mails from several of my friends saying that they are going to make the pumpkins wrapped with the ribbons.

I think your site is DARLING and my intent with my post was not to discourage people from using your wonderful ideas. I have a LOT of creative people who read my blog on a daily basis and I really wanted to give them a chance to visit your website.

Now that I look back at my post, all of my references to your site show things that I thought were not realistic for ME to do at this time because I'm going through ANOTHER home remodeling of yet ANOTHER room in my home during one of my favorite decorating seasons.

I was a bit bummed out when I was writing that post....bummed out, discouraged, frustrated.....I don't normally let my bloggers see this side of me, and I'm sorry that one of the few times I did that you felt that your site was at the brunt of my post.

I love, Love, LOVE to look at sites like yours and yours is one of the most well put together sites I've run across in a long, Long time. Truly, better than Martha....Sincerely...that's a high compliment :)

I was just trying to show that sometimes that yes, even I, feel overwhelmed by the simplest of projects. I never intend to squelch the creative nature of anyone.

Can we be friends?

~Tammy~

Fall Inspirations

I tried to write this earlier this morning with “Live Writer”, but I pushed the wrong button and it all disappeared dagnabit!

I was perusing the net this morning when I started coming across all of these beautiful ideas from “The Party Dress”

The first thing that caught my eyes were these…..little pumpkins dressed up with grosgrain ribbon wrapped around them (using double stick tape)

Serving up chili in various gourds.

and then there were these cute napkin rings….you can buy them at Moma nope I just looked…they don’t have them anymore but why do that when you could make them with some wooden napkin rings and chalk paint spoken like a true crafter…..yeah, like that’s ever gonna happen.

I love looking at all of these beautiful things on the internet, but then I start to feel totally inadequate….I mean, who has time to do all this stuff?

Sure, putting grosgrain ribbon around pumpkins with double stick tape sounds easy enough, but then you have to make a trip to the hobby store for ribbon and double stick tape, and then a trip to the grocery or farmers market for the little pumpkins.

Making chili is not that hard, but are you really going to scoop out all of those gourds?

DO any of you out there reading this relate? I mean, I’m doing good to keep the laundry caught up, cook supper 3 nights a week, walk the dogs, work full-time, yada, yada, yada…..Oh yeah….I’ve gotta have time to hook!

However, as I kept looking I did find a few things that might be do-able….at least for me.

Pouring some fall colored candies in a glass dish

Making a centerpiece using fall leaves, candles and nuts…..these leaves have little things written on them to be thankful for….I love that idea

Putting some branches in a glass vase with some pinecones in the bottom of it

These are things I can do, however, with the house still torn apart with the den remodeling….we’ll see if it happens or not.

The Welcome Mat

Sorry, I didn't realize "The Welcome Mat" was by invitation only. If you'd send me your e-mail address I'd be happy to send you an invitation.
tamboinmo@yahoo.com

~Tammy~

I can't post instructions here as it's not my dye method.

Wandering wools

Here are more wools that I dyed last weekend.  These are using a technique called “wandering”. Find out more about how to do this technique on “The Welcome Mat”.

This is such a fun technique to use and it yields beautiful, glowing wools.  I’m using some wandering wools I bought from Ken in my “Neon Footstool”.

Here are some of his wandering wools hooked.

I think he called this one “Tutti Fruitti”….it’s the center of the flower petals.

Here is another one he called “Red Sky at Night”, I’m using it in the scroll as well as in the heads of the coneflowers. I’m IN LOVE with this color!

Here are some of the ones I dyed.

I might use some of this really bright one in my hibiscus on my garden rugs…I think I used magenta, orange and yellow dyes for this one.

Today, I think I’ll head downtown and check out Cider Days…..or hook…still deciding.

Welcome Fall

Today, I'm posting some random photos from my day.......

When I came inside from taking photos the dogs met me at the door.


Then, Cleopatra, had to go and grab her Ernie doll to bring to me.....they acted like I had been gone all day.....I'd been outside taking pictures for about 15 minutes....isn't that just the best thing about dogs....they make you feel so loved!

The coneflowers have lost all of their petals and the long decorative grasses are going to seed.

A picture of the floribunda circle at the corner of our front yard. Kenny constantly amazes me at the plants he is able to put together....this has a little bit of everything.

That crazy frog statue that I just love, highlighted by these sweet pink flowers.

A little succulant in a trough that Kenny made, sitting on a lichen covered bench.

Marigolds.
Such a beautiful day....a bit overcast and windy....feels like fall to me!

The tear out of the den floor continues....first Kenny pulled up the carpeting and the pad....then old linoleum...now he's having to tear out particle board....will it ever end?

A little wool

Just a few pictures of some of the wools I dyed this weekend.

Irked!

I dyed GOBS and GOBS of wool yesterday! However, on this last batch I dyed them in long 1/2 yard pieces…something that I don’t normally do….I normally dye a yard at a time.

Well, they all came out looking like this:

All crumpled around the edges…this makes me INSANE!

Do I rewet them and hang them out to dry, iron them, what?!

Any ideas are appreciated.  Do you dye these long 1/2 yard pieces? How do you get yours to NOT do this?

The Beloved Island

Campobello Island, New Brunswick.

This is where President Franklin D. Roosevelt spent his summers as a child as well as when he was president. This is the “summer cottage”.

You can tour this for free when you are on the island. It’s beautiful…..I mean, these are the gardens in August. In August in Missouri, things are usually dried up and brown, so this was a real treat! Breathtaking vistas!

This is one of the children’s bedrooms. I took this picture, because I have a bed JUST LIKE THIS in my hooking room.

This is a huge megaphone that FDR would use to call out to ships and Eleanor would use it to call the children in to eat.

Most importantly, for this blogger anyway, are pictures of some of the handmade rugs that Eleanor had placed around the house. Handmade rugs, made by women who lived on Campobello Island.

We stayed for 3 days on the island. The people are hard-working and friendly and you get the feeling that you have gone back in time to when you were a kid…..at least that is how I felt. No franchises….all mom and pop joints, whether it be where you stay or where you eat. If you ever get a chance to visit I highly recommend it!

The neon footstool

I started this footstool at “Rugs on the Rocks” in Maine with Kim Nixon as my teacher.

My husband, Kenny, drew the design loosely based on design elements from a floor in a casino in Las Vegas, “Wynn”.

These are the brightest colors I've hooked to date. We're not talking Crayola colors....we're talking neon markers! I must confess that dyeing these bright colors and working with them makes me very happy.

Do these colors "go" anywhere in my current decorating scheme? Nope, not one bit, but that can always change :)

I still have quite a bit to hook, but I think if I buckle down and work on one panel every night I should be able to get this finished by next week. I’m feeling determined! Plus, now that the weather is cooling off, it makes hooking more enjoyable. Sitting on the couch, dogs snoozing at your feet, rug on your lap, pulling loops and watching an old movie....sounds like a day of heaven.

Here is an overall picture of the rug:

The top, I love the star....the duller yellow in the center makes the outer yellow shine.

Side 1

Side 2

Side 3

Side 4

As you can see….not all that much to hook to finish it up….I’d best get cracking!

Drizzle

I woke up at 2:30 am this morning to just a little bit of thunder…..not enough to bother me mind you, I actually love rain and thunder, that low rumbling and the scent of rain wafting into the house. 

However, the dogs don’t share this love of weather. Lonnie shakes like he has a little motor inside of him and Cleopatra just gets restless.  All I can hear is the click, click, click of her nails on the hardwoods.

I did fall back asleep around 5:30 or so and then awoke at 7:3o to the sounds of gentle rains thrumming on the plants and a little light peeking through the curtains. 

Of course the dogs are still asleep

But the sun is trying to peek out.

We interrupt our regularly scheduled program

with home remodeling!

I came home from work on Thursday to find that my husband, Kenny, had started tearing out our carpeting from the den.

He’s got the carpeting out….now he’s been scraping linoleum tiles from the floor…..talk about a messy, dirty job!

I hate having the house in a state of havoc, but we have to go through this to get to the prettier parts. We have various lamps and pieces of furniture stuck in various parts of the house and it’s just going to get worse for a while when we have to have EVERYTHING out of this room to put the new floor in.  We’re going to have slate put down, the same slate that we have in the kitchen….can’t wait!

He also pulled down the “funeral parlor” curtains that were in our front room…..getting ready to put a dose of “modern” in that room as well.

Soooooo, while we are remodeling here are some pictures from my hooking group that met last week.

This rug is being hooked by JoLynne.  I wish you could see the sculpting that she has done on the flowers.

Here you can see her peeking out from behind her rug!

Marsha finished hooking this BIG rug from Pine Island Primitives to go in her entryway.

Here’s Marsha with her rug

We had a new hooker join our midst that night. Elizabeth was starting on a pumpkin rug.

Belva has this rug almost finished….it’s a big one…it’s going to be a gift.

We had another hooker join our group that night as well, Nancy.  She’s moved here from Colorado….we hope she comes back to hook with us again next meeting.  I can’t wait to watch her squirrel rug progress.

Rita was working on this cat and pumpkin rug.  Can you see the areas around the cat that she pulled out? She had hooked in a few different background possibilities and then we voted on our favorite.

Here is one of Rita’s finished rugs that she brought along….I love the branch hanger and wished I would have taken a picture of the back to show you how she did that!

There were more rugs being worked on that night, but those were the ones I was able to photograph.  I promise to have more pictures to share after we meet again on the 8th of September.

Have a great holiday weekend,

Tammy