March Vintage Craft- Yoko the YoYo Bunny

I almost didn't get this one finished in time!  I have been so busy with gardening and other crafts I let time sneak up on me.  Anyway, here is my March vintage craft made from a Stitch and Sew magazine dated April 1979.  In April of 1979 I would have been busy thinking about graduating from high school and looking for a dress to wear to the Prom!

There were actually several really cute crafts in this book.

I thought these yoyo animals were just adorable!  I really wish they had put color photos of the projects in the magazines, but I'm sure that was just too expensive for many magazines.

I carefully cut out all my pieces.  Fortunately, these patterns were full size.

This was my fabric pallet. All of these prints were part of a giant box of fabric I bought a couple of weeks ago at an estate sale for only $5.  Most of it I gave to my cousin, the quilter.  But I kept a few pieces for myself.  Pink and Blue, fun Easter colors.

And here is Yoko in all her yoyo loveliness!

I had so much fun with these color combinations.

Yoko will be joining my other Easter decorations in my Happy Shelf.

I'm giving YoKo at thumbs up!

And on a completely different note.  I see some strange things sometimes on my way to work but as I glanced over at our Art Museum today, this is what I saw:

Do you see him?  King Kong with an airplane in his hand!  Gosh, you never know what movie stars you are going to meet on your way to work!

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Linda

Sigh.... More Pixies.....

I need an intervention, but I do't want one!  This past Sunday afternoon I ventured out the the local antique mall to try and find some cute little items to put in my sister and neices's Easter Baskets.  I had in mind a vintage pin and I found a couple that are maybe okay but not exactly what I wanted.  BUT.... in one booth I found all of these vintage pixies!!!  Oh my goodness...I almost fell over from all the cuteness.

A Pixie on a turtle?  Oh I love this.

These two sweet pixies are salt and pepper shakers.

Those eyes, Those ears!

This little fellow looks very proud of himself.

  

How could I pass up this sweet face?

I really didn't want this one as he was very chipped and in rough shape but I couldn't just leave him sitting alone of the shelf, could I?  Nope.  He came home with me too.

Sigh... Blogging from Pixieville,

Linda
p.s. Linking up to Colorado Lady for Vintage Thingy Thursday!



Easter Cream Cheese Sugar Cookies

Good Moday Morning everyone!
After a somewhat miserable weekend weather wise, we are having another lovely spring day here in SW Virginia.
In some of the areas surrounding where I live, golf ball sized hail fell this weekend and accumulated up to 4 inches!  What a huge mess it made.  We were very fortunate that we only got heavy rain from the storm system.

When the weather is nasty out I always find myself wanting to bake.  One of my favorite cookies is the Cream Cheese Sugar Cookie.  I started making these not long after I got married and they are soooo much better than a plain sugar cookie.  The cream cheese makes them so light and the almond flavoring is just delicious. 

Cream Cheese Sugar Cookies:

Ingredients

• 1 cup white sugar
• 1 cup butter, softened
• 1 (3 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon almond extract
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 egg yolk
• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

Directions

1.     In a large bowl, combine the sugar, butter, cream cheese, salt, almond and vanilla extracts, and egg yolk. Beat until smooth. Stir in flour until well blended. Chill the dough for 3 hours, or overnight.

2.     Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).

3.     On a lightly floured surface, roll out the dough 1/3 at a time to 1/8 inch thickness, refrigerating remaining dough until ready to use. Cut into desired shapes with lightly floured cookie cutters. Place 1 inch apart on ungreased cookie sheets. Leave cookies plain for frosting, or brush with slightly beaten egg white and sprinkle with candy sprinkles or colored sugar.

4.     Bake for 7 to 10 minutes in the preheated oven, or until light and golden brown. Cool cookies completely before frosting.

The only change I make is to use the whole egg and not just the yolk since I wasn't going to use the egg white for a wash for sprinkles.  For the decorater frosting, I use the directions on the can of Wilton's Meringue Powder.

Give them a try.  You'll be glad you did!

Blessings

Linda

It's Planting Time!

TGIF!!!  This has been one long week.  It is so hard to be inside at the office when I want to be home in the garden.  This is my favorite time of year and one of the reasons is that it's planting time!  We have expanded our garden this year and so far I have planted my onions, radishes and last week I planted three 70' rows of potatoes!  I have never planted potatoes in my own garden before because of space reasons but I loved going to my Grandfathers to dig his!  It was like finding treasure with each scoop of the spade.

This weekend, if it doesn't pour raining like the weatherman is calling for, I will be planting my broccoli, cabbage, lettuce and purple carrots.  YES!  Purple Carrots!  I ordered the seeds from Bakers Creek.

Aren't they beautiful?  I sure hope mine will grow and look like these.

I also will be spending some time transplanting my peppers.

They really need it!

I am growing Sweet green, banana, jalapeno and cayenne.

The other thing I will be doing this weekend is starting the redecoration of our bedroom.  For the last 5 years it has been decorated in a navy, burgundy and green primitive theme, which I like, it's just time to change it up some.  And this pillow that I won from The Cranky Queen is my inspiration piece!  I am going to do a purple, yellow, springy type theme!  Isn't this pillow just gorgeous.  She takes vintage linens and re purposes them into beautiful pillows.

Just Beautiful!  My walls are already white above the chair rail and green below so no painting will be involved. Thank Goodness!  I hate to paint!  I am hoping to find a soft green chenille bedspread.  I have an off white one that I bought at Macy's a few years ago but I would rather have a color, I think.

Hoping everyone has a wonderful weekend!

Linda



Spring!!!! and a fun Easter Swap

It's the official first day of SPRING!!!!!!  My favorite season and Easter is my favorite holiday!  Even better than Christmas.  

I had such exciting mail Saturday,  Sue over at It's a Very Cherry World hosted an Easter Swap and I was lucky enough to be matched up with the sweetest lady, Debby, from Cozy Blanket.

Look at all these lovely Easter goodies!

These napkins just scream my name!  I love vintage images and these are perfect.  And they are already on my dining room table waiting to be used for Easter dinner.  (although I kept a few of them and put them in my craft room, I have a plan for them...)  and there's a little rose decorated heart doily peeking into the photo too.

Such darling little bunnies

They have joined my other Easter critters on the sideboard in the dining room.  They are just perfect there.

Look at this bunnies sweet face....those teeth!!!!  I have this on my plate rack in the kitchen.

Thank you Debby I LOVE everything and it has been such a pleasure getting to "meet" you! 

Happy Tuesday!!!

Linda

Martha Stewarts Craft Book and Have you seen my camera??

Yesterday on my way to my Jazzercise class I ran by the library to pick up a book that I wanted and as I walked by the new books I noticed this is the new books section.

Martha Stewarts Holiday Crafts!   On a whim I just grabbed it and checked it out and let me tell you this book is fantastic!!  It has crafts for every holiday that are easy to make and just adorable!

I found a couple of photos on line of some of the crafts in there.

I am definitely going to order this book!  Lots of good stuff.

And why am I posting photos of this book that I found online instead of taking photos of the book I have you may ask?  Because I can't find my camera!  Drat!  My 10 year old Kodak Easy Share that I love and won't give up for any other camera has sprouted legs and wandered away.  I'm sure it's home somewhere and I'm hoping I will find it this weekend when I'm cleaning.

Hope everyone has a great weekend and when I find my camera I'm going to show you a photo of the cutest pillow on earth that I won on a blog giveaway!  Wish me luck!

Blessings

Linda

Reminising about my Favorite Toy

The other day my sister and I were talking about how much fun we used to have on a toy that we called "those yellow things".  They do have a name.  They were called "The Swervey, Curvy, Topsy, Turvy, Tipsy, Skipsy,  Doodle".  Yeah, that's why we called them those yellow things!  I don't think anyone ever took a picture of us with ours, but after digging around on the Internet, I finally came up with a couple images of them.

Ours looked just like this one! 

We used them for everything!  We watched T.V. sitting in them, we used them as a teeter totter, they would slide down the hill in the snow like a sled, they floated and we would play with them in the lake.  We also would slide down the hill in the leaves in the hall on them.  I had no idea they came in other colors other than yellow until I found the above ad.

I will never forget the day we got them.  Our grandparents surprised us with a week day visit, which was very unusual because they lived almost 3 hours away.  Grandaddy came walking up the sidewalk carrying these things and I was giddy with excitement because I just knew they were us!  And they were!! 

We played with those yellow things for years and I think they were finally thrown away when Dad remarried and sold our house after we were grown.  Wonder if today's kid's would find them so entertaining?  Hmmm.....

On an entirely different subject, I am reluctantly telling everyone to check out Imagimeri's blog for a wonderful giveaway! ( I wanted to be the only one to enter!)

Imagimeri's Great Giveaway!

Have a great hump day!

Linda

Out with the old, In with the new

Some husbands give their wives beautiful flowers

Some husband will buy their wives a beautiful new diamond ring

and some husbands will even buy their wives fine fur coats

But after being married for almost 32 years my husband knows what to buy that will make be absolutely giddy with excitement!

A new tiller!!!!

My poor old 18 year old tiller, that has been put through the wringer, finally bit the dust a couple of weeks ago.  We pulled it out Saturday and DH worked and worked with it and found that there were just too many things wrong with it to fix it.  I didn't know it, but DH had talked to our neighbor earlier who told him that he had a practically brand new tiller for sale.  He had bought it brand new and only gardened for one year and so he sold it to DH for a great price.  I heard a tiller running and thought that DH had fixed the old one and when I got to the garden I see Yngwie tilling away with the new tiller.  I am one happy mama! 

(poor dead tiller)

I spent the weekend transplanting tomatoes and peppers and starting some herbs and flowers indoors.  I moved all the plants to the greenhouse and so far they are doing well.  I always worry that first week about the temperature in the greenhouse.  Especially this week as we are in the upper 70's!!!  

Have a great Tuesday!

Linda

Spring is in the Air

SPRING!  My favorite time of year....The grass is getting green, the ornamental cherry trees are beginning to bloom, and the weeping willows are getting that fuzzy look about them....and I am doing this:

Planting onions!  I planted about half of the ones that I bought last weekend, but we haven't finished putting the fence up around the garden and I was afraid the deer might find them delicious but so far they haven't touched them.  We are expanding our garden again this year and had to take the existing fence down.  Hopefully, that project will be completed this weekend.  And this is what my laundry room looks like right now:

My tomato plants look spindly this year because they came up so fast!  I may have gotten the soil a little too warm.  But they will be fine because this weekend I am transplanting them into larger containers and will plant them deep.  This will give them a great root system and make the stems much hardier.  If you look closely you will see my grandmothers apron hanging there behind the shelves.

Here are some of the ones I transplanted last weekend.  They weren't quite ready but they were being crowded in the container that I started them in.  Already in just 3 days of being moved they have really taken off and are growing well.  I save yogurt containers all winter.  They make great transplanting cups!

I am growing Amish Paste, Roma, Yellow Pear, Mortgage Lifter, Supersonic, and Better Boy.  I think I have around 200 that have come up.

Hot peppers!  I saved some of the disposable tin pans that someone gave us some little cakes in for Christmas for watering trays.  I love it when I can reuse and re-purpose stuff. 

See those tiny little sprouts trying to come up?  Isn't that such a miracle?  Stick a scrawny looking seed in some dirt and a vegetable will grow.  Amazing!

They will hang out in my laundry room for another couple of weeks before I transition them to the greenhouse. 

What's growing in your part of the world??

Blessings

Linda



Our Little Piece of Paradise!

FINALLY!!!  I have a computer that will work!!  I took back the "possessed" computer that I bought and got another one and low and behold, it works just fine!  I hate technical issues because I am not a technical kinda person.  I know enough about computers to be dangerous!

If you have read my blog very long you will know that our family LOVES the water!   So I thought I would show you an ariel photo of where we live.



See the little black arrow?  That's our house!  We live on what used to be my husband's family farm that has been in the family for around 200 years.  Back in 1964 the electric company built this lake to generate electricity for all the surrounding counties and hundreds if not thousands of farms were swallowed up by the water, including my husbands great grandfathers.

Dear Husbands great uncle inherited the property and sold tracts of the land to various family members, my husbands father being one of them.  They moved here in 1969 and have lived here ever since.  When I married DH in 1980, I moved here as well and we built a house on the property. 

In the 30+ years that I have lived here there have been so many changes.  The area has gone from farmland to a more suburban area.  Gone are all the hay fields, vegetable gardens, and forests.  In came huge houses for very wealthy folks who want to stay here in the summer and some who are planning to retire here.  I miss the old farmers who were here before, but we have been very lucky that all our new neighbors are very nice and friendly.

In the summer hardly a day goes by that we aren't on the lake.  It is especially beautiful in the early spring mornings when the leaves are beginning to unfurl and there is a mist on the lake.  I love walking down there and sitting on the dock and having my morning coffee.  Watching the cranes and seagulls, listening to the sound of the robins singing their good morning songs, waving hello to the fishermen who are up before light hoping to land the "big one". 

I love living in our little piece of paradise!

Wishing everyone a happy Tuesday!

Linda

Computers, ARGHHHHH!!!!

I think I'm jinxed when it comes to computers.  Honestly.  Our Desktop computer at home crashed a couple of weeks ago.  I took it in to the computer gurus we use for work and they said it was toast.  They were able to retrieve all my photos so I was relieved for that.  So while I decided what to do about a new computer I was using my son's.  But he is at school most of the time.  So Monday I headed over to a big box electronics store and purchased a new laptop!  Yay!  I thought... I should have known.....

I took it in to work and we installed my virus protection, Microsoft Office, and Firefox and all was well.  I was so excited.  I took it home and plugged it in.  Booted right up.  Plugged the internet cable in and clicked on my browser, straight to "google".  No problem.  Then I typed in name of the website I wanted to go to.  It just sat there.  I waited and waited.  Nothing.  So I tried another website.  Again, it just sat there and said connecting but it never did.  I check all my cords, they are all fine.  I try again, nothing.  So I have Yngwie plug his in and try it.  His works just fine so I know there's nothing wrong with the internet connection. 

Finally I give up and take it back into work.  It works absolutely fine at work.  So I send it over to our computer gurus.  It works just fine there.  Okay, maybe I plugged something in wrong.  I take it back home.  Carefully plug everything in.  It still will not go to any websites!!!!  I am beyond frustrated!!  They can find no reason why it won't work at my home.

So, today I am taking it back.  What do I tell them?  It's possessed?  I am going to return it and buy yet another one and try again.  Sigh.......

In other news, my tomato and pepper seedlings are really growing well!!!  They will need transplanting by next weekend.  I love this time of year!
Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Linda