Niece's new N`avi (THAT is blankie to the rest of us)

Well the new lap quilt top is done. YIPEEEEE. Now plezzzzzz tell me WHY of WHY did I choose flannel for the blocks? When I washed the top it fuzzed up. I had to shave it LOL. What is up with THAT. The white squares are nobby chenille fabric. You remember that fabric , right.

The butterflies are fuzzy and are appliqued on. I am using a bright YELLOW flannel fabric for the back. I am NOT using any batting because in Florida it is HOT and I want something that my little niece can carry around and nap with.

What do you think? Will she love it or WHAT?

FREE THINGS TO DO FOR THE ECONOMICALLY CHALLENGED

time are hard now a days, with the economy being what it is. Everyone needs to watch what they are spending BUT summer is here, what are you gonna do? Well I did a search of two of Florida's citys and WOW I found a bunch of FREE things to do. I am just not talking about the givens like going to the Beach or the park. Check them out below......

Jacksonville, Florida
1 Fort Caroline National Memorial
2 Timucuan Ecological & Historic Preserve
3 Jacksonville Fire Museum
4 Anheuser Busch Brewery Tour (Well you hubby or boyfriend will like this one)
5 Metropoltan Park
6 Jacksonville Maritime Museum
7 Kingsley Plantation


Palm Beach County, Florida
1 Doggie Date Night: Yappy Hour (take your best doggy on a date)
2 Loggerhead Marinelife center
3 Historical walking tours of wonderful Worth Avenue (see what the rich buy)
4 Poetry at the Palm Tree
5 Shakespeare by the Sea
6 Wine & Cheese & Beauty Encounter
7 Clematis by Night (Music fills downtown West palm Beach)
8 Friday Night Jazz
9 Motown at the Colony
10 Salsa Fest
11 Fall Plant Sale
12 Street Painting Festival (artist and those of us who can not paint a descent stick person
use water paints and street chalk and paint the streets of downtown lake Worth.... pretty
AWESOME)

Well there you have it for 2 of Florida's locations. How about letting me hear what is FREE in your town.

GOT TO LOVE FREE!

What would you DO?

What would you do if you had nothing else to do in the whole world? Have you ever sat in a quiet place to think about what you will do with your life when the kids are grown..... after you quit work ..... just AFTER everything. As retirement time is catching up with my hubby and myself I have been pondering that very question. Everyone we know that has retired after working their whole life, retired and then found they had nothing to do, they did not make plans. There is no way you can just retire and DO NOTHING. You will get mighty bored and then you will get on each others nerves. You have to make plans. I am a big believer in PLANNING. I plan just about everything. I have drawings, lists, LOTS AND LOTS of LISTS. My hubby has enough books to keep him happy for a lot of years, even if we stopped buying books right NOW - which that will never happen. As for ME, one of the things I will do is garden. We have a very nice retirement place in North Florida with NO plants or flowers. I tried planting some flowers but they did not live because we are not there to water and take care of them. Soooo the first thing is to get my flower gardens planted. I personally like the cottage style gardens so that is the way I want to plants them. I want to have a drip and micro spray watering system installed (thank god, my brother is a plumber). After the flower beds are in I want to install some raised vegetable gardens. I want to raise them about 18 inches. I will have (6) 4ft square beds. I am planning on the Square Foot garden technique. You plant either 1, 4, 9 etc plants per foot, depending on spacing requirements. With the 18 inch height on the raised beds, they will be easy to reach in my old age and will also allow you the room to first put down hardware cloth (this will keep burrowing nasties out) then half the amended soil a layer of landscape fabric followed by the rest of the soil. My entire vegetable garden will be enclosed by a wire enclosure, which my niece calls rednecky LOL I do not care. The enclosure is like a screen house but will have wire (like chicken wire). This will allow beneficial insects to fly in and out but keep rabbits, moles, voles, mice, deer and other vile things out. If it doesn't work all I will be out is some 2 X 4s and some wire, no big deal.

After the gardens are in and I can sit and relax a bit, hubby and I will also travel about. We have a 30 day trip already planned. We will take the train and get on and off where we want to sightsee. We will be circling the USA, some what. We will not cross the US at the Southern states because the train stopped part of the route. We will go from Florida to New York to Chicago to Seattle to San Francisco to Los Angeles, then to Colorado and back to Chicago. Chicago to Washington DC then back to Florida. Like I said we will get off the train in different areas and see some of the sights then back on the train to another destination. the entire trip will be 30 days. Can't wait to take that trip. Another trip we want to do is go to Europe to England, Ireland and France and Italy. I have not started planning that trip yet, it is on my list of things to PLAN.

So now you know what we have planned, how about YOU. Sit someplace quiet and just dream about when you have nothing else to do.

You May Be a Florida Gardener If .....

* Five inches of rain one afternoon means you do not have to water for a few days
* Florida has no income tax, but the humidity is so thick you can lick it
* Down South means the KEYS
* Your trench edging fills in with sand after every rain and weeds instantly fill the gaps
* Your Hostas melt during their first 75 degree night
* You have never been STUNG by a poisonous moth larvae
* Forty degrees is considered biting cold and more miserable than mosquitoes at ninety
* You are fascinated by a standoff between a lizard and a "lubber" grasshopper
* You grow a vine on a hurricane evacuation sign
* You call the stretch of beaches west of Apalachicola the Redneck Riviera
* You personally know someone who has run over an armadillo
* You grow at least one insect eating plant
* Your bumper sticker says "I break for boiled peanuts"
* There is at least one vinyl manatee or alligator mailbox on your street
* You garden in Flip Flops so you can feel the fire ants bite quicker
* You have posted by your phone the number to call if an alligator gets in your pool
* You love summer because vacationers have left and you can actually find a parking spot
* You have never ever tried to mimic the sound of a toad or tree frog
* You know how many bags of compost will fit in your car
* You can amuse yourself for an hour with the garden hose
* You have never cleaned your car with the leaf blower
* You carry a small stick to go pick up the newspaper, to keep spider web off your face
* You can grow prickly pear and palmetto side by side
* All you want for your birthday is a new potting shed, gardening gloves & Compost

Little Girls Jewelry Box

A time will come when your little girl will start a life long love affair with jewelry. Your wee girl needs to start out with something that is inexpensive and will not break your wallet. Show my darling girl what her Aunt Tricia has for her.

I will post some more grown up little girl things later. By the way, If you will tell me how you got that slideshow where it shows all of the picture I will put the pictures in a slideshow. I can get the slidshow BUT only half the pictures is in the frame.

F.A.M.

Some of you may have noticed the little Bear on my blog. I am a member of the Etsy street team Fabulous Artistic Moms. It is a great group, very active. We just celebrated the teams first birthday and what a blast we had on line. We had a mega Treasure Hunt. You were asked to search thru all the participating etsy team members shops to find a Cupcake wearing a tiara that was hidden in the shop. Well we had like 35 shops and every shop donated a prize. the hunt was on for a whole week. After the week everyone who found all the Cupcakes, their name went into a drawing and the winner got an amazing amount of gifts. Each shop mailed their own gift out soooo you just know that the mailman just kept on bringing packages. WHAT FUN.

My gift was a totally cute FAM Bank.

A Cow in a TuTu wearing a Princess Crown. You got to love it. I have been kind of out of the team loop because of my accident but I am going to get by their home page and see what is going on.

If any of you readers are also etsy shop owners and are moms let me know and I will send out a invite. Check out my shop at http://www.tenderheartbabies.etsy.com/ I have totally too many babies for sale and they are all looking for a loving home.

NEW AND EXCITING PLANTS

I just found out the there is a American Wisteria (Wisteria frutescens).

The traditional Chinese wisteria is too invasive and is generally no longer available for sale, this native American Wisteria is much better behaved and just as showy. It still needs a sturdy tall structure to climb on.

FLOWER: Pale lilac flowers with yellow blotches appear in dense clusters on six inch stems that hang from the vines in the Spring, after the leaves have begun sprouting. Blossoms are followed by three inch velvety seedpods.

PLANT: Twining vine with shiny leaves of many leaflets, can take over small trees if not pruned after flowering in the spring.

INTERESTING KINDS: Amethyst Falls has large fragrant pale lavender flower clusters that rival any other wisteria. Nivea blooms a little earlier with White flowers.

VEGETABLE GARDEN TIPS AND TRICKS

Well I have been researching vegetable gardening and have come across a few tips.

If Rabbits dig your cabbage patch, plant any member of the onion family among the cabbages. OR you can dust with ashes, powdered aloes or cayenne pepper. Rabbits also do not like dried blood or blood meal.

Apples and carrots should be planted a distance from each other, to prevent the carrots from taking on a bitter flavor.

For sweet tasting carrots your soil must have sufficient lime, humus and potash. Too much nitrogen will cause poor flavor and so will a long period of hot weather.

Plant your tall or climbing vegetables on the North side of your garden so they do not block the sun from your shorter plants. Pole Beans do not like Sunflowers.

Cucumbers are offensive to raccoons so you can plant them with corn. Corm will in return protect the cucumber from a virus that causes wilt.

Plant 2 or 3 icicle radishes in each hill with Squash, this will help prevent insects on squash. Nasturtiums planted with squash will repel squash bugs.

Tomatoes prefer to grow in the same place year after year. If you SMOKE, be sure to wash your hands throughly before you work in your garden because tomatoes are susceptible to diseases transmited through tobacco. (THIS should be a good reason to give up that nasty habbit ...... I am not going to name names).

I will add more tips later.

Canned Baby Sweet Peas

OOAK clay art babies are all the rage whether they are large or small. Altered cans have also been very popular lately . Myself along with Sarah Ogunleye who is my craft buddy on Tender heart Babies on etsy have come up with a idea of combining the ooak art babies with the altered cans. One of the names that Sarah has come up with for this combination is "Canned Baby Sweet Peas" ,which are babies in a can .These Cans come in sizes pints to gallon cans . Also included in the can will be a COA,blanket,stuffed animal .The prices of the "Canned Baby Sweet Peas" will start at 55.00 to as much as 95.00 or more for gallon cans /I will be posting pictures of these babies here on this blog and also on Sarah's blog http://sartaviacreations.blogspot.com/ and also on our etsy site http://www.tenderheartbabies.etsy.com/

Altered Cans

Altered Cans are all the rage. My newest are the movie Night cans. Pictured is my Halloween Movie Night can. This one gallon can comes complete with a Halloween Movie Night label, black, orange and white ribbon with gift tag, 1 microwave popcorn label for $15. I also have a Movie Night Package which includes your one gallon can with label, gift tag, 4 Candy bar wrappers, 4 Tickets to movie Night, 2 Microwave popcorn wrappers for $30 ( additional wrappers are available for extra 50 cents each).
If you would like for me to include a Halloween Movie of your choosing I can include it for additional cost (cost of movie will be stated at time of order).

Additional Theme Cans are available: Movie Night, Halloween Movie Night, Movie Night for Two and Christmas Movie Night.

Christmas Movie Night
















Movie Night

Movie Night for Two