Egged!

Only we can live out in the middle of nowhere and get egged!



Sorry about the junk in the corner.  Spiders have taken up residence on the porch and the pollen has gotten trapped in their webs.  The whole area will get cleaned this weekend

So you may be wondering where that egg came from... and that it looks pretty small. 

Here's where it came from:


A little sparrow decided that the top of our porch light was a good spot to build her nest.  I had noticed that there was some mud up there at one point and I cleaned it a bit.  DH was convinced the slope was too steep for a nest..... he was wrong. :-)

Our industrious little sparrow planted her nest up there, and its a pretty good nest, too.  After the nest was already built and fully formed, I didn't have the heart to remove it.  So there's a sparrow up there sitting on the rest of her eggs waiting for them to hatch.  I think I may take the ladder out this weekend and take a peek up there.

Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations

Garden Update

It's been a week or two since I posted about our gardens, so I thought today would be a good time to post on how things are going.

This planting bed is actually mostly new this year.  We had a lot of trouble getting grass to grow here and we were thinking of changing it to a planting bed anyway.  So we decided to just pull some of the dirt out and layer mulch down so it looks a lot better.  We didn't know what kind of flowers we wanted to plant, so we ended up putting some veggies here.  :-)



Its a little hard to see in the picture, but the small plants in the front and on the right are broccoli.  The four on the right were a 2nd batch we bought after seeing how big they were compared to the other ones we had purchased.  There are also 3 cherry tomato plants in there.  We'll have easy access to the items and they should be relatively easy to care for since they're right at the house.  Next year we hope to have a bigger garden in the back of the house.


The plants in the existing planting bed (flowers) are all starting to really take off.  They're getting big and bushy as well as starting to get some buds.


The one above may actually flower today or tomorrow.  These are beautiful magenta-red flowers that are very pretty.


The rest of the plants are coming along well.  They have lots of green, but not too many have buds yet.  There's a lot more green around that the last time I posted pictures.


Our lupine is very happy this year.  The one in front is actually a new plant to replace one that died last year, but the two in the bag are existing plants and they are definitely happy.


Here's a view down the sidewalk towards the driveway.  My little pig is keeping a careful watch on the clematis and poppies.  :-)


Speaking of poppies,  here's one that is just about ready to bloom.  Its been like that for 2 days now and I know in the next day or two it will just completely pop open.


Our clematis are definitely much happier this year, too.  The one in the center is from last year and he's grown more this year than he did all of last summer.  We also planted two new clematis on either side of the first one.  They are all of a variety that you don't have to trim each year.  They bloom/grow on old wood, so we won't have to untangle it every year from the lattice.  We'll just need to trim off any dead bits and that's it.

I'm hoping the clematis will flower soon, too.  It looks like it has some buds that are almost ready to go, but since nothing flowered last year, I'm not sure how long it will take for the buds to mature.  The flowers are supposed to be anywhere from 4-7" wide, so it may take a while for them to mature enough to be a 7" flower.  When it does though... its going to be beautiful.


Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations

Whirlwind

This week has been a bit of a whirlwind for me.  I'm not quite sure how it got to be Friday (almost) already.  The past week or so has been primarily taken up by work items.  My work is going through a re-structuring....again.  By the time everything falls out, I will have had 6 managers in 6 years!

Part of this re-structuring is also some "de-layering", which essentially means that anyone above an individual contributor level needs to re-interview for our own jobs.  We have 15 people at the current level that I am at, and only 8 positions open.  In light of this, I decided to post for one of the new, open manager positions.  It took me several days to decide whether I even wanted to post for it.

At this stage, I've had the interviews (today) and I'm absolutely beat.  The interviews weren't especially long or difficult, but the whole stress of the situation seems to have taken its toll on me.  My quilting mojo is completely gone and I have very little desire to even get into the sewing room.  I'm hoping that now that the interviews are done and everything is essentially out of my hands, that I'll get some of that mojo back.  I'll know in about another 1-1.5 weeks whether I am selected over the other 3 candidates.  The other 3 have at least 5 years more experience than I have, so I'm not feeling quite so confident now about my chances.

Anyway, last weekend I did play with some new fabric in my sewing room.  I purchased a scrap bag just before Christmas and I'm going to make some fun and funky place mats with it.  I'm cutting the pieces into 4.5" lengths and varying widths.  Then those will get sewn into 12.5" long, strip pieced sets.  Everything will get sashed and the end place mat will be about 16" x 18".



Some of these fabrics are really fun, while some others are pretty ugly (see pieces being held up on the right side of the picture below).  I'm going to use Bonnie Hunter's method.... if its ugly, just cut it smaller.  :-)


I'm also thinking I should have taken a piece of advice from my cat over the weekend.  She had it right.... curling up on a soft blanket on a chair in front of an open window in the sun!


This weekend we're traveling a bit to visit my parents for Mother's Day.  Each year we visit them and with my siblings, we make a trip to a local garden center and buy my Mom more plants than she knows what to do with. :-)  Its a combination of Mother's Day and birthday for her.  Plus, my younger sister's birthday is also next week, so we'll celebrate that, too.

Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations

Stashbusting 2013 - Week 18

Wow!  Two weeks in a row that I'm posting for stashbusting... maybe I can keep it up. ;-)

I used a bit more fabric this week for my Bento Box quilt.  I had to cut some more pieces to make the pieced border, and I cut strips of fabric for 4" borders around the entire quilt.



The borders are ready to go on, but today will be spent outside again with the garden and taking care of the property (along with laundry and grocery shopping and paying bills).

Yesterday, I planted 24 new perennials to replace ones that died over the winter and also 4 more broccoli plants.  This is the first year that we're trying to grow some veggies, so we're starting with tomatoes and broccoli.  Next year we'll try some beans and possibly corn, too.


Here are my numbers so far this year:
Added This Week:       0.00 yards
Added Year to Date:    5.86 yards
Used This Week:          0.88 yards
Used Year to Date:       4.89 yards
Net Year to Date:         -0.97 yards

I'm just one yard in the hole and I know I'll be able to bust that out soon.  I will have one quilt ready for quilting and the Bento Box quilt will be ready soon, so that will be some good yardage busted once I get those complete.

Go on over to Judy's blog to see how everyone else is doing.


Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations

Guess What???

The text above the chicken says "Chicken Butt".

Yes - that was the lovely card my sister sent me for my birthday.  :-)  We got a good laugh out of it.  I actually had to check the back of the card to see if it was one she had special made or if it was something she found.  Believe it or not... it was a card that she found at a store! 

The "chicken butt" joke is one that has been running around the family for at least 10-15 years now.  I may have to recycle this card and give it to another sibling.

On the quilty front, here's my Bento box quilt with the pieced border sewn onto one side.  Its pinned onto the other long side, but I haven't had a chance to sew it on yet.  Hopefully that will happen tonight.


I'm slowly making progress on my quilts.  One would think that by sewing with a machine I'd get the tops done faster!  Too bad life tends to get in the way. ;-)

Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations

Yearly Ritual

It seems that I've made a yearly ritual... out of getting my hair cut.  I always have good intentions of making the appointments, but then never follow through on it.  Or maybe its because I like the idea of having long hair.  (Plus, DH likes long hair... except when he has to clean the vacuum!)

On Saturday (my birthday) I went and got my haircut.  I didn't even realize it had been a year since the last haircut until I arrived for my appointment and it was the same woman who cut my hair last year.... to the EXACT day.  Very odd!

But here it is before I got my cut... long... ends are a little dried out and needed some trimming, but for the most part, not too bad.


And the after...


I had about 4-5 inches taken off.  It definitely feels a lot lighter now and more manageable.  I no longer have to stand for 20 minutes drying my hair because there was so much of it!

I really should remind myself to do this more often. ;-)

Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations

Stashbusting 2013 - Week 17

Wow!  I can't believe its been so long since I last posted for Stashbusting this year.  I looked back and the last time I reported anything was back on week 8.  Yikes!

I've been doing a fair amount of quilting, but not using a whole lot of stash.  I've been working on some custom quilting for myself, which has been taking a long time to do.



I did get some quilting done this past week that used up some stash.  This quilt top is mostly together.  I have two side of the first set of borders on now and I've cut/sewn all the pieces for the pieced border (the little blocks in the picture below).


Slowly, but surely, I'm making progress.  I guess the good thing is that I've only bought one piece of fabric this year and it was backing for a quilt top.

Here are my numbers so far this year:
Added This Week:       0.00 yards
Added Year to Date:    5.86 yards
Used This Week:          0.68 yards
Used Year to Date:       4.01 yards
Net Year to Date:         -1.84 yards

Go on over to Judy's blog to see how everyone else is doing.

Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations

Garden Update

The flowers have slowly been growing here in upstate NY.  We've had a few days where its warm in the afternoon, but its still been cool in the mornings.  Yesterday morning it was 34F. Brrr!  This weekend we're supposed to get close to 70F. :-)

I decided to take a few pictures of our garden last night to show how well the plants have been growing.  I last posted about the garden here.  In that post, there was very little green and lots of brown stalks.  What a difference 2 weeks can make!




I found this little guy in my garden after some siblings visiting a few weeks ago.  He's very cute and I now have my own "little piggy". :-)

The plants are really starting to get green now.  Now flowers or buds yet really, but even the green looks good!




The greenish spots in the picture below are tall phlox on the left and cone flowers on the right.  The reddish bits are a neat plant called a Catchfly.  They have very pretty orange-red flowers on them when they bloom.


The little bits of green in the picture below are purple geraniums, and its a perennial.  Most geraniums in this area are annuals, but this particular variety is a perennial, which is nice.  I always find it hard to buy annuals knowing that I'll have to do it again next year!


Our lupines are much happier this year.  The one on the left is really doing well and hopefully we'll get more than one flower off the plant this year.


Our poppies are doing well.... at least the ones that survived.  All the blank spots... those are dead poppies that didn't make it through the drought last year.  We'll fill them in this weekend after we go plant shopping.


Our clematis is doing really well now.  It took us a long time to get it into the ground last year and as such, we weren't sure if it was going to survive.  It was really root bound in the pot and had grown through the holes in the bottom of the pot into the dirt below.  So when we pulled it out of the pot, we destroyed a lot of the roots.  This particular variety grows on old wood, so once it starts twinning about the lattice work, we won't have to cut it and pull it off the lattice.  We can just leave it there and it will keep growing and blooming.  We plan to get two more clematis this year to put on either side of the starter plant.


And the last of our little flowers.  This particular corner of the garden did not fare very well.  One lupine died, the poppies died and the two remaining lupines aren't very happy.  We may have to re-think the plants we have in this area.


I really love this time of year when the plants are all starting to grown and the blossoms are just starting to develop.  Everything is fresh and green and you can watch the woods and plants start to take off for growing throughout the summer.


Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations