New Furniture

Ever since moving into the house, we've been looking and struggling to find the furniture that we want to put into certain rooms.  We've spent 1.5 years looking for the furniture that we wanted... and couldn't find it at a reasonable price.  We were ready to just plunk down the cash for the stuff we wanted, but then found a great local place called The Blue Hen.

They have Amish-made furniture that is custom made for you (including wood type and stain).  The furniture pieces in the store were absolutely wonderful so we decided to go for it.  Usually my husband has a hard time getting things sight unseen, but he was willing to do it this time and we now have some great furniture.

I'll start off with the small stuff.  In our pool room, we wanted a small table and some stools for folks to use while playing a game.  We couldn't find ANYTHING that we liked locally, until we talked to the Amish folks.  They made this table to the exact size we wanted.


The top is truly very pretty and buttery smooth!


These "saddle" stools are just about perfect.  They are comfortable and incredibly easy to move around.  We're actually going to get some extras for our kitchen island.


The wood finish on the top of the stools is incredible.  Also...we love the look of cherry wood and it was perfect for these stools. :-)


Then for our kitchen area, we had been looking for a table for a long time.  We found one that was the right size, but would have been twice the price that we paid for this custom table.  This table was stained exactly to match our cabinets (dark wood on bottom and lighter on the top).


In the picture below, you can see the stain differences a little better.


Again, the color is off a little bit due the light, but the table top is very pretty.  I'm definitely going to get another picture with the morning sun on it since it was spectacular this morning.


If you are looking for furniture, I would highly recommend finding someone nearby that sells Amish furniture.  Not only are you going to get a great piece of furniture that is well made, but you're also supporting the local American economy.  The wood for our furniture came from right here in the US and it was made in the US.  Its definitely a good feeling to have purchased something that was made right here versus shipped overseas.

Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations

Garden Update

Our garden is definitely happy happy happy.  :-)

The potted geraniums are flowering nicely and are providing a nice pop of color on the front porch.  They have a nice variegated look to them that is a bit unusual.


Our phlox finally flowered.  The color is a bit washed out as it was very sunny when I took the pictures, but they are a happy pink color.


This clematis was absolutely stunning....before he got limp from the heat.  It was 90-degrees the day the picture was taken, so he wasn't too happy about it being that hot.  But the royal purple color is one of my favorites!


Finally, I have to share this picture.  Take a look at the white petal/leaf.  For some reason, it couldn't figure out whether it should be a flower or a leaf...so it chose to be both!  The white petals go right down to the blossom, but at the tip, its a green leaf.  So weird!


Hope everyone is enjoying their summer so far and their gardens are happy, too.


Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations

Lone Star Pictures

Today I took some additional photos of the Lone Star quilt in an attempt to show the quilting a bit more.  The colors are a bit off due the LED lighting above the quilt, but the texture shows up a bit more now.







I do have the following ones that were taken before the quilt was finished, but it shows all the detail and texture differences.....




We haven't quite decided upon how we're going to hang the quilt, but we have some ideas.  I have to add the hanging sleeves to the quilt next before we can really start attempting to hang it on the wall.


Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations

July Garden

 Now that we are into July, the garden has really taken off in most respects.  The rain from June (our wettest in several years) hampered some of the growth, but in recent weeks we've had more sun and dry days, so things are really starting to grow and produce.

We have this really pretty purple clematis now blooming, as well as a pure white clematis.  The white one is from last year and is the most vigorous this year and has already grown over the top of our 10-ft arbor.

To get an idea of how big those blooms are, the slats on the arbor are 2-inches wide.  The white flower is about 4-5 inches across.

I think next year this arbor will be completely covered in green and with lots of flowers blooming.  When we picked out the plants, we made sure to get ones that grown on old wood.  There's no way we wanted to remove the spent branches from the arbor every year.

Here is our catchfly plant.  Its blooms are bright orange, which attracts butterflies and humming birds.

Our coneflowers are also starting to take off.  Here's a new red one from this year.

And rubeckia from last year...

The balloon flowers are just starting to blossom, too.

Our planters near the house are also happy and sending out flowers everywhere.



The vegetables are really starting to go now, too.  These are our beans...

Tomatoes....

 

Corn....


It seems like the corn is growing by leaps on bounds.  The picture above and below are 1 week apart and the barn has grown at least 6" in that time... maybe more.

During our time off, we also decided to tackle some of our brush piles.  Here's where we started (after two prior sessions of chipping... note the pile of wood chips to the left on the pictures):


And here's what it looks like now.  All the chippable wood is gone and we're left with the larger pieces that won't fit into our chipper.  Once things dry out a bit more, we will cart it down to the back part of the property to just let it rot on its own.


I hope everyone else is enjoying their summer so far this year.  Let's hope it slows down a little more so we all can enjoy it! :-)


Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations

Garden Update

Our garden has been doing pretty well this year, despite all the rain.  Some of the plants aren't so happy with the wet conditions, but we're finally getting some hot, dry weather that is helping them to bounce back.

Here's our first batch of broccoli from our plants.  It was pretty tasty, but not a whole lot of it from the first four plants.

These next photos of the garden were all taken in early June.  We had lots of poppies and flowers going at that time.  It was nice to see everything green and the colors popping out.


Our Lupine are very happy. :-)


The clematis are starting to take off in early June.  No flowers as of then, but the plants were happy.


More Lupine....


Our campanula weren't very happy this year with the rain and wet conditions, but they still produced some very pretty purple flowers.


This was our vegetable garden in early June.  Plants were still small, but were happy and growing.






Our corn growing...very slowly... ;-)




I just love the purple lupine!  I wished I had about 10 more them!




Enjoy... There will be more recent photos later this week.

Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations

July !!??

How the heck did it get to be July already?!  This year has absolutely flown by so far.  I guess that's what happens when you're always working towards the next weekend or trip.

The past few days we've been home on vacation.  Most of our vacations are spent at home as we really enjoy being around the house and yard.  Its just relaxing for us and its nice to not have to deal with packing for travel and actually traveling.

With the few days off from work, I have been able to get some quilting done as well as taking care of the garden.  Work has been busy and, as typical, all manner of issues have started cropping up as soon as I took the new manager position at work.  Just my luck, right? :-)

I finally finished all the quilting and binding of the Lone Star wall hanging.  It turned out completely awesome!  It hangs straight and is perfectly square.  I was worried at first that it wasn't going to lie flat due to the differences in the amount of quilting in different sections, but once it was washed and dried, it is completely flat.

Here is the finished masterpiece!









The pictures don't really do it justice as its very hard to photograph the texture differences.  It is definitely very spectacular in person.  I should figure out how to get some better pictures with my camera.  I'm considering entering it into some quilt shows, but I haven't figured out which ones yet.  I made the quilt as a wall-hanging for our foyer, so that's its main purpose.  I would like to put it into at least one show to maybe get some comments and see how it does.

That's all for now folks!  I'll be posting some pictures of the garden for later this week.

Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations