Vacation

Last week, my husband and I both took the entire week off from work.  We didn't really have any plans to go anywhere, but we both needed to just not be at work.  Sometimes it isn't about going somewhere on vacation, but just being able to relax.

I always feel like when I travel on vacation that I need a secondary vacation to make up for the energy spent traveling somewhere.  It was really nice to just be home and relax.  We did make the most of our time and got a fair amount done around the house/yard.

When we purchased our piano a few months ago, we decided to convert our formal dining room into the room with the piano.  This ended up meaning that we had to change the table in our eat-in kitchen area to be one with leaves in it so we could seat everyone for large families dinners.  I don't have a picture of the new table yet, but it was delivered last week while we were home.

In addition to the new table, we then had to find some comfy chairs to put in the room with the piano.  We both hate furniture shopping.  Most of the time you don't find anything you like and you end up frustrated and feeling hassled by the sales folks at the stores.  This time, we did find some chairs!



This chair was at the 3rd furniture store we went to (over 2 weekends), but we fell in love with it.  Its comfortable to sit in and looks very nice.  One of the best parts.. its actually a recliner!  It looks like any normal chair (even from the back), but that square section on the front...that's the foot rest.  They will be perfect in the room with the piano and will let one of us sit and relax while the other plays.

Besides a bunch of yard work being done last week, we also spent some time at my in-laws where they live on a lake.  We went up twice and enjoyed swimming and kayaking.


Finally since I haven't shown many garden pictures this year.... The catchfly is flowering and is a very pretty orange-red color.


My orange coneflowers are also finally blooming.  They seem to be happy this year, which is good considering we thought we were going to have to replace them since they just didn't do it last year.



I hope you all are enjoying your summer and those of you in the south aren't wilting from the heat too much yet.  I did get a small amount of quilting done on vacation, but not enough to even consider taking pictures.  Hopefully I'll get my mojo back soon and will start making progress on a few things.

Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations

Busy! Busy! Busy!

The past month has yet again absolutely flown by.  Its amazing how each year time seems to go by even faster than the last.  I'm not quite sure how that happens, but somehow we're into July already and I barely feel like summer started.

I've been keeping busy lately with a lot of things.  Work (as usual) keeps me busy during the week from about 7:30am until about 6pm.  However, over the past two months, I've taken up running three times a week.  Last fall, I kind of got kicked in the butt to do something about my weight (about 20-25 lbs over what I should have been).  I purchased a Fitbit Flex and have loved having it.  It seems silly, but it keeps me accountable for actually getting up and moving more.

The first few months, I paid attention to how much I was walking and changed my eating habits slightly (no more bagels for breakfast).  By November, I had lost the 20 lbs I wanted to lose.  I've continued with the exercise and become more fit.  I'm still trying to get the last 5 lbs or so (I would really like to be down to 125 lbs again), but I'll get there eventually.

I walked a 5k with my sister a few weeks ago and plan on running (or at least partially running) one in the next two weeks.  I'm definitely more fit than I was and am glad that I've lost the weight and can now run more easily.



My garden has also taken off in the past month.  My lupines were beautiful while they were blooming.  I now have orange coneflowers up as well as some lavender.  My phlox should be blooming shortly.



My clematis are also going like crazy.  I have purple, pink and white flowers all over the place.  I definitely need to get an updated picture of it.

Last but not least, I also had a client contact me for quilting her quilt last month.  I finished it up and sent it back to her and will share some pictures here, but that is for another post since I have some nice photos to show.  She did a great job with her embroidery and I made sure that my quilting didn't detract from the embroidered blocks at all.

Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations

Garden Update

The garden this year has been doing surprisingly well, despite not having a lot of rain this spring.  All of my plants survived our cold and snowy winter and are coming along very well.  In fact, I think they are doing better this year than in the past simply due to having to "hibernate" longer.

The columbine is doing very well this year.  They are always my first ones to flower and its so nice to see that first pop of color after a long dreary winter.


This year I also decided to do some annuals in my planters on the porch.  I skipped it last year and missed out on the color.  This year I have a good mix of white, purple, pink and yellow to brighten things up.




For my birthday this spring, I received two garden "ornaments".  The first is this birdbath that is shaped like a flower.  The extra color in the garden is nice and the small birds seem to like it.  I've even seen a hummingbird at it.


The other ornament was this glass ball with a metal moon around it.  It gives a little bit of sparkle to the garden with the metallic shine.  The glass ball also glows slightly in the evening as it starts to get dark.  Its a nice addition to the garden.


Another view of my columbine as well as silver mound.  The silver mound are very happy.  They started out as two plants, which I split last fall and I now have four sections of very healthy and happy plants.  I have to give them haircuts once in a while to keep them from getting out of control, but I like their compact shape and the bit of simple green they add to the garden.


The picture below is from about 2 weeks ago.  I had purchase some new small ground cover plants to go in front of the clematis.  The clematis is only just starting to take off in the photo.  Now it has blooms all over it and the green is at least halfway up the trellis.



I hope everyone is enjoying their spring and early summer.  Before we know it, it will be hot and humid and we'll be asking for it to be fall!  ;c)

Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations

Spring!

It is finally here!! :c)

We had our first truly nice weekend weather-wise this past weekend.  We had one day last week, but both Saturday and Sunday were nice here.  Much of the nice weather has been spent raking the yard to remove the dead grass....definitely not one of my favorite spring-time chores.  I'm sore from all the raking.  Half of the yard was done two weekends ago and the rest of it was done this past weekend.

However, my plants are starting to grow and its really nice to see some green! One of the "weaker" lupine plants below.  For some reason it is struggling a little in its current home, so I may decide to move it later this summer if it continues to struggle.


I have some silver mound that I split last fall and now have four plants.  They are all a bit smaller, but will definitely grow a bit this year.  You can keep trimming them all year to keep them nice and tidy, so they provide a nice accent to the garden.


My clematis are starting to show signs of life as well.


You do have to look closely to see some of the green...but its there.


I think these two plants are called columbine.  They were a bit over-crowded last year, so I did some re-arranging in the fall to try to give them some more space this year.  Hopefully it will help and make them happier.


These ones are campanula.  They produce very pretty purple flowers...and lots of them.  These were also moved last year as they were crowded in with the columbine.


These next two are my happiest lupines.  They have more stalks than I can count right now, so they are definitely in a happy place.  I can't wait to see how many flowers I get out of these guys this year.


So this next picture is a bit odd.  You all know that I do quilting (or at least attempt to do it when I can find the time to get into my sewing room).  Aside from taking care of the garden, I also help split the wood we use to heat the house in the winter.  I started splitting wood last fall when I was going through a stressful time at work and I've found that I absolutely love it.  It is a great workout and is amazing at stress relief.  Beating on a big hunk of wood is very satisfying!  :c)

Since my husband also splits the wood, there were times last fall that we would both want to split, but we only had one axe.  So one of us would have to find something else to do, or just stand there and pick up the wood pieces.  I decided to fix that this year and put a new axe on my birthday list.  Its the same length as the old one, but is a tad bit lighter and had great reviews on Amazon.


I didn't get a chance to test it out this weekend since we spent all of Sunday raking (Saturday was spent doing some family stuff).  I'm hoping to be able to test it out this coming weekend and see how it splits.  The reviews on Amazon said that it was really easy to split wood with the axe and has plenty of power to it such that you can actually get through the larger logs.

I do expect to get some quilting in this week as the next three days have nothing but rain in the forecast.  Hopefully I'll have something to share later this week.

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

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