Sharing the Shots!

I've mentioned I've been busy of late -doing, what else, but embroidery stuff, pretty much. I've also been lucky this week in that I've actually been able to get a few things that grew in my garden this summer -froze about 4 or 5 baggies of green beans and got several nice-sized yellow summer squash too that I fixed for a side dish with our supper the other night.

And, the kids -as usual -have been busy keeping us busy trying to keep them out of trouble too. And, Mandy got a couple pictures last night of them with respect to something Kurtis got into last night. Judging by his application of eye shadow he's either in training to be a clown or maybe just practicing up to be a transvestite or some such when he grows up. He, like Maya, apparently does have a fascination for eye shadow but does definitely need a good bit more practice in the application process.



Here's two pictures of Kurtis showing off his new make-up techniques with Maya showing her approval of his workmanship too. Note -on the pictures of Maya -the gap-tooth look she's sporting now since she lost her first upper front tooth about 2 weeks ago today and then, a day or two later, lost another bottom tooth. Yep! Definitely she'll be singing "All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth" huh?

Now, for a little look at my garden this year:


Here's a view of the two tomato plants I have in planters on my deck. The one on the left has four tomatoes in the cluster shown -two ripe and two green as well as two more green tomatoes on an upper vine. The one on the right -has four green tomatoes on it but this shot only shows two of those four green tomatoes! So far, no black spots showing on the leaves or fruits of any of my tomato plants so maybe the tomato blight that hit most everyone around here last year has gone on to greener pastures and redder tomatoes. Sure do hope it works out that way!
Here's two jalapeno peppers growing on one of the pepper plants in my deck planters too. I have some more jalapenos and also, yellow banana peppers in the garden in the backyard but can't see them well enough to get a photo of them right now. (They are pretty much overshadowed by the huge leaves of my yellow squash plants out there!)

Here's a peek at the yellow squash growing in my garden! I'm really impressed with these plants and keep in mind, I only bought three yellow squash plants to put in the garden so I'm getting a pretty good yield from them. At least I think so anyway!

In this picture are the two largest of the yellow summer squash that I picked this morning. I picked six squash earlier this week and used five of them -nice sized they were too -for the casserole I made to go with our supper Monday night -which I might add turned out quite delicious. If anyone wants an easy and really yummy casserole recipe using yellow summer squash, let me know and I'll be more than happy to share it with you!

This photo to the right is an overview of my little garden in the back yard. I'm a lousy judge of distance but I'd say it's probably only 8x8 foot square -maybe as big at 10 foot square -and in the front here are the tomato plants growing there. The tall bushy stuff on the far right behind the logs are the three squash plants and the yellow things you can maybe see there amongst those big leaves are more of the lovely yellow squash forming and growing!

Now, here's some pictures of what I've been playing with lately inside the house. Yep, more embroidery! I've been on a kick for the past two weeks working on pillow cases and I now have three sets of pillowcases completed and almost have a fourth set done too. So here's what the ones I have completed look like:

This set is queen-sized and the name of the pattern is Floral Grandeur.
Note that below the flowers embroidered is a row of cut work on the cases -a very pretty set and I think this is the only pair I have that are queen-size pillow cases.


The above set here is a pair of standard-sized pillow cases and the name of this pattern is "Unforgettable." The design under the bottom of each of these designs is a floral embroidery, of the machine-type, done before it these cases ever reach my fat little fingers. Look closely at these two cases and tell me where you see the mistakes I made in them. LOL.
This pair -named quite simply "IVY" -is also for standard size pillows. Done all in two different shades of green. Just very pretty, simple and crisp.
And finally -for today anyway -this is one of the cases of the set I am currently working on. I just have the greens to finish on the second case and it will be a completed group. The name of this particular group is "Floral Fancy" and I was more than a bit worried when I started working on the flowers of this set as those larger flowers, done in satin stitch, were a bit intimidating at first but as I got accustomed to doing them, it ended up not being near the problem I first feared they would be.

I'm trying to do up a few more pillow case sets before I go down to Pittsburgh and have the surgery that is scheduled for two weeks from today. Then, hopefully, when I get back home I can concentrate on trying to get my Etsy account set up and running. Wish me luck -and lots of it too -on that deal! Look out, Paula as I may need to call on you for some assistance in the set-up and layout of my future Etsy site! Especially in figuring out how to price items at a figure that is fair to customers as well as to me. Even if it only takes me a day or two to complete say, a set of pillowcases, that's still a goodly amount of hours and as much as I love working on these things, I can't just sell them for a dollar or two over what I paid for the materials to do them but also, I can't exactly price them by an hourly rate either as that would make trying to sell them absolutely cost prohibitive then as well. How to strike a happy medium is my question there so any suggestions on that, please feel free to pass them on to me!

So there you have it -a bit of the stuff that's been keeping me busy, busy, busy for quite some time now!