Bee Tea & Quilt ~ Tea Time Tuesday

It is Tea~Time Tuesday again and I have missed joining in the fun lately. I have enjoyed being a part of this blogging party celebrating all things tea, so even though there were so many things I needed to get done today, I set them aside and brewed myself a pot of tea. Doesn't this bee-hive teapot with matching sugar & creamer make you smile? It is so sun-shiny happy during the cold, dark, days of February. Last week I just wanted to brighten things up and spread a cheery quilt made by the sewing & quilting ladies of Lacamas Community Center. ( they are now meeting at Ohop Grange)

I am showing you snippets and squares of the quilt that particularly celebrate bees.

Notice the detail of that tiny strip between the green & black fabric.

Did you think I would forget to show a teacup or two on Tea Time Tuesday? It was hard coming up with a teacup that fit in with the honeybee theme, but I like these not- too- delicate rose chintz patterned cups & saucers. Honeybees need flowers to make honey. A bright yellow teacup would be nice here too,maybe even better, but I still like the chintz for this setting.

Click onto the picture for enlargement.The teacups are Rose Chintz Gracie China, made in China. The two teacups are from a set of 4, and are perfect for tea parties with grandchildren. Real china, affordable, & dishwasher safe too.

Click onto any picture, it will enlarge and you'll be able to see the bees in the quilt squares.

It just makes me happy to see the quilt and teapot on my table, bee happy !

I am linking up with the ladies listed below for Tea Time Tuesday .

• Terri at Artful Affirmations *
• Martha at Martha's Favorites *
• Sandi at Rose Chintz Cottage *

The teapot, sugar & creamer were purchased at Fred Meyer's just last week. How could I not buy such a happy trio, especially when my husband is a bee-keeper? "Pleasant words are as a honeycomb, sweet to the mind and healing to the body." Proverbs 16:24

Jeannie's Quilts ~ 'Liberty Or Death'

Jeannie Austin is amazing. Her quilts show a woman who is not only talented in quilting, but design, family history, story-telling, and sharing her skills with the community .Her love of quilting spills over into her family & community in great abundance. Because so many wanted to see her quilts and photograph them , Jeannie brought them to the Lacamas Community Center in our little community and with help, hung them up for photographing. There were a few of us snapping pictures and I missed some very good shots of her quilts, but I hope the pictures I did capture show her quilts in good light. Please click onto any pictures you want enlarged for better viewing. Close-up of one square. Jeannie's quilts are stories told in fabric, and most of her quilts are fabric & thread stitching her family history.I wish I had taken notes on what she was saying as each quilt was unfurled to be photographed, and this post shows only one quilt. I will be sharing the quilts I photographed in coming posts, but really feel her quilts are works of art . I think she could hold a quilt show and easily fill a large room with them. I did not get pictures of the backs and bindings of the quilts, but they too, were worthy of their own display.Jeannie inspired me to sew with care, creativity, and an attitude of sewing for the future generations to come. With the high price of fabric, the rarity of hand-sewn & hand-quilted items, combined with the love invested in a quilt, it is well to consider the design and future of any quilt you set your heart to make, and make it well! * I am thankful for women who freely share their skills and knowledge with other women , thereby passing on the joy of creating a life well-lived and well-loved within the means and abilities God has granted .

Nap Time Anyone?

Today is the day I change the sheets , they need to be washed & dried and the bed made new. Blizzard, our cat ( still a kitten) does not care about clean sheets. He is comfortable. He was oblivious to me taking them off the bed around him and settled himself right back down for a long nap. Today is also sewing day with one of my granddaughters. Here she is sewing two pairs of pajama pants. One pair for her little brother and one pair for her little cousin.She has already sewn pajama pants for her sister, older brother, herself, and her doll. Blizzard thinks every day is a great day for a nap. I hope today is a great day for you, and no matter what you have planned, a nap doesn't hurt, and might even be just what you need.

I Lost..No, I Won! Thank-you Vickie ~

Vickie Fears & I had a friendly blogging competition on who could eliminate the most underground varmints in a year.Vickie and her family farm suffer terribly from the devastation groundhogs cause, and my husband and I ( and our property) suffer from mole destruction. Please do not take this lightly because it is pretty bad. Anyway, Vickie Fears is a fearsome ( pun intended) foe of the varmints and she won 2 years in a row. I intended to send her a prize and she told me "no", she was sending me a prize for being such a good loser. I like the sound of that...being a good loser, well, if that includes a prize I can deal with it. Little did I know that when I opened my prize I would cry because it was so perfect, and so precious.Look at the ink & watercolor above I received in the mail from her.How did you know Vickie, that this would mean so much to me? Vickie, you truly caught the spirit of Abel here and also, you portrayed the eyes of a ram perfectly, a feat I do not see often. The eyes of a sheep or goat are hard to capture just right, but you did! Abel was a ram I loved, a triplet lamb from my very first Jacob sheep, Joy. Joy died of old age ( 17 years old) in our garden, and Abel was a very good ram who never displayed the bad behavior rams are notorious for. Abel also seemed to be constantly adorned with greenery in a way no other ram I have ever had has displayed.Most of the sheep I have now are in some way related to Joy & Abel, and I appreciate them more now as the years have gone by .Vickie, I do not think I can adequately express how much your gift / prize has touched me, and how much of a treasure it already is. Thank-you, very much.Please check out Vickie Fear's blog* and be sure to click onto her web-site showing her art.

This Old White-Haired Lady

I know this picture is a blur, but what caught my attention after I downloaded pictures from our family Christmas party was the sight of the old white-haired lady with one of my granddaughters, then realized the old white- haired lady was ME ! When did this happen? I know, I know, I have been covering up the gray for years and finally this past summer gave up, but how did so much white hair appear so soon? This picture was taken this past summer as my husband and I left for his 40th high school class reunion ( my 40th is this year ). My hairdresser, the one who did NOT fry my hair trying to make it blonde to hide the gray,( thank-you Anya ) strongly urged me to keep my white hair that day after my request for some dark streaks, and I am grateful to her for this. For years I have covered the gray while trying to keep my hair the very dark brown I was born with. This has been hard because my hair grows well more than 1/2 inch a month, I measured the growth with a ruler which was very easy to do with the white "skunk line " appearing a scant 3 to 5 days after dying my hair. The time and money spent trying to retain dark brown hair was simply not worth the investment. I see pictures of famous brunette women who are aging and even with the editing and touch-ups I can tell they are dying their hair.When I am in crowds and see older brunettes in the day-light I can see their dye-lines in spite of the dye, easily. I then wonder who they're fooling, because it surely isn't time, or the people who know them. I am still wondering what to do with my hair and seem to suffer even more bad hair days than when I was younger, but my dilemma now is what to do with white hair... most definitely NOT the short, tightly curled bob of older women from years ago...nor the bun. What to do, what to do?

"Gray hair is a blessing, ask any bald man." Author Unknown "There is only one sure cure for gray hair, it was invented by a French man. It's called the guillotine." P.D. Wodehouse

I found some very interesting blogs on this topic, here are two of them. If you are toying with the decision to go gray check them out. ~Aging Abundantly* , and ~Going Gray *.

For years members of my family were against any decisions to go gray, and because I love to please my family, I obliged. My husband was even willing to pay for me to have this professionally done every other month. To stay brunette was becoming expensive and one visit to a salon after months of home dye jobs left me victim to snickers and guarded bad comments from my hair dresser ( not Anya ) .Family photos showed the dyed hair was obvious, and beginning to look harsh. If I was to continue this route I would need to make sure I kept to dark rooms and low lights, or go full on for the vampire look...no thanks . So by publishing this post I am going public with the decision to go gray / white. Now again regarding the styling, what to do, what to do ? This old gray mare may not be the brunette she used to be, but I am not yet ready to be put out to pasture either!