Wednesday on the Homestead

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Good Morning!

I'm thinking at this point it may be afternoon for some of you. I am on the later side because I was distracted by several things. The morning is absolutely beautiful. The sun is shining (and we haven't seen a lot that lately), there's a nice breeze blowing and the outdoors was calling my name. I went and took some pictures by our pond because this is the time of year that the water lily's start blooming.

I couldn't help stopping and taking a few pictures of the little wild flowers that are starting to show up around my homestead...

 

Of course my duck, Ping, saw me down there and had to come and visit me. He followed me up to the house and I gave him a little grain as a treat...



Over the week I managed to get some kitchen reorganization done. I had 2 cupboards that weren't really holding a lot of important stuff. I made a new home for the items I wanted to keep and put the items I didn't want into my donation box. With the new available space I was able to store my Instant Pot and Air Fryer in one cupboard and my crockpot and Bosch mixer in another. Now my counters look much less cluttered and my appliances are easier for me to reach. 


I still have more organizing work to do in the cupboard on the right, but slowly I'm getting there! 

I also went through some more things in my hutch in my dining room. Went through my DVD's and my daughter took some that were favorites when she was little for her kids to watch. I also have some collections of Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica and a few others that belong to my boys so I need to talk to them and see who wants them.  The few remaining will go in my donation box.

My daughter and grandchildren came to see me on Saturday and we headed to a nearby trail and got a 3 mile walk in. I was impressed with my grandchildren for sure! And perhaps more impressed with my daughter. She had the newest little baby in the stroller and the 2nd youngest in a backpack. So she got even more of a workout. 

On Sunday my cat, Pila, had kittens (she is the little rescue cat I shared about last year, her jaw is off center and she has no bottom lip due to a rough start to her life). She's an indoor cat but made a great escape a couple months ago and that was all it took. 

 
She only had 3 kittens, which is good and I have potential homes already for a couple of them. Now I need to go and get her fixed because I don't want this to become a regular occurrence! :)

 

Goals
A walk is most definitely on the list today! :) Gotta get out and enjoy the day before it rains. 

In the home I have a few things to take care of..

~give the bathroom a quick run through
~fold a load of laundry (currently in the dryer) and put away
~Sweep and mop my kitchen floor

Dinner tonight is leftover chicken alfredo so no cooking for me today. 




For the Love of Books!
I'm about 2/3rds or so into Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. I'm enjoying the book a lot. What's not to love about pirates, the good guys, buried treasure, treasure maps, a seafaring journey to an island to search for the treasure, mutiny among the men. Lots of action and adventure and it's kept me captivated for sure.


Projects
In the last couple of days I pulled out my scrap quilt project. I had put it away when I started doing some spring cleaning. But I'm ready to move forward again with it. I don't like unfinished projects sitting around especially when my brain is creating new projects all the time! :D 

I have about 4 or maybe 5 blocks left to make. I need to lay them all out on my bed and see what size I want. I haven't had a concrete plan in mind, I've just been doing things and figuring it out along the way. 

I had this pile of fabric pieces that I had already cut for previous squares..

 

And at this point I really want to be done with making the blocks and move on to putting the quilt top together. So I looked at all my pieces and got the idea of sewing strips together to make a large piece of fabric. So I started sewing strips of precut blocks, bits of pieced items I had previously made, parts left from when I made my crazy quilt squares and long strips of fabric of various widths. 

And this is what I have now..


I think it looks pretty cool! Now I'm ready to use my template and cut out squares from this piece of "fabric"..

 
Depending on where I put my template the squares will all be slightly different. I should be able to get 4 or 5 more squares and then I can move on to the next step. I still am deciding if I want to put sashing between the blocks.  I think I will because that way each unique block will stand out better.


 

Fitness and Health
I did 5 miles yesterday and hope to get out and do 4 or 5 today. I had a few days last week that I wasn't able to get out due to weather and did some walk DVD's at home. I know I get a much better workout when I go outside, but I like the dvd's (and Leslie Sansone's YouTube channel) to keep me moving. 


View from my Deck
This mornings pictures are not from my deck, but down at my pond. I wanted to share how pretty the iris flowers are this time of year.

 



Today's weather: High: 70  Low: 52



That's all for this week my friends,
Crystal

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