COLORS PARTY

Hello Sweet Peeps....I am joining the monthly blog Colors party at ETSY COTTAGE STYLE and I hope you will come join me by clicking on the link and visiting all the blogs showing their "whites" this month.....this is the month for brides and beautiful weddings, so it just had to be a "white" month.

It has been so cool, cloudy and even rainy here that I don't have much in my garden. Nothing is really interested in growing or blooming. I have lots of green and my Eden roses had their first gorgeous blooming but nothing white.....yet. So, I took my camera inside and shot a few of my inside whites....I use white and wood as I think they compliment each other and keep it from getting boring. I love colors, especially soft pretty pastel colors and white is a perfect backdrop for them...I admit to a love of red and blue, too, and use the stronger colors mostly the kitchen, I just have to sneak some in. lol!

Have a beautiful day and have fun wandering through our "whites!" Here are some of mine:
The first picture, above, is one of the guest rooms and where my computer is. I love all the comfy pillows and this is "my reading spot". Those two pillows in front are 20 years old!!! I could not believe it when I figured back to when I purchased them in Prescott, Arizona. They are by Waverly and were very expensive which goes to show you get what you pay for. They are made of polished cotton and have wide eyelet ruffles....the pillows behind them mostly have vintage cases....

I love this white picket fence shelf....it holds sweet olden baby shoes in black and other mementos.....I did the watermelon slice years ago.....sold hundreds of them it seems at shows...

A darling and very old little shelf above and another of my "picket" shelves, below....note the pretty white and glass terrarium...inside, it has the daintiest little wrens nest...all the twigs as fine as thread. One of my darling granddaughters, Miss Allie, found it and saved it for me a few years ago. I found a Robins egg that was mostly intact and it gently rests in that little nest....It is one of my favorite possessions!

A wall of white and olden plates with white backgrounds, a part of my olde Kitchen Hoosier and a beautiful spoon rack painted by Celestina Marie....Isn't it a beauty?


And, my last picture is of the dining which is mostly white with white lace curtains and swag valances...only a maple corner cupboard that was my Mom's, a grandfaher clock and my olde Singer sewing machine cabinet and an lovely olde oak chair were not painted....I am still debating on the corner cupboard...
Thank you for stopping by and I hope you enjoyed your visit!
Bye For Now....
Smiles and Hugs,
Jil

Come Smell The Roses

Welcome Sweet Pink Loving Peeps! Here is the way to Beverly's and all the fun and amazing blogs that love PINK as much as I do.....Be sure and leave Beverly a comment so she will know how much you enjoy this venue! Thank You Beverly! We just LOVE you!

Finally! The roses are blooming and the rose that holds the key to my heart is Eden. We have had a chilly and wet Spring and beginning to Summer and without the six hours of sun she loves, she has been taking her sweet time to burst forth, but here she is. Isn't she gorgeous?

Even though I use a Bayer product for my roses that is supposed to discourage all buggies, with all the wet we have them anyway. So, they are not all absolutely perfect, there is a little nibble hole here and there, but then, that is just Nature at work! Right?



Below are my hardy and pretty landscape roses.....never any bugs and they survive any weather, it seems. They just grow and bloom and make Mama happy!

I hope you enjoyed some of my roses!

I am planning my first ever GIVE A WAY! I would have had one long ago, but I had to figure out how make the little button for you all to take back to your blogs....so, When I get to 325 followers I will celebrate my first one....stay tuned!

Have a very Rosy Pink Saturday!
Love To You All!
Jil

Crazy Week

Oh mercy! What a week this has been. It seems like one thing after another, but thankfully none of them serious, just a bother!

Yesterday, my mail was hijacked and all of my addresses gone! I got that straightened out, but now I have to gather addresses again.

And, I lost my post I did earlier this week. I don't know where it went, but it is not here! lol! I have been having lots of problems with my computer. In fact, I have to come to my blog through Google Chrome if I want to stay on it. If I come in on Yahoo it just keeps loading and reloading and reloading. It wants to install a Flash of some sort, yet all it does is freeze up the computer.

So, on a happier note, I had said in the post that went missing, I have gotten enthused to go back to some painting.....here is the picture of a piece I did for a craft show that started that enthusiasm. I kept it by putting a stupid price on it. I did that because I had such fun painting all the hills and cottages and lost myself in it so much I did not want to part with it. Silly, I know! I did other paintings that sold, but this one will stay mine.

I had thought I would start with an old window that I lugged home from somewhere. I knew hubby could do any mending it needed while keeping it all chippy and shabby. He finally has "got" that down and it is so hard for him. He wants everything looking perfect and like new. :-) It looked like it would be a good day to work on painting the porch, so he did that instead and I worked on the little piece below which is now in my WEBSITE



While he was painting the steps, I was down in my basement "studio" painting this.

I am pleased how it turned out...it is just a sweet little accent piece!

Off for a walk.....our evening is just beautiful!
Bye For Now!
Jil

Hello All....This is our day to show each other our delicious PINKs, so be sure and go to Beverly's to find all the blogs to visit for this Saturday! Isn't she a sweetheart to hostess this for us? Thank You! Beverly.....

I have been doing a lot of this and that and when I look back over the week I don't think I accomplished much! lol! I didn't do any creating as I have been kind of "brain dead" in that department. Do you ever get that way? Or maybe it is just a touch of Spring Fever. Once in a while it hits and I have found the best way to deal with it is not to force anything and just roll with it....inspiration will come back in its own time!
I did do a little treasure hunting and found these two pretty plates...


They will probably wind up in tiered dessert servers....

And this little beauty I found somewhere on our way back home, last year, from Texas and California. I love this plate as the glaze is very different. It is a satin and it makes the roses and designs on the plate very soft and so pretty.

And here is a preview of what is to come....this is one of many buds on my climbing rose bush, Eden. The bush is just covered and I will be so happy to look out one day and find one has opened up.....this is a beautiful English rose and one of the most beautiful of all the roses!

A hanging basket I planted with bright blue Lobelia and pink and white Fuchsias. They have not been growing very fast or as well as they should with all of our cloudy and chilly weather! This has been such a different spring!

These are my pinks for this week so I am going to wish you all a wonderful and happy PINK SATURDAY and go and visit each of you!
Bye For Now,
Jil
xo

PINK SATURDAY ~ No Matter What The Weather May Be !

Hello Pink Saturday Bloggy Friends! And, how was your week? Just fine, I hope! It has a been a great one here, but the weather is strange, to say the least!!! Yesterday it was in the high 90's and it was HOT~ HOT~ HOT with lots of humidity and then today is so chilly it is back in jeans and a long sleeved shirt. The air conditioner went to off and the windows stayed closed! lol! When I came home from mailing boxes, this afternoon the car said it was 53 degrees!

One thing about this unusual weather is the flowers and lawns thrive in it! My gorgeous Eden rose is covered and I mean covered in buds! And, long ago, say seven years ago, I planted a Columbine in dainty pink. It just did not do well and I thought it had died....not so! It was waiting for a winter with more than twice the normal amount of snow and a spring full of rain to show off! As you can imagine, I was more than delighted. I walk out to just look at them. It is like a lovely gift! I wish the pictures did it justice. (* To see them up close, just click on each picture *)Aren't they graceful and sweet?




And, aren't these Pinks, below, pretty? They are not perennials, but they think they are as they nestle among my Arizona rocks. They come back every Spring! They are like an old friend!

And some Carnations that smell so spicy and good!

The Peonies are a different story this year....I have many big healthy bushes of them and a total of two blooms! I have been flabbergasted as I adore Peonies and could hardly wait for them to burst out in all their gorgeousness. One is out....

And I have this one to look forward to and then that is it! lol! :((((

Hubby knows of my distress over this and he, who always reads the Shopper, saw that there was an article by Martha Stewart on Peonies, and he sweetly brought it to me. It seems my problem is probably caused by a lack of Potassium. Next trip to my favorite nursery I will remedy that problem! In the article MS writes that with TLC you can sometimes coax them to bloom TWICE! Wouldn't that be heavenly?

This is all of my PINKS for this week! Now I am off to be inspired by all of yours!
Bye :-)
Jil
Be sure to visit our Miss Beverly for this Saturday's list of wonderful blogs celebrating PINK.....

Two Sweet Little "Belles"

Hello Sweet Friends.....
Do you love Southern Belles as much as I do? The pretty ones are few and far between, but these two are little charmers! I couldn't resist making a sweet pillow with them....
The pillow is newly listed at THE RUFFLED ROSE


~ JUST SOLD~
and is so pretty with the soft pinks and white with feminine side ruffles....

( If you click on each picture you can see them in more detail )

I want to share with you one of my beloved belles on a small doiley that I was lucky enough to win on eBay from a lady that collected them. She was downsizing her collection and now this lives happily draped over a pink and white stripped cushion on a chair in my dining room....note the tiny stitches and all the exquisite details in this piece....



Hope your week is starting out well.....I don't know what is going on in town, but sirens are going all over the place......I hope it is nothing serious, but I think it is a good time to stay home and start a new project! It is supposed to get warm again after, once again, donning sweaters. Maybe even a thunderstorm or two, today, too. That I would like!

I am getting over a little "bug." I thought I had severe allergies, but when it went into my chest, I figured it must be a little infection. I need to get over it so I can go and plant flowers.....this is a year we will have a short window of opportunity!

Sending Happy Thoughts to you all!
Jil

Pink Saturday And New York

Hubby aka Pa, Nolan And Allie,Lilly and me, Jack is in front and our daughter is taking the picture. This is at Lake George on our day of much fun!


Hello and Welcome Bloggy Friends! I hope your week has been delightful! I have been absent the last two weeks....we went to see some of the grandchildren and our daughter. It was Grandparents Day for the sixth graders and we drove to upstate NY to join in the fun. Believe me, that long, 500+ mile trip, was well worth it. We muched on sugar donuts and drank lemonade and decorated our kite. After it was decorated we put it together and once done we all went out to test them! It was a beautiful day....the forcasted thunderstorms knew they better stay away and they did! The kites flew perfectly in the breeze and when the afternoon was over we all went home happy!


Our darling Lilly, isn't she cute?, and her Grandpa who is known as "Pa." Thank heavens we had him as he can tie any kind of knot!



This is the greeting waiting for us done by Jack, our first grader grandson....wasn't that sweet? We were charmed for sure! It says, "Hi Mo And Pa HI" We are Mo and Pa to most of the grands.....

Before I go a dot further, be sure you visit our hostess Beverly to find all the wonderful pink loving blogs and do leave her a comment to let her know how you enjoy this event she so sweetly provides for us.

Much of our dear country has suffered through severe weather causing all sorts of misery as well as loss of life. Lake Champlain was over burdened just as the ole Mississippi was. More water from all the snow and rain than it could handle and so it spread out into fields, eroding the banks and leaving people homeless. It is hard to find words to express this kind of devastation, but I had a lot of tears in my eyes as I looked and wished there was something I could do. They have a long hard row ahead of them!

Water everywhere it is not supposed to be....huge bolders brought in to save the shoreline drive...

Thankfully our daughter and family live on higher ground near the lake and so they were not flooded.....the lake had 12' waves at one time during all of this that washed out cement walls, decks and docks. The damage is horrendous. They showed me a little house that was almost surrounded by water where an older lady lives. She refused to leave and I felt so sad for her. Her property is always so pretty with grass out to the water and lots and lots of flowers.... I hope the water stopped rising before it seeped into her house....

Allie and Pa

Lilly and Jack riding their bikes on the lane next to their home as well as flowers blooming.....the day was so warm and beautiful and the mosquitoes the size of elephants!!!



I helped our daughter weed one of her many gardens....then we had a delicious spring dinner and relaxed in the evening. It was truly a beautiful day!
The next day we all went to Lake George to play miniature golf and roam the shops and play! We found an arcade and had a blast! I walked and walked and believe me, I need to be doing a bit of that every day! It felt so good!

Kym teeing off and a hole in one, but the amzing thing was Jack! He had never played before, he is seven and he made one on a very difficult hole! The picture I took of him turned out all fuzzy! :((( Sorry Jack!

Miss Allie.....she played with her nice boyfriend of two years! This was their 2nd anniversary!

This is the prettiest bush with these white blossoms, but I can not remember the name and I have not had time to look them up in one of my many gardening books....

"Pa" and he made a hole in one, too!

Miss Lilly....she made a hole in one!!!

Our Miss Hannah left with her Dad on Friday for NY City and the weekend. She belongs to the schools drama club and they chartered this amazingly comfortable bus with several drop down big tv's and left to see three Broadway Plays.....They saw Wicked, Jersey Boys and Billy Elliot. What an experience for a thirteen year old and they stayed in a luxury hotel, too! Plus they met behind stage, the cast of Wicked...learned one of their songs and did a few dance steps....this will be a trip both will remember forever!

Arriving is always the best and saying goodbye so hard, but aren't we lucky that we can visit...We hope they can come for some of the summer and then our minds will turn towards Texas.

On the road again.....Driving the 401 headed SW to Toronto, Ontario, CA and home....
We found an antique where we stop to make sandwiches....and now I have a place to always stop on our trips North....








And we arrived home, it had rained so much the lilacs were not looking very pretty and they were tight buds when we left, but the Lily Of The Valley are beautiful and so are the Bleeding Hearts and Columbine.....we still had some pretty tulips and the roses are budding.






This has been a long post, but I hope you enjoyed seeing a bit of our trip and now I am going visiting....
Happy Pink Saturday and have a beautiful week!
Jil
xo