Headed to Tucson!!!!!!

With my grandmother on her one and only trip out west when we lived in Tucson...my husband is sporting the cowboy hat and I am holding our daughter, who now lives there with her own family.....

I am headed west again! I will be gone for almost two months, and my daughter doesn't have a computer hooked up...will be trying to do something about THAT while I'm there!!!! If I am successful, I will see you all when I can get online while in that sunny city!!!! Will have SO MUCH to post when I return if I don't. Be watching for my future posts. There will be so much to share!!!

Have an incredibly blessed Easter one and all.....

Marie

My Newest Creation!

A baby quilt for my niece's baby that is due in mid-June! It's a boy, named Hayden, and we are all very excited about the baby that is on his way! I had already made a rose and grey baby quilt that I haven't machine quilted or bound yet, thinking maybe one day I would have a grand-daughter to go with my grandson. I had the material and loved the colors and thought of making the quilt for a year or two before I actually started it. Then we found out our niece was expecting, and with our daughter's blessing (she SWEARS she is not going to ever have another little one!) we thought the rose and grey quilt would make a perfect gift IF it was going to be a girl. The, we learned that, nope, the little one is a boy, so I started in making the quilt you see below.

For you quilters out there--this is the THIRD quilt I ever finished. (I have about six more in various stages of done-ness! :-))It is only the second one I ever machine quilted (my first attempt at machine quilting was pathetic!) and I was really proud of the machine quilting on this! My first hand-quilted and complete quilt was made for our grandson and can be seen by clicking here. I am a VERY SLOW hand-quilter, so I will be machine quilting most of the quilts I make from now on, but I am really proud of the hand-quilting I did on our grandson's quilt. So, now I have two--one hand-quilted, and one machine quilted--of which I am VERY proud!

Spring!!

AHHHHHH.........at last!

Inspiration From Matthew Burns!

I am a country girl down to my toes. I love all kinds of music, but there is a soft spot in my heart for mountain melodies, old country tunes, ballads, hymns and sacred harp music. I have very eclectic tastes in music, from blues to classical to rock, but the old country and mountain music speaks to a part of me that nothing else does. I have not been able to visit so many of my favorite bloggers these last few months, and today I opened up Matthew Burn's blog and sat back to ENJOY! If you have never visited his wonderful blog, you are MISSING OUT! Click on the link for his Appalachian Lifestyles blog and you will be so happy that you did. Anyway, the post that really got to me was about the ballad Omie Wise! He supplied a link to YouTube so the reader could enjoy listening to a version of the song, and well, about seven or eight versions later, I was jumping back into his post and telling him how much it meant to me to learn this amazing ballad, and also to become acquainted with some of the artists that I listened to for the first time, in the process. So, I am going to also provide you with a link to YouTube to the same version of Omie Wise, but hey, listen to them all....:-) Omie Wise Have fun! Oh, phooey--it's not letting me link directly to the video. You'll have to do a search once you get on there. I need to learn how to embed the video into my post! :-) But, search under "Omie Wise" or Doc Watson, or Greg Graffin, and you'll find it. Sorry....

Festival Hill

...The International Festival-Institute at Round Top...
This is where I used to work! It's a marvelous place, and I have a post about it WAY back in my archives and if you want to look, click here. But, check out this YouTube spot by clicking on the link below too!

Festival Hill

Skywatch Friday--Steeples

This is Skywatch Friday and a view of skies in my world...for views of skies posted from all over the world, click on the link!
At my new "home" in downtown Suffolk it was delightful to discover four churches in a one-block stretch of Main Street. Each steeple is unique and interesting. The first one pictured here is of the United Methodist Church of Suffolk and is quite impressive. This photograph was taken on a different day than the other three, as you can see by the fluffy clouds:


This is The Christian Church next door....The bells often chime and serenade us with song from its fine tower:

This is the facade of St. Paul's Episcopal Church across the street:

Half a block down from St. Paul's is First Baptist Church of Suffolk, my new church home, now in its 180th year! (Not in this building, though) I love the strong history of these fine churches in Suffolk! And the bright blue skies are wonderful on the day these three shots were made...the clouds lovely on the day the first picture was made. Happy Skywatch!

Happy Birds

Mom's feeders have been COVERED in birds! There have probably been three or four dozen at a time, all over the feeders, the suet holders and on the ground below. Maybe even more--it's so hard to count them all! It's hard to capture the "multitudes" since the main feeders are in a small dogwood tree and the area behind it is an abelia bush. You lose so much detail. But we have been enjoying chickadees and sparrows galore, purple finches, cardinals, goldfinch and the occasional dove. And, there is a red-headed woodpecker that enjoys the suet feeder, and a downy woodpecker who also does. I caught the downy with my camera below, and a female cardinal as well.




Here is one of the many sparrows that are enjoying the feast...



And amazingly we saw two black phoebe, which are not as commonly seen at the feeder.






There was also another black bird I was not able to get a photo of. He was the size of the cardinals and looked like a redwing blackbird, but instead of the red patch, he simply had a buff-colored thin stripe on each wing. I looked redwing blackbirds up in a bird book to see if he could be a juvenile or a female, but there is not listing for just a buff-colored thin stripe in any form of the redwing. Does anyone know what he could be? Sorry there's no picture to help out.

Winter in Southeast Virginia

Wow....we FINALLY got some real snow! :-) So many of you have been enjoying the snow for a couple of months, but we've had a couple of dustings, and that was it. What a lovely day it's been!