Edna Mae - What a Beautiful Lady - Remembering Grandma...

I'm currently unemployed, it's true. This isn't a pity party post though, no sir! :) ;) (also, why has blogger not enabled emoticons?! I NEED them to talk at you! O.O ;)). This is a short reflective post! One of the projects I have on my list for the not too distant future is to make two hats for my friends little girls (ages 2 months & 2 years old - joy! :D). The girls are adorable I assure you! :D In any case, the hat project had me perusing my crochet pinterest board (see it here - oh and follow too! ^-^) to show me all the goodies I've found on previous pinterest adventures! I worked my way to the bottom of the board and my eyes settled on a photo that made me slightly nostalgic... if you've been following my blog for a while you might remember it from this post.

I've been totally blessed by an outpouring of thoughtful people in my life who have passed on to me their yarn, their nicknacks, their stories of knitting/crochetting/tatting/crafting times gone by, their time and their patience. Namely I have to say my late Grandma Fagner was one of thee biggest gifters of her talents and time to me. She was involved in so many things throughout her lifetime and I realize she shared her passions as much as she could with me, my siblings, my cousins and so so many others. Here's a shot of my siblings, my mom and Grandma :) - this was the last time I saw her in person before she passed away. Isn't she adorable?!?!

Grandma lived an amazing life, she was 90 when she passed, though admittedly I thought she'd live to be 100 ;-), the lady had some spunk I'm telling you! After I was out of the Air Force I got to spend a lot of time with her, gardening, dancing & crafting. I am so fortunate to have had that time with her. I know she knew Jesus and that when the time comes I will see her again. Selfishly, of course I would rather have kept her here with us :). God's timing is perfect though and I trust that. Grandma looked beautiful and peaceful when I saw her for the last time at her funeral - the casket was perfect for her too! It had a lovely feminine touch with flowers and a beautiful light mauve color on the outside. The inside was a wonderful lavender and there was one embroidered flower. A lady til the end :). Grandma's are the best!

Over the years I've realized it was Grandma Fagner and my mothers love for peonies that encouraged my appreciation for this kind of flower... I was SO excited when I found out our last house grew them!! It's only fitting I share a photo of one of the blooms with you here ;)

And a few flowers I discovered existed in the past few years that I love too! :D

 Ranunculus'! 

Anemones!

Photo credit goes to Clarevision from their original post here.

"But Dawn, what is the point of your post?", you might be asking. 

Well, the point is, rather the points are: 

 - Hands down, my grandma was awesome. 

 - Thank the people that take the time to spend the time with you daily, you'll never regret it.

 - The flowers I like have everything to do with the beauty they are and that they remind me of my childhood.     Yes.

 - I have a lot of yarn I need to tend to and projects to make in between looking for jobs. ;) 

I hope this finds you doing well! now go do something the future you would thank you for! ;)

Gah! Where are those emoticons!!! XD

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Dried Flowers, Wooden Crochet Hooks & Fall Blanket Progress...

Yesterday my husband and I helped our neighbors move. The house they were moving from was a little bigger than ours and they moved into an even bigger house. After the move I realized two things, 1) our house is not all that big and 2) we don't really have that much stuff, we just have almost zero storage space. 

I was doing laundry yesterday and ended up in our white room sorting through dried flowers and the desk (someday I will have all my craft stuff organized ;) someday). I tossed a few of the dried flowers and then organized the rest to keep for potential photo props later :). I snapped a few pics of the flowers before putting them away because I wanted to share them with you!

Yesterday I received my first ever Furls Crochet hook! 

Furls was sweet to send me some complimentary thread with the package! 

Today I'm hoping to get back to my Fall Blanket. I've just about finished the body of the blanket. I might work one more row of squares if I find a color I like to add to one of the ends. Otherwise, the yarn pictured next to the blanket are the ones I plan to use for the edging. Can you believe this blanket is 45 inches wide by 60 inches long? I'm so pleased with how its turned out so far. 

I'm sure to do a post later with lots of photos. I really like this blanket! 

What else am I working on at the moment? I'm glad you asked! :) I'm also working on 2 Jayne Hat's and hope to have at least one done before the end of today but we'll see ;) So many projects, so little time! :) 

Loving a few lovely things..

...a few flowers really ;)

Black Dahlia's set against a dark background... makes me want to paint a picture just like it!!!

♥♥♥♥♥

Remain Simple shared this lovely photo... blue/black hair has me swooning! 
Braided with what looks like babies breathe to contrast... now I'm daydreaming of fields and prairies... 

or a river..

MoonandTrees on tumblr is adorable :) 
I felt this pic finalized the post quite well between the complimentary colors, the show of nature and the encouragement to be still, find peace and rest. I love that nature can remind us of these things... 

To add a bit of reflection... 

Isaiah 26:3-4

You will keep in perfect peace
all who trust in you,
all whose thoughts are fixed on you!
Trust in the Lord always, for the Lord God is the eternal Rock.  

♥♥♥♥♥

I hope you are having a wonderful weekend!  
I hope to post more this weekend of finds from this week as I was window shopping. :) 

Stay tuned! Or better yet - sign up for emails every time I post! :)

♥ Dawn

Birthday Daisies - Planted!

For my birthday my coworkers gave me some tea and a live daisy plant! Since the family was visiting and my mom has a bit of a green thumb ^-^ she planted them where the peonies used to be! Thank you mom! :D

Hopefully these pretties will fare better than the peonies did there. 

Quick update - the peonies transplanted about a month ago haven't grown any more :s nor have the dahlia's come up! I asked my mom about them when she visited and we cultivated the soil around it again. Maybe they'll come up next year? 

No matter - I will let you know either way! :D

Are there any plants that are struggling for you this year? 

Peonies & Black Dahlia's? I hope so! :)

This beauty, this beauty right here - is from a listing I have in my etsy shop - I used this lovely to add some color to the listings landscape and to show off the flower. 

After all it had come from my yard and was equally fragrant as it was beautiful :). 

 In 2010 though, we transplanted the huge peony bush and things haven't been the same since. :/

The peony plant that was once a flourishing flowering plant only gets this big after transplanting years ago.

***Dawn to the rescue!!!***

The peony bush is the tall plant in the middle. I had such high hopes for this transplant from 2010! The bush was so overgrown when we first moved in in 2009... you can see it to the far left of the house in the picture below, its covering the corner of our neighbors garage right in front of their truck:

Clearly it was a flourishing Peony bush before we moved to the back yard - but hasn't done well since.. 

no more flowers for me :(. This will not do!

Saturday my sister and I went to Home Depot after taking stock of what landscaping items we had, and found an perennial Black Dahlia. *swoons* When it comes to plants - I love anything white, light pink, dark purple and green. These color combinations just make me happy what can I say?

Back at the house - it was transplanting time!

Let the planting/transplanting begin!

BEFORE

We used to have this eye sore of a plant just parading around the the down spout and would share some orange flowers near fall season. 

I didn't much care for it and it just looks like a big mess with spiders most likely lurking in its leaves. 

No thank you!

AFTER

A bit of an improvement eh? ;) 

With my sisters help we dug up all the roots of the other plant and added a bunch of soil before placing the peony. I also added the Black Dahlia bulbs spacing them out in line with the rocks. 

Top View :)

 We set down newspaper and then added dirt under the rocks in an attempt to ward off having to weed too much. I don't mind weeding, I just hope the crab grass stays at bay!

 I am *so* hopeful this lil one takes off. I miss my peonies! :0)

They smell so wonderful and look amazing when they bloom! 

Of course I'm also excited to see how the Black Dahlia's do too! I've never planted flowers before, my history has been more in vegetable gardening and helping my mom when she would transplant flowers growing up in Iowa. Iowa soil is so much nicer than the clay soil in Virginia. 

We're working with what we got though! :) A Home Depot down the road a ways and some tender loving care to get these lovelies blooming! :) 

I will keep you posted on their progress! :) Are you planting anything new this year? 

Best, Dawn

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**Good News**

I know it's only been a few days since transplanting the flower on 4/27/13 but today 4/30/13 I am happy to report the peony leaves are already stretching out and growing! We've had a lovely light rain/misting the past few days which is perfect right after transplanting/planting these! :D

Landscaping Progress Over the Years

This past weekend I did some yard work and wanted to share the outcome of it with you. I felt I would be only sharing the tip of the iceberg with you though so I did some digging into my photo files to give you a more complete picture. Here is the landscape history of our house.

I'll share the landscaping project I worked on this weekend with you all tomorrow so stay tuned! ;)

In 2009 when we signed on our house, we inherited a lot of other peoples left over issues, er maybe not issues, but because they were too lazy to keep up with the house and yard properly we had a lot of work to do... the house was a diamond in the rough, full of potential, but left much to be desired. The house was stinky and there were nicotine stains on the walls (they smoked *inside* :( ), heavily soiled carpets (it would seem they never ever took off their shoes and didn't own a vacuum, a mess of a yard (rotting firewood, wooden playhouse falling apart), jungle gym for kids (this again, rotting). Twigs all over the yard under the grass, everywhere you walked there was a snapping sound. Apparently they hadn't thought to pick up sticks before they mowed huh? :s Meh...yard work was not the prior owners priority... geesh.... At any rate, we have come a long way. 

Here is the original front of the house... oh how I do NOT miss it... ☺

The front of the house overgrown shrubs and red landscaping bricks lined the house.

  A little while later, before moving in...you will note the open windows - ventilating the house - the ones that could be opened... we also spent this time cleaning the heavily trafficked carpets... oye vey..

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Here are many of the eye sores of the yard...

Oh the jungle gym... the oh so UNsafe playground... 

Back of the house - nice huge deck, but the lattice?!?! It had to go!

Rotting play house :( once I got it to the front curb it folded on its side.
This baby was heavy! All real wood! 

Branches and other debris collected where a large shed used to be (prior owners). 

Luckily we had a city wide clean up that fall and were able to set a lot of junk out on the curb to get it gone!

Yes, that's a refrigerator - it was full of mold when we moved in...
so we decided better safe than sorry.

Our curb as it appeared from across the street...
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In 2010 we removed all these icky shrubs from the front of the house... 

and put up some solar lights and planted a few *tiny* shrubs. ☺

We toned down the red brick fascia a bit by replacing the brick landscape siding with neutral cement blocks.
You'll notice we also added white rock on top of the soil (after putting down a plastic tarp).
A nice upgrade ;) it looks so much cleaner!

Where the shrubs were we planted grass seed and lined the cement walkway with cement blocks making them flush with the side walk. 

Here is a close up of the left side of the house near the walkway at night.

Here is a shot of the cement blocks lining the cement a few years later. The grass grew in nicely!

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We transplanted 4 of the 5 shrubs in the back yard - my family from Iowa visited to help with this landscaping project. Oh. My. Goodness. Could not have done this in record time without all of them! I love my family. I love their giving spirit and worker bee attitudes. At least I know where I get it from huh? :)  Oh! And in the time they were here not only did they help us tackle the landscaping but they also helped with the large sitting room upstairs.

Hasta's were brought from Iowa and planted near the base of most of the trees. Thank you Mom! :D This is the view as seen from the deck.

More Hasta's! You will notice the barren spots, this is where the toy shed was.
Grass has since grown in nicely!

The two Azalea Bushes & Peony Bush were transplanted from the front yard and were placed to the left between two trees.
There was another set of matching bushes we transplanted towards the back of the yard as well.

We planted grass seed in all the spots that were in need of TLC, and we recruited a lawn care service since then to properly take care of the lawn (aerating, fertilizer and seeding), it's been green and flourishing ever since!

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A few years later the family visited again and we took on the edging of the driveway -
what. a. chore!
The soil in Virginia is full of rocks! This was a huge undertaking. In some cases we had to break larger rocks so we could set the blocks flush with the ground.

The results were worth it! Here again I must credit my family, I'm so thankful for them.

As seen from the mailbox.

As seen from across the street. 

So to recap on the front yard progress - as far as the landscaping goes (we later found out we needed a new roof, siding, windows, etc. :s ) here is how it compares.

Before and after landscaping.

As mentioned, we've resided the house since then and there is a little bit more landscaping/transplanting that we did this past weekend but I'll share with you tomorrow.
 For now I hope you enjoyed the journey we've been on! :) God is faithful no? ;) 

Spring in Bloom II

Since the African Violets on my dining room keep gracing me with lovely flowers I thought I'd share them with you!

African Violet in bloom.

I so appreciate the textures of this flower :) The white petals glisten in the sun as if they were made of glitter!

I hope you enjoy the pictures and that your spring is off to a wonderful start! I so enjoy watching plants grow  - I wish I had caught a few snapshots of the tulips around the neighborhood that had sprung up... maybe next year since their petals have already wilted.

Spring is in bloom....

Last week my Grandma passed away, this had our family road tripping to Iowa and back again within a few days. Spring sprung up here in VA while we were gone and we were welcomed with open tulips and flowering trees galore!

Inside the house was a beautiful African Violet that was given to me by a prior co-worker, Juliet. This is the first flowering (ever!) and I wanted to share! 

Clearly Juliet has a green thumb as this lovely was grown by a leaf snipped from another African Violet plant. I tried to do this but ended up drowning the plant and then it rotted away :( (ew, I know). Maybe one day I'll get back to trying my hand at these lovelies! I think they are so pretty! I love the leaves too! So soft! :D

This weekend I hope to transplant a peonie plant of mine that used to *love* the front yard and it was flourishing! But then I moved it... and it's in a shaded area... I know I know... not a good thing for peonies but I'm going to fix that because I want my peonie flowers back! They make me happy okay! :) 

I'll try and take some pics of the peonie transplant adventure to share later. For now, please enjoy the first African Violet bloom of the year from me! :) 

xox ~Dawn