Monday, July 5, 2010

Christmas and Arts & Crafts in July


It's Monday morning.   Thank goodness, I think I'm back on a regular sleep schedule.  Monday, of course, is lawn and laundry day at our house.  No lawn today because it's raining.  This is one of the beauties of working out of our home.  I can work and do laundry at the same time.  Also, I don't have to get out in the rain to go to and from work.  Sweet.

This morning 3 of our 4 pots of lemon balm on the deck is dead.  We don't know what happened.  Maybe too much rain.  The lemon balm really does smell like lemons but better than that, it contains natural citronella.  I think we are going to empty the pots in a nice, sunny spot in the yard and try again.  I've never had problems with the lemon balm before, so this is puzzling.

The tomato plants are very lush but no tomatoes.  I looked it up on the internet yesterday and it said that if you have several consecutive days of temperatures over 90 degrees that the fruit will not form.  That must be the case.  So, I'll just continue to pamper my tomato plants and maybe when the temperature gets down in the fall, we will have tomatoes.  At least that's my plan.  Bell peppers and green beans, however, are doing extraordinarily well.

George had planted some hibiscus in the front yard that have blossumed this year.  Those dark pink flowers are gorgeous.

It was a pretty active weekend for us.  Friday night we attended a cocktail party on the beach.  Saturday we met for lunch with George's sister on Perdido Key, and yesterday we had a delightful afternoon with the neighbors celebrating the 4th of July.  I guess most people in the US have a holiday today, but not me.  I don't even mind because I love what I do.  It's part of my life.

I've been working on lace lately.  Today I actually think that I'm going to post some handkerchiefs with my lace on Etsy.  I'm still trying to combine the black and white, french and animal themes throughout.  That's not easy for a girl who loves color.

We have a few orders that need my attention this week.  Some pillowcases, scarves and bags.  I need to get to Cantonment to my favorite fabric store.  Maybe I can do that tomorrow.  They are probably closed today.  I think they are closed on Monday's anyway.  That'll take awhile because once in that store I touch everything and look at everything.  It's my playground.

Also this week, I'm hoping to build a light box.  I've read that a light box will help with the photography of my items.  We'll give it a shot.

Since it's now July, it's time to start thinking about Christmas and the upcoming Arts & Craft Festival on the beach.  Need to work on getting enough items in stock to fill our booth for the October Arts & Craft Festival.  I haven't heard a lot about it this year and I sure hope we are still doing it, in spite of the oil situation.

Also since it's July, I have to pay our quarterly sales tax.  Paying it is not as bad as figuring it out.  Poo yie.  Not my favorite thing to do.

Nevertheless, July is going to be busy.  Since George has the job with Deepwater Horizon now, I am not going to have my right hand man here to help with the embroidery. 

On our Mexico Beach trip we had some fabulous food.  My friend, Lynn, sent the recipes and my absolute favorite was the spinach balls.  I made them the other night.  My intent was to make them and take them to the 4th of July celebration.  However, George and I ate all of them.  I want to make some substitutions to the recipes that keeps the wonderful flavor but leaves out or substitutes some of the high coloric ingredients.  Spinach is so good for you.  It's really the butter and bread crumbs that are the only high caloric ingredients.  I'll see what I can do.  It's an easy recipe that even I can follow.

Back to work.  Stay posted.

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