Outdoor Fire Place

Last year my husbands best friend hired me to help renovate a 1900 year old home for his firms CPAs office. It was a great project and was going to put some of the before and after pics on the post but discovered they are on another computer. Maybe I will do that later. But the main reason I was writing this post was because out of this project.  We were given about 1200 old 1900 year old brick from the side yard of this old house that survived the fire earlier in the 19th century.

My husband went and loaded the bricks into his truck and made five trips back and forth to bring them to our back yard.  We hired a brick mason and chose this picture of an outdoor fireplace for the mason to go by.

Below is a picture of the completed project, one that we are very pleased with. The screen cover is just something we will use during the summer to decorate, and this fall we will have to find a real screen. This is actually a garden gate that we purchased several years back and never used it for it's intended purpose.

Hyde Park, New York Trip

Hi Everyone,

This post was intented for the start of summer, and one that I meant to share with you but didn't have the time to post after we got home from our trip to New York in June.  Even though summer is almost over I wanted to share because Hyde Park/Roosevelt's Home was such an interesting place. Maybe some of you have seen it, but awesome place to visit.

Decorating My Half Bath/Toilet Room

Well it's not something I usually post, but thought this tutorial might be interesting to some, so I decided to post it on my blog! So here goes. I hope someone out there learns just a little from this post and also enjoys it. I always like to see photos of what others are doing in their homes.  I sometimes just wish I could knock on a door in a neighborhood and ask if I could see their house because I find their yards are so pretty.  Anyway..... here goes!

Friendships

As many of you, I have several groups of friends.  They come from different social groups that I hang with such as dinner club, garden club, book clubs, social clubs, bunko, and old school friends.  And...as you know you never are short for conversation when you get together.  It's like yesterday when you finally are able to share your thoughts with one another and catch up.  I cherish those times together.

But, as I get older I have come to realize that we are all friends for a reason.  God has put each one of us in each other's lives for a purpose!  My mother, whose picture is in my heading in the white dress,  always taught me that you should have three (3) sets of friends. The first set of friends should be older than you, so they can mentor you as you grow in the Lord. They help you temper your life to His liking and assist in His plan for you.  And, they have great recipes!

The second set of friends are your age and share in your life as you both go along the way.  You usually have children the same ages and have so many wonderful memories of childhood stories of when you were raising your children.  You also encourage, help, and love one another as you grow together, and travel along life's paths.

Finally, the third set of friends are those that you are mentoring, as they are younger than you. Sharing what God has done for you and will do for them if they are faithful.  As you cherish all three groups, these younger ones are the friends you love to watch grow as hopefully you have grown through the eyes of the older generation that mentored you.

As I see these groups that I hang with, I noticed that we all are there for each other, as in a marriage, through sickness and in health, in bad times and good; having fun; enjoying fellowship with one another; and learning and leaning from and on each other.

I thank God for all my friends and pray that they will continue to love me as I love and cherish each and every friendship that comes my way.  I always want to be a good friend, trusted and true, and pray that God will help me as I strive to continue doing just that.  I know my friends are just that to me also.

So call your friends today and meet them for lunch and cherish the time together!

My Sweet Grandson!

Harrison, my oldest grandson who just turned 7 last month, drew a pic that I wanted to post.  I thought it was very ingenious of him to label it the way he did.  I think it's simply adorable and wanted to share! As you can see it says:
Name: Harrison
Harrison (Spider-man)
Alex: Venom
From: Harrison
To: Alex
I thought this was so cute since he added all the punctuation
 

2013 Spring/Summer Garden Projects

 

Hi Everyone, it 's been a while since I have written in my blog, but thought since I was seeing all these new ideas on everyone's blogs I would also give it a try.  I plan to also include a few of my embroidery/sewing projects that I have been working on, but don't have the pictures with me to do that right now, so I will be writing about my "yard/gardening" projects.

Here is a picture of my side yard near the neighbors and our brick wall that separates the property.  This pic was taken last month before all the grass turned green.

I want  to put in a new flower bed and met with our gardner last evening to help me do just that.  We do have a guy that comes several times a month to help out with what I call "Jr Projects" but Jr., my husband is not involved.  He used to be and still does a lot in our yard, but we have both gotten to where it's easier to get some help with these things.

So, now that you can visialize the yard and the brick wall, the bed will be like a snake along the wall about 4 feet wide.  I plan to put in pink Knock Out Roses and  border it again with the Monkey Grass that you see on the other beds.  I hope to add two architechtual cut lattices to the backdrop as this brick fence is about 40 feet long. I'll post when I get this beautiful bed done!  This will be fun!