long time.........no blog....spring has sprung!

mud season

.....it's here.





well the pleasures of living on an unmaintained, for the most part, gravel road in the country can be celebrated as of this past week.





thank goodness for 4 wheel drive...it's the only way in and out of our road and will be until things dry out.


come some dry weather ....some major changes will have to be made. deferred maintenance prior to our moving to sweetwater bend will have to addressed. can you tell i am not too happy? do you think i will ever get all this mud off? there is simply no reason to run it through a car wash.....until june.

enter sweetwater bend at your own risk.....road under deconstruction....



meanwhile, crocus popping....woohoo! thank you dear lord!

roadside picture frame...done.

ya'll remember this frame......

it had one saving grace....it had the colors of my college alma mater....mizzou!!!!...but really the black and gold colors weren't it's real saving grace.....obviously. it was the unique wood frame.


i blogged about it a few weeks ago....i had picked it up on the side of the road on the eve of trash pick up out here in the country. i am telling you i have the best neighbors.....they throw out the best stuff on thursday trash days...


here's what i did with it.....




a couple coats of antique white spray paint. a few new pieces of material, including the black toile from hobby lobby. and see that tan twill material that was used for the matting? another roadside freebie from another neighbor that i found the following week. they threw out a perfectly perfect twill-style set of curtain panels, along with the curtain rod itself....hehehe. the amazing thing about this find was that i was on my way to the fabric store to pick up just about the same kinda material...what luck. kinda hated cutting the curtains up....but......

costs:

24x24 picture frame....$2.52...the cost of the toile

oh how i wish i could sew.....

now i can say i have.....


i have been admiring those cute pillowcase dresses that a lot of blogging mommas and g-mommas make for the young girls in their lives. i finally decided it was time to sit down at our 8 year old brand new (i had never used it, altho hubby had, once) sewing machine and try to make one for our granddaughter. i found these cute little notions at the sewing store and they inspired me even more to get my sewing on.



found a couple yards of fabric at the thrift store instead of searching any further for a non-existent cute vintage pillow case. where do all these sewers of those cute dresses find them? surely, i could turn this fabric into a pillowcase shape with a few stitches. i was able to....:)




the white cotton fabric had a lovely flower textured pattern....very sweet.





4 hours later...i know most sewers could make this in like ummmm... 30 minutes...a sweet little pillowcase dress for our granddaughter, courtney.





we went to visit her this past weekend....and it was just a wee bit big for the sweet little love.....but i am sure it can easily be altered, right? i see my first attempt at alterations in my future already when she comes to visit us ......and the sewing machine.

world's most beautiful drive

...peoria illinois' grandview drive.



if you get a chance to come to peoria, illinois you must visit this bluff drive that overlooks the illinois river. but if you can't get here anytime soon....let me give you a tour of the this grand drive. come on let's go......



here we climb the hairpin-turns hill leading up to the top of grandview drive.

when we see this sign we know we have arrived.




...when Theodore Roosevelt visited peoria, illinois on october 10, 1910, he called grandview drive the "World's Most Beautiful Drive." grandview is revered as one of the most beautiful drives in peoria because of its breathtaking views of the illinois river and the many historic and remarkable homes lining it.

grandview drive is a two and a half mile scenic road and the whole drive is part of the peoria park district. the east side of the drive is mainly park distric land with picnic areas and benches. the residential area on the west of grandview drive, opposite the river, was added to the National Register of Historic Places as an historic district in 1996.

there are few different styles of homes up here on the drive. i seem to be drawn to the stone cottage and castle-type homes.















this home was just finished over the winter.....it is the newest home on the drive. notice no landscaping......yet.


there are many styles of homes.



but my favorite home on the drive is the one around this corner........


here it is close up....



in the summer the owner plants gorgeous planters of flowers on that triple balcony and they trail down the front of the home.....i think the white of the home just makes those planters pop. the home is quite different than the stone and brick homes that line the road.

most of the residents along the drive have this type of "grand view" from their front yards.










there is even a dvd available from the pbs.org website about the drive.

http://www.shoppbs.org/product/index.jsp?productId=1991305


roosevelt was quoted as saying, "I have traveled all over the world, and this is the world’s most beautiful drive." teddy you were right. we are blessed that we live so close to such a wonderful place and enjoy our walks up and down the drive. such a grand view!

ponderisms....i can take a hint

ok...the other day i was getting massive amounts of texts and emails from my hubs. he definitely likes keeping in touch when we are apart. one of the emails was titled, "ponderisms". i think it was emailed to me because he wanted to do a blog post....hehehe. i took the subtle hint....so today's post is written by him to some degree. really it was the least i can do, after what he did for me a few days ago. you will see what i mean as you read on. here's my dear hubs with our youngest son....just a few years ago.....:)



look at those dreamy blue eyes they both have....i am so blessed to have both of their sets of steel blue eyes to look at for the rest of my life.

here are his thoughts....


"ponderisms"

I was driving in the morning and the thought hit me that any other generation before us would absolutely marvel at the way we live…



1) Getting the opportunity to operate a motorized vehicle to get to work…with a heated interior in the winter and a cooled one in the summer.

2) Being blessed with a domicile that is sealed from cold winter winds and the dry hot summer sun that contains every convenience (too many to list).

3) A plentiful and abundant food supply, oh lest I forget…fresh water (and too many other beverages to mention)

4) We are blessed with doctors, nurses, EMT’s, police, firemen, etc. that respond to our “emergencies” (whether real or contrived).

5) We have a system of government that allows us to complain about EVERYTHING mentioned above and yet, if we took the time to count our blessings we would realize…we really have nothing to complain about.


good points hubs.


and thank you for making a wish list item come true....a little sooner than i thought. glad you read my emails too.....hehehe.




and special thanks to janean at old sweetwater cottage who blogged about this flatware in a post a few weeks ago....i have been obsessed with this flatware since then. i had emailed hubs that if he wanted to get this sometime this year for us, they would make a great present for a special occasion. i really did not expect the flatware much before next christmas.....i was so surprised to get them just a few months sooner....:) really, i did want to pine for them a bit longer....lol. oh wells. the pattern is called napolean bee. the pattern was commissioned by napolean, himself. the silver flatware is available at neiman marcus and horchow online.

a very big thank you to my loving hubs.....for really picking up on my obsessions and delivering them with unexpected timeliness. love you hubs...you can be a guest blogger any ol' time.

simple loves and jergens

we have a simple master bath and i have a few new and old loves in it.



when we looked at this log cabin i fell in love with the many special touches that dwelled within it. this faucet in our master bath, to me, was one of the most special touches. i love how the handles look like old pump handles, but are in a modern pewter finish. i have never seen a faucet like this. it reminds me of simpler times.





and these simple textiles i found, by accident at walmart last week. don't you love going to walmart and coming out with something totally unplanned? i decided when i saw these that our masterbath needed a little update for spring. of course, that thought hadn't entered my mind before going into the store. ahhhh well.....i love how the two different textures of the shower curtain and the nubby rag rug play off each other. they are simply cotton. simple..... i love that for spring.




here they are in place........again.....simple...love the look.




and finally....i absolutely love the smell of jergens lotion.....too simple, right? my grandmother always had this in the bedroom i slept in at her home. there was a glass bottle of it in the top drawer of the 1930's waterfall dresser that was next to the old iron bed that i slept on. i wonder if grandma really even used it, as it was in an out of the way room in her house. and i think that same bottle was there for years in that one little drawer. i loved opening that drawer and smelling the lotion in it with each visit. the smell of it reminds me of her home, not so much her, herself. i don't actually remember her smelling of it, but i remember the smell of that room and that drawer...... i love simple jergen's lotion.

do ya all have a certain smell that reminds you of somewhere special?