Miniature Hearts Quilt - Happy Valentine's Day

Hello from the frozen beach!

Happy Valentine's Day! 

This little cutie has been in my collection for many years.

It's dated 1985. Fun to see the calicos that were available at that time.

Happy Valentine's Day!

love

lizzy

gone to the beach.....

Mo the Pug Goes to the Beach

Hello, everyone! Guess what! Yes, we are having another winter weather ''event''. It's gloomy and icy. No surprises, it's February, after all.

Mo tries hard to be a good puppy [11 months old on the 20th!] but no matter what the weather he wants to get out and run. And run and run.

his dog show pose

This is what greeted us today when we went to check out the beach.

Glaciers! Drifts from last week's snowfall.

And a lot of flooding and ice. This is frozen salt water! Oh yeah, it's cold this year.

A few weeks ago, before the weather got so dismal, a friend came by to help me take Mo to the beach. Mo goes wacko when he hits the sand and he is small but very strong. I can't control him or run fast enough to exercises him properly. And after he escaped from his harness one day we wanted to be sure that if he did run off he'd know where ''home'' is.

Off we went to the beach. Mo and my friend ran ahead...yay! They were so happy, having so much fun! Mo had never seen the ocean close up before.

And THEN!--- wouldn't you know, the cops came!
So fast!
And it was the Bay Constable, how scary!
We don't usually see the BC on the beach, more often I wave to the county police, or the Public Safety police. Occasionally the DEC police, whose Jeep always draws a mean snicker, as we read that as The Decorating Police. What they give out tickets for tacky umbrellas and mismatched beach towels? [Dept. of Ecology and Conservation, I think in real life. They're the Plover Police.]

Meanwhile the Bay Constable came right away and stopped to chat. Uh oh. The officer was nice but he made us leave the beach. Dogs are forbidden on the beach but there's sort of an unspoken custom that in midwinter, when there's no people or rare birds , it's okay or at least tolerated.

(If you think it's mean that dogs are forbidden, just picture a going out on a beautiful day with your picnic and beach stuff and family and sitting in a mess of dog poop! Not to mention I've had a few close encounters with unleashed very large possibly scary dogs when I've been walking on the beach. I love dogs but I'm wary of  strange dogs. One was even a Great Dane! Best the dogs stay home, in a general way.)

Back home Mo keeps me company while I sew.

He is so smart! Look at this, he has brought his little old baby bed, that came with him from California, I keep it in the kitchen so he doesn't have sit on icy tiles. And he has carried into my work area, and set it in the only patch of winter sun. He sets it on a weewee pad for extra warmth.

As the sun moves, every so often, he tugs his little bed further east, back into the warmth.

This week my grocery had Dollar Days sales, and I got Mo a pack of kitty fish poles games, 2 for a dollar. [plastic pole with elastic cord, ball and feathers]
Pugs are oddly catlike---they like to sit on your shoulder, pull the elastic out of your ponytail, stare at you blankly when you call their name, stuff like that--- and Mo thought the kitty toys were awesome.

So...he destroyed them. But it gave him a lot of fun for a buck.

Hope you all are warm and cozy! How I envy those of you who have had a few warm days.

love

lizzy

gone to the beach

Random Wintery Notes : Puttering Around and Shop at Home

rare [for the beach] cardinal, coming in closer for food?
He's been out there with his ladies all week.

Hi everyone! Happy February..."Oh the weather outside is frightful..." It really is pretty bad, 2015 is shaping up to be a nasty winter, isn't it? And as the ice-and-snow days keep coming, it gets hard to stay focused and accomplish all those things you put off last summer, when you thought, Something to do in February.

I have to pee out HERE?

Some tasks are so tiny, so tedious. LOL. Like I cleaned the threads off the roller thing on the big vacuum. Yay! I moved the large chests in the bedroom to sweep out the dust bunnies hiding by the baseboards. I prepped a quilt to be sent off to a new quilter, for custom quilting, finger crossed!

I sorted the herbs on my fridge door, washed their shelves. I found out I had two little jars of poppy seeds, of all things---plus a mix for lemon cake in the baking bin. Oh goody! A lemon poppy seed bundt sounded delicious.

I also found a can of Duff's cupcake frosting, hmmm. I think I will mix it with a few tablespoons of my Christmas Grand Marnier and drizzle it on my cake . Then I'll slice the cake and freeze it so I have a nice tea cake all ready if a friend stops in for a visit and a cup of tea. Surely with all the snow shovelling we've done we can have a sliver of cake?

Let's see what else? Oh I made chili again. I revised my recipe: use two large cans of tomato paste, not one plus a can  fireroasted tomatoes. They make the chili too watery.

And while I was hunting around for I think fabric dye (I keep my dyes on a high kitchen shelf where no one will accidentally mess with them) and I found this collection of adorable pastel McCoy pots. 

So sweet, so spring-y. I think maybe they once held my mom's African violet collection and/ or some were dump dug back in Illinois, by my dad.

I plan to fill them with tiny daffodils or primroses if I ever get to the flower store. Or maybe windowsill herbs?

Sadly I immediately fumbled and dropped the little pink pot! My fave! It just makes the collection so perfect, so I glued it back together. But I was sad. Maybe closet rummaging is a bad idea?

 I had fun shopping in my cupboards, finding the cute pots, a couple of big Mason jars, and a base for another pincushion. Despite the loss of pinky. [something to look for next spring at the flea]. Who knows what I'd find in the closets....

I am ordering a special heating pad for Mo's crib. He sleeps in his crate at night and when I get him up each morning his fur is so cold! I've upped the heat in that room to 65* for him, my usual is 55", but he still seems cold. This is a non-electric microwave warming pad. I hope he is warm and cozy with it. Snuggle-Safe

My paper whites, week 2:

And last note: remember how I said the cold air is invigorating? That it seems like it has extra oxygen. Well, who knew! It does.

''Cooler air is more dense than warmer air. Warm air can actually hold more moisture because molecules are farther apart, making more room for moisture. Cold air is dense and compact; it's "thicker," so when you breathe in you get more oxygen.''  Cold air DOES have more oxygen

So, get out and enjoy the good cold air, icy days excepted of course.

love

lizzy

gone to the beach.....

below, snow encrusted dunes...I wish you could have seen them last night under the full moon. They glowed.