Pillow Perplexities

One day Missy L was at Dominic and Holly's house and she ripped the decoration off one of their throw pillows. She was in big trouble! And it was a random silly reason, not an accident.

I felt it was important to teach her about restitution, so with her mom's permission, I helped her sew a new pillow for Holly. She had to pay for the pillow form herself, out of her allowance. This pretty pillow is the end result. It's a bit Christmas-y but Holly didn't seem to mind, and it fits with the red chair and red accents she and Dominic have in their living room. I had the fabric, so we didn't have to buy more.

Missy also had to give the pillow to Holly herself, and apologize and admit what she had done. She also had to admit it to her parents. Confessing was probably the hardest part for her but she was a brave girl and told the truth. Holly accepted it graciously and the matter was closed.

I fixed the old pillow as well as I could, since it seemed to mean a lot to Holly. I think her Grandma or someone like that gave it to her. So now Holly has two pillows.

Once Upon A Time

Once upon a time there was a little girl who was in love with life, and with romance. One day she asked her mother if she could have a bride doll for Christmas. Her mother said no, because they lived out in the country, and a bride doll would be exposed to dust and dirt.  The little girl was sad, and though life went on, she never forgot the doll she dreamed of.

When the little girl was grown up, she became a bride. Her sister Sandy sewed a beautiful dress for her, and she was happily married to her Prince Charming.

About ten years after they were married, Prince Charming gave the girl a pretty porcelain doll she had admired in the store. She bought another one on a special trip with her mother and some of her sisters. As time went on, she began collecting dolls from special occasions. One is from Easter, another belonged to her mother, one was given to her by her mother-in-law, whom she loves.

One day, during a casual phone conversation, the girl and Sandy talked about her dolls, and she mentioned the bride doll she'd always wanted. That year for her birthday, Sandy gave her a very special porcelain bride doll. It had a name on the tag, and the name was Nancy, which they both loved because it was the name of another sister.

After a few years, and a few moves, the girl noticed that the doll was showing a bit of wear. The veil wouldn't stay attached, and the socks fell down.  One day she decided to spruce up the doll. She carefully hand-washed the dress and petticoat, replaced the petticoat elastic, and created a tiara out of some little pearly beads.

She made a bracelet to match the tiara.

The girl used tiny hair elastics to hold up the socks.

Now the bride is ready for her wedding. The girl was amused to notice that the doll had no bloomers, as most porcelain dolls do. That may be a project for the future, but the bride is headed for her honeymoon, right?

Little Squirt Birthday Cake

I am a woman of many talents...cake decorating just doesn't happen to be one of them.  However, my grandson T wanted a cake shaped like a squirt gun for his birthday. It's expensive to special order such a cake, so the parents asked if I could do it. It was easy to cut out the shape, but when I set aside the pieces for the trigger guard and cap, Grandpa ate them!  Luckily I still had the corner piece, but I re-cut it in a hurry so it's quite out of proportion to the rest of the squirt gun.

The frosting is stabilized whipped cream. I wish I had a little more whipping cream so I could have made it thicker and my corners didn't show through so much.

I did get teased about the "IV" when it means 4, not 5.  Oops. I meant to put five, and I know it's V. I just goofed.  Notice the five white candles forming the "squirt of water" at the left side. The blue sprinkles are supposed to represent squirted water drops too. I "glued" them on with egg white.

T seemed to like the cake--and after he blew out the candles, he reached right out and ate some of the blue gel from the tray. I'm glad it was from there and not the cake!

Roses

My roses are blooming in spite of the rainy spring.  I pruned them last year, and gave them rose food early this spring, since I happened to find a bag of rose food spikes when we were sorting the garage.  Kevin has helped a lot with the roses, especially enjoying keeping the dead ones trimmed off for me.

The first one to bloom was gorgeous but rather shy, 

peeking out from deep in the foliage.

After that the yellow bush decided to go wild 

and bloom with dozens at once.

And here's a closer look at one vivid yellow rosebud. 

Yellow roses are for friendship, 

so here's a salute to my friends.

My Flower Garden

I got my annuals planted out front!  They don't look like much now, but in a few weeks I'll have pretty flowers. That's my favorite part of gardening. The gray-white things are dusty miller. They wintered over. They were big so I chopped them way back. It doesn't seem to have bothered them much.

I always cut off the blooms when I plant annuals, so they put their strength into spreading out for a while before they bloom, giving me bigger, healthier plants with more blooms later. Petunias are quick anyway, and they are already blooming in this bed, which I planted about a week ago.

These old buckets don't carry water any more, but they were gorgeous last year as planted containers.  Anthony rigged them up so the soaker hose from the rose bushes keeps them watered regularly.

The next one is an oak half-barrel with a plastic liner. It does so much better retaining moisture with the liner, and for annuals it only needs to be 6" deep, so it is not as heavy as it would be in case I decide to move it a bit. Once the flowers grow and bloom, you really don't even see the liner, just a tub full of blooms.

I didn't really do any high plants this year, because I'm pinching pennies, but I had to get a few flowers at least. I started some tall plants from seeds just to try them, but I don't know how much luck I'll have with them.  The tiny sprouts you can see if you look carefully are from last year's snapdragons. I scattered the seeds at the end of summer.