Good morning and Happy Friday!! Another fun filled weekend at the lake awaits me. And that means I have a gazillion things to do to get ready. But first, I have to check out what is going on in Blogland of course. I wanted to mention that yesterday when I was visiting some of my favorite friends, I happened to find out that there is an event called White Wednesday's hosted by Faded Charm Cottage. It is pretty self~explanatory and sounds like a lot of fun. I think I am going to join up. It sounds like a lot of fun and who does not have a lot of WHITE hanging around?? LOL!!!

So while I perused blogs, I had a spot of coffee...

...and looked in dismay at all of the clean laundry I did yesterday, that has to be folded today...

...and then I spotted the newspaper, and maybe you heard the news. Mark Buehrle of the Chicago White Sox threw his first perfect game yesterday against the Tampa Bay Rays. This has only been done 18 times in major~league history!! Well I won't bore you or myself with this as I know you all know from a recent post, that I am not a big sports fan, but...GO SOX!!!!

So after the laundry is folded, I will have ironing to do as I left it all squashed in the baskets all night. My family is fully aware of all the obstacle courses Blondie creates in the name of housework

Then off I go to water my flowers...

I am pretty proud of myself for planting 3 more pots yesterday! Yep! Still planting pots. In July (almost August, actually). I still have more flowers sitting in the driveway outside the garage door. They are doing pretty well except for the flat of petunia's I ran over with my car.

I call the ones in pots Survivors!!

I have some really pretty day lily's blooming in the backyard...this peachy one.

And this pretty yellow one.

And I have this cute little chive flower in my herb garden that will drop seed for next year. Maybe I will snip some to bring with me to the lake. Sprinkle a little on some deviled eggs or in a salad.

And of course, I can't forget to water the indoor plants. This is Mr. Palm that spent last summer at the lake. We couldn't bring him back because he outgrew my car!! He and Monster Fern are here to stay!

And then I will pack up my tote bag. The weather here is sunny and in the 80's, so I don't need much more than a bathing suit and some shorts. Yes!!

And then off I go to run some errands We have company coming so it's always nice to have some goodies. I'm pretty much happy eating S'mores all weekend but some people are finicky and want three square meals. Go figure.

And I thought I would bake a little dessert. And of course, by now you know Blondie does not bake, so if you look closely at the picture below, you will see that I have a little helper!

I wanted to mention that Martha from Lines from Linderhof is posting a recipe for a Lemon Blueberry Tart (or cake, I forget). I think I will try that. Blueberries are at their peak right now and not very expensive at all, especially if you get them at a farmer's market.

So, Abby is at her friend Nora's cottage on Lake Michigan in Indiana and will be meeting us.

And Emily and Mike went up to our cottage yesterday. I called her last night to see what was up and she said, "Well, I'm relaxing on the patio with Layla in my lap, drinking your wine." The nerve!! I said, "Emily, quit being me!".

The lucky girl and her boyfriend had tickets to see Elton John and Billy Joel play at Wrigley Field Tuesday night.

That would be one great concert to see. The two Piano Men! We saw Elton John in Vegas a few years ago but The Husband doesn't care for him. He got tickets for us to see Cher in Vegas this year. That will be a blast! I think this will be about her 15th comeback tour. LOL!!

I showed you all U.S. Cellular Field a few weeks ago and now this is Wrigley Field or The Friendly Confines. But pay no attention to me, I am NOT a sports fan!!!

And here is a closing shot of Elton, I believe. And another thing, she saw Bruce Springsteen a few weeks ago. I have always adored him!! I'm telling you, the girl is living my life!!

I wish you all a wonderful weekend. Stop by Mrs. Magpie, it is her birthday today. I am going to get on my laundry and then run out to get dessert, I mean stuff to make dessert!!

xoxo

Jane

MET MONDAY: DIVA'S!!!

Today I am joining Met Monday for the first time. Yes, yes, I know it is only Friday, but we are starting to stay up at the lake until Monday night (whoo~hoo!!) and I don't always have a signal for my laptop...I will be linking up with Susan at Between Naps On The Porch, who is the hostess of this event. On Monday, go to Susan's blog to see her post and all the others gals joining up.

This post, as a lot of my posts, involves one of my odd but lovable daughters. But let me first ask; have we all have seen Gone With The Wind or read the epic novel by Margaret Mitchell? Let's see a show of hands... Well, one of my favorite scenes is when Scarlett rips the green velvet drapes off the window to have a gown made since she can no longer afford one. Likewise, you may have seen the parody on The Carol Burnett show a zillion years ago. Not only is Scarlett (Carol) wearing the dress, but the curtain rod is also attached! Oh, it can still bring me to my knees with laughter!!!

This is Vivien, not Carol. Well, anyway, take a look at what I saw when I walked in to Abigail's room the other day:

You may remember the two beautiful gowns that she wore for her Senior prom and her graduation, respectively.

Yes, she decided to use them as draperies! Is she out of her mind?? Of course! Is she creative? Er...Yes!! Am I livid? You bet!

What led up to this impulsive act by my daughter is that her curtains were constantly falling down as her bed is up against the window. Finally, the rod broke off and in a moment of inventiveness, she hung the dresses as drapes. So, now I would say that she has a window treatment that cost in the area of $700.00...

In all fairness to Scarlett, wouldn't she have won over more of our momentary compassion that she had accepted her fate if she had come home from the gala and re purposed that dress into drapes for that bare window?? If only Scarlett had had dear Abby's sense of frugality!! Oh, but frankly, who gives a damn!!

So this is my contribution to Met Monday. If you have any formal gowns packed away, perhaps your wedding dress, may I suggest you bring it out of storage and put it to good use?

THANKS SUSAN!!!

Now I have something else I want to share and this might just be keeping with Met Monday. I happened to hear about a website called Renee's Garden that specializes in flower, herb and vegetable seeds. These are not your average seeds. They are imported from all over the world and she has many antique varieties. Wouldn't it be lovely to have the same flowers that grandmother or great grandmother had? I originally went to the site to order Sweet Peas. I entered through this gate:

And behold, the most beautiful illustrations of all nature's blessings! Mrs. Scott Elliot Columbine from France, Hummingbirds Choice Color Fountains Cleome (which Thomas Jefferson adored and planted in profusion in his garden at Monticello). I ordered exotic and tropical~ looking Ruby Moon Purple Hyacinth Bean, and Gulf Winds Alyssum that will send honey~scented perfume wafting through the air. And for my friends in the South, suffering from this intolerable heat, there is Maiden's Feather Cypress Vine which is heat~loving and twines up effortlessly in "an exquisite tracery of fine cut feathery foliage".

And of course I ordered Jewels of Albion Sweet Pea which is a "custom blended color palette of especially fragrant antique variety seeds". Ooh la la!! I personally love climbing vines because I love to see color at eye level and above. You can also disguise less than desirable features in your yard such as ugly sheds, fences or outhouses. And in an effort to be a little more frugal these days, I want to start plants from seed and the selection I chose will do very well that way. Some are perennials and some will drop seed and come up the next year. I can then transplant some of the seedlings elsewhere.

I just get so excited when I find a website I love, especially like this one with all it's eye candy.

So I am going to get outdoors today and plant some of these darling little seeds and see what happens!! At $2.79 a pack, I am saving tons of money not buying potted plants. So for a future Met Monday, I will show you some of my perennials that are just plugging along in their barren little spot of my garden, and then I hope to show you a plethora of vines and blooms! Oh, am I optimistic or what? I encourage you to visit Renee"s Garden and dream a little bit!

Finally, this is a show I watched the other night and maybe you did too. The title makes it sound like a reality show, but I really liked it. And I am not a television watcher. There are probably a lot of great shows out there but I am a really addictive person, so I just don't turn the T.V. on. Simple as that. I only have so much life ahead of me and I don't want to spend it in front of the tube. But, it wasn't my fault Sunday night. Abby left it on and I was immediately engrossed in this dramedy. I don't want to drone on about it, but I will. A model wannabe (Deb) meets Heaven's gatekeeper, Fred after being in a fatal car crash. Deb tries to persuade Fred in to returning her to her former shallow existence and instead she ends up in the body of recently deceased Jane (Go Jane!!), a brilliant, thoughtful, plus~sized attorney. So this Jane person is sort of mixed up, hating her new appearance, but also being amazed at her new found intelligence and sensitivity (this is the Deb/Jane mix). It doesn't sound plausible but it works. It is really funny, Fred (the gatekeeper) lurks around keeping Jane's morale up, and then there are parts, such as when Jane sees her fiance mourning her (when she was Deb) and then seeing one of her man~hungry co~workers hit on him and there is nothing she can do!!

Okay, I have droned enough. But this show sort of fits in with Met Monday, don't you think? Skinny, mean person turns into plus~size heroine. Drop Dead Diva is on Sunday nights at 9:00 ET/PT on Lifetime. There is an encore performance on Monday nights. Let me know if you watch it and what you think.

Now, I was going to go out and plant those seeds, but it looks like rain. I think I will have lunch and take a nap. I'll worry about it tomorrow!!

Have a great weekend, everyone!!!

xoxo

Jane

2nd TIME AROUND TUESDAY AND THREE OR MORE TUESDAY: PRESERVING THE PAST

Today I am joining everyone in Three Or More Tuesday, as well as 2nd Time around Tuesday, hosted respectively by Tam at The Gypsy's Corner and Diane at A Picture's Worth A Thousand Words. After you leave a comment, please visit these two ladies to see what they have to offer today. Then visit all the participants who have something to share for these events. Have fun!!

First off, for 2nd Time Around Tuesday, I am showing the before and after pictures of the God awful shutters on my house. Yes, God awful. I have had to live with these G.A. shutters for 23 years!! 23 God awful years!! Okay, you get the idea. Our house is a cream colored brick with brown trim. I have wondered and pondered and considered and prayed for ways to change the color without actually selling the house and getting as far away from it as possible. I mean brown!!! And the reason said shutters can't be changed is because all of the gutters and soffit are brown as well. And The Husband has declared that he is not going to have perfectly good material ripped off the house to change perfectly good brown shutters. So...

One day Future Interior Designer Daughter (FIDD) came to me and said, "Mom, I saw the most cool house the other day. It was the same color as ours and it had chocolate brown and blue trim." So I thought, you know, brown and blue look marvelous together. I mean, look at my blog!! Well, we knew we had to do it without The Husband knowing. Generally speaking, we had to "sneak around". So the plan was hatched. I'd whisk The Husband up to the lake while Emily did the deed. Well actually, we were going to the lake anyway, so there was no real whisking involved, but The Husband was out of the way and Emily set to work!

The G.A. brown before:




And the pretty blue after!!

Isn't it great?? Emily also put up flower boxes (as best she could), trimmed the shrubs and spread new shredded bark around them. She had to trim back some of the ivy but that's okay, it was starting to need it's own driveway. The house looks colorful and fresh and the blue goes well with the brown. And does The Husband like it? Nope. Now on to Three Or More Tuesday...

Back during the winter I went to one of my favorite antique stores, the one where The Husband scored the set of china in the auction for $40.00. Remember? I found the three items shown below and bought them on the spot. I knew they would look great together on the sofa table in my den.

Now, Florida Sue at Lux Lanai has the naughty habit of leaving price tags on everything and I am the opposite. So I can't tell you if I got a deal or not.

The lamps are heavy glass and silver with etched glass hurricanes. The only problem I have is that the faux candle is cracked at the top and I am wondering if anyone knows where I can get replacements. Otherwise they are in great shape.

The candelabra is heavy silver that is just starting to tarnish. There are no markings on the bottom.

So this is where I have the trio, in the den, behind the settee I won't let anyone sit on. I didn't notice that the settee is a little crooked in front of the sofa table, but oh well.

Lastly, I wanted to give a big thanks to Fifi of Fifi Flowers Designs for posting a picture of the painting she did of my Summerhouse up at the lake. If you didn't get to see it, go to her Outdoor Wednesday post of last week. She did a fabulous job and I can't wait to get the painting. She will also be doing a painting of the actual Cottage (the Summerhouse is actually a guesthouse) and I am really excited to see that.

Please visit everyone participating in Tam and Diane's events, as I am off to do. Thanks for stopping!!

xoxo

Jane

HOOKED ON FRIDAYS: BOOKSHELVES EVERYWHERE!!

Today I am joining Julia at Hooked On Houses for the very first time. The event is called Hooked On Fridays. Please visit Julie and see a bunch of things other bloggers just love with a passion. It's really interesting stuff!! Today I am showing off some of my bookshelves, which are just about in every room of my wee little house. Exercise caution though; this was a last minute post and I did not tidy up or stage one tiny bit! So, if you see cobwebs or dust or something I stuck on the shelf because I had no other place to put it, I will attest to the fact that organization is not one of my strong points and I am inherently lazy.

Above are the shelves in my kitchen that hold all of my cookbooks. You may note that the shelves are sagging and it is not the fault of my carpenter. I recently cleared out about half of the books along with scraps from newspapers, magazines and hastily written down recipes from friends or bloggers. As I was going about this arduous task, I came across cookbooks that I had never even opened!! And I am a little ashamed to admit why. I have a bad habit of judging a book by it's cover! You see, there are so many cookbooks in the discount bins at bookstores and I go through them and think "Wow, this looks like a great book! And look at the beautiful cover!" I get them home only to find that one book involves cooking entirely with tofu, or one involves purchasing ingredients from a select and obscure Armenian food market. Looking at my shelves today I saw Jewish Holiday Feasts (I'm Catholic). The Black Pot (I don't own a lick of cast iron cookery). The Lazy Baker. (They got the lazy part right, but I abhor baking).

So I donated a bunch of books and brought a carton up to the Lakehouse even though we are pretty much "Throw some meat on the grill" people.

But truth be told, I really love to read cookbooks, especially one's where the author talks about how and when they made the dish (only to find that the guests at her dinner party generally shied away from beef tongue), or a little story about how they got the recipe from a medicine man in the mountains of Bali. Really interesting stuff. So my secrets are out.

Moving along, this is the shelf in the master bedroom. And these books belong to the Master of the house. If they have dust on them it is because they almost as old as him. I can't argue the point that he wants to hang on to them (I still have my first cookbook: The Clueless Baker...). He maintains that these are reference books. Some just sound so interesting, it brings me to my knees: Larrey: Surgeon to Napoleon's Imperial Guard. Larrey? Larrey who? And then this one, a real conversation starter: The Autobiography of Gordon Saltonstall Hubbard. Hmmm... maybe he knows Larrey. And some of us may be interested in this book: How Walmart is Destroying America. Gulp. This book might just destroy my love for one of my favorite haunts.

So there you have The Husbands books. I have shuffled them around the house so this shelf does not look so messy. A bedroom is supposed to be relaxing and soothing and I don't like to see the jacket cover with Larrey hovering over French soldiers with swords in their chests.

I keep most of my book in the den. It is a mix of self help books and Chick Lit. Maybe I could use a little self analysis to figure out why a married woman of my age wants to read about twenty~something girls romping around New York City with the very best of friends and a couple of cads thrown in for fun. I also keep a lot of note cards that have sat untouched since the advent of email and if you are of a queasy nature, don't look at the black container on the upper right side of the top shelf. It holds, er...my last dog, if you will.

This shelf holds a lot of my favorite children's books that I can't part with and a lot of my journals. You might be appalled at the fact that I leave something so private out on these shelves. Truth be told, no one here is interested in me. I could place one of these journals right on top of The Husbands morning newspaper and he would just swat it away and continue to search for the sports page. So no need to worry about anyone reading how much weight I have gained or how I fantasize explicitly about Harrison Ford. Nope, my secrets are safe!

And lastly in the den, a little row of books I don't want, but need to fill in this shelf. I do like the painting below. I bought it from an antique store. It has some French script I can't read, of course, and it shows women in tight corsets dancing with men in wigs wearing ruffled shirts. I was positive The Husband would somehow spot Napoleon (or even Larrey, if he wasn't tied up caring for the wounded soldiers), so I hastily hung it here before he could snatch it for his office.

Here we have a shelf in the family room. It is filled with books that I have read and would be willing to loan out because I didn't like them very much. The rest of my books are treasures, reference if you will. When family members come over and start to peruse my shelves for a book to borrow, I gently nudge them over here...

And finally we have the Boy's Shelf. These books are all about sports. I have been threatened severely to never throw away or so much as touch these books (and you will note I haven't due to the haphazard way they are arranged). Again; reference. Why can't a man just read a big old fictional novel? The guys in my house equate reading a book from beginning to end as a blow to their manhood. Men like facts. They like to read facts (as in the scores on the sports page). Have you ever noticed that when we argue with our husbands, they have that great capability of sticking to the facts, while we women just ramble on and on? I personally think they miss a lot of good stuff not reading like we do, but then again, I could use some help in the rambling department. Note to self: Look for self help book along the lines of Stop Rambling and Start Making Sense: A Woman's Guide to Understanding and Using Facts in Everyday Life.

I wish you all a great day!!

xoxo

Jane

OUTDOOR WEDNESDAY: 4th OF JULY AT THE LAKEHOUSE

We celebrated 4th of July up at the cottage with the Irish side of the family. Although our renovations are not yet completed, everyone had a warm bed and a meal on the table. I went on a scavenger hunt for cheap patriotic decor and much to my delight, The Dollar Tree had just about everything I was looking for. I noticed many of the same items out there in blogland and was tempted to go back a second time after spotting some things I missed!!

Emily was in "Future Interior Designer" delirium, playing with the red, white and blue garland, stars and flags. It's hard to tell in some of these pictures but she managed to make her mark on just about everything. She also rearranged some furniture and cleaned out my linen closet.

Food was aplenty. These pictures may not look very cohesive as I was using Emily's camera and most of the time she wouldn't let me have it. Difficult children. Above are my nieces, Grace and Trish, posing in front of a more healthy treat compared to some of the rest. The dip for fruit is made with marshmallow fluff and cream cheese. If you haven't had it before, let me know and I will post the recipe. It is wonderful.

Meals were simple; hamburgers, hot dogs, Italian sausage, and chicken on the grill. We also had pasta salad, potato salad and Papa's tomato, cucumber and feta cheese salad. Although there was an abundance of fruit available, I lost all sense of control and had banana bread and sour cream donuts every morning for breakfast. Holidays are about food, right? I haven't weighed myself since I got home.

We like our bonfires. You can't see the bonfire since I only took pictures of the people around the bonfire. Here is Emily and Mike, her boyfriend.

Mike, Papa and brother~in~law Marty's leg.

A picture of The Husband and Emily. I can't remember if this was before or after she showed him her new nose ring. Must be before~they look civil.

Grace and Trish playing on our beach.

"And my third wish is that I could stay here forever!"

Fun on the boat. For some reason Emily set the color on the camera to sepia. Not a great idea when you are on blue water under a blue sky. Above, Abby and sister~in~law Megan.

No more sepia!! The happy passengers!

Emily

The Husband and Trish...

...or the Captain and First Mate!

And my favorite boating pastime: looking at the beautiful lake houses!

We moved on to the wave runners. Note the three redheads. I told you this was the Irish side of the family!!

Sister~in~law, Karen.

A nice after dinner walk.

Cousins. Grace, Trish and Liz.

"I had a great holiday. How about you?"

For more great Outdoor Wednesday posts, visit our hostess Susan at A Southern Daydreamer and see what everyone else is up to outdoors!!

xoxo

Jane