My Everything Corner

I had a lovely weekend spent with family.  We had a BBQ on Friday to celebrate my Mother-in-law's 72nd birthday.  I put together a cute, little cake that fit the season so well.  Although she figured out that our get together was in honor of her special day, we managed to surprise her with the company of her two daughters.  Mom was so surprised, she had quite the giggle and we enjoyed a long evening of chit-chat.    Then we were invited to her home on Sunday for a turkey dinner.  Now, this is all very unusual and a very big deal in this farming family.  Not once, since I've lived here in the past 5 years have we been able to get together on these 2 days.  The men have always been in the field putting in the crops. All of us are happy when the seeding begins, and even happier when it's done, so celebrations are put on hold, and then forgotten. While there, I sneaked out to her garden for awhile to take a few photos. I haven't ...

Having an unstructured, quiet morning, I found myself missing my blog.  Although I've been visiting others' blogs, I hadn't added to my own in nearly 2 weeks.  So I thought it was time to catch up with what has been going on around here. We had our first get together since Uncle's passing. Although we were 2 days off my sister-in-law's special day, a comforting meal followed by a special cake was welcomed by everyone.  There was plenty of talk about Uncle and how things are going with the cleaning up of his home.  I know it isn't easy, and with every bit of physical progress, they make some emotional progress as well.  There are memories in everything they touch, right down to the old pancake mix.  Smiles are mixed with tears as they continue to sort through. The beginning of the new year is always my time to get caught up on the past year of scrap booking. I have completed two, one for each of my children and am well into a separate album for ...

 It is very hard to believe that July has almost passed us by already.  We've had a great summer so far; beautiful eather, lots of time with family and a wonderful road trip have all made the time fly by quickly.  I'll have to save the road trip for another post, as I still have to sort through over 1300 photos from those 9 days. We kicked off summer as we usually do, with a birthday party on July 4th.  My daughter decorated this cake, and it one of my all-time favorites.  It's one of the happiest cakes I've ever seen! Irish moss in flower had become my favorite plant! The daisies have really only just started their colorful show. A lovely group of dwarf sunflowers to take cuttings from and decorate my house for fall. Gardening is at the center of our life here.  Of course, the flowers make for the best photos, but we also have 2 large vegetable gardens to tend to. I planted a lot of zinnias this year, including into contain...