If we were having coffee ... where did June go?

Once upon a time I subscribed to The Perpetual Page-Turner blog and she had a post titled "If we were having coffee together." I thought to myself "What a clever idea." This type of blog post is for when I have a lot of little things I want to share. She still has a blog.  Amazing!

So, grab your coffee/beverage of your choice and join me. 

If we were having coffee ... I'd ask, in all seriousness, what the heck happened to June? I feel like all I did was blink and here we are at the start of July.

I think I know what caused it. I took a lot of vacation time in June. The work schedule was conducive to it, and my hubby was able to take time off for similar reasons. So we had nearly two weeks of free time to do what our little hearts desired. 

All in all, June has been a pretty nice month. 

I was looking through my phone's camera and realized I didn't take as many photos as I thought I did. Also, I was pretty boring this month, when I get right down to it. 😆 I puttered in the garden, I knit, I cross stitched. I fretted about the weather and if we were ever going to get rain.  (Spoiler alert: It did.  Then it turned humid and gross for a while)

If we were having coffee ... I'd let you know that after 25 days (I was told) I got my beloved Rav back. Oh my gosh, I missed having *my* vehicle so much. 

I got the call earlier this week letting me know that the parts arrived and the techs were working on it.  Then about an hour later I received a call lettting me know everything was done and I could come get it. 

I went up to the dealership the next morning, signed the necessary papers and very happily gave them the keys to the loaner. 

I was so excited to see my Rav that I didn't even ask where it was parked.  

I meandered around the parking lot a bit before spotting her. 

If I could have, I would have run over there. 

Instead, I clicked my fob and unlocked the vehicle, to make sure it was mine. 

Then I opened the door, slide into the seat, relished the familiarity I felt, and sighed contentedly. 

A quick selfie was taken and sent to my husband, with the message "Did you hear that sigh of contentment?" 

If we were having coffee ... I'd tell you that I had a very nice birthday.  It was quiet on the day, and I sort of reveled in it. 

Jessica over at Lumistitch gave me a copy of her "Cherries" chart, and gave me three copies for a giveaway. I decided it would be perfect for a SAL. I started a cross stitch stitch-along/start-along for my birthday.

Here's a photo of my start. 

It's a fun, quick stitch and sort of potato-chip-y and I don't really want to stop working on it. My friend Milka is already done with it!

My husband made me my traditional birthday steak dinner. Yum!

If we were having coffee ... I'd chat real quick about Amazon Prime Days and how we managed to mostly abstain from shopping. Almost. 

We decided to order a pressure washer.  It arrived on this past Friday. Oh. My. Gosh. It is a beast! 

The first project we used it for was to power wash the deck so we could re-stain the deck and rearrange the furniture a little bit. 

After power washing the deck. I cleaned so much old stain and grime off the deck. 

The next morning we stained.  But first ... we opened the can of stain I bought and immediately declared it wasn't the right one. Bah!  So it meant a trip to Menard's so we could exchange and get the right color. 

With the correct color in hand, we went back home and started the project. 

Looks great, right? We decided it was maybe a little *too* red, so we we got another color and used that for a second coating. 

We are so happy with the end results.  And this new set up. 

I took this photo right after it rained. 

If we were having coffee ... I'd chat real quick about some of the other crafting I've been doing. 

I worked a little bit on my Porcupine Island shawl. 

It's slow and steady progress on this shawl. Despite how careful I'm being, I'm winding up with extra stitches.  It's so weird. 

Squares for the Battenberg blanket have been worked on. 

I haven't touch my Battenberg blanket, or my Maeve crochet square project in ages.  I'm trying to get those projects back in to the rotation. 

If we were having coffee ...  I'd give a sneak peek at the garden. 

Oh! I just remembered something.  We have caterpillars on the milkweed. At least we did this past weekend. I haven't checked to see if they are still there. And all the photos we took are on my hubby's phone. Shoot!  

If we were having coffee ... I'd mentioned that it's the Fourth of July holiday this weekend.  I've been enjoying seeing all the patriotic stuff I've been seeing on social media. Am I doing anything special this weekend? I'm really not sure.  It depends on the weather. We've had some rain this week.  More rain is in the forecast. 

Okay, well, I guess that is it for now. It's been quietish around the homestead. I've been in my own little world probably more often than I care to admit. I'm sure I'm forgetting a ton of stuff to write about, too. 

Thanks so much for reading my nonsense.  I appreciate it. ☺️❤️

First storm of the season

 Friday morning my coworker messaged me that there was a storm heading her way.  I can't recall how the rest of the message went. I checked my own weather app and saw we had something coming our way, too. 

"Oh," I thought. "Okay. Well, cool. Looks like we are supposed to get something, too."

I made the decision to keep the girls in the coop and not let them free range.  Have you ever tried to corral chickens in a storm? it's not fun and there's usually one lone hen that decides she's too freaked out to go in to the coop, and is convinced you are trying to steal her virtue, or murder her. Also, who wants to run out to the coop and close it up when it's raining? "Not I," said the crow. 

I sort of went about my business for the day until my son started messaging me. He was asking me how the weather was out there. He was in town. Then he told me it started hailing.  Then my darling son went silent for like an hour. I was having visions of his car being pummeled by hail, but that's neither here nor there. 

I checked the radar and was so surprised to see how gnarly the radar looked. 

Eeeks! I decided that could be something really bad. Rarely do I see purple and that deep pinkish maroon color on the radar.  So I went and closed up the greenhouse. 

This was the sky when I looked west. 

Granted, the photo doesn't do it justice. The temperature started dropping, too. 

Then I heard rumbling start up, way off in the distance.  So I went back to the house and waited for the storm to arrive. 

Wind, rain and not as much thunder as I thought there would be.  There was hail.  I heard it hitting the house, the front window and the garage door. I mildly worried about hail breaking the living room window.  That would be a terrible thing. 

Then the power went out. 

I wasn't really expecting the power to go out, but I wasn't surprised. Thank goodness for power back up. 

"Oh no! My quiche!" I thought to myself.  My oven shut off when the power went out. Between the quiche, and my hubby trying to work out in the garage, we decided to throw the backup power on. 

My quiche:

I think it actually overcooked a wee bit.  Crazy, right? 

After a few hours the power came back on. Yay!

And then, the rain stopped. I thought we were in a ... what do you call it, a trough? A calm time between the storm bands. 

No, it was officially over. 

The sun even came out.

I posted some video clips on my most recent garden video.

It sounds like we missed the brunt of the storm. There's a few towns to the east of us, right on the lake, that sustained damage. Downed trees and all that not-so-good stuff. 

The rest of the weekend was pretty uneventful.  The temperatures dropped. We are back to running the wood stove and my plants are back in the house. 

Sunday was sunny and there wasn't any wind.  All of us spent some time outside, doing some storm clean up. 

My son and I moved the fountain out of the greenhouse. It's so easy to walk in there now! 😆

Isn't that blue sky gorgeous? It's such a liar, though. It looks like it should be warm. It wasn't as warm as I think it should be.  Temps in the 40s F, I think. 

While I was over by the garden I decided to clear out the leaves around my table.  I have no idea how, but that side of the garden collects oak leaves like no one's business.

I was wearing my fancy new croc boots that I purchased a while back. Yes, I know that's not the "proper" rake for what I was doing, but I was working with what I had, instead of walking all over, looking for a proper rake. 

Looking good! 

I have some grand dreams for this little area.  Will I do it? I don't know.  Maybe.  Depends on how I feel, quite honestly. 

This must have been back on Wednesday.  The girls found the front door again. 

They hung out there for a good long while. I was surprised there was hardly any poop out there when they finally decided to leave. 

Guess what? I started a new cross stitch project. I reached 500 stitches on it and stopped. 

Western Meadowlark by Lindy Stitches. I dyed that fabric myself.  Even though I measured dye with my heart, it turned out exactly like I wanted it to. I'm starting to wonder what I'll do when the fabric *doesn't* turn out like I want it to. 

Today was publishing day.  It went pretty smoothly. Yay! I love when that happens. 

If you watched my most recent flosstube episode, you will know that I decided to jump on the wheel bandwagon. 

Spin the wheel and let it decide what you work on. That's how I started the Western Meadowlark. 

This evening I decided to add a couple things on the wheel.  One if the things was "Free space." I thought it might add some excitement to the whole Spin the Wheel fun. 

Guess what I spun when I spun for tonite? 

"Seriously?" I said out loud. I could decide to spin again, if I wanted. I decided not to. 

Instead I made 8-minute cheesecake, while watching my friend Leann's newest flosstube.

And then I decided it was a good time to sit down and write a blog post. After this? Who knows.  The world is my oyster this evening. 

Oh, and my son's car? It's fine. The hail that was in our area wasn't very large. Thankfully. 

Discombobulation

 This whole week has been off for me. Our last publishing day was done earlier than usual and this past week I thought we were working towards a publishing Friday. Ufff, when I was wondering why the issue had such a far out date I was like "What's going on?" then "Oh yeah ...." 

So, yeah, it's been a weird week. 

I recorded a flosstube on my Wednesday lunch hour.  In it I shared my tale of woe about my Armande cardi. 

When I was scrolling through my camera roll I saw this photo. 

*sigh* and it was taking me back to when I knit my first Harvest Cardigan. 

Even though I saw this Armande in the sunlight and I'm well-aware of the color difference, and it doesn't bother me that much ... seeing the color difference in this photo did. Ugh, I just feel annoyed when I think about all the work I put in to this cardigan. 

Back on Monday Feffer was in a mood, so I decided to spend some quality time with him and cuddle for a bit. 

He can be still for only so long.

Then he saw me trying to take photos. 

"What you got there?"

This one came up on my Book of Faces memories from like eight years ago.  I'm *sooooooo* feeling this one. 

Fortunately, the snow is going away. Finally. I admit to not remembering much of the weather this past week.  So it must have been less than ideal. This weekend's weather was a bit off, shall we say.  Though it did end the weekend in a lovely way.  Temps in the 70s!  At the end of the day. That part wasn't so hot.  I would have loved the nice weather for most of the day. 

Things starting picking up this weekend, despite my hubby being ill. He did a wee bit of car maintenance on my vehicle, before admitting defeat (about being sick) and spend most of the weekend taking it easy. 

We made a quick trip to town Friday evening.  I joked to him about taking me out past my bed time. 

I took a few photos of the sights along the way. 

Yup, snow.  Though I was more focused on how beautiful the sky looked. 

The sunset, though. ... WOW! 

Saturday morning was cool and a bit sunny, before it turned cloudy and rained for the rest of the day and all through the night. 

See, beautiful day!

I did a couple homesteady-type chores before the rain. 

I had to get wood for the woodrack. We have now reached that time of year when a wagon full of wood lasts more than half a week.  Yay! Though we did tear through this load a bit, thanks to the rain and wanting to keep the house warm for my hubby. 

The girls certainly enjoyed the weather while it was good.  When it started raining they did go in to the coop for the rest of the day. 

Friday evening I started a new cross stitch chart. My friend Alison posted a new chart and I decided I had to get it and stitch it right away. Then I got hit with the tireds and had to go to bed.  Turns out I wasn't immune from whatever pestilence was in the household.  I managed to bounce back, somewhat. 

I picked the chart back up Saturday afternoon while I was watching CHiPs.  Yes, I was watching CHiPs.  You know why? Potato chip tv watching, plus I know things are going to wrap up by the end of the episode. A bit campy. A bit silly, but I don't have to worry about what I might see or hear. 

Anywho ... here was my progress. 

In this episode of CHiPs Ponch was being super serious and explaining to some motorbiker that if he hadn't stopped him, the motorbiker would have driven off a cliff and hurt people and likely killed himself. The motorbiker saw the error of his ways. 

This morning I woke up to rain.  Rain and mist and fog and all the things that would make you think you lived on a boggy moor, or something. 

We ran to town for the weekly grocery shopping. 

Once we returned home and I did the things that needed doing, I completed the chart I purchased from Alison, over at AZ Family Zoo. She also has a youtube channel. 

Wee Bee Patriotic

Can be purchased at: https://azfamilyzoo.com/shop/ols/products/wee-bee-patriotic-cross-stitch-chart-pdf-download

Started: April 10, 2026

Completed: April 12, 2026

Fabric: 14 count aida, dyed by me

DMC: 310, 725, blanc, 797, 321

Super fun and quick stitch.  I told Alison I'm going to need to get the entire series now.  

Oh, I want to mention that she runs a forever home sanctuary so all the proceeds go towards the care of the animals, which I pink, puffy, heart love, and it makes it super easy to decide to purchase the charts and support the animals. Plus, when she records her videos, we get to hear some of the birds that are in her care, and they are always so lovely to hear.  Especially Zazu, the canary. 

It was cloudy and overcast for the majority of today.  I think it was mid-morning when my hubby checked the forecast and saw we were supposed to hit a high of 70 degrees.  We were both like "What?! No. Way." 

You know what? It happened. 

The sun came out.  The temps warmed up. 

I went out and did outdoorsy things. But mostly I sat by the garden and soaked it all in. 

The hens loved it and I spotted them out in "the great wild" looking for tidbits and tasty bugs. Because I'm nice (hee hee) I took some video of them enjoying being wild wood chickens. 

Light at 5:30 p.m.

 Earlier this week I bopped out the back door to go take care of some outside chore when I realized it was way past 5 p.m. and it was still light out. 

I had to stop and admire the still-lit sky for a few moments, before running in to the house and grabbing my phone so I could take photos. 

For so long, it felt, that the darkness at 5 p.m. was going to last forever. 

In the busyness of January I did not notice that the days were slowly getting longer. 

It felt wonderful when I realized the days were indeed getting longer. 

Then I walked up to the back door and noticed foot prints in the snow.

At some point the ladies, aka the chickens, decided to come up on the deck and check things out. 

Their foot prints always look so much bigger than their feet are. 

This past week was indeed a busy week. When I wrote on Monday I said the day didn't go quite the way I thought it would, and that I felt the entire week would be busy.  

I sort of nailed it. It was a busy week and by the time it was done I was *so* tired. 

Tuesday I had a doctor appointment. The waiting room at the clinic has an amazing view of Lake Superior. 

I took three photos to show the view.  It's really amazing. 

When I looked down at the lake, and saw all those chunks of ice, I swear I could see them swaying in the water, and I felt a little motion sick. 

On my way back to the skywalk I was admiring the art pieces along the way. This one in particular caught my eye. 

Yes I took the skywalk to and from the parking ramp. Normally I just go down to street level and cross the street to the clinic. It was cold out and I decided I didn't want to be in it, so I took the skywalk and it probably added at least three-fourths of a mile to the trip each way. 

A quick shot of downtown Duluth. 

I wouldn't say I ended up wasting a day on the doctor appointment, but waiting around for prescriptions to be sent to the pharmacy sure wasted a lot of time. 

By the time I got home it was time to start supper. 

I turned on Youtube and started watching Corrina, and was tickled to see that we were both making pizza. How funny is that? 

My pizza turned out good. 

After I was ready to settle down in for the evening I started a new project. I'm doing a stitch along with my friend Patty, for her birthday. 

I got a respectable start going. 

Thursday and Friday are a bit of a blur.  I was knee deep in work during the day, and I did some crafting at night. I was so tired in the evenings, though, I didn't get much done. 

When I signed off for work on Friday I was almost giddy. 

This weekend has been nice.  Quiet. I think I caught up on sleep. 

The sky Saturday morning. It was beautiful. 

Saturday I decided to do something I haven't really done for a while, despite what I may have done last weekend.  I spent the morning baking.  I was trying out new-to-me keto "bread" recipes. 

I'm not going to bother sharing this recipe.  It flopped. 

This recipe is one a friend shared with me. It's like biscuits.  Good, but not quit hitting the spot. 

The best recipe of the day? It's a recipe I've made before and it's SO easy. 

I think it's called 90-second bread. It's the round piece below the bread knife. An egg, almond flour and butter. Oh, and some sort of leavening agent. Best bread texture out of everything I've made so far for a bread replacement. 

Today was a pleasant one. Ran to town early in the a.m. and got that all out of the way.  Took care of some stuff when I got home, and then sat down and stitched. 

When I finished stitching "Portrait of a Snapping Turtle," (Yes, you read that right -- it's done!) I did some stitching on my February cat stitch.  And watched some Fr. Brown.  It's been ages since I've watched Fr. Brown. 

After Fr. Brown was done I decided to throw on an episode of Supernatural. 

Okay, a few blog posts ago I mentioned Supernatural and one of their cases being in Hibbing, Minnesota.  Since then I've noticed the Winchester Brothers spend a LOT of time in Minnesota and Wisconsin.  The episode that was playing decided to have them in Duluth, Minnesota. 

That hit close to home, literally and figuratively. ... 

In the episode I was watching, Dean was trying to get the GPS on Sam's phone turned on, and saw he was in Duluth, I guess. 

This is a photo I took of the tv screen. I been in or through all the towns shown on the screen. 

I guess that was the high points of the last week. This next week is looking to be a busy one, too, but hopefully not as busy and I'll have time to record a flosstube and some things in order.