Summer Blog Hop, Garden edition

Here's to another year of Jo @ Serendipitous Stitching hosting her Summer Blog Hop with Garden as the theme.  My beautifully stitched postcard is from Kaye @ Kitten Stitching.  Of course I love that she has cat in it! 

 And here are her garden thoughts...

 

"Here are my pics - "My cat Coco lives here" (actually High Hopes by Just Nan) and two pics of my winter garden - one very bare and the other of some jonquils.

I love gardens and flowers but unfortunately I hate the actual gardening and I am allergic to a lot of highly scented flowers!  However, I am lucky enough to live in a beautiful, leafy Melbourne suburb with some of the loveliest gardens to view as I go on my walks.  I do so enjoy seeing the change of seasons in the gardens which I pass and in my own, lovely garden which is looked after by a lovely man who comes by once a fortnight to maintain mine for me."

Please be sure to check back to Jo's blog at the end of summer to make sure you haven't missed any garden postcards!  I know I'm way behind on following it myself, so that's where I'm headed - mine is out there somewhere!

An early housewarming gift

Look what I received in the post from my chosen sister, Karen...

I LOVE IT!!!

She surprised me and made this for me to hang in my new craft room.  I love that the house is blue and it has two kitties - Ming and Max!

This is pretty close to the colour the room is going to be, sort of a creamy, very light yellow. 

Not quite sure where I'm going to put it yet.  I wish I could put it just before you enter the room, but that won't work.  No worries, I know I'll find the perfect spot.

So thank you, dear Karen, for making me this wonderful treasure.  Maybe I'll even wait until you come visit to hang it up, then I'll put you to work! 

We still don't know when we're moving in yet.  I'm hoping for the end of September, but realistically it will probably be mid October.  Not quite sure how I'm going to decorate for Halloween while trying to unpack - priorities!

At least we're one step closer inside.  The fireplace was finished this week, we just need the mantel.

I still haven't been reading blogs, but I will make that my down-time this week in the evening.  Please let me know if I'm missing following your blog, I haven't caught up with that either.

And thank you so much for your thoughts and kind words for my Mom.  She's at home and doing great.  On Monday she gets her staples out, all 32 of them!  

My Momma and some scenes from a car

Mom/Oma's "party" before her hip replacement surgery. 

 

Oma and Opa with 6 out of 9 grandkids.

Crazy bunch included Margo and Doug, who are hosting my parents while we are in our rental house which is not practical for Mom to stay in.

Arrived at the hospital, ready to get fixed up!

Pre-op, getting ready and getting drugged!

 

After surgery - she's talking to Margo and he's talking to my older brother.

The gmen came to visit.

 

Margo and Doug had brought some beautiful flowers when they came to visit.

Mom will finally be getting out tomorrow, she went to the rehab floor a couple days after surgery and she's doing great!  She had to get a special walker since she can't use her hands due to her rheumatoid arthritis and she's zooming around.  She gave us a scare when her heart rate was high and they didn't know why, but no problems now.

 

Driving into and around Baltimore every day wasn't really too bad, we seemed to find different ways of getting home every day!  These were some of our scenes.

 

 

Just in case you didn't know what colour it was!

And many thanks to Nana, who had Nathan stay with her so we could visit Mom every day.  He always has a good time with her.



 



Mythbusting

I had heard about this on Pinterest and looked it up - "wooden spoon over boiling water", this is one of the pins I found.

 Wooden spoon over boiling water

And this is what happened when I tried...

Um, didn't work!

Then I found this one when I looked up "keeping bananas from turning brown"

How to keep bananas from browning quickly

And this is what happened when I tried it.

Ok, it looks like I didn't have it wrapped tight enough and actually should have wrapped them individually.  I'm willing to try again and see what happens.  As for this bunch, looks like future yummy banana bread.

This is not so much mythbusting, just a little different.
Baking your eggs instead of boiling them to make deviled eggs.  Placing them in muffin tins instead of boiling them, super easy.  

Well, one cracked so that ended up getting tossed because it was a bit mushy on the outside.

The others were fine, some were easier to peel than others, no big difference.  But you can see where the eggs shell had touched the bottom and side of the pan.  I think I'll stick to boiling my eggs.